Some ChatGPT users have noticed a strange phenomenon recently: occasionally, the chatbot refers to them by name as it reasons through problems. That wasn’t the default behavior previously, and several users claim ChatGPT is mentioning their names despite never having been told what to call them. Reviews are mixed. One user, software developer and AI […]

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week brought us mixed messages. A fresh IPO filing, but a bleak outlook for exits overall. New funding rounds, but founders frustrated over lack of capital. […]

TikTok content creator Kelley Heyer sued the video game Roblox for using her dance to Charli XCX’s “Apple” without permission. Heyer posted the viral dance in June 2024, which fed off of the hype of Charli XCX’s hit summer album “Brat.” The dance became so popular that Charli XCX incorporated it into her live show […]

OpenAI is upgrading ChatGPT’s “memory” again. In a changelog and support pages on OpenAI’s website Thursday, the company quietly announced “Memory with Search,” a feature that lets ChatGPT draw on memories — details from past conversations, such as your favorite foods — to inform queries when the bot searches the web. ChatGPT release notes were […]

The company sells “cooling credits” for its sulfur dioxide-based geoengineering projects.

For startups around the world, the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield program offers unmatched exposure, credibility, and connections to scale their businesses. TechCrunch has long been committed to spotlighting companies solving real-world problems in scalable and sustainable ways — making it a powerful launchpad for startups both in and outside the U.S. Several Latin American startups have […]

Nintendo announced on Friday that it will open Switch 2 preorders in the U.S. on April 24, following a delay due to the Trump administration’s hefty tariffs. Fans feared the long-awaited console would spike in price due to Trump’s import rules on international goods, but Nintendo confirmed the Switch 2 will still cost $449.99 and […]

Today’s the day! The application to speak at TechCrunch All Stage closes tonight at 11:59 p.m. PT — this is your final chance to share real-world insights with 1,200+ startup founders and VCs attending the event. Whether you’ve built or backed startups, battled bottlenecks, or cracked the code on growth, the stage is yours. TC […]

Netflix is building a new search experience aimed at improving the discovery experience, and it’s going to use AI to do it, the company’s CEO Greg Peters said during its first-quarter results conference call. Peters said Netflix is working on “interactive search that’s based on generative technologies” to help people find different titles. Answering an […]

When news broke that OpenAI was in talks to acquire AI coding company Windsurf for $3 billion, one of the first questions on the mind of anyone following the space was likely: “Why not buy Cursor creator Anysphere instead?” After all, OpenAI Startup Fund has been an investor in Anysphere, the maker of Cursor, since the […]

On February 18, 2024, Ian Laffey posted on X that he and two others he’d just met built a cheap drone at a hackathon that calculated its coordinates simply by using its camera and Google Maps. He and his colleagues, Sacha Lévy and Carl Schoeller, were all engineers under the age of 25. The tech […]

Expense management startup Ramp is being considered for a charge card pilot program by the U.S. government’s General Services Administration, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Thursday. The government’s internal expense card program, dubbed SmartPay, is a $700 billion program. It is estimated that the charge card pilot program contract for which Ramp is being […]

In a bid to more aggressively compete with rival AI companies like Google, OpenAI is launching Flex processing, an API option that provides lower AI model usage prices in exchange for slower response times and “occasional resource unavailability.” Flex processing, available in beta for OpenAI’s recently released o3 and o4-mini reasoning models, is aimed at […]

The deal was executed through Oxy Low Carbon Ventures for an undisclosed amount.

President Donald Trump’s tariffs have underscored the increasing geopolitical risk that almost all businesses now face. As the situation continues to shift with Trump’s unpredictable deal-making, it’s also becoming clear how challenging it is for companies, nonprofits, consultants, and lawyers to keep up with the rapid day-to-day changes. “We are drowning in trade updates every […]

The Chinese e-commerce marketplace app DHgate, which is now the No. 2 free iPhone app in the U.S., isn’t the only one that’s oddly benefiting from President Trump’s tariffs on U.S. imports from China. Another Chinese shopping app, Taobao, has now also entered the Top 5 as of Thursday. U.S. consumers began flocking to these […]

Geoff Ralston, known for his years at Y Combinator, has a new AI VC fund called SAIF. It is seeking AI startups focused on safety.

On Thursday, weeks after launching its most powerful AI model yet, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Google published a technical report showing the results of its internal safety evaluations. However, the report is light on the details, experts say, making it difficult to determine which risks the model might pose. Technical reports provide useful — and unflattering, […]

China is cracking down on how automakers advertise driver-assistance features, banning terms like “autonomous driving,” “self-driving,” and “smart driving,” Reuters reported, citing a transcript of a meeting between the government and industry representatives. The updated rule will also prohibit automakers from rolling out improvements via software updates to advanced driver-assistance systems in vehicles already in […]

Chatbot Arena, the crowdsourced benchmarking project major AI labs rely on to test and market their AI models, is forming a company called Arena Intelligence Inc., reports Bloomberg. In a blog post published Thursday, Chatbot Arena said that the company will “give [it] the resources to improve [its platform] significantly over what it is today.” […]