While the Chinese internet giant Tencent is best known for its super app WeChat, it’s also a major investor in U.S. tech companies and startups. Some of its most notable and still active investments include Reddit, Snap, and Fortnite creator Epic Games. Things might get a little awkward, though, because Tencent was designated a “Chinese […]

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Friday, December 27, was supposed to be the start of a relaxing holiday weekend. But it was chaos for thousands of small business owners who use Bench, an accounting and tax startup based in Canada that raised $113 million from investors like Bain Capital Ventures and Shopify. That morning, they found themselves unable to log […]

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Tacora Capital has raised its second fund, after Peter Thiel backed its first fund with $250 million.

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Conservative activists claim X is censoring them for being critical of its owner, Elon Musk.

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Bench, the VC-backed accounting startup that left thousands of customers locked out of their accounts after it suddenly shut down last week, will be acquired by Employer.com for an undisclosed price in a last-minute deal, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. The San Francisco-based HR tech company Employer.com focuses on payroll and onboarding, in contrast to Bench, […]

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Bench, a Canada-based accounting startup that offered software-as-a-service for small and medium-sized businesses, has abruptly shut down, according to a notice posted on its website.   “We regret to inform you that as of December 27, 2024, the Bench platform will no longer be accessible,” the notice reads. “We know this news is abrupt and may […]

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ChatGPT's new search feature can be told to generate entirely positive product summaries thanks to hidden code, new research finds.

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Contractors working on Google Gemini are comparing its responses to Claude's, according to internal correspondence seen by TechCrunch.

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Sam Altman dismissed what he called a "conspiracy theory" from a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen.

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Led by Markforged veterans and backed by a16z, Backlip has raised $30M to democratize product design thanks to AI.

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Internal guidelines passed down from Google led to concerns that the AI model could be prone to inaccurate outputs on topics like healthcare.

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The US government is calling on a Perplexity executive to help make its case that Google is a monopolist.

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The Canadian AI startup has quietly partnered with Palantir to put Cohere's models in use with unnamed Palantir customers.

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Telegram launched a new page touting its moderation efforts, which have spiked since its founder's arrest.

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Cap table management firm Carta is under fire from some founders who say cancelling their subscriptions is too hard.

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University endowments could be taxed much higher under Trump. That may harm VCs, an investor warns.

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Generative AI has a plethora of well-documented misuses, and now, it appears to be cropping up in state influence operations.

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The OpenAI Startup Fund discloses its biggest SPV yet, but is staying quiet on what it's for.

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The AI chatbot within X, Grok, is now free for all users - but with some limits.

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Several factors indicate that Snyk, most recently valued at $7.4 billion, could IPO soon. But the CEO told us why it might not.

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