Brain tech startup Science Corp. raised $230M, a source says at a $1.5B valuation, taking its total funding to $489M, to commercialize its implant for blindness
Nvidia launches the Vera Rubin platform, saying it will offer dramatic reductions in inference and training costs compared to Blackwell, across six new chips
The Rubin GPU boasts five times more AI training compute power than Blackwell. … Nvidia is kicking off 2026 …
French online carpooling marketplace BlaBlaCar says India now accounts for ~33% of its carpool passengers and expects to reach ~150M passengers globally in 2025
Every few weekends, 21-year-old student Lavanya Jain opens the BlaBlaCar app to find a lift from Noida on the outskirts … X: @techcrunch . LinkedIn: Nicolas Brusson X: @techcrunch ...
Sesame, which is developing an AI agent with a natural-sounding human voice and smart glasses, raised a $250M Series B and opens an early beta of its iOS app
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch :
General Intuition, which trains AI agents in spatial reasoning using game clips from Medal, raised a $133.7M seed led by Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst
Medal, a platform for uploading and sharing video game clips, has spun out a new frontier AI research lab that's using its trove …
eBay agrees to acquire Tise, a social marketplace for secondhand fashion and interior design items that has raised $45M in funding, for an undisclosed sum
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch :
Meta starts rolling out built-in message translation in WhatsApp, with support for 19+ languages on iOS and six on Android
Qualcomm calls it incredible Sagar / GSMArena.com : WhatsApp announces Message Translations feature for Android and iPhone users Markus Kasanmascheff / WinBuzzer : WhatsApp Rolls O...
Huxe, an app built by three former NotebookLM developers that offers users personalized daily briefs and topic exploration with AI podcast hosts, raised $4.6M
Google's AI note-taking and research assistant NotebookLM took off to a spectacular reception at launch, capturing people's imaginations … X: @peterdedene , @andrewcurran_ , @gethu...
Hugging Face unveils two open-source humanoid robots, the $3,000 full-sized HopeJR and a $250-$300 Reachy Mini desktop unit, expected to ship by the end of 2025
AI dev platform Hugging Face continued its push into robotics on Thursday with the release of two new humanoid robots.
An interview with Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia on building the “next Nextdoor”, not licensing data to AI firms for now, his relationship with Bill Gurley, and more
Connie Loizos / TechCrunch :
Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko plans to transfer Mastodon's ownership to a new non-profit, saying “Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual”
Mastodon says the decentralized network ‘should not be owned or controlled by a single individual.’
Elon Musk appears to confirm that X deprioritizes posts with links in their main text, to stop “lazy linking”, and tells users to “put the link in the reply”
Anyway, here's the biggest loser of all, admitting to throttling links and blaming the user for wanting to link: — https://www.mediaite.com/... Bluesky: @davidjoffe64.bsky.social...
Apple updates its $199 Magic Keyboard, $99 Magic Mouse, and $149 Magic Trackpad with USB-C, keeping the same pricing; all three have used Lightning since 2015
Apple is finally removing the Lightning port from its lineup of Mac accessories. Earlier today, the company announced a new iMac …
Notion previews Mail, an email client that uses AI to organize, archive, or draft emails and handle scheduling and follow-ups, saying it is “coming soon”
the most dramatic new feature releases from @NotionHQ in one day... ever! I cover th big ones in the video below. ✉️ Notion Mail is officially announced as coming soon! 🗒️ Plus Not...
Microsoft partners with Anduril Industries to improve the performance of Integrated Visual Augmentation System or IVAS, the new combat goggles for the US Army
- Pentagon may spend up to $21.9 billion on headsets over decade — System must pass combat test next year before full production
A TuSimple shareholder letter alleges “potentially fraudulent activities” as it tries to move ~$450M to China to pivot from self-driving trucks to AI animation
TechCrunch : Threads: @lorakolodny . X: @sokane1 , @techcrunch , and @mattrosoff Threads: Lora Kolodny / @lorakolodny : Whatever happened to TuSimple? They're trying to pivot. ht...
An interview with Plaid's first president, Jennifer Taylor, on expanding beyond its traditional fintech customers as its enterprise customer base crosses 1,000
An interview with Plaid's first president, Jennifer Taylor, on expanding beyond its traditional fintech customers as its enterprise customer base crosses 1,000
As Plaid has expanded its fintech services, so, too, has it grown its customer base. — Plaid got its start as a company … X: @techcrunch and @bayareawriter . LinkedIn: Kevin Youn...
Q&A with FTC Chair Lina Khan about scrutinizing Big Tech's “innovations in potential lawbreaking” with AI deals, use of AI at FTC, startups, acquisitions, more
FTC Chair Lina Khan was the youngest person appointed to her position when she assumed the job in 2021.
Q&A with FTC Chair Lina Khan about scrutinizing Big Tech's “innovations in potential lawbreaking” with AI deals, use of AI at FTC, startups, acquisitions, more
FTC Chair Lina Khan was the youngest person appointed to her position when she assumed the job in 2021.