Bill Gates wants to see a robot tax and ‘Human Reserved’ jobs to mitigate harms from AI

Gates is mostly in the Responsible AI camp, but there are a few ideas in here we hadn't heard before.

CISA confirms hackers targeted over 100 US water systems during July

The federal cyber agency's warning comes amid a wave of suspected Iran-backed cyberattacks targeting critical water systems across the United States.

Surprise: Z.ai is the AI lab behind the mysterious Ox Alpha model

Z.ai confirms it is behind Ox Alpha, the mysterious open AI model topping benchmarks and leaderboards, and its weights are set to be released soon.

Meta settles for $18 billion in lawsuit brought by 29 states over social media harms to children

The lawsuit alleged that Meta knowingly designed platforms like Instagram and Facebook to addict children, despite knowing about the harms the platforms could p...

Robot brain builders are pushing out of their GPT-2 era

Robot bodies are waiting for their AI brains to catch up.

Bluesky now lets you upload 10-minute long videos

Bluesky's new 10-minute video support includes faster upload speeds, too.

QueryStory wants you to believe what AI is telling you

The startup came out of stealth with $6 million in seed funding and a plan to use LLMs and cybersecurity know-how to make AI queries coherent.

Arga is building a better way to train enterprise AI agents

Arga has raised $10 million in a seed funding round that was led by General Catalyst, with participation from Box Group, Emergence, Gradient and SV Angel.

Hearing tech startup Legato emerges from stealth with $12M and a peek at its AI hearing glasses

The glasses, called Legato Frames, integrate the company’s patented hearing-assistance technology into the arms of eyewear frames.

Runable hits $21M to bet AI agents can go from building businesses to growing them

Runable says 60%–70% of its 1 trillion-plus token usage in the last 90 days came from paying customers.

Ventures Platform goes bigger — and broader — with its second Africa fund

The Pan-African venture firm has raised $83 million and plans to invest in startups beyond its home market of Nigeria.

India’s Ringg gets backing from Peak XV as it pushes voice AI past the phone call

Ringg has raised $10 million from Peak XV as a part of its Series A extension.

Robotics startup Generalist reaches $3B valuation, sources say

The $200 million extension comes just months after the physical AI startup reached a $2 billion valuation.

OpenAI loses a top data center exec, as stream of high-profile departures continues

Before Malone left, OpenAI had already reshuffled its infrastructure org, shifting his reporting line away from President Greg Brockman and putting Vice Preside...

X sends cease-and-desist to open-source project Nitter over alleged scraping

X has sent cease-and-desist letters to Nitter, the open source project behind privacy-friendly X frontends, demanding its instances and code repository be taken...

Instagram’s ‘First Draft’ feature aims to make editing Reels less tedious

Instagram is making one of the most tedious parts of creating Reels easier. The company announced Tuesday in a Threads post that it’s rolling out “First Draft,”...

Stability AI, maker of image generator Stable Diffusion, raises $76 million in fresh funding

The company's new fundraising total now stands at $232 million.

SpaceX will build a second, $100B ‘Starbase’ spaceport in Louisiana

The company says it will start construction in 2027 and that a Starship rocket could take flight as soon as 2029.

Your vote matters! Decide which Audience Choice sessions will make it to TechCrunch Founder Summit

Each year, we get a huge influx of applicants to speak at TechCrunch’s events, and this year’s Founder Summit in Boston on November 4 will be no different!

Claude Cowork finally remembers what you told the app in chat

Anthropic is giving Claude a shared memory across chat and Cowork, so users no longer have to repeatedly brief the AI on projects, preferences, and other contex...

Waymo robotaxis are headed to Munich

Germany's autonomous vehicle regulations have made it a hotspot for autonomous vehicle testing and eventual commercial robotaxi deployment.

Life360 expands pet tracking with new $8 scannable tags and zoomie alerts

Life360’s new $7.99 scannable pet tags alert families when a lost pet is found and share its last known location, while new care-tracking features help househol...

That fake Grand Theft Auto VI demo is actually just malware

Grand Theft Auto fans, eager for news about one of the most anticipated video games of all time, appear especially vulnerable to this new cyberattack.

Pacific Fusion’s next fusion machine could clear a key hurdle to commercial power

Fusion startup Pacific Fusion broke ground on a demonstration facility in New Mexico that it says will generate enough energy to power itself.

Gamma acquires Accel-backed design startup Lica

Lica co-founders are going to work on Gamma's new research team.

Apple rescues Hide My Email feature from the privacy scrap heap

Apple says it will no longer ditch using its icloud.com domain for hiding people's email addresses.

OpenAI’s Jalapeño chip is built for fast inference at scale, benchmarks show

Tested on Semianalysis’s InferenceX benchmark, Jalapeño registered both more tokens per user and more throughput per kilowatt than the currently available state...

Apple debuts its ‘most powerful chip ever’ in M5 Ultra and M6

Apple unveils these new processors alongside an updated Mac Mini and Mac Studio.

Self-driving truck startup Gatik raises $200M following PepsiCo deal

The funding, Gatik's largest so far, was led by Qatar Investment Authority and Koch Disruptive Technologies.

Apple’s latest Mac Mini runs on a new M6 chip, and starts at $899

The base model of the Mac Mini comes with 256GB of storage, 16GB of RAM, and costs $899.