Plus - Microsoft to lessen reliance on OpenAI by buying AI from rival Anthropic; OpenAI denies that it’s weighing a ‘last-ditch’ California exit amid regulatory pressure over its restructuring Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesبقلم TechCrunch

Apple unveiled its new line of iPhones on Tuesday, and the iPhone 17 Pro is making a direct appeal to content creators. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesبقلم TechCrunch

SpaceX just fired off one of the biggest shots yet in the spectrum wars, agreeing to pay $17 billion to take over a massive chunk of wireless airwaves from EchoStar for Starlink’s Direct-to-Cell services. The deal is the most aggressive signal yet that SpaceX wants to rule the satellite-to-phone market. Also, Ramp answered any lingering questions a…

Nuclearn got its start when the founders were working at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station just west of Phoenix. They had been experimenting with ways to streamline various repetitive tasks first from a data science perspective then with more advanced AI models. Also, ReOrbit, a Finnish startup focused on helping nations control their own s…

After watching Reddit's OpenAI and Anthropic communities, Sam Altman thinks social media cannot be trusted. And bots are to blame. Also, OpenAI executives are discussing a potential relocation out of California as increasing political resistance threatens the company's efforts to convert from nonprofit to for-profit status, according to The WSJ, bu…

X enthusiast and Reddit shareholder Sam Altman had an epiphany on Monday: Bots have made it impossible to determine whether social media posts are really written by humans, he posted. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesبقلم TechCrunch

Meta changed its policies around researching sensitive topics — like politics, children, gender, race, and harassment — six weeks after whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked internal documents that showed how Meta’s own research found that Instagram can damage teen girls’ mental health. Also, Salesloft said a breach of its GitHub account in March all…

Deep Fission is proposing to build small, cylindrical nuclear power plants and lower them into 30-inch diameter holes drilled one mile down into the Earth. By burying the reactors, the company hopes to solve several problems that plague current reactors, including concerns over meltdowns and potential terrorist attacks. Also, The corporate space wo…

Why is a startup that bills itself as the “Netflix of AI,” and that recently raised money from Amazon’s Alexa Fund, talking about remaking a movie that was first released in 1942? Well, the company has built a platform that allows users to create their own cartoons with AI prompts — Fable is starting out with its own intellectual property, but it h…

A new research paper from OpenAI asks why large language models like GPT-5 and chatbots like ChatGPT still hallucinate, and whether anything can be done to reduce those hallucinations. In a blog post summarizing the paper, OpenAI defines hallucinations as plausible but false statements generated by language models, and it acknowledges that despite …

Why is a startup that bills itself as the Netflix of AI, and that recently raised money from Amazon’s Alexa Fund, talking about remaking a movie that was first released in 1942? Also, around half a million writers will be eligible for a payday of at least $3,000, thanks to a historic $1.5 billion settlement in a class action lawsuit that a group of…

If you spend any time online, there’s a good chance you’ve seen plenty of ugly, AI-generated ads — but few to none when interacting with AI chatbots themselves. Koah co-founder and CEO Nic Baird argued that will inevitably change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesبقلم TechCrunch

Mark Zuckerberg sues Mark Zuckerberg; Google Photos upgrades its image-to-video feature with Veo 3 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesبقلم TechCrunch

Sodium-ion battery startup Natron ceased operations this week, ending the company’s 12-year quest to commercialize its technology in the U.S. The company had $25 million worth of orders lined up for its Michigan factory, but it couldn’t deliver them until it had UL certification, according to Raleigh’s The News & Observer, which reported on the bus…

Tesla has proposed a new 10-year compensation plan for CEO Elon Musk that could be worth as much as $1 trillion even as the EV maker’s car business stumbles and it sets its sights on humanoid robotics and AI. Also, Snapchat is launching a new Lens that lets users create and edit images using a text-to-image AI generator, the company told TechCrunch…

Plus - OpenAI announces AI-powered hiring platform to take on LinkedIn; Threads challenges X by offering free support for up to 10K characters, plus prominent links Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesبقلم TechCrunch

On Thursday, Augment announced that it raised an $85 million Series A led by Redpoint, with participation from 8VC, Autotech Ventures, and others. The massive round comes just five months after the startup launched out of stealth with a hefty $25 million seed round. Also, Mark Zuckerberg, a bankruptcy lawyer from Indiana, has filed a lawsuit agains…

The classic feature from Facebook’s early days lets users get a friend’s attention with a virtual nudge of sorts. While the poke fell out of use ages ago, the company has more recently seen an uptick in its use among younger users, which has now prompted it to make the poke a more central part of the Facebook experience. Also, the classic feature f…

Mike Cannon-Brookes, Atlassian’s CEO and co-founder, said, ‘today’s browsers weren’t built for work; they were built for browsing. This deal is a bold step forward in reimagining the browser for knowledge work in the AI era.’ Also, Francesco Cacciatore is a self-proclaimed skeptic. Yet after spending two decades in the European aerospace industry a…

Captions, an AI-powered video creation and editing app for content creators that has secured over $100 million in venture capital to date at a valuation of $500 million, is rebranding to Mirage, the company announced on Thursday. Also, JetBlue will use Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellites for free in-flight internet. Learn more about your ad choices.…

On Wednesday, Orchard Robotics announced that it raised a $22 million Series A funding led by Quiet Capital and Shine Capital, and with participation from returning investors, including General Catalyst and Contrary. Although the idea of using computer vision for specialty crops isn’t new, Wu says that the largest farms in the U.S. still rely on ma…

The Trump administration wants the United States to be the dominant force when it comes to artificial intelligence, and one way the administration hopes to achieve primacy is by bringing semiconductor manufacturing back to the U.S. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesبقلم TechCrunch

Amid lawsuits alleging child safety concerns, online gaming service Roblox announced on Wednesday that it’s expanding its age-estimation technology to all users and partnering with the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC) to provide age and content ratings for the games and apps on its platform. The company said that by year’s end, the age-est…