Category: Apps

In the first half of 2024 alone, more than $35.5 billion was invested into AI startups globally. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. ​ For some, AI fatigue is real — but clearly venture investors haven’t grown tired of the category. AI deals continued to dominate venture funding during the third…

A lawsuit by the world’s wealthiest man against one of the fastest growing companies of all time is necessarily interesting stuff. But while the allegations are yet to be proven, the case has already exposed a batch of emails between Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and others during OpenAI’s early days. Here are a few of…

Xiaodi Hou, the co-founder and former CEO of self-driving trucking startup TuSimple, has urged a California district court to issue a temporary restraining order to stop the company from transferring its remaining U.S. assets to China, according to a recent court filing. Hou, who plans to apply for a temporary restraining order in December during…

On Thursday, the UK’s largest mobile network operator, O2, introduced a chatbot designed to frustrate phone scammers. Called “dAIsy,” it mimics an older woman with all kinds of time to chat – about knitting, her cat Fluffy – with the aim of keeping fraudsters endlessly engaged as they try obtaining her (fake) bank details. A…

InStyle reported yesterday that Meghan Markle is an investor in the hair and wellness company Highbrow Hippie, founded by her colorist Kadi Lee and Myka Harris. The company was announcing the launch of a new hair care line and Meghan told the outlet that she was “proud to invest in her as a friend and…

If you’re an hourly worker, the number of go-to options you have for finding new jobs is shrinking a little. JobGet, a Boston-based startup that operates an hourly job-hunting site with social features built in, à la LinkedIn, is acquiring Snagajob, one of its rivals in the U.S. market. JobGet claims this will make it…

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday announced the company’s X competitor, Threads, would begin testing custom feeds for specific topics and profiles, making it easier for users to find communities and conversations that interest them. The news follows the rapid growth of the social networking startup and X rival, Bluesky, which prioritizes tools that allow…

Social networking rivals continue to benefit from the user exodus from X. Spill, the social app founded by two former Twitter employees, released a statement claiming it has also seen a jump in users after the U.S. presidential election, following similar news by Bluesky, which gained more than 2 million users during that time. The startup,…

General Motors is laying off nearly 1,000 workers in the U.S. as part of a cost-cutting bid, just three months after cutting 1,000 software jobs. The company told TechCrunch that cuts won’t affect hourly workers at any of its factories, but declined to specify which teams were affected. A significant majority of the layoffs were…

Per Bloomberg, X, Elon Musk’s social media company, has sued to block California law AB 2655, which requires large online platforms to remove or label AI deepfakes related to elections. X argues that the law, also known as the “Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act of 2024,” will lead to widespread censorship of political speech.…