Category: Apps

OpenAI has hired its first chief economist: Aaron Chatterji, formerly the chief economist at the Commerce Department under President Joe Biden and a senior economist in President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. Chatterji, who’s also a professor of business and public policy at Duke, will study AI’s economic impacts at OpenAI, leading research into how…

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week we’re looking at One Zero potentially raising $100 million, Apple Pay expanding support for loan options, and another way Stripe is making crypto a big priority for its business.  If you’d like to receive the Fintech newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday, sign up here! The big story One…

LinkedIn users on Tuesday began noticing a problem with their follower counts on the platform: They were dropping rapidly, and sometimes by many hundreds of users at once. With no official word at the time from LinkedIn, many began speculating that the situation was the result of LinkedIn purging fake accounts from the platform. Some…

Furno’s micro-kilns promise to reduce pollution and eliminate transportation costs. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. ​ Cement startup Furno will receive a $20 million grant from the Department of Energy, funds that will help the company build up to eight micro-kilns at a concrete plant in Chicago.  Chicago might not…

Federal regulators have cleared the path for electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft to share U.S. airspace with planes and helicopters — a win for the burgeoning industry and a timely decision for startups like Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation that are expected to launch air taxi networks commercially in 2025.  The Federal Aviation Administration…

Fintech lending startup SoLo Funds is facing a new class action lawsuit according to a copy seen by TechCrunch. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. ​ In Brief Posted: 1:13 PM PDT · October 22, 2024 SoLo Funds is facing a new class action lawsuit according to a copy seen by…

Ro co-founder and CEO Zachariah Reitano said while he’d “never say never” about potentially taking the 7-year-old telehealth company public, he thinks the benefits of being a private company are growing. Reitano dodged multiple questions from Axios reporter Dan Primack about whether or not the company has plans to IPO in the near term —…

Paytm, a leading Indian financial services firm, has received regulatory approval to resume adding new UPI payments users, following an eight-month restriction on many of its operations. UPI, which processes over 15 billion monthly transactions, dominates India’s online payments. Walmart-owned PhonePe and Google Pay process about 87% of UPI transactions, whereas Paytm’s market share has…

Following a string of controversies stemming from technical hiccups and licensing changes, AI startup Stability AI has announced its latest family of image-generation models. The new Stable Diffusion 3.5 series is more customizable and versatile than Stability’s previous-generation tech, the company claims — as well as more performant. There are three models in total: While…

3D printing objects using metal is a well-established technique, but it tends to be too complex, expensive, or imprecise to match traditional methods at scale. Armed with $14 million from Nvidia and Boeing, Freeform aims to change that, building a new metal additive printing process that they say changes the game — and yes, there’s…