The United Kingdom’s NHS — the world’s largest public health service — is working on creaking IT infrastructure. In any sector, that’s a ticking time bomb. But when you consider that the NHS holds medical records for nearly 67 million people, a breach of that system could become a meltdown; Sophia Tung set up a livestream this past summer, showing self-driving Waymo cars honking from the San Francisco parking lot near her apartment at all hours of the night; Meta’s X rival Threads is rolling out...
Oct 17, 2024•7 min
During Tesla’s much-hyped robotaxi reveal event last week, CEO Elon Musk said he expects Tesla to release an “unsupervised” version of FSD, the automaker’s advanced driver assistance system, in Texas and California in 2025 on certain Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 17, 2024•8 min
During Tesla’s “We, Robot” event last week, which TechCrunch covered late into the night,, sources on the ground sent me a handful of videos of the automaker’s Optimus humanoid robots walking around the party, dancing, mixing drinks, and talking to guests. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 16, 2024•4 min
With the deal, Google joins Microsoft and Amazon in turning to nuclear power to satiate its thirst for electricity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 16, 2024•4 min
The telecom industry is undergoing its greatest period of disruption since the telegraph, as companies work to open up space as the next frontier for communications. French startup Constellation hopes to take part by repurposing 5G tech to provide a Starlink-like satellite broadband that uses telecoms’ existing assets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 15, 2024•5 min
A ransomware and extortion racket called Underground has claimed responsibility for the breach on its dark web leak site, which TechCrunch has seen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 15, 2024•3 min
Interlagos, the venture capital firm started by former senior SpaceX leaders, is looking to raise $550 million for its first venture fund, according to regulatory filings and a confidential deck sent to prospective LPs and viewed by TechCrunch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 14, 2024•4 min
Social networking startup Bluesky is seizing the moment. Amid ongoing moderation issues affecting X rival Instagram Threads, the decentralized X competitor Bluesky has created an account on Meta’s newest platform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 14, 2024•5 min
AI is spamming up job applications. 404 Media’s Jason Koebler writes about how he used a free tool, AI Hawk, to apply for 17 jobs in an hour while working a restaurant shift — only stopping when he’d reached 2,843; The Internet Archive, the nonprofit organization that digitizes and archives materials like web pages, came under attack Wednesday; The startup, which already monitors the climate impact of digital advertising, is expanding to include artificial intelligence; Opera browser has a new A...
Oct 11, 2024•8 min
A multi-year competition challenge to Facebook (aka Meta), which saw Germany’s antitrust authority become a pioneering champion for privacy rights in 2019 after it sought to block the social media giant’s ‘superprofiling’ of users on the grounds that consentless cross-site tracking of users is an “exploitative abuse” of Facebook’s monopoly position, finally concluded Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices...
Oct 11, 2024•10 min
Even a category as hot as robotics is not immune from macroeconomic trends. According to figures from automation advocacy group, A3, the North American robotics market declined in the first half of 2024, both in terms of sales and revenue. The number of industrial robotics ordered in H1 declined 7.5% year-over-year to 15,705. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 10, 2024•3 min
It’s been the stuff of science fiction for decades: to provide gigawatts of cheap, clean power anywhere on Earth, day or night, using satellites that collect and transmit solar energy directly on orbit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 10, 2024•4 min
As the engine powering the world’s digital artists, Adobe has a big responsibility to mitigate the rise of AI-driven deepfakes, misinformation, and content theft. In the first quarter of 2025, Adobe is launching its Content Authenticity web app in beta, allowing creators to apply content credentials to their work, certifying it as their own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 09, 2024•5 min
Actress Emma Watson has made a previously undisclosed investment into the women’s health company Hertility, bringing its total funding to more than $14 million, the company told TechCrunch in an interview on Monday. Watson is known for her interest in the environment and supporting women-led initiatives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 09, 2024•5 min
Ultrasound is perhaps best known as the technology that enables non-invasive body scans, underwater communication, and to help us park our cars. A young startup called Sonair out of Norway wants to employ it for something else: 3D computer vision used in autonomous hardware applications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 08, 2024•6 min
A woman in Ohio is being haunted by ghosts. Or, maybe she’s not. There’s a dead body buried underneath her house, rolled up inside a rug. Or, there’s actually no body at all, despite signals from cadaver dogs. This week’s biggest drama on TikTok tells the story of a woman from Ohio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 08, 2024•5 min
Rivian says it will build fewer vehicles this year than it did in 2023, the result of a supply chain problem that popped up in the third quarter that has “become more acute in recent weeks.” The company did not specify what specific component is impacted; Waymo has struck a deal with Hyundai to bring the IONIQ 5 EV to its robotaxi network, adding another autonomous vehicle option as it scales up its business. The autonomous vehicle company announced Friday that it expects to start on-road testin...
Oct 07, 2024•8 min
Are you confused about artificial general intelligence, or AGI? It’s that thing OpenAI is obsessed with ultimately creating in a way that “benefits all of humanity.” You may want to take them seriously since they just raised $6.6 billion to get closer to that goal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 07, 2024•7 min
The race is on for better chips and data center capacity to handle AI workloads, but all that activity comes with a catch. Heavy processing power means heat — a lot of it — and that has massive implications, both for how well servers operate and the environment Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 04, 2024•6 min
ChatGPT maker OpenAI has closed the largest VC round of all time. The startup today announced that it raised $6.6 billion in a funding round that values OpenAI at $157 billion pre-money. Led by previous investor Thrive Capital, the new cash brings OpenAI’s total raised to $17.8 billion or so, per Crunchbase. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 04, 2024•7 min
Ameba takes the unstructured data in a retailer’s supply chain systems, sprinkles in some generative AI, and makes the whole thing more efficient. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 03, 2024•4 min
The past few years have seen the topic of women’s health thrown into the sociopolitical spotlight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 03, 2024•5 min
Evil Corp maintains a "privileged" relationship with the Kremlin, and was often tasked with launching cyberattacks on behalf of Russia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 02, 2024•6 min
Microsoft has given its Copilot assistant on Windows a makeover — and a voice. Copilot can now read your screen, speak aloud, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 02, 2024•8 min
California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed SB 1047, a high-profile bill that would have was regulated the development of AI. The bill was authored by State Senator Scott Wiener and would have made companies that develop the largest AI models liable for implementing safety protocols to prevent “critical harms.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oct 01, 2024•3 min
EV startup Canoo has been hit with two new lawsuits from suppliers linked to the drivetrains that power its electric vehicles, just weeks after the company kicked off a major reorganization that included the departure of its chief technology officer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sep 30, 2024•4 min
For years, Silicon Valley and Wall Street have questioned Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to invest tens of billions of dollars into Reality Labs. This week, Meta’s wearables division unveiled a prototype of its Orion smart glasses, a form factor the company believes one day could replace the iPhone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sep 30, 2024•8 min
A new Dealroom report shows that VC investment in defense-related tech is outpacing any other type of investment across NATO member states and allies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sep 27, 2024•4 min
A new female-founded dating app called After is launching in Austin, Texas on Thursday with the mission of tackling ghosting and holding people accountable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sep 27, 2024•4 min
The promise of blockchain to change the world hasn’t materialized. For the most part, the technology has instead enabled people to speculate on a new asset class. A big hurdle to realizing blockchain’s full potential, web3 proponents argue, is that decentralized services are incredibly hard to build. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sep 26, 2024•7 min
