TechCrunch All Stage is returning to Boston, Massachusetts, on July 15 for a jam-packed day where founders — no matter what stage they’re in — will gain practical insights to fuel their startup growth. With a lineup of expert-led sessions, founders will leave with actionable strategies they can implement right …
Read More »Apply to compete in Startup Battlefield 200 today
Start your engines … applications for TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield 200 competition are open! If you’re a pre-Series A startup founder looking to make your mark on a global stage, this is an opportunity you can’t pass up. We want to see you showcase your game-changing innovations to the world at TechCrunch …
Read More »Revel opens first EV fast-charging hub in San Francisco
Brooklyn-based electric vehicle charging infrastructure startup Revel on Monday launched its first fast-charging station in San Francisco, kicking off its plans to expand across the Bay Area over the next year. “For years, Revel has operated the largest, fastest, and most reliable fast-charging network in New York City,” Frank Reig, …
Read More »Quick Take: Binance Suspends Employee Amid Insider Trading Allegations
Binance has suspended an employee following an internal investigation into allegations of insider trading. The staff member, formerly part of the BNB Chain’s business development team and recently transitioned to the Binance Wallet team, was found to have misused confidential information about an upcoming token generation event (TGE) for personal …
Read More »Daphni secures $215M for its third fund
French VC firm Daphni is announcing the first closing of its new fund, Daphni Blue. The firm has raised €200 million (around $215 million at current exchange rates). It expects to raise as much as €250 million ($270 million) by the end of the year. Some of Daphni’s most remarkable …
Read More »The Trump administration planned Yemen strikes in an unauthorized Signal chat
The Trump administration’s national security leaders accidentally included the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, in a chat on Signal discussing confidential plans to attack Yemen’s Houthis. “I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans,” Goldberg wrote of …
Read More »a16z- and Benchmark-backed 11x has been claiming customers it doesn’t have
Last year, AI-powered sales automation startup 11x appeared to be on an explosive growth trajectory. However, nearly two dozen sources — including investors and current and former employees — told TechCrunch that the company has experienced financial struggles, largely of its own making. Numerous people in the U.S. and U.K. …
Read More »OpenAI says its AI voice assistant is now better to chat with
OpenAI released updates Monday for Advanced Voice Mode, its AI voice feature that enables real-time conversations in ChatGPT, to make the AI assistant more personable and interrupt users less frequently. Manuka Stratta, an OpenAI post-training researcher, announced the changes in a video posted Monday to the company’s official social media …
Read More »A new, challenging AGI test stumps most AI models
The Arc Prize Foundation, a nonprofit co-founded by prominent AI researcher François Chollet, announced in a blog post on Monday that it has created a new, challenging test to measure the general intelligence of leading AI models. So far, the new test, called ARC-AGI-2, has stumped most models. “Reasoning” AI …
Read More »A Chinese tech giant says it slashed AI costs using only Chinese chips
Earlier this year, DeepSeek briefly crashed Nvidia’s stock because of speculation that its models require far fewer chips. Now, Chinese fintech giant Ant Group, which is backed by Alibaba founder Jack Ma, is claiming a major AI breakthrough. Ant was able to use Chinese chips made by Alibaba and Huawei …
Read More »