Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: ChatGPT users are figuring out the location of photos using o3's image-analyzing capabilities paired with its web search functionality, raising privacy concerns — There's a somewhat concerning new trend going viral: people are using ChatGPT to figure out the location shown in pictures.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: US consumers are flocking to Chinese shopping apps DHgate and Taobao, which let them buy direct from manufacturers, as Shein and Temu prices rise amid tariffs — The Chinese e-commerce marketplace app DHgate, which is now the No. 2 free iPhone app in the U.S., isn't the only one that's oddly benefiting …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: OpenAI launches Flex processing in beta, an API option halving o3 and o4-mini prices in exchange for slower responses and “occasional resource unavailability” — In a bid to more aggressively compete with rival AI companies like Google, OpenAI is launching Flex processing …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Smashing, an AI-powered news and social media posts aggregation app by Goodreads co-founder Otis Chandler, shuts down, citing its inability to grow quickly — Building an app dedicated to helping people aggregate and read news, articles and social media posts in one place is apparently a tough proposition these days.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: SEC filing: AMD estimates new US export rules for its MI308 chips to China will cost ~$800M in inventory, purchase commitments, and related reserves charges — AMD says that the U.S. government's license control requirement for exporting AI chips to China and certain other countries may have a material impact on its earnings.
Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch: Patreon plans to test livestreaming within its mobile app and on the web with select users this week ahead of a wider rollout in summer 2025 — Patreon is finally experimenting with a native livestreaming, a new feature that could attract more creators and help them earn more money.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Data orchestration startup Hammerspace, which counts Nvidia, Meta, Tesla, Palantir, and the DOD as clients, raised $100M, sources say at a $500M+ valuation — Artificial intelligence services at their heart are massive data plays: you need data — a lot of it — to build the models …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Google says it suspended 39.2M US advertiser accounts on its platform in 2024, up over 3x from 12.7M in 2023, and took down 1.8B ads, aided by new AI tools — Google on Wednesday said it suspended 39.2 million advertiser accounts on its platform in 2024 — more than triple the number …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: UK data-based car insurance startup Marshmallow raised $90M, roughly split 50-50 in equity and debt, at a $2B+ valuation, up from $1.25B in September 2021 — U.K. startup Marshmallow has blown up over the years by using innovations in data science to build car insurance policies for immigrants …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Nvidia starts making its Blackwell chips at TSMC's Phoenix plant and says it aims to make up to $500B of AI infrastructure in the US in the next four years — Nvidia said on Monday that it has commissioned more than a million square feet of manufacturing space to build and test AI chips …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: LiveKit, which offers open-source tools for building apps to transmit real-time audio and video, raised a $45M Series B; LiveKit also powers ChatGPT Voice Mode — A challenge for many tech companies is delivering high-bandwidth, multimodal data — for example, simultaneous audio and video …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Appfigures: ChatGPT was the most downloaded app globally in March, excluding games, with 46M downloads across App Store and Google Play, its biggest month ever — ChatGPT became the world's most downloaded app in March, excluding games, topping the usual contenders for the No. 1 spot, Instagram and TikTok.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: AI reasoning models cost more to benchmark, making it harder to independently verify claims; Artificial Analysis: OpenAI's o1 costs $2,767.05 to evaluate — AI labs like OpenAI claim that their so-called “reasoning” AI models, which can “think” through problems step by step …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Madrid-based Jobandtalent, which connects gig workers with companies, raised a $103M Series F at a $1.5B valuation, down from its $500M Series E at $2.35B — Jobandtalent, an AI-based “workforce as a service” marketplace that connects people with companies looking for hourly workers …
Charles Rollet / TechCrunch: The DOJ charges AI shopping app Nate's ex-CEO, Albert Saniger, with fraud, alleging the app relies heavily on workers in the Philippines; Nate had raised $50M+ — Albert Saniger, the founder and former CEO of Nate, an AI shopping app that promised a “universal” checkout experience …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Incident.io, which streamlines incident management for organizations with 200+ users, raised a $62M Series B led by Insight, sources say at a ~$400M valuation — In the world of tech, some might argue that the term of the decade is AI, but in the bigger scheme of things beyond this single sector …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis says Google will add support for Anthropic's Model Context Protocol to its Gemini models and SDK, but did not give a timeline — Just a few weeks after OpenAI said it would adopt rival Anthropic's standard for connecting AI models to the systems where data resides, Google is following suit.
Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch: Reddit integrates Gemini into its conversational AI search tool Reddit Answers, in beta since December 2024, to improve search relevance and give quick answers — Reddit Answers, the platform's conversational AI search tool, gets an upgrade through an integration with Google Gemini.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Google Cloud Next: Google unveils Gemini 2.5 Flash, a reasoning model ideal for “high-volume, cost-sensitive” and “real-time” apps, launching soon in Vertex AI — Google is releasing a new AI model designed to deliver strong performance with a focus on efficiency.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Cloud Next: Google unveils Ironwood, its seventh-generation TPU and the first for inference, coming later in 2025 in a 256-chip cluster or a 9,216-chip cluster — During its Cloud Next conference this week, Google unveiled the latest generation of its TPU AI accelerator chip.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Google Cloud Next: Google updates Gemini Code Assist to add agentic capabilities, including creating apps from product specifications in Google Docs, in preview — Gemini Code Assist, Google's AI coding assistant, is gaining new “agentic” capabilities in preview.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: UK-based high-end fashion marketplace Lyst agrees to a $154M acquisition by Japan-based fashion and e-commerce company Zozo; Lyst was valued at $700M+ in 2021 — Fashion goes in and out of style, and it turns out, so do fashion startups. Lyst, a high-end fashion marketplace that was once valued …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Blackbird Labs, which makes a blockchain-based payment loyalty app for restaurants, raised $50M led by Spark Capital, taking its total funding to $85M — A founder who has carved out a name for himself building products to help restaurants connect better with would-be diners has raised $50 million …
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch: Amazon launches Nova Sonic, an AI voice model to generate natural-sounding speech that it says is “the most cost-efficient” model on the market, via Bedrock — On Tuesday, Amazon debuted a new generative AI model, Nova Sonic, capable of natively processing voice and generating natural-sounding speech.
Mike Butcher / TechCrunch: Turkish startup Sipay, which bills itself as “Stripe for emerging markets”, raised a $78M Series B at an $875M valuation to expand outside of Turkey — Billing itself as “Stripe for emerging markets,” Turkish Fintech Sipay has raised a $78 million Series B funding round, claiming a valuation of $875 million in the process.
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Meta rolls out Teen Accounts to Facebook and Messenger, automatically enrolling young users and adding built-in protections, in the US, the UK, and others — Meta is introducing Teen Accounts to Facebook and Messenger. The feature, which automatically enrolls young users into an app experience …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Meta updates Meta AI in WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram Direct, and the Meta.AI website with Llama 4 in 40 countries; multimodal features are US-only in English — Meta has released a new collection of AI models, Llama 4, in its Llama family — on a Saturday, no less.
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch: Joel Kaplan says Meta's US fact-checking program will be over by Monday, and Community Notes will start appearing on Facebook, Threads, and Instagram — Meta will no longer have any fact-checkers in the U.S. come Monday, according to chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan.
TechCrunch: SensorTower: users in India have spent $8M on ChatGPT subscriptions through IAP since 2023, not including web app purchases, versus ~$330M spent by US users — For years, U.S.-based tech companies have tapped into India's vast and increasing internet user base for growth. OpenAI is no exception.
Marina Temkin / TechCrunch: Turbine, which allows LPs to borrow funds secured by their position in venture funds, emerges from stealth with a $13M Series A and an $8.75M seed — Since IPOs slowed to trickle a few years ago, limited partners who invest in venture capital funds have had one giant problem: a dearth of liquidity.
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Amazon introduces a Kindle Recaps feature that uses GenAI and moderators to create short summaries of books in a series — Amazon is introducing a new “Recaps” feature for Kindle users to help them recall plot points and character arcs before picking up the latest book in a series.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch: Google hasn't released safety reports for its latest models, like Gemini 2.5 Pro and 2.0 Flash, raising concerns that it is prioritizing speed over transparency — More than two years after Google was caught flat-footed by the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT, the company has dramatically picked up the pace.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Midjourney debuts V7 in alpha, its first new AI image model in nearly a year with a “totally different architecture”, a week after OpenAI's new image generator — Midjourney, one of the first AI-based image generators on the web, has released its first new AI image model in nearly a year.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch: Amazon's AGI Lab unveils Nova Act, a general purpose AI agent to control a web browser and independently perform some simple actions, and a Nova Act SDK — Amazon on Monday unveiled Nova Act, a general-purpose AI agent that can take control of a web browser and independently perform some simple actions.
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch: Prolific fintech VC and QED Investors co-founder Frank Rotman says he will become partner emeritus by the end of 2025 and focus on launching his own startups — Prolific fintech investor and QED Investors co-founder Frank Rotman said Friday that he will transition to a partner emeritus role …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Google starts offering user choice billing in the UK, initially to non-game developers, says 90%+ of developers are satisfied with Google Play's native billing — Google said today that it will start offering user choice billing in the U.K., giving Google Play developers the ability to use …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: PUBG developer Krafton acquires a “north of 75% stake” in Pune-based gaming studio Nautilus Mobile for $14M in an all-cash deal, its first acquisition in India — Krafton, South Korea's gaming giant known for titles including PUBG: Battlegrounds and Battlegrounds Mobile India …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Google rolls out new Search, Maps, and Gemini features to help users plan vacations, including trip idea updates to AI Overviews and hotel price drop alerts — Google is rolling out a slew of new features — some powered by AI — across Search, Maps, and Gemini that are designed to help people plan their summer vacations.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch: After OpenAI released a new ChatGPT image generator, social media has been flooded with AI memes in the style of Studio Ghibli, highlighting copyright concerns — It's only been a day since ChatGPT's new AI image generator went live, and social media feeds are already flooded with AI-generated memes …
Charles Rollet / TechCrunch: A leaked Chinese dataset on “public opinion work” reveals 133,000 entries fed into an LLM designed to automatically flag content deemed sensitive by China — A complaint about poverty in rural China. A news report about a corrupt Communist Party member.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch: Report: North Korea is launching a new cybersecurity research unit called Research Center 227 focused on AI-based hacking and stealing digital assets — The North Korean government is reportedly establishing a new hacking group within the intelligence agency Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB).
Paul Sawers / TechCrunch: Stockholm-based Evroc, which plans to build hyperscale data centers in Europe and an array of cloud services, raised a $55M Series A from Blisce and others — A Swedish startup aiming to build a hyperscale cloud company in Europe has raised €50.6 million ($55 million) in Series A funding.
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch: Denver-based Multiply Mortgage, which provides an AI-based mortgage origination service for tech employees, raised a $23.5M Series A led by Kleiner Perkins — After hitting record lows at the start of the pandemic, mortgage rates began to climb in 2022 and haven't come down significantly since.
Connie Loizos / TechCrunch: Michael Seibel says he is leaving YC after 12+ years and moving to a “Partner Emeritus” role, after stepping back from his “leadership responsibilities” in 2024 — Michael Seibel announced late Wednesday on X that after more than 12 years at Y Combinator, he is transitioning to a “partner emeritus” role.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Google launches new Search and Android health features, including medical records APIs, and plans to release open AI models for drug discovery called TxGemma — Google on Tuesday announced new products and features aimed at healthcare use cases, including improved overviews in Google Search …
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: Open letter: ~100 EU companies urge EU lawmakers to take “radical action” to shrink the reliance on foreign infrastructure by fostering a so-called “Euro stack” — A broad coalition drawn from across the ranks of Europe's tech industry is calling for “radical action” …
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: Bluesky proposes letting users indicate if their data can be used for AI training, web archiving, and more; critics see it as a reversal of its prior statements — Social network Bluesky recently published a proposal on GitHub outlining new options it could give users to indicate whether …
TechCrunch: A look at some standout startups from YC's W25 Demo Day, which showcased 160 companies, including several creating tools to enhance other companies' AI agents — Silicon Valley's most storied startup accelerator, Y Combinator, held its Winter 2025 Demo Day on Wednesday, showcasing its latest batch of 160 startups.
Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch: Orlando-based Worth, whose tech lets fintechs, banks, and enterprises underwrite SMBs by automating KYC, fraud verification, and more, raised a $20M seed — Worth, a company focused on helping fintechs, banks, and enterprises underwrite small and medium-sized businesses more easily …
Kate Park / TechCrunch: SoftBank plans to buy a former Sharp LCD panel plant in Osaka for ~$676M, sources say to turn it into a data center for jointly developing AI agents with OpenAI — SoftBank is marching ahead on its ambitions to build out a major AI operation in its home market of Japan …