For the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch, Disrupt 2025 (taking place October 27–29 at Moscone West in San Francisco) gets real about one of the most pressing founder questions: compensation and equity. On the Builders Stage, a panel of experts who’ve lived it, scaled it, and solved it will tackle the …
Read More »Roblox announces short-form video feed for gameplay clips, new AI tools for creators, and more
Online gaming platform Roblox is launching a TikTok-like short-form video feed for sharing gameplay moments, the company unveiled on Friday at the Roblox Developers Conference. The company also announced increased earnings for creators, new AI tools to boost creation, and other advancements in performance. The new short-form video experience, called …
Read More »Warner Bros. sues Midjourney for AI images of Superman, Batman, and other characters
Warner Bros. is suing AI startup Midjourney for copyright infringement, alleging that the company allows users to generate images and videos of characters like Superman, Batman, and Bugs Bunny without permission. As first reported by Reuters, Warner Bros. says that Midjourney knowingly engaged in wrongful conduct, noting that the company …
Read More »Tesla’s ad spend on X has shrunk to almost nothing
Tesla spent $400,000 advertising on Elon Musk’s social media platform X in 2024, according to a new regulatory filing. But the automaker appears to be on track to spend just a fraction of that in 2025 as sales have struggled. In the first two months of 2025, Tesla spent $10,000 …
Read More »Natron’s liquidation shows why the US isn’t ready to make its own batteries
Sodium-ion battery startup Natron ceased operations this week, ending the company’s 12-year quest to commercialize its technology in the U.S. The company had $25 million worth of orders lined up for its Michigan factory, but it couldn’t deliver them until it had UL certification, according to Raleigh’s The News and …
Read More »X is now offering me end-to-end encrypted chat. You probably shouldn’t trust it yet.
X, formerly Twitter, has started rolling out its new encrypted messaging feature called “Chat” or “XChat.” The company claims the new communication feature is end-to-end encrypted, meaning messages exchanged on it can only be read by the sender and their receiver, and — in theory — no one else, including …
Read More »OpenAI hires the team behind Xcode coding assistant Alex Codes
Acqui-hires feel like they’re here to stay: The team behind Alex Codes, a popular tool that lets developers use AI models within Apple’s development suite Xcode, is joining OpenAI. In a post on X, Alex Codes’ founder Daniel Edrisian said the startup’s team is joining OpenAI’s Codex division, which is …
Read More »Scale AI’s former CTO launches AI agent that could solve big data’s biggest problem
Isotopes came out of stealth on Thursday with a healthy $20 million seed round. It offers an AI agent to solve a problem that data analytics products have struggled with for decades: The people who know how to run the big data infrastructure are not the ones who actually need …
Read More »Learn to create communities and companies that last at Disrupt 2025
When you design for people instead of institutions, you don’t just build a product. You build a movement. That’s the idea behind this live Builders Stage session called “Creating Communities and Companies That Last,” only at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 on October 27-29 at San Francisco’s Moscone West. This fireside chat …
Read More »Tesla shareholders to vote on investing in Musk’s AI startup xAI
Tesla shareholders will soon vote whether to let the electric vehicle maker invest in Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI, a proposal pitched as a way to strengthen Tesla’s ambitions in AI, robotics, and energy. Listed in Tesla’s proxy statement alongside a company-backed push to raise Musk’s 10-year pay package to …
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