Mike Liberatore, xAI’s chief financial officer, has left the company, according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal. This marks the latest in a string of high-profile executive departures. The former Airbnb executive joined the company in April and left around the end of July, per WSJ. While at xAI, …
Read More »CoreWeave acquires agent-training startup OpenPipe
CoreWeave, which provides cloud servers to large companies training AI models, has struck an agreement to acquire OpenPipe, a 2-year-old Y Combinator-backed startup that helps enterprises develop customized AI agents with reinforcement learning, the companies announced on Wednesday. “Reinforcement learning is emerging as a pivotal force to strengthen model performance …
Read More »Google brings Material 3 Expressive to Pixel 6 and newer devices, along with other features
Google announced on Wednesday that it’s bringing a slew of new features to the Android ecosystem and Pixel devices. The tech giant is introducing Material 3 Expressive to Pixel phones, Adaptive Audio for the Pixel Buds Pro 2, on-wrist navigation for the Pixel Watch, new AI writing tools in Gboard, …
Read More »SpaceX gets a green light to more than double its Florida launches
The world’s most-flown rocket may start flying even more. U.S. regulators have completed a key environmental review that paves the way for SpaceX to more than double the number of Falcon 9 launches from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. In addition to the annual launch increase from 50 launches …
Read More »Pornhub owner pays $5M settlement to FTC over historic failure to block abusive content
Pornhub owner Aylo will pay a $5 million settlement to the FTC and Utah over allegations that the company knowingly profited off of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and nonconsensual material (NCM). Formerly Mindgeek, Aylo made some significant changes to the way it moderates content in late 2020, when The …
Read More »Orchard Robotics, founded by a Thiel fellow Cornell dropout, raises $22M for farm vision AI
Inspired by his grandparents, who were apple farmers in China, Charlie Wu got the idea to apply technology to agriculture while studying computer science at Cornell University, a top agriculture school. “I got to meet fruit professors who are the best in the world at what they do,” Wu told …
Read More »Netflix CPO Eunice Kim is coming to Disrupt 2025
The celebration of TechCrunch’s 20th anniversary is happening at Disrupt 2025 — taking place October 27-29 — and we couldn’t celebrate two decades of being the north star of tech and startup news without spotlighting one of the biggest transformation stories of our time: Netflix. From a DVD-by-mail startup to …
Read More »Roblox expands use of age estimation tech and introduces standardized ratings
Amid lawsuits alleging child safety concerns, online gaming service Roblox announced on Wednesday that it’s expanding its age estimation technology to all users and partnering with the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC) to provide age and content ratings for the games and apps on its platform. The company said that …
Read More »Google avoids breakup, but has to give up exclusive search deals in antitrust trial
Google will not be forced to break up its search business, but a federal judge has tentatively ordered other changes to the tech giant’s business practices to keep it from further anticompetitive behavior. U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta outlined remedies on Tuesday that would bar Google from entering …
Read More »Venezuela’s president thinks American spies can’t hack Huawei phones
During a press conference on Monday, Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, showed off a Huawei smartphone that China’s President Xi Jinping gifted him, calling it “the best phone in the world,” and making a bold claim. “The Americans can’t hack it, neither their spy planes, nor their satellites,” Maduro said. The …
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