Nepal has made a dramatic U-turn, reversing a social media ban imposed last week after the decision sparked nationwide “Gen Z” protests that reportedly left at least 19 people dead. The ban, which blocked access to 26 platforms including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X, was imposed following an August 25 …
Read More »Snap breaks into ‘startup squads’ as ad revenue stalls
Snap is breaking itself apart and rebuilding from within. In a new company letter, CEO Evan Spiegel just announced the company is restructuring around small “startup squads” of 10 to 15 people to better compete against larger competitors. The move comes as the 5,000-person company faces mounting pressure. Advertising revenue …
Read More »Intel’s chief executive of products departs among other leadership changes
Semiconductor giant Intel continues to shake up its senior leadership since Lip-Bu Tan took the helm as CEO in March. Intel announced Monday that Michelle Johnston Holthaus will depart the company after more than three decades. Johnston Holthhaus was most recently chief executive officer of Intel products and will remain …
Read More »Netskope follows Rubrik as a rare cybersecurity IPO, both backed Lightspeed
Cybersecurity is a massive sector, but startups in the category are more likely to be acquired than go public. Even Wiz, which for a time held the title of the fastest-growing startup, abandoned its IPO ambitions when it agreed to sell to Google earlier this year. In the past few …
Read More »Sam Altman says that bots are making social media feel ‘fake’
X enthusiast and Reddit shareholder Sam Altman had an epiphany on Monday: Bots have made it impossible to determine whether social media posts are really written by humans, he posted. The realization came while reading (and sharing) some posts from the r/Claudecode subreddit, which were praising OpenAI Codex. OpenAI launched …
Read More »Nuclear startup Deep Fission goes public in a curious SPAC
Nuclear startup Deep Fission announced Monday that it has gone public in a reverse merger, netting the company $30 million. No, it’s not 2021. The startup is proposing to build small, cylindrical nuclear power plants and lower them into 30-inch diameter holes drilled one mile down into the Earth. By …
Read More »Bluesky adds private bookmarks | TechCrunch
Social networking startup Bluesky is rolling out one of users’ most in-demand features — no, not an edit button! — bookmarks. The company on Monday announced the new addition, which it calls Saved Posts. The feature is accessible through a new bookmark icon underneath each post, next to the heart …
Read More »Google’s AI Mode adds 5 new languages including Hindi, Japanese, and Korean
Google is expanding AI Mode — its AI-powered Search experience — to five new languages, opening access to additional users around the world, after being limited to English for over six months. On Monday, Google announced that AI Mode will now support Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, and Brazilian Portuguese. The …
Read More »Flexport’s Ryan Petersen joins the Builders Stage at Disrupt 2025
One of the biggest questions facing founders today: How do you keep building when the rules won’t stop shifting? At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, where we celebrate TechCrunch’s 20th anniversary from October 27-29 at Moscone West in San Francisco, we’ll hear firsthand from Ryan Petersen, founder and CEO of Flexport, on …
Read More »Space Dots raises $1.5M seed round to provide insights on orbital threats
The corporate aviation world tired Bianca Cefalo to the point that she found it easier to literally start her own space company and launch objects into orbit. Cefalo is the founder of Space DOTs, which launched in 2022 to detect space threats. She and her team have created a software …
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