Tech

The U.S. Department of Energy has taken equity stakes in Canadian company Lithium Americas and its Nevada mining joint venture with General Motors as part of a renegotiation of a federal loan. Under the new terms, the U.S. government will take a 5% equity ownership in Lithium Americas and a …

Starbase is a city without a police department, but not without police. For months, Cameron County sheriff’s deputies have patrolled the roads and beaches surrounding SpaceX’s sprawling rocket facility in South Texas. Now, less than a year after Starbase residents voted to incorporate, the city has signed formal agreements making …

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has blocked an effort to pass legislation that would have extended data privacy protections for federal lawmakers and public officials to everyone in the United States. On Monday night, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) asked the U.S. Senate for unanimous consent from fellow senators to pass his …

What happens when your first 10 hires aren’t people at all? At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, happening October 27–29 at San Francisco’s Moscone West, we’re digging into the new wave of startups replacing or augmenting early employees with AI agents. Think outbound sales, billing, and customer support — automated from day …

Imgur, one of the web’s most popular image sharing and hosting platforms, has shut off access to its site to users in the United Kingdom, following a notice of a fine by the country’s data protection watchdog. According to reports on social media, users attempting to load Imgur from the …

Fitness band maker Whoop formally opened Whoop Advanced Labs for business on Tuesday. Some 350,000 people were on the waiting list after the service was previewed in May, the company told TechCrunch. Whoop Advanced Labs offers health-screening blood tests from Quest Diagnostics that cover a variety of markers from calcium …

Browser maker Opera launched its AI-centric browser Neon Tuesday, with the ability to create apps through AI prompts and create repeatable prompts through a feature it calls cards. With this Opera joins a growing number of companies like Perplexity and The Browser Company that are trying to make agentic browsers …

The lack of growth capital in Europe is such a persisting issue that some early-stage firms have taken the matter into their own hands. London-headquartered firm Notion Capital is one of them. In 2017, Notion Capital was one of the first in Europe to close an opportunities fund to provide …

Charlie Javice, founder of the financial aid startup Frank and Forbes 30 under 30 alumnus, has been sentenced to seven years in prison for fraud. The fintech startup had been acquired by JPMorgan Chase in 2021 for $175 million. The bank later accused Javice of lying about its customer base; …

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed SB 53, a first-in-the-nation bill that sets new transparency requirements on large AI companies. SB 53, which passed the state legislature two weeks ago, requires large AI labs – including OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google DeepMind – to be transparent about safety protocols. It also ensures whistleblower protections for employees at those companies.   …