Fusion power startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems has raised $863 million from a long list of investors that includes Nvidia, Google, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and more. “We’re continuing our trend here of looking into the world and saying, ‘How do we advance fusion as fast as possible?’” co-founder and CEO Bob …
Read More »AI or not, Will Smith’s crowd video is fresh cringe
Will Smith posted a video on social media that shows oceans of fans cheering him on during his recent European tour. “My favorite part of the tour is seeing you all up close,” the caption says. “Thank you for seeing me too.” In these thousands-deep crowds, some fans are holding …
Read More »Mississippi’s age assurance law puts decentralized social networks to the test
An overly broad age assurance law in Mississippi is leading to arguments about which platforms — Bluesky, Mastodon, or others — offer the best solution for avoiding crackdowns on internet freedoms. The company that makes the Bluesky social app announced last week that it would block access to its service …
Read More »US manufacturing investment stumbles as clean tech cancellations pile up
More clean tech manufacturing investments were cancelled in U.S. in the second quarter than were announced, according to a new study from the Rhodium Group and MIT. Companies cancelled $5 billion worth of projects, while only $4 billion in new investments were announced. Actual clean tech manufacturing investments, not just …
Read More »Threads tests a way to share long-form text on the platform
Threads is testing a new feature that makes it easy to share long-form text on the social network, Meta confirmed to TechCrunch on Thursday. The feature lets users attach a block of text to a post instead of creating a thread of several different posts when looking to share more …
Read More »MathGPT, the ‘cheat-proof’ AI tutor and teaching assistant, expands to over 50 institutions
As AI becomes more prevalent in the classroom—where students use it to complete assignments and teachers are uncertain about how to address it—an AI platform called MathGPT launched last year with the goal of providing an “anti-cheating” tutor to college students and a teaching assistant to professors. Following a successful …
Read More »Mark Cuban’s war on America’s $5 trillion healthcare machine: ‘They can’t react as quickly’
Billionaire entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban thinks America’s healthcare industry is broken, and he’s not mincing words about it. “No one looks at the financial side of healthcare and says, ‘This is the way it should work,’” Cuban said on this week’s episode of the Equity podcast. “When you go …
Read More »No-code website builder Framer reaches $2B valuation
Framer, a no-code website builder that claims over half a million monthly active users, has reached a $2 billion valuation after raising a $100 million Series D funding round led by existing investors Meritech and Atomico. This double-unicorn milestone comes at a time of hype for website builders — including …
Read More »Honor’s slim Magic V5 foldable is fun to use, minus the huge camera bump
There is a spec war going on among companies to claim the crown of thinnest foldable. Phone manufacturers are playing with fractions of millimeters to boast about their phone’s thickness. Honor is winning this race on a theoretical basis with its 8.8mm (when folded) thick Magic V5 foldable. I’m saying theoretical because there is a huge, camera-bump-sized caveat to this. …
Read More »AI hires or human hustle? The next frontier of startup ops at Disrupt 2025
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 …
Read More »