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 …
Read More »Your last chance to exhibit at Disrupt 2025 is today
If you’re a founder who planned to wait until the last minute … this is it. Today is the final day to secure your exhibit table at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. If you want to get in front of more than 10,000 startup and VC leaders, connect with media, and generate a …
Read More »Snapchat’s new Lens lets you create AI images using text prompts
Snapchat is launching a new Lens that lets users create and edit images using a text-to-image AI generator, the company told TechCrunch exclusively. The new “Imagine Lens” is available to Snapchat+ Platinum and Lens+ subscribers. Imagine Lens allows users to create, edit, and recreate Snaps by entering their own prompts. …
Read More »Tesla proposes new pay package for Elon Musk worth up to $1T
Tesla has proposed a new 10-year compensation plan for CEO Elon Musk that could be worth as much as $1 trillion even as the EV maker’s car business stumbles and it sets its sights on humanoid robotics and AI. The company has tied the compensation to a number of benchmarks, …
Read More »Bret Taylor’s Sierra raises $350M at a $10B valuation
Investors are clearly bullish about former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor’s AI agent startup Sierra. Sierra, which helps enterprises build customer service AI agents, announced it raised a $350 million funding round on Thursday. The round, led by earlier investor Greenoaks Capital, values the startup at $10 billion, according to a …
Read More »Rivian makes its second small workforce cut of the year ahead of R2 SUV launch
Rivian is laying off around 150 workers — its second small staff cut in a matter of months — as the company readies itself for the all-important launch of its more-affordable R2 SUV next year. The company confirmed to TechCrunch that the new cuts were mostly to its “commercial” team, …
Read More »Facebook is trying to make ‘pokes’ happen again
Technically, the poke never really left Facebook. The classic feature from Facebook’s early days lets users get a friend’s attention with a virtual nudge of sorts. While the poke fell out of use ages ago, the company has more recently seen an uptick in its use among younger users, which …
Read More »TED leader’s $300M ‘valley of death’ fund might be just what later-stage climate tech needs
Like many startups, climate tech companies often face a “valley of death” that lies between early stage funding and growth capital that helps proven technologies reach commercial scale. But because climate tech startups are often hardware focused — physical problems tend to require physical solutions, after all — this valley of death …
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