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Funding, launches, tools & everything AI money — updated daily
Instinct brings its AI agent to group chats, even for friends without an account
Instinct is launching group chats that let friends use its AI agent together for tasks like planning trips, organizing carpools, and coordinating events. The company says personal accounts remain...
TikTok rolls out an AI shopping assistant and one-click checkout
TikTok describes its new Shopping Assistant as a conversational AI agent designed to help users discover and purchase products.
HackerRank’s AI interviewer offers a glimpse into what job interviews could become
HackerRank’s AI interviewer has already conducted more than 500,000 interviews, with Snowflake, Snorkel, and Capgemini among its early testers.
Connecting AI agents to enterprise knowledge
For all the data that AI systems continually amass and analyze, enterprise AI agents often suffer from a curious shortcoming: a lack of knowledge. More than data, knowledge is the understanding of...
OpenAI launches visual ads that appear alongside image generation results
OpenAI said the new visual ads will show up after your image generation results appear in the U.S. only for now.
Open or closed AI? How founders are choosing what to build on at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
Learn how founders are choosing between building on open or closed AI at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. Register now to save up to $100 and get a second pass at 50% off.
Bringing predictive analytics to the agentic AI era
In 2026, the question for enterprise AI is no longer whether predictive models can outperform statistical forecasts—that argument is settled. The big question now is how to enable predictive systems...
The Download: AI’s popularity paradox and EmTech Future 2026
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. People really hate AI, so why can’t they get enough? —Will...
Crunchbase Data: Q3 2026 Posted A Record Count Of Billion-Dollar Rounds As The Global AI Race Heats Up
Global venture funding totaled $159 billion in Q3 2026 with close to 6,000 startups funded, Crunchbase data shows. And while the third quarter was the lowest for startup investment so far this year,...
People really hate AI, so why can’t they get enough?
Over the summer I talked to the CEO of Springboards, a startup building an LLM that’s designed to come up with a wider variety of responses than its mainstream rivals do. At the start of the call, he...
EmTech Future 2026: When AI Meets Everything
Yossi Matias, Vice President & Head of Google Research, explores how AI is beginning to reshape biology, infrastructure, manufacturing, and science, and why its greatest impact may come when it...
Google froze its open source bug bounty program due to a ‘significant rise’ in AI submissions
AI slop seems to be overwhelming bug bounty programs.
Trump unveils his new Super Intelligence Force
This new task force is Trump's latest response to the debate over AI safety.
Amazon responds to data center backlash, says it no longer uses NDAs
The CEO of Amazon Web Services tried to push back against widespread suspicion of data centers.
The Nvidia Shield TV Is 7 Years Old. It Just Got a $100 Price Hike
The price of anything with memory is skyrocketing thanks to AI. Aging streaming devices are no exception.
OpenAI safety employee resigns, claiming the company’s ‘culture is broken’
By his own admission, David Robinson is “something of a cliché”: an employee at a leading AI company who issues a dire warning while resigning from their job.
All the AI agents that can live in your text messages
We created a list of the most notable AI agents that can live in your text messages, from general assistants to agents designed for families, travel, and work.
Muse Creates Detailed Profiles of All Your Friends and Family
Millions have downloaded Meta’s AI agent Muse. But getting it to do your bidding comes with privacy costs.
Sean Parker is rebuilding Stability AI around music
Sean Parker, who once taught the music industry what asking for forgiveness looks like, is now back with the labels' blessing and money.
The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: Almost All About AI
This week’s list of the largest U.S. startup funding rounds was pretty much all about AI. That includes the biggest financing — a $1 billion round for Instinct, a developer of AI assistants for...
Apple says it’s tightening macOS ‘Full Disk Access’ controls due to new risks from AI agents
Apple says it will add new controls around macOS’s Full Disk Access permission, warning that increasingly capable AI agents make broad access to users’ files, messages, mail, and browsing history...
These AI Experts Want to Do High-Stakes Research Out in the Open
Many frontier labs keep their risky research locked away. Trillium Labs wants to show off its work when it comes to self-improvement and model behavior.
Redefining enterprise intelligence with autonomous AI
Enterprise AI is no longer a future ambition. It is in full operational flight. Model capabilities are advancing faster than most organizations can absorb, while the cost of performance continues to...
Trump’s Crazy AI Rebrand Was a Loyalty Test for Tech Execs—and It Worked
For years these billionaires gushed obsessively about AI. But they meekly went along when Trump canceled the term.
The Download: a biological de-aging contest and why LLMs don’t reason
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. A new contest pits competitors against each other in a race...
Nautical And Marine Startups See Stepped-Up Funding
Over the past year, venture backers have poured close to $3 billion into good-sized rounds for marine-related startups in sectors ranging from defense tech to clean energy, per Crunchbase data. Top...
Reporter’s Notebook: Europe’s Sovereign AI Push Needs Customers As Well As Capital
Crunchbase News Research Lead Gené Teare moderated panels and spoke with leaders building Europe and the Middle East’s AI ecosystems at HumanX in Amsterdam. Here we share a snippet of her...
A Flaw in ChatGPT’s Mac App Could Have Let Hackers Grab Sensitive Data
While the focus has been on AI agents’ hacking capabilities, a recently patched vulnerability in a ChatGPT app shows that AI software is itself an inviting—and vulnerable—target.
AI Is Making a Mess of Nurses’ Schedules. They Say It’s a Safety Issue
A hospital giant and radiology network turned to Palantir to streamline scheduling, but nurses and other staff say the new software is causing errors, burnout, and frustration.
A new contest pits competitors against each other in a race to biological youth
This week, I officially signed up for an unusual competition. One that rewards competitors for getting younger. I recently turned 40, and I don’t need reminding that both time and my chronological...
Exclusive: Homeward Raises $120M To Help Homeowners Buy And Sell More Quickly As Housing Market Stalls
Homeward, a startup that helps homeowners buy before selling their existing homes or get cash offers for their properties, has raised a $120 million Series D round, Crunchbase News reports...
The Download: AI “mind-reading” and creative uses for small batteries
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. An AI “mind-reading” tool can reconstruct what you’re looking...
The IPO Window Is Opening Selectively; Readiness Will Decide Who Gets Through
The 2026 IPO market is reopening selectively, favoring large companies that spent the slowdown strengthening their financial reporting, governance and operations, writes guest author Mark Williams,...
The Crunchbase Tech Layoffs Tracker
Over 127,000 workers at U.S.-based tech companies were laid off in mass job cuts in 2025, per a Crunchbase News tally, and the layoffs have continued into 2026. See the latest companies to cut roles.
Oura Hits Pause On IPO While Anthropic’s Prospectus Reveals The Cost Of Its AI Ambitions
Although Oura has postponed its planned offering that could have raised as much as $2.2 billion, Anthropic is still making a move toward the public markets along with AI cloud provider Nscale and...
Hot Right Now
Instinct brings its AI agent to group chats, even for friends without an account
TikTok rolls out an AI shopping assistant and one-click checkout
HackerRank’s AI interviewer offers a glimpse into what job interviews could become
Connecting AI agents to enterprise knowledge
OpenAI launches visual ads that appear alongside image generation results