The Department of Justice has launched an investigation into Andreessen Horowitz, targeting the firm's practice of holding board seats at competing companies. The probe challenges a long-standing venture capital norm, specifically questioning the presence of partners on the boards of data giants Databricks and Fivetran as their business interests converge.
Code discovered in the latest U.S. version of TikTok’s iPhone app suggests the social media giant is building a peer-to-peer payment system. The feature would allow users to transfer money directly through direct messages, echoing the functionality of established services like Venmo and Zelle.
OpenAI has formalized a new tier of security safeguards, mandating rigorous monitoring and network isolation following a breach involving the Hugging Face platform. These measures arrive as the company grapples with the escalating risks inherent in developing increasingly capable models, forcing a temporary halt to its most ambitious reinforcement learning runs.
Registration for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 hits a price hike this Friday, August 21, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Attendees have until the end of the week to secure tickets at a discount of up to $300, ahead of the event scheduled for October 13-15 at San Francisco’s Moscone West.
Faced with intense scrutiny from the European Commission, Apple is abandoning its controversial per-install fee in the European Union. The company is replacing the Core Technology Fee with a flat 5% commission on digital goods sold through alternative app marketplaces or direct web distribution, marking a significant pivot in its DMA compliance strategy.
After securing $700 million in a fresh funding round led by Jane Street, hardware startup Etched has doubled its valuation to $21 billion in just thirty days. The rapid capital infusion follows successful performance testing of the company’s specialized inference clusters by the quant fund’s own engineering team.
Millions of Xfinity subscribers can now transform their home routers into motion sensors, using Wi-Fi signal interference to detect movement. While the feature offers a convenient security layer for monitoring empty homes, the trade-off involves broad permissions that allow Comcast to share generated data with third parties without prior notification.
When evidence of camera-equipped AirPods surfaced in macOS 26.7 release candidate code, the specter of invasive recording immediately followed. However, the hardware appears designed as a sensory extension for Siri rather than a tool for capturing photos or video, challenging the narrative that Apple is building a wearable surveillance device.
A relentless wave of junk traffic crippled Bluesky for nearly 24 hours this week, forcing the social network to scramble its defenses. While the company confirmed the outage was the result of a coordinated distributed denial-of-service attack, evidence suggests the disruption may be tied to broader geopolitical tensions.
Streaming subscribers will face steeper monthly bills starting August 18 as NBCUniversal pushes its Peacock platform through another round of price increases. The adjustments affect every tier of the service, continuing a broader industry trend of rising costs aimed at sustaining profitability after the streamer's first positive financial quarter.
Smaller engineering teams often lack the infrastructure to build robust AI agent loops from scratch. Warp is addressing this gap with its new system, Warp Factories, which provides a pre-built environment for deploying, monitoring, and managing autonomous agents across standard software development lifecycles.
Anthro Energy began construction Tuesday on a Louisville facility capable of producing 25 gigawatt-hours of battery electrolytes annually. The plant aims to supply enough material for 300,000 electric vehicles while providing a critical, domestic alternative for manufacturers seeking to avoid foreign-controlled battery supply chains.
Following intense scrutiny over mental health risks and academic integrity, OpenAI is rolling out a specialized ChatGPT version for younger users. The platform introduces mandatory safety filters and a Study Mode designed to pivot students away from automated homework completion toward guided, step-by-step problem solving.
After a year-long promotion offering free premium access to millions of Airtel customers, Perplexity is discovering whether India’s massive user base will convert to paying subscribers. As the initial wave of complimentary memberships expires, the company faces a critical transition from subsidized scale to sustainable monetization.
A hidden video file within the latest macOS 26.7 release candidate reveals Apple’s plans for camera-equipped AirPods. The footage demonstrates a user engaging with Siri to scan a book, highlighting a new 'Visual Intelligence' feature that allows the device to process and save information from the physical environment.
More than 25,000 New Yorkers have already joined the waitlist for Neko Health, the diagnostic startup co-founded by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek. On September 24, the company officially plants its flag in the United States, opening a flagship scanning center at 300 Lafayette Street in the heart of SoHo.
Dutch manufacturer Fairphone is bringing its latest sustainable smartphone, the Fairphone 6+, to the United States for the first time without third-party modifications. Starting at $649, the device aims to challenge the industry’s cycle of planned obsolescence by offering a modular design that prioritizes long-term repairability over raw flagship power.
San Francisco-based Reach Capital has secured $265 million for its fifth fund, signaling continued investor appetite for boutique firms focused on human-centric AI. The 11-year-old firm plans to deploy the capital into approximately 50 startups across the learning, health, and work sectors over the next three years.
Swedish logistics firm Einride is set to integrate 500 Tesla Semis into its fleet over the next 24 months, starting this September. The move, aimed at servicing major clients like Amazon, signals a massive scaling effort for the company’s Saga AI platform, which manages freight routing and electric charging infrastructure.
After navigating a volatile market for electric vehicles, Detroit-based Grounded has secured $5 million in seed funding to pivot its modular customization business. The startup is shifting away from its original focus on electric-only van conversions to a vehicle-agnostic model capable of outfitting both combustion and electric commercial fleets.
Anthropic’s annualized revenue trajectory has reached $65 billion as of late July, marking a sharp climb from $47 billion in May. This rapid acceleration places the AI firm on a path that investors anticipate will yield between $100 billion and $120 billion by the end of 2026.
After shuttering his AI automation startup Relay, founder Jacob Bank is returning to Google to spearhead product and developer relations for the Chrome browser. The transition marks a homecoming for Bank, whose previous company, Timeful, was acquired by Google nearly a decade ago.
Apple has issued a record-breaking volume of threat notifications across 110 countries, warning users of potential state-sponsored mercenary spyware attacks. Digital rights organizations and cybersecurity firms report that the surge in alerts, which began Friday, is significantly higher than any previous notification cycle triggered by the technology giant.
Prospective attendees have until 11:59 p.m. PT this Friday, August 21, to secure tickets for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 at a discount of up to $300. The annual gathering, which draws over 10,000 founders and investors, returns to San Francisco’s Moscone West from October 13-15.
Spotify is shifting its interface from a passive listening experience to a social narrative, introducing Playlist Notes to allow both listeners and staff curators to attach personal context to individual tracks. The update follows last month’s rollout of track-specific notes, deepening the platform's focus on user-generated storytelling.
With a valuation that has quadrupled in just eight months, AI video startup Higgsfield has secured $400 million in Series B funding. The rapid capital injection underscores the intense demand for compute-heavy generative video tools as the company pivots from viral film debuts toward deep enterprise integration.
Reddit is launching a test of video and audio-narrated posts, an attempt to capture the engagement currently siphoned off by TikTok and Reels creators. By allowing users to listen to threads in the background, the platform aims to integrate the popular ‘spoken Reddit’ format directly into its own native mobile experience.
Acoustic fire suppression is moving toward commercial viability after Ohio-based startup Sonic Fire Tech raised $15 million in a round led by the O.H.I.O. Fund. The company aims to replace traditional water and chemical systems with infrasonic waves that extinguish blazes without leaving behind a trail of property damage.
Starting August 24, YouTube will register a view the moment a video begins playing or a live stream opens. This shift abandons the long-standing, though never officially confirmed, 30-second benchmark, aligning the platform’s primary metric with competitors like TikTok and Instagram to provide creators with a clearer picture of immediate exposure.
Conflict: While Feedly aggressively markets its new AI-driven threat intelligence tools, its core user base reports that the platform's fundamental RSS reader has become virtually unusable. Subscribers complain of severe web app latency and ignored support tickets, casting doubt on the company's commitment to its original service.
