Disney is turning to TikTok creators to populate its fledgling short-form video feed, Verts, aiming to capture the attention of younger audiences. This pilot program, launching in the U.S. before a planned international rollout, features fan-made videos centered on franchises like Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar directly within the Disney+ interface.
Ukrainian developer MacPaw is teaming up with Liquid AI to integrate locally hosted models into its product ecosystem, starting with its Eney assistant. By shifting processing from the cloud to the device, the company aims to offer developers a suite of tools for private, secure, and offline-capable AI applications.
Retail investors gain a new path into the startup ecosystem on August 13 as Robinhood launches its Venture Fund II. Priced at $25 per share, the vehicle aims to raise $200 million to acquire equity in companies backed by the prestigious Y Combinator accelerator, though the structure carries significant management costs.
With a fresh $120 million injection in Series C funding, Bengaluru-based electric vehicle maker River is shifting from product development to aggressive manufacturing expansion. The startup, which has already pushed 50,000 units of its flagship Indie moped onto Indian roads, now sets its sights on reaching profitability by 2029.
With $37 million in new Series B funding, Palo Alto-based WindBorne Systems is betting that its fleet of high-endurance weather balloons can bridge the gap between complex atmospheric data and private sector profitability. The round, co-led by Khosla Ventures and Galvanize, values the startup at $250 million.
As climate change threatens the water-intensive cultivation of rice across Asia, New York and Bengaluru-based climate-tech startup Mitti Labs has secured $9.5 million in a Series A round led by Aramco Ventures. The funding will accelerate the company's efforts to scale its AI-driven platform for optimizing water usage and methane reduction.
By capturing system audio rather than joining calls as a participant, Wispr Flow’s new Mac application enters the competitive meeting-transcription market. The tool generates live transcripts, identifies action items, and allows users to query their entire meeting history through an integrated AI interface.
Lucid Motors is betting its survival on a $1.4 billion cash reduction strategy as new CEO Silvio Napoli attempts to reverse a cycle of mounting losses and operational inefficiency. The manufacturer plans to consolidate its workforce and production while pivoting toward robotaxis and a new mid-sized vehicle platform.
During SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company, Elon Musk frequently veered into bold, speculative territory, leaving his executive team to scramble and provide more tempered, legally cautious context for investors. The session highlighted a recurring internal tension between visionary rhetoric and the company’s actual financial roadmap.
San Francisco remains a notoriously expensive city for travelers, but attendees of TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 can bypass standard market rates by utilizing exclusive room blocks near Moscone West. With the event scheduled for October 13 to 15, securing accommodations early provides both financial relief and proximity to the conference hub.
SpaceX has poured $329 million into Tesla Megapack battery systems this year, underscoring the deep operational ties between Elon Musk’s ventures. The massive expenditure, detailed in a recent regulatory filing, highlights a strategy to stabilize the volatile power demands inherent in the company’s expanding artificial intelligence data centers.
SpaceX reported a 92% surge in quarterly revenue to $7.8 billion, a dramatic financial shift driven by a pivot toward renting out massive computing capacity to rivals Anthropic and Google. While the company remains in the red, the losses are narrowing as Starlink continues its aggressive expansion.
Millions of Android users are unwittingly handing their precise location data to data brokers and government agencies. The Electronic Frontier Foundation found that third-party software development kits, often integrated into apps for monetization, scrape location data by default, frequently without the developer’s knowledge or explicit user consent.
A massive $10 billion agreement links Anthropic with Volta, a startup formed only this year to provide specialized cloud infrastructure. Over the next six years, this partnership aims to secure the massive compute capacity required to sustain the development of the Claude AI model in an increasingly crowded market.
China-based Z.ai has released GLM-5.2, an open-weight model that rivals top-tier systems from OpenAI and Anthropic in cyber and biological capabilities. A new report from SaferAI warns that while these models are catching up to frontier performance, they lack the critical safety guardrails found in their closed-source counterparts.
Barely a week after its inception, the 120-member Open Secure AI Alliance has moved from advocacy to implementation. Meeting at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, the group launched the Shared AI Findings Exchange to formalize how companies report, analyze, and remediate cybersecurity threats within the AI ecosystem.
“If the phone in my pocket knows exactly where I am, shouldn’t the places in front of me be able to speak?” That question from co-founder David Stemler sparked the creation of Wrinkles, an app designed to replace heads-down screen time with immersive, location-aware audio storytelling about your surroundings.
Registration for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 is now $100 cheaper for founders, investors, and attendees through a limited-time flash sale. The offer remains active until 11:59 p.m. PT on Friday, August 7, serving as the final opportunity to secure a bonus discount before pricing tiers shift on August 21.
Removing the final barrier to entry, Alphabet-owned Waymo has dropped its waitlist for autonomous rides in Dallas. Residents and visitors can now hail the company’s electric Jaguar I-Pace vehicles directly through the app, signaling a significant scale-up for the self-driving operator across the United States.
When Whip Media shuttered the popular TV Time app to pivot toward artificial intelligence, over 28,000 users petitioned to save it. Now, original co-founder Antonio Pinto is answering that demand with Bingers, a new tracking platform designed to restore the community-driven social features that defined its predecessor.
A security vulnerability in Coldcard hardware wallets has allowed attackers to siphon more than $130 million in Bitcoin from users who kept their keys entirely offline. By exploiting a flaw in how the devices generated seed phrases, hackers bypassed physical security measures to reconstruct private keys at scale.
Spotify is expanding its upcoming generative music tool, securing a partnership with independent licensing network Merlin to include over 30,000 labels in its AI remix platform. The feature, designed to let fans alter existing tracks with artist consent, marks the company's latest move to formalize user-generated AI content.
Walmart has officially absorbed Vibe.co, a self-service streaming platform designed to simplify television advertising for smaller brands. The integration into the retailer’s Walmart Connect division marks a significant step in the company’s push to dominate the connected TV market and refine how brands reach shoppers during their commerce journeys.
Governor Greg Abbott has ordered the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the state grid operator, ERCOT, to audit all new data center projects. This move targets an explosive surge in connection requests that now totals 474 gigawatts, threatening to overwhelm the state's electrical infrastructure if left unchecked.
Elon Musk is increasingly rebranding Tesla as a robotics and artificial intelligence powerhouse, despite financial reports confirming that car sales still generate 70% of the company's revenue. Data analysis from quarterly earnings calls reveals a stark shift in his rhetoric, with half of his commentary now dedicated to future-tech bets.
With over 1,100 startup founders and investors expected to descend upon Boston for the Founder Summit on November 4, 2026, local organizers are opening applications for independent side events. These gatherings, scheduled between November 1 and November 7, offer brands a direct line to the conference's high-profile attendee base.
Apple is escalating its trade secrets litigation against OpenAI, alleging that a broader network of former employees may have misappropriated sensitive data. The company is now seeking a preliminary injunction and expedited discovery, claiming that internal investigations uncovered evidence of unauthorized document handling involving unannounced hardware projects.
Spotify has officially crossed the 300 million subscriber threshold, marking a 9% quarterly increase that defies recent price hikes across several global markets. This growth accompanies a broader surge in platform engagement, with monthly active users climbing to 777 million as the company aggressively pivots toward an AI-integrated ecosystem.
India is laying the legal groundwork to dismantle its zero-merchant-discount-rate regime, a policy that has kept UPI payments free for businesses since 2020. New legislation signals a shift toward a sustainable business model, allowing for potential transaction fees as the network reaches record-breaking volumes across the country.
Infrastructure startup Runware is challenging the dominance of massive, centralized data centers with the launch of its Sonic Inference Pod. By deploying smaller, transportable units that utilize closed-loop cooling, the company aims to provide high-quality AI inference closer to end users while bypassing the lengthy construction timelines of traditional facilities.
