TechCrunch

Pharma giant Cencora is alerting millions about its data breach

Zack Whittaker — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 14:45:00 +0000

The pharma giant won't say how many patients were affected by its February data breach. A count by TechCrunch confirms that over a million people are affected.

Self-driving truck startup Aurora Innovation to sell up to $420M in shares ahead of commercial launch

Rebecca Bellan — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 14:32:00 +0000

Self-driving technology company Aurora Innovation is looking to raise hundreds of millions in additional capital as it races toward a driverless commercial launch by the end of 2024. Aurora is pursuing a driver-as-a-service model, wherein carriers purchase trucks with the Aurora Driver tech on board and then offer their services via those trucks to shippers. […]

Rediff, once an internet pioneer in India, sells majority stake for $3M

Manish Singh — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 11:08:24 +0000

Payments infrastructure firm Infibeam Avenues has acquired a majority 54% stake in Rediff.com for up to $3 million, a dramatic twist of fate for the 28-year-old business that was the first Indian internet firm to list on Nasdaq back in the year 2000. Founded in 1996, Rediff rode the initial dot-com wave to become one […]

Terraform Labs co-founder and crypto fugitive Do Kwon set for extradition to South Korea

Kate Park — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 08:54:43 +0000

The ruling confirmed an earlier decision in April from the High Court of Podgorica which rejected a request to extradite the crypto fugitive to the United States.

Meta’s Threads crosses 200 million active users

Ivan Mehta — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 08:40:50 +0000

A day after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked about his newest social media experiment Threads reaching “almost” 200 million users on the company’s Q2 2024 earnings call, the platform has touched the milestone. Instagram head Adam Mosseri confirmed that the Twitter rival has reached 200M active users in a post on Threads. Meta has taken […]

Connect with Google Cloud, Aerospace, Qualcomm and more at Disrupt 2024

Cindy Zackney — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 03:00:00 +0000

TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 will be in San Francisco on October 28–30, and we’re already excited! Disrupt brings innovation for every stage of your startup journey, and we could not bring you this world-class event without our world-class partners. Take advantage of the opportunity to leverage the expertise and resources of some of tech’s leading companies. Their participation […]

A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs

Cody Corrall, Alyssa Stringer — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 23:10:00 +0000

The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the first months of 2024. Smaller-sized […]

Intel to lay off 15,000 employees

Maxwell Zeff — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 23:05:02 +0000

Intel announced it would layoff more than 15% of its staff, or 15,000 employees, in a memo to employees on Thursday. The massive headcount is part of a large plan to reduce spending by $10 billion in 2025, following a dismal second quarter earnings report and outlook. “Our revenues have not grown as expected – […]

AI music startup Suno claims training model on copyrighted music is ‘fair use’

Lauren Forristal — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 21:50:57 +0000

Following the recent lawsuit filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) against music generation startups Udio and Suno, Suno admitted in a court filing on Thursday that it did, in fact, train its AI model using copyrighted songs. But it claimed that doing so was legal under the fair-use doctrine. The RIAA filed the lawsuit […]

iPad sales help bail out Apple amid a continued iPhone slide

Brian Heater — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 21:31:50 +0000

In spite of a drop for the quarter, iPhone remained Apple’s most important category by a wide margin.

How filming a cappella concerts and dance recitals led Northzone’s newest partner Molly Alter to a career in VC

Rebecca Szkutak — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 19:03:39 +0000

Molly Alter wears a lot of hats. She’s a mocumentary filmmaker working on a project about an alternate reality where charades is big business. She’s a caesar salad connoisseur and documents her rankings of different restaurants’ attempts on a blog called JULIUS. She’s also Northzone’s newest partner. Alter’s path to venture capital was not an […]

Microsoft now lists OpenAI as a competitor in AI and search

Maxwell Zeff — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 17:55:17 +0000

Microsoft has a long and tangled history with OpenAI, having invested a reported $13 billion in the ChatGPT maker as part of a long-term partnership. As part of the deal, Microsoft runs OpenAI’s models across its enterprise and consumer products and is OpenAI’s exclusive cloud provider. However, the tech giant called the startup a “competitor” […]

Sequoia-backed Knowde raises Series C at a valuation cut

Rebecca Szkutak — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 17:03:56 +0000

The San Jose-based startup raised $60 million in a round that values it lower than the $500 million valuation it garnered in its most recent round, according to multiple sources.

Twitter disappears from Mac App Store

Lauren Forristal — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 16:32:04 +0000

X (formerly Twitter) can no longer be accessed in the Mac App Store, suggesting that it has been officially delisted. Searches for both “Twitter” and “X” on Apple’s platform no longer surface the app. The URL no longer works, either. Instead, it displays a pop-up message indicating that it is unavailable. This means new users […]

Heeyo built an AI chatbot to be a billion kids’ interactive tutor and friend

Rebecca Bellan — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 16:00:00 +0000

When Xiaoyin Qu was growing up in China, she was obsessed with learning how to build paper airplanes that could do flips in the air. Her parents, though, didn’t have the aerodynamic expertise to support her newfound passion, and her teachers were too overwhelmed to give her dedicated attention. “That’s why I wanted to build […]

Google brings Gemini-powered search history and Lens to Chrome desktop

Ivan Mehta — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Google Thursday said that it is introducing new Gemini-powered features for Chrome’s desktop version, including Lens for desktop, tab compare for shopping assistance, and natural language integration for search history. Years after introducing and evolving Google Lens on mobile, the feature is finally coming to desktop. Rolling out to users across the world in the […]

Boeing bleeds another $125M on Starliner program, bringing total losses to $1.6B

Aria Alamalhodaei — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 15:15:29 +0000

While the company was awarded a massive, $4.2 billion contract to accelerate Starliner development in 2014, it was structured as a “fixed-price” model.

Anthony Levandowski bets on off-road autonomy, Nuro plots a comeback and Applied Intuition gets more investor love

Kirsten Korosec — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 15:05:00 +0000

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Summer road trip season is upon us, so when Google announced some updates to Google Maps, we got excited. Surely this would include a feature that allows […]

Google Cloud expands its database portfolio with new AI capabilities

Frederic Lardinois — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Google's new features include Gemini in BigQuery and Looker to help users with data engineering and analysis.

VC darling Rad Power Bikes hit with another round of layoffs

Rebecca Bellan — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 14:59:11 +0000

Rad Power Bikes, the Seattle-based e-bike startup that has raised more than $300 million from investors, went through another round of layoffs in July, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. This is the company’s fifth round since April 2021, when it cut back 100 staffers. Rad’s latest layoffs follow a culling a year ago, when the e-bike […]