Anthropic has been shopping a draft federal AI safety bill to Congress, according to Politico and reported by TechCrunch. An Anthropic spokesperson confirmed it reflects the company's Advanced AI Framework, which it has promoted to federal and state lawmakers since June. The bill would allow a model's release to be blocked when it poses a…
SpaceX reported $14.6 billion in third-quarter revenue in a regulatory filing, with its AI business now accounting for 52% of income. The renamed "Super Intelligence" segment includes the recently acquired Cursor coding tool, the Grok bot and a neocloud business with 1.7 GW of compute. Net income was $4.4 billion, against a $1 billion los…
GM confirmed to TechCrunch that it will close the Brownstown Battery Assembly Plant south of Detroit, as first reported by Automotive News. The site assembled battery packs for the Cadillac Celestiq and electric drive units and battery packs for the Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray. A GM spokesperson said the closure is unrelated to its EV strate…
This TechCrunch Equity interview features Amulya Vishwanath, founder and managing partner of Techable Ventures, a VC firm focused on physical AI. She is a former Nvidia product marketer. She argues that robotics has not yet had its "ChatGPT moment" and is in a "LEGO era", in which foundational software and hardware building blocks such as…
Court records obtained by NPR show that TikTok employees repeatedly warned executives about risks the platform posed to minors, including sexual exploitation and exposure to suicide-related content. Employee depositions filed in March 2026 describe frustration with how leadership responded. Staff reportedly flagged minors appearing in sex…
Inspired Capital, the New York-based early-stage venture firm founded in 2019 by Alexa von Tobel and Penny Pritzker, closed its fourth fund with $450 million in commitments, bringing assets under management to nearly $1.4 billion. The article is business and funding news with no security incident, vulnerability, threat actor or malware co…
Reliable Robotics, a Mountain View, California startup building autonomous flight systems for existing aircraft, raised $115 million as an extension of its Series D. The round comprises $90 million in equity led by Nimble Partners and $25 million in debt from Silicon Valley Bank. It brings the Series D to $275 million, lifts the valuation…
Spotify launched paid podcast memberships on Tuesday, letting creators monetize their biggest fans beyond paywalled bonus episodes. Creators choose the perks, such as bonus audio or video, fewer ads or early access. The feature was previewed at Spotify's Investor Day in May and is rolling out to 34 markets, including the U.S. The launch i…
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at The People's AI Assembly, hosted by the AI Now Institute, that the federal government has abdicated its role in regulating AI. He urged New Yorkers to resist the idea that AI adoption is inevitable. He pointed to his September order banning AI use in elementary and middle schools. He also pointed…
Amazon is funding development of a proposed 960-megawatt nuclear plant near Terre Haute, Indiana, and would be the first customer for its power, according to an announcement on Monday. American Electric Power (AEP) would operate the plant, and X-energy would supply 12 Xe-100 small modular reactors. The site is a demolished coal plant. The…
Apple tightened its App Store developer guidelines over the weekend to ban apps that use AI to create offensive content. The update also targets apps that pass review as ordinary apps and later turn into nudify apps or surface those features prominently (a bait-and-switch tactic). Apps hosting user-generated content must filter objectiona…
Elon Musk said he will give one of his SpaceX shares to "every kid in America" in 2027. At the current $146 share price, the gift would be worth more than $10 billion, roughly 1% of his reported $1 trillion net worth. The mechanism is unclear, though Musk said he wants to give the shares "directly to the public" and called this the "first…
Laplace Intelligence, an Ann Arbor-based startup spun out of the University of Michigan, is building automated red-teaming for physical AI such as robots and autonomous vehicles. It is competing in Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt. The product pairs a high-fidelity, real-world-grounded simulation with AI agents that probe for…
This is not a cybersecurity incident. It is an interview-based report from TechCrunch Disrupt with the five partners of venture firm Benchmark. The partners discuss the firm's $2 billion raise across two funds this summer, including a $1.25 billion growth fund. They say they will keep a pace of two or three new investments per partner per…
TechCrunch reports that the documentary "You Can See Everything" about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos earned an estimated $15 million in its opening weekend, the second biggest documentary opening ever. It played in 855 theaters, had about 2,000 reported sellouts, and holds a 99% score on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. It was co-directed …
Town, a two-year-old San Francisco startup founded by former Plaid CTO Jean-Denis Greze, announced a $108 million Series B co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Menlo Ventures, giving it a unicorn valuation. The company launched publicly four months ago and says it reached millions of dollars in annual recurring revenue within weeks. It has r…
Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe told TechCrunch Disrupt that autonomous driving will let the company build vehicles very different from its current SUVs and trucks. Rivian is prioritizing autonomy software development even at the cost of delaying profitability. The article is industry and business news and describes no cyber threat, vu…
Meta's AI companion app Muse has reached 10.9 million downloads since its September debut, 10.2 million of them in the United States, according to Sensor Tower. Only 11 other apps have reached 10 million U.S. downloads within 40 days of launch. The most recent was Threads in July 2023, and most of the others were mobile games. Muse is ava…
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has ordered federal civilian agencies to stop buying DeepSeek products and services and to remove them from government IT systems, citing national security concerns. The order also covers third-party products and services built on DeepSeek technology, though agencies may request exceptions. DHS…