Cloudflare wants AI companies to pay up. The cloud infrastructure provider, which powers around 20% of the web, is launching a new experiment that would let publishers charge AI firms every time their bots scrape a site. It’s called Pay per Crawl, and it could reshape how content is accessed and monetized online. Today on […]
Why Cloudflare wants AI companies to pay for content Read More »
Robinhood’s Baiju Bhatt has a new mission: solar power from space. Fresh off a $50 million Series A raise, Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt is going all-in on space-based solar power. His new startup, Aetherflux, wants to launch solar power-collecting satellites into low Earth orbit, with a demo flight set for 2026, and to transmit clean
Robinhood’s co-founder is beaming up (and down) the future of energy Read More »
This week, two major AI companies scored early wins in court, with federal judges siding with Meta and Anthropic in separate lawsuits over how their models were trained on copyrighted material. The decisions represent the first real legal validation of AI companies’ argument that training models on books, images, and other creative works can be
Big Tech lands an early win in legal battles against publishers Read More »
OpenAI recently announced a $200 million deal with the U.S. Department of Defense, which has us wondering: Could this further strain the company’s relationship with its biggest backer, Microsoft? After all, there have been numerous reports about growing tensions between the two companies, particularly as they become more competitive over enterprise deals. Today, on TechCrunch’s
Could OpenAI fill Microsoft’s shoes? Read More »
AI investments hit $110 billion in 2024, and the funding landscape in 2025 is more competitive than ever. For early-stage startups, that means more money in the market, but also more pressure to stand out. At TechCrunch Sessions: AI, Rebecca Bellan sat down with three experienced investors: Jill Chase, Partner at CapitalG; Kanu Gulati, Partner
Seed to Series C: What VCs actually want from AI startups Read More »
Meta just made a $14.3 billion bet on data-labeling company Scale AI, but it’s not a traditional takeover: Meta’s taking a 49% stake in the company and adding Scale’s co-founder Alexandr Wang to its team. The move signals Meta’s growing urgency to keep up in the AI race, even if its strategy for competing with
Meta’s big AI bet and our not-so-hot-take on fintech IPOs Read More »
If you’ve been following Anthropic, you’ll know it’s been a busy year for the AI startup. Back in March, the company announced that it raised $3.5 billion at a $61.5 billion valuation in a round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Since then, it’s launched a blog for its Claude models and, according to Bloomberg reporting,
Inside Anthropic’s AI ambitions with Jared Kaplan Read More »
“One of the biggest vulnerabilities in companies is actually humans,” CrowdStrike co-founder and former CTO Dmitri Alperovitch told TechCrunch in this week’s episode of Equity. “The more you automate, the more opportunities there are for people to find vulnerabilities in your system.” With the $50 billion Chinese AI market potentially slipping out of reach for
Elon Musk has officially announced he’s stepping down as a U.S. special government employee and the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency, better known as DOGE. The move follows Musk’s cooling relationship with the Trump administration and slumping Tesla sales tied to his political advocacy. Despite his announced departure, Musk gave a
Elon dips from DOGE, and Silicon Valley enters the ‘find out’ stage Read More »
“Startup culture may be great for putting out a new app or building a successful company, but not for distributing tens of millions of people’s benefits. Real people with real interests are at stake,” says Daniel Weiner, director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Elections and Government Program. In other words, when it comes to
What founders need to know about tech’s growing influence in D.C. Read More »
