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 »
OpenAI just made its biggest acquisition yet, scooping up Jony Ive and Sam Altman’s secretive device startup, io, in a $6.5 billion all-equity deal. Ive, the legendary designer behind the iPhone and other iconic Apple products, will now lead creative and design work at OpenAI through his firm LoveFrom. The goal? To take AI “beyond
OpenAI goes all in with Jony Ive as Google plays AI catchup Read More »
“The only thing worse than being a public company CEO is being a private company CEO right now,” says Ali Kashani, co-founder and CEO of Serve Robotics. Access to capital, he argues, is everything in robotics. And in today’s “FOMO-driven” venture climate, securing funds is far from guaranteed. Backed by Nvidia and Uber, Serve recently
Databricks just snatched up another AI company. This week, data analytics giant announced a $1 billion acquisition of Neon, a startup building an open-source alternative to AWS Aurora Postgres. It’s the latest in a spree of high-profile buys, joining MosaicML and Tabular, as Databricks positions itself as the place to build, deploy, and scale AI-native
Is $1 billion a lot of money these days? Read More »
