“We put AI in this thing. Does it work? We’ll see.” That seemed to be the theme for some companies attending CES 2025, but looking beyond the experimental hype, there were also some significant (we think) developments and cool new products. Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Margaux MacColl, Anthony Ha, and Max
Month: January 2025
It’s only the second day of CES 2025, and we’ve already reached the point where it’s difficult to distinguish real products from elaborate pranks. In Case of Death currently leads that race by a country mile. Produced by Zugu, the product is designed as a kind of dead man’s switch for your digital life. It
After accounting startup Bench abruptly shut down on December 27 and was bought in a fire-sale by Employer.com, Bench customers are now learning they can’t easily just take their financial data and leave. And some are very unhappy about it, three customers told TechCrunch. To recap: When Bench, a startup based in Canada that raised
The white cane for the 21st century. While many tech companies have increasingly worked to make technology more accessible for the blind and visually impaired, canes haven’t benefited much from these advances. London-born WeWalk takes a more traditional approach to the white cane. Beyond the bulkier handle, not much sets the company’s product apart visually
Large corporations aren’t known for taking risks. This is as true in the world of consumer hardware as anywhere. Annual updates are largely incremental, with small changes to things like screen resolution or image quality. It’s a phenomenon that Lenovo is more than happy to buck when it showcases the latest updates to its PC
Businesses dependent on the physical supply chain — the network of facilities and transportation systems used to move materials from one location to another — face a number of challenges, from staff shortages to increasing customer expectations. The pressures aren’t easing up. According to a survey from Prologis, a real estate investment trust, two-thirds of
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. The second week of the year is usually a busy one for startup news, and 2025 is no exception. From CES product launches to M&As and funding
CES isn’t much of a gaming show. Every year, however, a few notable products slip through the news deluge. Created in collaboration with My Arcade, Gamestation Go fits the bill. The handheld sports a 7-inch display and comes preloaded with north of 200 titles from various Atari generations. Of course, simply being a portable game
Scale AI relies on an army of workers it categorizes as contractors to do essential AI work like labeling images or rating LLM responses for Big Tech and others. But the AI startup, most recently valued at $13.8 billion, is facing mounting legal challenges over its labor practices. On January 3, 2025, former Scale AI
Defense tech startup Epirus is reportedly raising between $150 million and $200 million in a new funding round led by Joe Lonsdale’s venture firm 8VC, Bloomberg reports. The round could give the company, which develops technology to intercept drones, a valuation of about $1 billion. If that’s the final valuation, it would be a decrease
Xocean, an Irish marine robotics startup that provides ocean data to the energy and hydrography industries using uncrewed surface vessels (USVs), has raised €115 million ($119 million) as it looks to expand coverage to additional sectors. Founded in 2017, Xocean has built a fleet of remotely-controlled USVs that can remain offshore for long periods of
Finnish startup Doublepoint launched its free app, WowMouse, for the Apple Watch this week at CES 2025. The app uses the wearable’s sensors, compass, and accelerometer to turn your hand into a mouse that can control devices through hand gestures. The Apple Watch already uses a similar technology for the double tap feature it released
VLC media player, the popular open-source software developed by nonprofit VideoLAN, has topped 6 billion downloads worldwide and teased an AI-powered subtitle system. The new feature automatically generates real-time subtitles — which can then also be translated in many languages — for any video using open-source AI models that run locally on users’ devices, eliminating
ICON Technologies Inc., which builds homes using 3D printing, is laying off 114 people, according to a WARN letter filed with the Texas Workforce Commission. A spokesperson for the company confirmed the news to TechCrunch, providing a statement that ICON had “recently made a difficult decision to re-align” its team and team size “to focus
Hippocratic AI, a startup building AI solutions that can handle non-diagnostic patient-facing tasks, secured a massive $141 million Series B at a valuation of $1.64 billion led by Kleiner Perkins, the company announced Thursday. The funding comes nine months after Hippocratic AI raised a $53 million round from General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz and five
As wildfires rage for the third consecutive day through parts of Los Angeles, now including the Hollywood Hills, several neighborhoods have been forced to evacuate for safety purposes. But on Thursday afternoon, a wildfire evacuation alert was mistakenly sent to the smartphone of every resident in Los Angeles County, a region with more than 9
Doorbell cameras are standard fare these days. More and more people have invested in connected security systemss, as the technology has become both cheaper and more user friendly. There’s one important thing these system won’t do, however: shoot people and animals with paintballs. That is, however, pretty much the Eve PaintCam’s whole M.O. Carrying the
Google searches for how to cancel and delete Facebook, Instagram, and Threads accounts have seen explosive rises in the U.S. since Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company will end its third-party fact-checking system, loosen content moderation policies, and roll back previous limits to the amount of political content in user feeds. Experts see
A startup hoping to provide a credible alternative to Amazon has picked up funding to double down on the gap in the market. PrettyDamnQuick (PDQ) provides tech to retailers to let them customize and test different shipping and checkout flows, and now it has picked up a deal of its own: a $25 million Series
Millions of packages stolen each year. DoorBox aims to change how packages are delivered with its smart package box that features a theft-proof design with live camera feeds and an alarm that activates automatically if the box is tampered with. After selling 2,000 units of its initial version, which offered manual functionality, the startup unveiled
Ask any scientist that has worked with cell cultures in a lab: contamination is high on their list of fears. Even one stray bacterium or fungal spore can spoil an entire experiment. Now imagine scaling that risk up to biomanufacturing, which uses living cells to make a range of stuff, including drugs, food ingredients, and
The Razzies, the Darwins — not all awards are good. Sure, CES is a time to celebrate the year’s weirdest and most wonderful consumer electronic, but thankfully we’ve got iFixit around to throw a little cold water on the fair. As we enter the penultimate day of the event, the repair stalwart presents its “Worst
TV providers and streamers’ real competition isn’t each other, it’s social video. Or at least that’s what the president of Comcast Advertising, James Rooke, said during an interview on Wednesday at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. The ad exec was speaking about the company’s Monday launch of “universal ads,” a solution that lets marketers buy
Tran Le was an engineering student at Stanford University when she tried to enroll in a clinical trial for her chronic condition. Although she identified several promising trials, she found the sign-up process daunting — she had to have extensive email exchanges with clinical sites and complete lengthy 20-page forms. All that paperwork was so
The tech layoff wave continued through 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, 2024 saw more than 150,000 job cuts across 542 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Large companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap, and Microsoft conducted sizable layoffs in 2024, while smaller-sized startups also experienced cuts, and in some
Tim Barat loved being a lineman at an electric company in Australia, where he grew up, even in the chaos of the Black Saturday brushfires in 2009 that torched over 1 million acres and left many without power or homes. But when he moved to the U.S. in 2013, his wife was less enthusiastic about
There was a time when baristas just had to write a customer’s name on a cup and call it out. They wouldn’t always get the name right, but more often than not, it went to the right person. The prospect of picking up takeout has, however, become considerably more dicey in this post-pandemic era dominated
The former chief executive of the parent company of MoviePass, Theodore Farnsworth, pleaded guilty to charges of securities fraud and conspiracy after being accused of misleading investors over the service’s “unlimited plan.” Farnsworth also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud as the chief executive of Vinco Ventures, a publicly traded company. Helios &
Last year, police surveillance startup Flock Safety hired the mayor of a California city with over 200,000 residents to promote its products. But the mayor, Ulises Cabrera of Moreno Valley, now claims Flock wrongfully terminated him, partly because he refused to use his position as mayor to benefit Flock, according to a lawsuit Cabrera filed
Astrohaus has cornered a very specific niche. The Michigan-based startup builds hardware for writers looking to eliminate distractions. It’s really tough finishing up that novel when Instagram exists, after all. While the company has made its name bucking most tech trends, however, its latest offering has found a bandwagon to jump onto. Announced at CES
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