Apptronik, an Austin-based maker of humanoid robots, on Tuesday announced a new pilot partnership with American supply chain/manufacturing stalwart, Jabil. The deal arrives two weeks after Apptronik announced a $350 million Series A financing round aimed at scaling up production of its Apollo robot. The Jabil deal is the second major pilot announced by Apptronik.
admin
A demo from Optifye.ai, a member of Y Combinator’s current cohort, sparked a social media backlash that ended up with YC deleting it off its socials. Optifye says it’s building software to help factory owners know who’s working — and who isn’t — in “real-time” thanks to AI-powered security cameras it places on assembly lines,
YouTube announced it’s making changes to mid-roll ads to improve the viewing experience for users while also helping creators potentially earn more revenue. Starting May 12, the Google-owned platform is going to show fewer ads during moments that feel interruptive or may cause viewers to abandon the video — like in the middle of a
Just a few weeks after chipmaker Tenstorrent raised nearly $700 million in funding, developers can now try out Tenstorrent’s AI accelerators on Koyeb. Tenstorrent sells AI processors built around the RISC-V instruction set architecture, and has developed its own open-source neural network library, TT-NN, and open-source low-level programming model, TT-Metalium. Tenstorrent is part of a
Canadian biotech startup Afynia Laboratories, a spin-out from McMaster University in Ontario, has picked up $5 million in seed funding to commercialize a blood test for endometriosis — a medical condition that can afflict people with a uterus, causing problems like chronic pelvic pain and fertility issues. Endometriosis affects nearly 200 million people worldwide. Getting
The world is in a pickle: Human activity continues to dump too much CO2 into the atmosphere, raising the risk of catastrophic global warming. At the same time, the most climate-friendly way to keep using fossil fuels, carbon capture, has hit a rough patch. Only around 40 facilities worldwide are capturing some of the carbon
Clicks is bringing its BlackBerry-style physical keyboard case to Android. The company on Tuesday announced the launch of three new products aimed at Android users, including Clicks keyboards for the Google Pixel, Motorola Razr+, and Samsung Galaxy. The cases are available for pre-order starting today and will initially be offered at lower price points than
Music streamer SoundCloud announced a partnership with Ticketmaster and Universe, owned by Live Nation, to let artists list events on their profile in a customized way. The company said it would create more promotion opportunities for artists in the future in partnership with Ticketmaster through a new promotion program but didn’t give any more details.
The U.K. government is pushing forward with plans to attract more AI companies to the region through changes to copyright law that would allow developers to train AI models on artists’ content on the internet — without permission or payment — unless creators proactively “opt out.” Not everyone is marching to the same beat, though.
For decades, patents have been a bone of contention in the technology world, seen by some as a way to protect intellectual property, but by critics as a blunt weapon against innovation. In the age of AI, they are once again getting revisited. New York startup Patlytics has developed an AI-enabled patent analytics platform to
Pre-Series A founders, this is your moment! If you’re ready to showcase your game-changing innovations on a global stage, the battlefield awaits. Applications for TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200 — the premier startup pitch competition — are officially OPEN. This is your shot to shine! Step onto the global stage and showcase your groundbreaking startup to
It’s a scene that plays out in cities and suburbs across America: A tree gets cut down, and instead of being milled into lumber, the whole thing gets shredded. There are a range of reasons why, none of which have sat well with Ben Christensen. Christensen grew up in New Mexico among the state’s towering
The U.S. government is leaning hard on tech companies to make more commitments to building their businesses in the country, and Big Tech is falling in line. On Monday, Apple laid out its own plans in that area: It will spend $500 billion over the next four years in areas like high-end manufacturing, engineering, and
Larry Ellison’s leap into farming with his company, Sensei Farms, serves up a classic reminder: being a genius in one arena doesn’t mean success in another. As the WSJ reports, the Oracle co-founder set out to reinvent agriculture on Hawaii’s Lāna‘i Island, which he scooped up for $300 million back in 2012. Eight years and
As school districts struggle to support the mental health of their students, a startup called Sonar Mental Health has built a “wellbeing companion” called Sonny to help. As described in the Wall Street Journal, Sonny is a chatbot that relies on a combination of human staff and AI. When students text their questions to Sonny,
The beauty of podcasting is that anyone can do it. It’s a rare medium that’s nearly as easy to make as it is to consume. And as such, no two people do it exactly the same way. There are a wealth of hardware and software solutions open to potential podcasters, so setups run the gamut
Apple has been steadily working to expand the world of the Apple TV+ series “Severance,” through online materials, e-books, podcasts, and other content – and so have its fans. Taking advantage of its platform power, the Cupertino tech giant has been able to easily distribute supplemental material that adds to the show’s storytelling abilities, offering
From idea to IPO — where are you on your startup journey? Are you a pre-seed founder seeking your next VC investment? A late-stage startup preparing to go public? Still in the idea phase and looking for insights to bring your vision to life? Or are you a VC eager to back the next breakthrough
Tiny Michigan biotech startup CircNova has raised a $3.3 million seed round for its technology that uses AI to target “circular RNA.” The development holds promise as a new method to quickly develop therapies for conditions that currently have no drug treatments. The new funding is also a victory lap for co-founder and CEO Crystal
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. Startup life is a story of births and deaths. This week confirmed this, and it confirmed that unicorn rounds are not dead. Most interesting startup stories from
The criminal trial against fintech startup founder Charlie Javice began on Friday, with lawyers laying out their opening arguments, Reuters reported. Lawyers reiterated their original claims and defenses from the lawsuit filed by JPMorgan Chase against Javice in December of 2022. The financial services giant alleges that Javice helped “fake millions of customers in order
Two years ago, oil and gas company Occidental bought carbon capture startup Carbon Engineering. The transaction was hailed as a win-win: A climate tech company scored a significant exit, and a fossil fuel company gained a foothold in a sector that could be worth up to $150 billion by 2050. Now we have a better
You read that headline correctly! The best deals for TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 tickets are about to end in just 7 days. Save up to $1,130 on individual passes and up to 30% on group tickets. Don’t wait — these offers end on February 28 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Join us in celebrating 20 years of
AI Innovators, seize your moment! Have insights that could inspire 1,200 AI founders, investors, and enthusiasts eager to advance the future of AI? Take center stage, influence the AI conversation, and exchange ideas at TechCrunch Sessions: AI on June 5 at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. We’re gathering top AI visionaries from the startup world to
Humane’s Ai Pin, which promised to replace your smartphone with a sleek wearable device, is officially dead. After a rocky launch, negative reviews, and returns outpacing sales, the startup is shutting down and selling its assets to HP for $116 million — less than half of what it raised. But what’s next for Humane’s tech,
Renewable electricity is cheap and clean, but also less predictable than firing up a gas turbine. Turns out that’s both a problem and an opportunity. Most solutions to the problem of intermittency involve pairing solar panels and wind turbines with batteries, which store the power for use when the sun sets or the wind dies
Consumer-grade spyware apps that covertly and continually monitor your private messages, photos, phone calls, and real-time location are an ongoing problem for Android users. This guide can help you identify and remove common surveillance apps from your Android phone, including TheTruthSpy, Cocospy and Spyic, among others. Consumer-grade spyware apps are frequently sold under the guise
The CEO of Clearview AI, the controversial facial recognition startup that created a searchable database of 30 billion photos by scraping the internet, has resigned, according to a statement he supplied to TechCrunch. The CEO, Hoan Ton-That, said “it is time for the next chapter in my life” and that he would remain on as
Despite a still tight venture capital market, new unicorns are still being created every month. Using data from Crunchbase and PitchBook, TechCrunch tracked down the newly VC-backed startup minted unicorns so far this year (as of the end of January). These include healthcare companies like Hippocratic AI and satellite space companies like Loft Orbital. This
The U.S. invested a record-breaking $338 billion in the energy transition last year, according to a new report, but it wasn’t quite enough to lessen the country’s overall carbon emissions. Solar took the lead, adding 49 gigawatts of new electrical generating capacity in 2024, far more than any other technology. Solar and wind together now