While Roy Lee, the founder of Cluely, argues that startups should be thinking harder about social media virality, he also admits that brand awareness alone won’t lead to sustained growth. “I can’t say if it’s a mistake, but maybe we launched too early,” Lee said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 last week. “The whole…
Apple is nearing a deal with Google that would see the iPhone maker pay the tech giant roughly $1 billion a year for a custom version of Google’s Gemini AI model to power its overhaul of Siri, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The move is a big one for Apple, which has traditionally…
On an earnings call on Tuesday, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready highlighted the promise of open source AI models in helping the company keep its costs down as it expands the use cases for visual AI. The image pinboarding site, which often serves as consumers’ first step in their shopping journey, leverages AI technology to power…
For years, Australians have been been installing solar panels at a rapid clip. Now, that investment is paying off. The Australian government announced this week that electricity customers in three states will get free electricity for up to three hours per day starting in July 2026. Solar power has boomed in Australia in recent years….
Eugenia Kuyda saw the future of consumer AI before most. She founded Replika, the first major AI companion startup, in 2017 years before ChatGPT launched. Today it has 35 million users. Now Kuyda is back with a new startup called Wabi, which she describes as YouTube for apps – a social platform where anyone can use prompts to instantly create mini apps and share…
The Motion Picture Association (MPA) has sent Meta a cease-and-desist letter demanding that it stop using the term “PG-13,” as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Last month, Meta announced that teens on Instagram would, by default, only see content that adheres to PG-13 movie ratings. Two weeks later, the MPA sent Meta a…
The University of Pennsylvania confirmed on Tuesday that a hacker stole university data as part of last week’s data breach, during which alumni and other affiliates received suspicious emails from official university email addresses. “We got hacked,” the message from the hackers read. “We love breaking federal laws like FERPA (all your data will be…
If you look at how AI deals are conducted these days, it seems AI companies and their investors are imitating the circle of life. Only, it’s a circle of profit that ensures the money eventually comes back to their own coffers. Case in point: SoftBank, which is investing tens of billions into OpenAI and committing…
Cybersecurity is a massive sector, but startups in the category are more likely to be acquired than go public. Even Wiz, which for a time held the title of the fastest-growing startup, abandoned its IPO ambitions when it agreed to sell to Google earlier this year. In the past few years, there have been scant few significant…
A raft of voice-based hardware devices have emerged, aimed at companionship, productivity, or personal growth. These include card-shaped devices from Plaud and Pocket; pendants from Friend, Limitless, and Taya; and a wristband from Bee, which is now part of Amazon. Now, two former Meta employees who worked on interface design have launched Sandbar, a startup…
