Over the past few weeks, the Department of Energy has been looking at canceling billions of dollars’ worth of contracts. Now, the federal agency has confirmed that it’s axing $720 million worth of manufacturing awards. The cuts affect companies that make battery materials, recycle lithium-ion batteries, and manufacture super-insulating windows. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has…
President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese inked an agreement on Monday that will pump billions of dollars into critical minerals projects. The U.S. and Australia will together contribute $3 billion to the projects over the next six months. The total project pipeline is worth $8.5 billion, the governments said. As part of…
New data indicates that use of Meta AI’s mobile app for iOS and Android has seen a significant increase. According to a new analysis from market intelligence provider Similarweb, the app’s daily active users across both platforms jumped to 2.7 million as of October 17, up from around 775,000 just four weeks ago. In addition,…
The Federal Trade Commission has removed three blog posts from the Lina Khan-era that addressed open-source AI and risks of AI to consumers, according to a Wired report. One post, titled “On Open-Weights Foundation Models,” was published July 10, 2024. Another, titled “Consumers Are Voicing Concerns About AI,” came out in October 2023. A…
WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg called the company’s Tumblr acquisition his biggest failure — but one he hasn’t given up on yet. The comments were made at the recent WordCamp Canada 2025 conference, where Mullenweg went live for a Town Hall session to connect with the open source-focused WordPress community. The exec noted…
San Francisco is getting a symbolic jolt very soon as newly elected Mayor Daniel Lurie steps onto the Disrupt stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, October 27-29 at Moscone West, in a homecoming of sorts for both tech and the city that helped define it. Disrupt has long been a launchpad for founders and investors chasing…
T-minus 7 days until TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 officially kicks off at San Francisco’s Moscone West! One of the year’s biggest tech events is ready to dominate the Bay Area’s thriving tech landscape for almost the entire week. Get ready for one of the biggest tech gatherings on October 27-29. Tech experts from every corner of the globe will come together…
Spotify is introducing a new feature that will let users follow venues to get updates and details on concerts scheduled to take place there. Venues you follow are saved in your library, and you can browse them to see event calendars, information on scheduled concerts, and announcements. Users can also filter upcoming shows at venues…
An outage affecting web hosting giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) has taken out vast swathes of the web, including websites, banks and some government services. Amazon said on Monday morning that the outage had been “fully mitigated” and that most services are returning to normal after an hours-long stretch during which much of the internet…
Lee Roberts meets me at the University Club of San Francisco on a Friday morning, hours before his football team will lose to Cal in heartbreaking fashion – a fumble at the goal line, because little about the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s expensive experiment with Bill Belichick has gone according to script….
