Welcome, folks, to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s weekly news recap. The weather’s getting hotter — but not quite as hot as the generative AI space, which saw a slew of new models released this week, including Meta’s Llama 3. In other AI news, Hyundai-owned robotics company Boston Dynamics unveiled an electric-powered humanoid follow-up to…
Post News, a microblogging site that emerged in the days after Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition, is shutting down just a year and a half after launching in beta. Founder Noam Bardin, previously CEO of Waze, broke the news in a post on Friday. “At the end of the day, our service is not growing fast…
Validating consumer demand is a crucial step for any startup, and TechCrunch Early Stage is offering a golden opportunity to learn how to do it right. Peter Gladstone, senior adviser for startups at Harvard Innovation Labs, is set to lead an engaging roundtable titled “Validating Consumer Demand: How to Make the Most of Your Expertise.”…
CesiumAstro alleges in a newly filed lawsuit that a former executive disclosed trade secrets and confidential information about sensitive tech, investors and customers to a competing startup. Austin-based Cesium develops active-phased array and software-defined radio systems for spacecraft, missiles and drones. While phased-array antenna systems have been used on satellites for decades, Cesium has considerably…
Consumer-grade spyware apps that covertly and continually monitor your private messages, photos, phone calls and real-time location are a growing problem for Android users. This guide can help you identify and remove common surveillance apps from your Android phone, including TheTruthSpy, KidsGuard and other apps. Consumer-grade spyware apps are frequently sold under the guise of…
Much has been (and will continue to be) written about automation’s impact on the jobs market. In the short-term, many employers have complained of an inability to fill roles and retain workers, further accelerating robotic adoption. The long-term impact these sorts of sweeping changes will have on the job market going forward remains to be…
Tesla is pushing forward with a plan to build an electric big rig charging corridor stretching from Texas to California, despite being snubbed by a lucrative federal funding program that’s part of President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. But the original scope of the project could still change, TechCrunch has learned. The company had been seeking…
CRED has received the in-principle approval for payment aggregator license in a boost to the Indian fintech startup that could help it better serve its customers and launch new products and experiment with ideas faster. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, valued at $6.4 billion, received the in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India for the payment…
Generative AI models are increasingly being brought to healthcare settings — in some cases prematurely, perhaps. Early adopters believe that they’ll unlock increased efficiency while revealing insights that’d otherwise be missed. Critics, meanwhile, point out that these models have flaws and biases that could contribute to worse health outcomes. But is there a quantitative way…
Spend management startup Ramp has raised another $150 million at a post-money valuation of $7.65 billion, the company confirmed to TechCrunch today. New investor Khosla Ventures and existing backer Founders Fund co-led the raise, which also included participation from new backers Sequoia Capital, Greylock and 8VC. Other existing investors Thrive Capital, General Catalyst, Sands Capital,…





