Author: TechCrunch News

Welcome to Startups Weekly. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. You know what isn’t a great idea for my energy levels? Enjoying a week of TechCrunch Disrupt and then getting straight on a plane to attend a startup event in Oslo, Norway. I’ve only just gotten over my jet lag,…

SpaceX won its first contract for Starshield, the defense-focused version of its Starlink satellite internet service, from the U.S. Space Force. The one-year contract has a maximum value of $70 million, a U.S. Air Force representative told Bloomberg. The contract “provides for Starshield end-to-end service via the Starlink constellation, user terminals, ancillary equipment, network management…

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed suit against Tesla on Thursday, accusing the automaker of violating federal law by tolerating widespread and ongoing racial harassment of its Black employees and subjecting some workers to retaliation for opposing harassment. The lawsuit from the federal agency responsible for enforcing civil rights laws against workplace discrimination…

Meta announced a host of new AI-powered bots, features and products to be released across its messaging apps, the Meta Quest 3 and the future Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. The new features — ranging from an AI assistant to image editing — harness the power of generative AI to make Meta’s technology just that much…

As Google is shifting its podcast listeners over to YouTube Music, Apple today announced an upgraded experience for its own Apple Podcasts app, following the release of iOS 17. With the software update, the service will now support a refreshed design with full-screen artwork, a more streamlined queue, episode art, interactive widgets, search filters and…

Amazon has agreed to invest up to $4 billion in the AI startup Anthropic as the e-commerce group steps up rivalry against Microsoft, Meta, Google and Nvidia in the fast-growing sector that many technologists believe could be the next great frontier. The e-commerce group said it will initially invest $1.25 billion for a minority stake…

The generative AI boom has put a spring in the step of Correcto, a Madrid-based language writing tool startup focused on Spanish speakers that’s today announcing $7 million in seed funding. The round is led by London-based Octopus Ventures, with Carya Venture Partners and River Park Ventures also contributing. The founding team began work on…

PhonePe launched the Indus AppStore Developer Platform on Saturday, promising zero platform fee and no commission on in-app purchases as the Walmart-backed fintech races to win Android developers in Google’s largest market. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, which has amassed over 450 million registered users on its eponymous payments app, said developers can start registering and uploading…

W elcome to the TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. The Perkins School for the Blind has identified over 1,400 companies that are designing and building products specifically for people with disabilities. I…

Welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter covering the past few days in tech. The TC crew — including this reporter — is coming off the high of Disrupt, which hopefully some of you, dear readers, were able to attend in person. Fret not if you didn’t — there’s always next year, and…