Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: WhatsApp upgrades its two-step verification, letting users replace the six-digit PIN with a longer alphanumeric password, and adds support for multiple passkeys — WhatsApp announced Tuesday that it's launching new security features and updates to help users keep their accounts secure …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman unveil the $250 Luffu Link, a screenless, jewelry-inspired LTE health and safety band, set to ship in early 2027 — Luffu, a new startup from Fitbit's co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman, on Tuesday launched Luffu Link …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Sources: Flipkart Minutes, the quick commerce service of Walmart's Flipkart, is now delivering 1.1M-1.2M orders per day, up from ~390K-400K in November 2025 — Indian startups spent years getting consumers accustomed to having groceries and everyday goods delivered within minutes.
Anna Heim / TechCrunch: London-based Inherent, founded by DeepMind alumni and with $50M in seed funding, says its new Faraday agent beats GPT-5.5 at reproducing research paper findings — Inherent, a London AI lab founded by Google DeepMind alumni, says its AI agent just outperformed much larger models from Anthropic and OpenAI using a fraction of the size.
Marina Temkin / TechCrunch: Source: AI training data startup Micro1's gross annual run rate grew from $100M to $500M in the past eight months, putting net annual run rate at $150M-$200M — The near-bottomless demand for unique AI training data from top labs and corporations is driving a massive boom for a cohort of data-labeling startups.
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch: Nevada approves permits letting Tesla deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis in the Las Vegas area over the next year, while Waymo and Uber are each allowed up to 1,000 — Nevada, get ready for the robotaxis. — The Nevada Transportation Authority unanimously approved three permits Thursday that will allow Tesla …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Binance launches Agent OS, a platform that lets AI agents analyze markets and execute trades on users' behalf; users set limits on AI agents' access and trades — Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange with more than 300 million registered users, on Thursday launched a platform …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Google unveils the $899+ Pixel 11, $1,099+ 11 Pro, and $1,299+ 11 Pro XL, with Tensor G6, new Gemini features, Magic Capture to pick the best frames, and more — For the last few years, Google's Pixel has been a showcase of new AI features, with few hardware changes from the previous year's devices.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Google adds Venmo as a payment option on Google Play for games, apps, add-ons, subscriptions, and more in the US, expanding support beyond PayPal and Cash App — Google said that it is adding Venmo as a payment option today on Google Play for purchases including games, apps, add-ons, and other digital content.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Athens-based Omilia, which builds self-learning AI agents that work across different customer contact points, raised a $67M Series B led by Expedition Growth — The customer support industry has seen a massive influx of startups like Sierra, Decagon and Parloa trying to infuse AI …
Kate Park / TechCrunch: Horizon3, whose AI penetration testing platform NodeZero helps find and exploit attack paths in production systems, raised a $250M Series E at a $2B valuation — Cybersecurity startup Horizon3 has raised a $250 million Series E at a $2 billion valuation, more than tripling its valuation in 14 months.
Tim Fernholz / TechCrunch: June, which aims to help enterprise AI deployment by finding bottlenecks and building agents, emerges from stealth with $20M led by Marc Benioff's Time Ventures — It's so hard for big businesses to get AI tools working reliably that whole new organizations of forward-deployed engineers or FDEs …
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: YouTuber Hank Green faces online criticism after using ChatGPT to help research a script, and says his LLM usage “is not healthy for me or good for the world” — Hank Green, a novelist, comedian, and YouTuber with 3.2 million subscribers, recently apologized to his audience for his growing reliance on AI chatbots.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Sensor Tower: India's mobile app market generated a record $345M in consumer spending in Q2, up 35% YoY; ChatGPT ranked No. 1 by downloads and No. 2 by revenue — For years, India was the world's largest app download market but one of its toughest places to make money.
Julie Bort / TechCrunch: Lake Mary, Florida-based Spur Intelligence, which helps distinguish human and bot traffic to find fake users and threats, raised $200M led by Insight Partners — Spur Intelligence, a cybersecurity startup based in Lake Mary, Florida, has raised a $200 million round led by Insight Partners.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Fish Audio, which offers AI voice models for creators and enterprises and has $21M in ARR, raised a $50M seed led by Coreline Ventures and Capital Today — The market for AI-generated voice models is massive. Creative use cases require AI voice models to be more expressive …
Russell Brandom / TechCrunch: Richard Socher's Recursive Superintelligence signs a $410M, multiyear AWS compute deal to support its self-improving AI systems, after raising $650M in May — On Tuesday, the AI company Recursive Superintelligence announced a $400 million compute deal with Amazon Web Services.
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch: Baidu begins testing its purpose-built Apollo Go RT6 robotaxis with human safety operators in outer London; Baidu plans to offer the taxis on Lyft's Freenow — Chinese tech giant Baidu has started testing autonomous vehicles in London as part of its partnership with Lyft and Freenow …
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch: Mobileye founder and CEO Amnon Shashua plans to step down after nearly three decades, as the company pushes into robotaxis and humanoid robots — Mobileye founder and CEO Amnon Shashua plans to step down from the top leadership post after nearly three decades, just as the company pushes into robotaxis and humanoid robots.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Meta launches Meta Business Agent globally on WhatsApp and Instagram DMs, after a two-year pilot of the customer support AI bot in India, Mexico, and others — For years, WhatsApp has been a communication layer for businesses of all sizes around the world.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Boston-based software monitoring startup Coralogix raised a $200M Series F at a $1.6B post-money valuation, up from $1B+ after a $115M Series E in June 2025 — Coralogix, a Boston-headquartered software monitoring startup founded in Israel, has raised $200 million in a new funding round …
Lucas Ropek / TechCrunch: With Microsoft's GitHub Copilot shifting to token-usage billing on June 1, many developers bemoan massive cost increases and the end of flat-rate subscriptions — The golden age of Microsoft's Github Copilot appears to be at an end — for the little guy, at least.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Google's keyword ad practices face renewed criticism after the Delhi High Court ruled against Google in a trademark dispute involving Indian company Hindware — A recent Indian court ruling against Google's keyword advertising practices has gained fresh attention after founders said competitors …
Kate Park / TechCrunch: Xcena, whose MX1 chip performs data orchestration and KV cache management directly within memory modules, raised a $135M Series B at a $570M valuation — Every time you ask ChatGPT a question, your request triggers a data relay race. Information leaves memory, passes through a CPU for preprocessing …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Visa makes an undisclosed investment in Replit; the two will explore how Replit developers can use Visa Intelligent Commerce and the Trusted Agent Protocol — Visa has announced an undisclosed investment in AI coding platform Replit. The two companies are also exploring …
Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch: Milan-based social travel startup WeRoad raised a $58M Series C led by Airbnb, taking its total funding to ~$100M, to expand into the US, starting in Austin — WeRoad, the Milan-based group travel startup, has raised a $58 million Series C round led by Airbnb as it prepares for its first major expansion outside Europe.
Julie Bort / TechCrunch: Atlanta-based e-commerce logistics company Stord raised a $250M Series F led by Strike at a $3B valuation, up from $1.5B after a $200M Series E in May 2025 — E-commerce logistics company Stord has raised a $250 million round at a $3 billion valuation, it announced Tuesday.
Dominic-Madori Davis / TechCrunch: Fresha, a London-based beauty and wellness booking marketplace, raised $80M from KKR's growth equity arm at a $1B+ valuation, bringing its total raised to $285M — Beauty and wellness booking marketplace Fresha has announced an $80 million investment from KKR's Next Generation Technology Growth fund …
Dominic-Madori Davis / TechCrunch: Nectar Social, which offers an agentic OS for marketers, raised a $30M Series A led by Menlo Ventures, with GV and True Ventures among investors — AI-powered marketing platform Nectar Social announced Thursday that it raised a $30 million Series A round led by Menlo Ventures and its Anthology Fund …
Julie Bort / TechCrunch: In a viral X post that parodies the old Mac vs. PC commercials, General Catalyst posted a “VC vs GC” video, with the VC apparently modeled after Marc Andreessen — One of the most entertaining moments in VC this week was a piece of rage-bait marketing from General Catalyst.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Wirestock, which says it provides multi-modal data to six of the largest foundation AI labs, raised a $23M Series A, bringing its total funding to $26M — In the past few years, creative marketplaces and platforms have realized that they are sitting on a data goldmine …
Marina Temkin / TechCrunch: Canadian legaltech company Clio says its ARR has reached $500M, citing demand for its AI tools; Clio had a $5B valuation after a $500M Series G in November 2025 — While AI is now being applied to everything from healthcare to customer support, no single use case has yet been nearly as popular or lucrative as code writing.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: AI voice startup Vapi raised a $50M Series B led by Peak XV, a source says at a $500M post-money valuation, after Amazon chose Vapi to handle 100% of Ring calls — Amazon Ring, facing a surge in customer-support calls during last year's holiday season, evaluated more than 40 AI voice vendors …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Amazon launches Amazon Now, its 30-minute delivery service, in dozens of US cities including Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia, and Seattle, after pilots — Amazon deliveries keep getting faster. On Tuesday, the online retailer announced the launch of its 30-minute delivery option …
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch: Discord launches Nitro Rewards, giving Nitro subscribers access to offers from gaming services like Xbox Game Pass and hardware like Logitech G at no extra cost — Discord on Monday unveiled Nitro Rewards, which gives Nitro subscribers access to offers from other gaming and lifestyle brands for no additional cost.
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch: NHTSA says the 2026 Tesla Model Y is the first car model to pass the agency's new ADAS tests; Tesla conducted the tests and submitted the results to the NHTSA — The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said Tuesday that the later release 2026 Tesla Model Y is the first vehicle …
Anna Heim / TechCrunch: Khosla-backed robotics startup Genesis AI unveils GENE-26.5, its first model, which can control robotic hands that it designed in-house to do tasks like cooking — Genesis AI, a startup that raised a $105 million seed round to build foundational AI for robotics, has unveiled its first model …
Ram Iyer / TechCrunch: Seattle-based CopilotKit, whose popular AG-UI protocol lets developers deploy app-native AI agents, raised a $27M Series A led by Glilot, NFX, and SignalFire — Many companies today provide AI simply as a chatbot inside their apps: you type in (or dictate) what you want it to do, and the AI bot goes and tries to do it.
Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch: Amazon debuts “Join the chat”, an AI-powered feature that lets users ask questions about products and get conversational audio responses generated in real time — Amazon launched a new AI-powered feature on Tuesday that allows users to ask questions about products …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Spotify rolls out a Verified by Spotify badge to identify human artists; criteria include artist presence on and off platform and consistent listener activity — As AI-generated artists and tracks flood music streaming platforms, Spotify is rolling out a new “Verified by Spotify” …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Divine, a Vine reboot financed by Jack Dorsey-backed nonprofit “and Other Stuff” and built by an early Twitter employee, debuts with ~500K restored Vine videos — A new project to bring back Vine's six-second looping videos is now available for download on the App Store and Google Play.
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Snapchat launches AI Sponsored Snaps, a conversational ad format in the Chat tab that lets users talk to brand-specific AI agents for product recommendations — Snapchat announced on Tuesday that it's rolling out “AI Sponsored Snaps,” which will allow users to interact directly with brands' AI agents.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Truecaller faces mounting pressure as growth slows in India, its largest market, while telcos, Apple, and Google roll out caller ID and spam-blocking features — Truecaller is one of the world's most widely used caller identification platforms, with more than 500 million users.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch: Citizen Lab details two spying campaigns that abuse weaknesses in the SS7 and Diameter protocols across 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G networks to track people's locations — Security researchers have uncovered two separate spying campaigns that are abusing well-known weaknesses in the global telecoms infrastructure to track people's locations.
Connie Loizos / TechCrunch: LinkedIn profile review shows Thinking Machines Lab has been hiring more researchers from Meta than from any other employer; TML's headcount now stands at ~140 — Weiyao Wang spent eight years at Meta — his first job out of college — helping build multimodal perception systems and contributing …
Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch: Beehiiv rolls out new creator tools, including metered paywalls, letting creators host webinars for up to 10,000 people, AI analytics, and more — It's been clear for a while that Beehiiv wants to be more than just a newsletter platform. The L.A.-based company announced a slew of updates …
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch: Apple fixes a bug that stored notifications for deleted messages on iPhone and iPad, following a report that police used it to extract deleted Signal messages — Apple released a software update on Wednesday for iPhones and iPads fixing a bug that allowed law enforcement to extract messages …
Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch: Source: Mira Murati's TML signed a deal with Google Cloud, valued in single-digit billions, to access Google's latest AI systems built on Nvidia's GB300 chips — Former OpenAI executive Mira Murati's startup, Thinking Machines Lab, has signed a new multi-billion-dollar agreement to expand …
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: Tesla expands its robotaxi service to Dallas and Houston after launching in Austin last year and starting to offer rides without safety drivers in January 2026 — Tesla is expanding its robotaxi service to Dallas and Houston, according to a social media post from the company.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Appfigures: app releases across the App Store and Google Play grew 60% YoY in Q1, with App Store releases alone up 80%, possibly driven by AI coding tools — Everyone said AI would kill apps. Instead, new app launches are soaring. — According to a new analysis from market intelligence …