Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: X is rolling out worldwide automatic post translation powered by xAI's Grok models, and updates its iOS image editor to add tools like drawing and blurring — Social media platform X is now rolling out a new feature that automatically translates posts. The company is also launching …
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch: The Trump administration proposes cutting CISA's budget for 2027 by $707M+ to help the agency refocus on its “core mission”, not “weaponization and waste” — The Trump administration is planning to cut the budget of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency by at least $707 million for 2027.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Adobe launches Acrobat Spaces, a free AI-based study tool to help students generate flashcards, mind maps, quizzes, and Express presentations without logging in — Adobe Acrobat has largely catered to professionals with its recent AI features. Now, the company is turning its attention …
Tim Fernholz / TechCrunch: Xoople, which is developing a satellite constellation to collect earth data for training AI models, raised a $130M Series B, bringing its total funding to $225M — Space data companies have argued for years that the private sector needs their products, but the real uptake has been from government buyers.
Kate Park / TechCrunch: Japan, driven by labor shortages, is increasingly adopting robotics and physical AI, with a hybrid model where startups innovate and corporations provide scale — Physical AI is emerging as one of the next major industrial battlegrounds, with Japan's push driven more by necessity than anything else.
Lucas Ropek / TechCrunch: Fabless AI chip startup Rebellions raised $400M in a pre-IPO round at a $2.34B valuation, bringing its total funding to $850M, with $650M in the past six months — Fresh off a successful Series C funding round in November, the South Korean fabless AI chip startup Rebellions has raised an additional $400 million.
Kate Park / TechCrunch: New York-based Qodo, which offers AI agents for code review, testing, and governance, raised a $70M Series B led by Qumra, taking its total funding to $120M — As AI coding tools generate billions of lines of code each month, a new bottleneck is emerging: ensuring that software works as intended.
Tim Fernholz / TechCrunch: Space data center startup Starcloud raised a $170M Series A led by Benchmark and EQT at a $1.1B valuation, and plans to launch Starcloud 2 later in 2026 — Starcloud's latest funding round values the space compute company at $1.1 billion, making it one of the fastest startups to reach unicorn status after graduating from Y Combinator.
Julie Bort / TechCrunch: Report analyzing payments of 28M US consumers shows Claude adding paid subs at a steadily increasing pace; Anthropic: paid subs have more than doubled this year — Whatever the final outcome for Anthropic from its feud with the Department of Defense, the attention it has generated …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: WhatsApp rolls out features and updates: an AI tool to suggest replies based on a user's conversations, the ability to touch up photos with Meta AI, and more — WhatsApp is rolling out a slew of new features and updates, including one that generates AI-powered suggested replies based on your conversations.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Mistral launches Voxtral TTS, an open-source enterprise text-to-speech model that supports nine languages, including Hindi and Arabic, based on Ministral 3B — French AI company Mistral released a new open-source text-to-speech model on Thursday that can be used by voice AI assistants or in enterprise use cases like customer support.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Mirage, formerly Captions, which develops an AI video editing and marketing suite, raised $75M from General Catalyst, after moving to a freemium model in 2025 — Mirage, the maker of video editing app Captions, has raised $75 million in growth financing from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund (CVF).
Connie Loizos / TechCrunch: In a Kleiner podcast interview, DOD official Emil Michael says he will “never forget” nor “forgive” Uber investors that ousted him and Travis Kalanick in 2017 — Emil Michael, who serves as a senior technology official at the Department of Defense …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Cloaked, which offers security and privacy services such as VPNs, raised a $375M Series B in a mix of equity and growth funding, for enterprise expansion — Consumer-facing security tools often focus on one kind of modality, such as password protection, VPNs, or identity management.
Julie Bort / TechCrunch: Zendesk agrees to acquire Forethought, which makes AI-powered customer support software, for an undisclosed sum; Forethought has raised $115M — Zendesk is acquiring Forethought, a company that builds software to automate customer service interactions, the companies announced on Wednesday.
Tim Fernholz / TechCrunch: Google Research launches Groundsource, a geo-tagged time series dataset created by using Gemini to extract 2.6M flood events from 5M historical news articles — Flash floods are among the deadliest weather events in the world, killing more than 5,000 people each year. They're also among the most difficult to predict.
Kate Park / TechCrunch: Chinese brain-computer interface startup Gestala raised $21.6M co-led by Guosheng Capital and Dalton Venture at a $100M to $200M valuation, per CEO Phoenix Peng — Elon Musk's Neuralink and OpenAI-backed Merge Labs are pushing forward with brain-computer interface (BCI) technology in the U.S. Meanwhile …
Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch: Google closes its acquisition of Israeli cybersecurity company Wiz for $32B, marking Google's biggest acquisition ever; Google initially approached Wiz in 2024 — Google has officially acquired Israeli cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion in cash, a full year after the companies announced the deal.
Sean O'Kane / TechCrunch: Amazon's Zoox partners with Uber to offer its robotaxis on the Uber app, starting in Las Vegas in late 2026 and expanding to LA in 2027; Zoox needs US approval — Amazon-owned Zoox plans to make its robotaxis available to hail on the Uber app in Las Vegas later this year, the two companies announced Wednesday.
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Google rolls out Gemini-powered AI capabilities across Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive, including a “Help me create” tool in Docs to generate first drafts — Google announced on Tuesday that it's bringing a slew of new Gemini-powered AI capabilities to Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive.
Julie Bort / TechCrunch: AI networking equipment startup Eridu emerges from stealth and raised a $200M Series A led by Socratic, John Doerr, and more, taking its total funding to $230M — Drew Perkins has been inventing computer network tech and building startups since the dawn of the internet age.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: IDC: India's PC market had its strongest year on record in 2025, with shipments up 10.2% YoY to 15.9M units; commercial buyers accounted for 52.9% of shipments — India's PC market had its strongest year on record in 2025, surpassing the surge in demand during the COVID-19 pandemic as millions …
Russell Brandom / TechCrunch: Cursor launches Automations, a new tool that lets users automatically launch agents triggered through new additions to a codebase, a Slack message, or a timer — As agentic coding spreads, the working life of a software engineer has become dazzlingly complex.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Eight Sleep, which sells smart mattress accessories to track sleep patterns and adjust temperatures, raised $50M at a $1.5B valuation, up from $500M in 2021 — Sleep tech company Eight Sleep today said that it has raised $50 million in a strategic round led by Tether Investments at a valuation of $1.5 billion.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Xiaomi launches the €15 Xiaomi tag, an AirTag-like device that works with both Apple Find My and Android Find Hub, and the €300 Xiaomi Watch 5, in Europe — Xiaomi today launched a slew of gadgets ahead of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona including a camera-focused flagship smartphone …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Source: India issued a blocking order on February 24 to restrict access to developer database service Supabase; the government did not publicly cite a reason — Supabase, a popular developer database platform, is facing disruptions in India — one of its key markets — has been blocked in India, TechCrunch has learned.
Marina Temkin / TechCrunch: Plaid allowed employees to sell some of their shares at an $8B valuation, up 31% from the $6.1B valuation in April 2025 and 40% below its $13.4B peak in 2021 — Plaid, a company that connects financial applications to users' bank accounts, enabling payments and data verification …
Russell Brandom / TechCrunch: Open source projects like VLC and Blender are seeing a decline in the average quality of contributions, likely as AI coding tools lower barriers to entry — A world that runs on increasingly powerful AI coding tools is one where software creation is cheap — or so the thinking goes …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Bengaluru-based Sarvam, which is building AI models for local languages, launches its Indus chat app in beta, powered by its Sarvam 105B model — Sarvam, an Indian AI startup focused on building models for local languages and users, on Friday launched its Indus chat app for web and mobile users …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: General Catalyst plans to invest $5B in India over five years, an increase from the $500M to $1B previously announced, after merging with a local VC in 2024 — General Catalyst, a Silicon Valley-based venture firm with more than $43 billion in assets under management, has announced it plans …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Google rejected 1.75M policy-violating Android apps and blocked 80K+ developer accounts from Google Play in 2025, down from 2.36M apps and 158K accounts in 2024 — Fewer bad actors are targeting Google Play with malicious apps, the company says, a shift that the tech giant credits …
Tim De Chant / TechCrunch: DG Matrix, which builds solid-state transformers to handle up to 2.4 MW and boost data center power efficiency, raised a $60M Series A led by Engine Ventures — Data centers face a conundrum: how to power increasingly dense server racks using equipment that relies on century-old technology.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: A US federal judge orders OpenAI to stop using the word “Cameo” for its Sora products and features, in a trademark lawsuit filed by celebrity video app Cameo — A federal district court in Northern California ruled in favor of Cameo, a platform that allows users …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Airbnb expands its Reserve Now, Pay Later feature globally, after a US pilot for domestic travel saw a 70% adoption rate for eligible bookings — Airbnb said on Tuesday that it is launching its “Reserve Now, Pay Later” feature — which lets users secure bookings without immediate payment — globally.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Cohere releases Tiny Aya, a family of 3.35B-parameter open-weight models supporting 70+ languages for offline use, trained on a single cluster of 64 H100 GPUs — Enterprise AI company Cohere launched a new family of multilingual models on the sidelines of the ongoing India AI Summit.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Airbnb says its custom-built AI agent now handles ~33% of its customer support issues in North America, and it is preparing to roll out the feature globally — Airbnb says its custom-built AI agent is now handling roughly a third of its customer support issues in North America, and it's preparing to roll out the feature globally.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: India approves a $1.1B state-backed VC fund to finance high-risk areas like AI and advanced manufacturing, doubling down on an effort that debuted in 2016 — India has cleared a $1.1 billion state-backed venture capital program that will channel government money into startups through private investors …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: India partners with Alibaba.com to help Indian startups and small businesses reach overseas buyers, highlighting its selective engagement with Chinese platforms — India's government has partnered with China's Alibaba.com on an export-focused program aimed at helping startups and small businesses reach overseas buyers.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch: Blockchain-based lending company Figure confirms a data breach; ShinyHunters hacking group published 2.5GB of data, saying Figure refused to pay a ransom — Figure Technology, a blockchain-based lending company, confirmed it experienced a data breach. — On Friday, Figure spokesperson …
Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch: A look at the 2026 Super Bowl ads from Anthropic, Amazon, OpenAI, and others, as AI continued to take center stage in ad creation and AI product promotion — Following last year's trend of showcasing AI in multimillion-dollar ad spots, the 2026 Super Bowl advertisements took it a step further …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: India's updated startup framework doubles deep-tech startup eligibility to 20 years and triples the revenue cap for tax, grant, and regulatory benefits to ~$33M — Deep tech startups in sectors such as space, semiconductors, and biotech take far longer to mature than conventional ventures.
Marina Temkin / TechCrunch: Source: Benchmark raised $225M in special funds to invest in Cerebras' ~$1B Series H, led by Tiger Global; Benchmark led Cerebras' $27M Series A in 2016 — This week, AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems announced that it raised $1 billion in fresh capital at a valuation of $23 billion …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Spotify rolls out About the Song, swipeable stories in English, summarized from third-party sources to highlight song details, in beta for Premium users — Spotify is rolling out a new “About the Song” feature that lets users explore the stories behind the music they're listening to, the company announced on Friday.
Marina Temkin / TechCrunch: Sapiom, which is developing a financial layer for enterprises to let AI agents automatically buy the services they need, raised a $15M seed led by Accel — People without coding backgrounds are discovering that they can build their own custom apps using so-called vibe coding …
Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch: Sources: Reno-based chip startup Positron raised a $230M Series B from the QIA and others to build high-speed memory chips, taking its total raised to $300M+ — Semiconductor startup Positron has secured $230 million in Series B funding, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
Marina Temkin / TechCrunch: Insurance tech company Ethos raised ~$200M in its Jan. 29 IPO, selling 10.5M shares at $19 each; it reached a $1.1B market cap, below its 2021 $2.7B valuation — Ethos Technologies, a San Francisco-based provider of software for selling life insurance, debuted on the Nasdaq on Thursday.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Google's experience in India has become a proving ground to scale AI in education, as the country accounts for the highest global usage of Gemini for learning — As AI races into classrooms worldwide, Google is finding that the toughest lessons on how the tech can actually scale are emerging …
Connie Loizos / TechCrunch: Airtable unveils Superagent, a service that can deploy AI agents in parallel for tasks like market analysis, its first standalone product in its 13-year history — It might sound crazy to some, launching an entirely new product line while your flagship business has shed two-thirds of its paper value.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Counterpoint: India smartphone shipments were flat YoY at ~153M; Apple shipped 14M iPhones, raising its share of shipments to a record 9%, up from 7% in 2024 — Apple's iPhone is gaining ground fast in India, shipping about 14 million units in 2025, based on market data shared exclusively with TechCrunch.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Google Photos' latest generative AI-powered feature, “Me Meme”, lets users create memes from their own images, launching first in the US — Google Photos will now let you make memes with your own images. On Thursday, Google introduced a new generative AI-powered feature called …