Category Technology

Fintech Varo has been hoping to raise a $55 million Series G round but has, so far, closed on $29 million to date, according to a recent SEC filing. Varo declined to comment on this new round but the fintech…

Recommendation algorithms operated by social media giants TikTok and X have shown evidence of substantial Far Right political bias in Germany ahead of a federal election that takes place Sunday, according to new research carried out by Global Witness. The…

Swizzle Ventures has closed its Fund I at $6.6 million, bypassing its initial $3 million target, Jessica Kamada, the firm’s founder, told TechCrunch.  Back in December, TechCrunch reported that the firm, which quietly launched in 2023, was raising and has…

Uber has introduced daily fees for auto rickshaw drivers in India to move away from its typical commission-based model. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Source: techcrunch.com

Mark Zuckerberg’s charity has eliminated its DEI programs and efforts just weeks after assuring staff it would continue supporting DEI efforts, The Guardian reports.  The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), co-founded by Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, will end internal…

Google has gained permission to sell its e-books and audiobooks directly to customers through its iOS app, Google Play Books. While iOS apps today can offer access to content previously purchased elsewhere, like e-books bought via a website, developers have…

The layoffs slashed between 13% to 20% of the four Power Marketing Administrations’ workforces. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Source: techcrunch.com

Humane announced on Tuesday that it has been acquired by HP for $116 million. The hardware startup is immediately discontinuing sales of its $499 AI Pins. Humane alerted customers who have already purchased the Pin that their devices will stop…

A senior Elon Musk staffer created a custom AI chatbot that’s supposed to help DOGE “eliminate” government waste. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Source: techcrunch.com

Duolingo’s mascot, Duo the owl, is dead. Okay, Duo isn’t really dead (we think), but the language learning app committed so hard to this bit that its CEO, Luis von Ahn, read a eulogy for this beloved green bird on…

Confused about which AI model to use? Check out this comprehensive list of the most advanced models out there. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Source: techcrunch.com

The New York Times is now allowing its product and editorial teams to use AI tools, which might one day write social copy, SEO headlines, and code, reports Semafor.  The news came to staff via an email, in which the…

We all know headphones can be bad for your hearing if you listen to sounds too loudly in close proximity to your ears. But a BBC report suggests that a new health scare could be emerging around the noise-canceling feature…

Social media is often about scale, but Nextdoor bet long ago on something different: that it could grow a big business off smaller, local communities. For years, the plan worked. The 15-year-old company has long been a dominant platform for…

More than 10,000 protesters gathered in New York City on Presidents’ Day to speak out against the current Trump administration and the actions in particular of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).  It was one of several protests that…

After warnings that Paramount content was about to disappear from Google’s pay TV service YouTube TV, the companies announced late Saturday that they’d reached a deal that averts any disruption to channel availability. Those announcements didn’t include many specifics about…

Broadcom and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) are separately exploring deals to take over parts of Intel, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Broadcom is reportedly considering an acquisition of Intel’s chip-design and marketing business, and would…

Artificial intelligence could eventually help us understand when animals are in pain or showing other emotions — at least according to researchers recently profiled in Science. For example, there’s the Intellipig system being developed by scientists at the University of…

Every Sunday, NPR host Will Shortz, The New York Times’ crossword puzzle guru, gets to quiz thousands of listeners in a long-running segment called the Sunday Puzzle. While written to be solvable without too much foreknowledge, the brainteasers are usually…

OpenAI is changing how it trains AI models to explicitly embrace “intellectual freedom … no matter how challenging or controversial a topic may be,” the company says in a new policy. As a result, ChatGPT will eventually be able to…