Category Technology

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has denied OpenAI’s attempt to trademark “GPT,” ruling that the term is “merely descriptive” and therefore unable to be registered. It’s a blow to OpenAI’s branding, but don’t expect its competitors to start releasing…

There’s been many attempts at open source AI-powered voice assistants (see Rhasspy, Mycroft and Jasper, to name a few) — all established with the goal of creating privacy-preserving, offline experiences that don’t compromise on functionality. But development’s proven to be…

It’s [checks calendar] a week and a half until Mobile World Congress 2024 [mild panic creeps in], and TechCrunch will be returning to Barcelona once again for the big phone show [soothing memories of tapas past]. The event is always…

It’s easy to lose track of the fact that robotics is as much a software problem as a hardware one. The programming understandably gets overshadowed by the alure of mechatronics, but without the proper software solution, you’ve got little more…

Called Regenerative and Circular Operations, this organizational model aims to be a practical approach to integrating sustainability at the core. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Source: techcrunch.com

Meta is in hot water after announcing plans to remove politics from its recommendations across Instagram and Threads, its new Twitter-like app for text-based posts. That leaves a window of opportunity for the startup Bluesky, whose CEO Jay Graber recently…

It may be Valentine’s Day here in the U.S., but the dating app market isn’t looking as promising as it used to. According to a new analysis by app intelligence provider data.ai, global downloads of dating apps saw only tepid…

Software testing is hard. Even with the right talent in place, it doesn’t always go as planned — particularly when executed at scale. In a 2020 survey from Electric Cloud, 58% of developers blamed software bugs on test infrastructure and…

Grocery-delivery giant Instacart announced today that it’s laying off around 250 employees, or roughly 7% of its global workforce, as part of a restructuring. Instacart CEO Fidji Simo said in a letter to investors that the layoffs will allow the…

Airbnb is slowly killing the cleaning fee as it aims for more transparent pricing. Since early last year, when the company started showing guests all-inclusive pricing when booking a property, almost 300,000 listings have removed or lowered cleaning fees, Airbnb…

Waymo is voluntarily recalling the software that powers its robotaxi fleet after two vehicles crashed into the same towed pickup truck in Phoenix, Arizona, in December. It’s the company’s first recall. Waymo chief safety officer Mauricio Peña described the crashes…

In November, Airbnb acquired a stealth AI firm launched by Siri’s co-founder, called GamePlanner.AI. The deal valued the secretive startup at around $200 million, according to reports. Though the hosting company didn’t telegraph its plans for GamePlanner at the time,…

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. We’re just two days away from Intuitive Machines’ first-ever mission to the moon. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Source: techcrunch.com

Bitwise runs the Bitwise Bitcoin ETP, currently the fourth-largest spot bitcoin ETF by market cap. But the road to this point wasn’t easy. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Source: techcrunch.com

On a brutal December day, 17% of Spotify employees found out they had been laid off in the company’s third round of job cuts last year. Not long after, music fans around the world realized that the cult-favorite website Every…

The National Transportation Safety Board, a U.S. government agency that investigates crashes, has ordered the Dawn Project organization to stop using its seal after it appeared in a Super Bowl ad that called for consumers to boycott Tesla. The NTSB…

A consumer-grade spyware operation called TheTruthSpy poses an ongoing security and privacy risk to thousands of people whose Android devices are unknowingly compromised with its mobile surveillance apps, not least due to a simple security flaw that its operators never…

To understand what’s happening with seed rounds in 2024, TechCrunch+ spoke with three seasoned investors who offered advice for founders looking to raise. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Source: techcrunch.com

TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility – your central hub for…

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech (formerly The Interchange)! We’re back after a brief hiatus, and I can tell you that judging by the volume of pitches I received last week, venture investing in the fintech space is definitely picking up. This…