The Trump administration might take an equity stake in OpenAI
President Donald Trump said on Friday that he’s spoken to AI companies about striking deals “where the American people can benefit from the success of AI.”
TechCrunch – Ai
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TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 tickets now on sale: Lowest rates all year
We’re kicking things off earlier than ever this year! TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 tickets are officially on sale. Lock in the lowest rates of the year with the Super Early Bird pricing — available through February 27 — and be among the first 500 registrants to score a plus-one pass at 50% off. Once either ...
Nvidia chases $200B CPU market with AI agent PCs from Microsoft, Dell, and HP
Battery recycler Ascend Elements files for bankruptcy
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I put Google’s 24/7 AI assistant Gemini Spark to work, and it’s actually pretty useful
Gemini Spark is Google’s new 24/7 agentic assistant, designed to help you help you “navigate your digital life,” which essentially means getting your online to-dos done, summarizing the things you don’t have time to read (like the entirety of your inbox), or organizing something that would have otherwise ...
Beyond Instagram: Introducing the next generation of social apps
For years, our social media experiences have been dominated by Big Tech players like Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), Google (YouTube), Snapchat, TikTok, and X. But a growing number of startups are taking aim at these giants by building new, often smaller and more personal social networking experiences ...
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Founders share VC horror stories, and some are naming names
The saga of the International Space Station air leak took a worrying turn Friday
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Mira Murati steps back into the spotlight, carefully
Mira Murati isn’t a natural creature of the conference stage. As the CTO of OpenAI, she was present but rarely the public face of the company. As CEO of her own company, Thinking Machines Lab, she has been even harder to find. So when she sat down with Bloomberg in San Francisco on Thursday — her first ...
Beyond Instagram: Introducing the next generation of social apps
For years, our social media experiences have been dominated by Big Tech players like Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), Google (YouTube), Snapchat, TikTok, and X. But a growing number of startups are taking aim at these giants by building new, often smaller and more personal social networking experiences to connect people with friends, interests, and tighter-knit communities.
TechCrunch – Social
Founders share VC horror stories, and some are naming names
Asking venture capitalists for investment is a rite of passage for tech founders. This has led to another universal experience: the VC pitching horror story. A massive conversation sharing such stories has taken place all week on X, with the comments both funny and infuriating. We read through them all to find the most interesting ones so you don’t have to.
TechCrunch – Venture
The saga of the International Space Station air leak took a worrying turn Friday
Five of the seven crew members on the International Space Station briefly sought refuge inside a SpaceX return capsule Friday morning as two Russian cosmonauts worked on an air leak on the other end of the complex.
arsTechnica – Space
The token bill comes due: Inside the industry scramble to manage AI’s runaway costs
Across the industry, companies are starting to balk at the price of AI. Uber blew through its entire 2026 AI coding budget by April. Microsoft revoked its developers’ Claude Code licenses months after enabling them. A Priceline employee told TechCrunch that a routine Cursor contract renewal came back 4-5x more expensive.
TechCrunch – Ai
Rocket Report: Blue Origin explosion still making headlines; Impulse raises money
Welcome to Edition 8.44 of the Rocket Report! The news this week is decidedly weighted in favor of heavy-lift rockets, largely due to the fallout from last Thursday’s explosion of Blue Origin’s New Glenn on its launch pad in Florida. Blue Origin aims to resume launches at the badly damaged launch facility by the end of the year, but there’s good reason to be skeptical of this timeline. With New Glenn grounded, will Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos approach Elon Musk’s SpaceX to launch his Blue Moon lander to the lunar south pole? It sure sounds like NASA is pushing for that.
arsTechnica – Space
Mira Murati steps back into the spotlight, carefully
Mira Murati isn’t a natural creature of the conference stage. As the CTO of OpenAI, she was present but rarely the public face of the company. As CEO of her own company, Thinking Machines Lab, she has been even harder to find. So when she sat down with Bloomberg in San Francisco on Thursday — her first major media appearance in roughly 18 months — it was worth paying attention, even if she was careful not to say too much.
TechCrunch – Ai
Ahead of its IPO, Anthropic’s Daniela Amodei shrugs off doubts about AI’s returns
Private investors have been falling over themselves to get a piece of Anthropic, given the AI model maker is growing at a dizzying pace. Multiple investors told TechCrunch that the company’s $65 billion fundraise at a $965 billion valuation, announced last week, was greatly oversubscribed. Now, with that private demand still strong, Anthropic has revealed that it’s taking steps toward a public listing by filing confidentially for an IPO.
TechCrunch – Ai
Apple approves Poke as the first AI agent on its Messages for Business platform
Poke, a startup that turns using AI agents into something as simple as sending a text message, has become the first AI agent approved to run on Apple’s Messages for Business platform. Previously, the platform was designed for businesses — airlines, retailers, hotel chains, and others — to communicate with their own customers through iMessage, offering a standardized interface that supports both automated chat and live agents. Until now, it hadn’t been open to standalone third-party AI agents.
TechCrunch – Ai
Ramp raises $750M at $44B valuation as investors hunger for fintechs with an AI story
Corporate expense management platform Ramp on Thursday said it has raised $750 million at a valuation of $44 billion, nearly tripling its valuation within just a year as investors scramble to grab a part of the fast-growing startup.
TechCrunch – Fintech