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Amazon Web Services’ annual technology conference, AWS re:Invent, has concluded its first official day of programming and is already delivering an endless stream of product news. Naturally, the theme is enterprise AI, but this year is all about upgrades that give customers more control to customize their AI agents, including one that AWS claims can learn from users and operate independently for days. AWS re:Invent 2025, which runs through December 5, kicked off with a keynote address from AWS CEO Matt Garman. He embraced the idea that AI agents could unlock the “true value” of AI. “AI assistants are starting…
Amazon on Tuesday announced a new product called “AI Factories” that will allow large companies and governments to run AI systems in their data centers. Or, in AWS’s words, the customer supplies the power and data center, and AWS integrates and manages the AI system and connects it to other AWS cloud services. The idea is to respond to businesses and governments concerned about data sovereignty, or having complete control over data so it doesn’t fall into the hands of competitors or foreign adversaries. An on-premises AI factory means no data is sent to the model maker and no hardware…
Vending Spoons, a company that buys and turns struggling tech companies, agreed to buy Eventbrite for about $500 million, a far cry from the $1.76 billion the company was worth when it went public in 2018. Like many of Bending Spoons’ previous acquisitions, including Evernote, Meetup, Vimeo and AOL, Eventbrite has a strong brand, but its business has stalled, according to audited financial reports. The event marketplace and ticketing company was co-founded in 2006 by Julia and Kevin Hertz and Renaud Visage. The former tech darling has raised about $330 million in venture capital from top investors including Sequoia Capital…
Kalshi, a prediction market that allows people to bet on future events, announced Tuesday that it has raised a $1 billion funding round at an $11 billion valuation, confirming a TechCrunch scoop from last month. The round was led by returning investor Paradigm, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Capital G, and other existing backers. The latest funding comes less than two months after Kalsi announced it had raised $300 million at a valuation of $5 billion. The trading platform soared in popularity last year after people used it to predict the outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election,…
As OpenAI goes into “Code Red” citing competitive pressures, Google announced it has begun testing a new feature that will integrate AI Overview and AI Mode in Search. This means that on top of your search results, you’ll typically be provided with an AI-generated snapshot of important information about your topic or question, and you can dig deeper by asking follow-up questions in a conversational interface. Google calls this conversation feature AI mode. Released in May of this year for users in the US and in August of this year for users around the world, it enabled chat interaction with…
Anacondas have been huge for millions of years, a new study has found.The average body size of giant snakes has remained constant since they first appeared in the fossil record some 12.4 million years ago during the Miocene (16 million to 11.6 million years ago), according to a new study published Monday in the journal Vertebrate Paleontology.During the Miocene and Late Miocene (12.4 to 5.3 million years ago), warm temperatures, extensive wetlands, and abundant food allowed many animal species to grow much larger than their modern relatives. However, very few of these giant animals have survived to this day. you…
Tomorrow evening at Playground Global in Palo Alto, some very smart people who are building things you don’t understand yet will explain what’s coming. This is the last StrictlyVC event of 2025 and the line-up is truly ridiculous. Image credit: Aaron V Barrera Photography This series has traveled the world under the auspices of TechCrunch. Steve Case rented a theater in Washington, DC. We spoke with the Greek Prime Minister in Athens. Kirsten Greene hosted us at the Presidio in San Francisco. However, the concept is always the same. That means bringing together people working on really important developments in…
A fallen vase, a crushed sugar cube, and exploding bubbles all have something in common. A new mathematical equation reveals that they break down in a similar way.French scientists recently discovered a mathematical formula that describes the size distribution of the pieces that form when something is crushed. According to a new study published Nov. 26 in the journal Physical Review Letters, this equation applies to a variety of materials, including solids, liquids, and gas bubbles.Although cracks often propagate in objects in unpredictable ways, research has shown that the size distribution of the resulting debris appears to be consistent regardless…
Nuclear power startup Antares announced Tuesday that it has raised $96 million in Series B funding as it advances the design of a small modular nuclear reactor. The round was led by Shine Capital, with participation from Alt Capital, Caffeinated, FiftyThree Stations, Industrious and others, and consists of $71 million in equity and $25 million in debt. Antares said it is targeting commercial, defense and space-based applications with its R1 microreactor, which produces 100 kilowatts to 1 megawatt of power. The design uses TRISO fuel, and in the case of Antares, carbon- and ceramic-coated uranium spheres embedded in graphite. The…
When I was 18, I bought cheap tickets from my college class’s Facebook group to go see Grimes perform at a nearby music festival. That sunny afternoon, in the crowd, a drug-addicted man kept trying to climb a young, fragile tree for a better view. He failed again and again, but it was simply impossible for such a dainty plant to withstand its weight. Yet I watched in fascination and horror as this stranger persisted in a task that required him to defy the very laws of physics. More than a decade later, I found myself in a disturbingly similar…