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On Wednesday night at PlayGround Global in Palo Alto, some very smart people who are building things we don’t yet understand will explain what’s coming. This is the last StrictlyVC event of 2025 and the line-up is truly ridiculous. 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 small environment before others…

For more than 4,000 years, Native Americans have been painting rock art depicting their view of the cosmos in what is now southwest Texas and northern Mexico, a new study has found.Innovative dating techniques reveal that this rock art, known as the Pecos River Style tradition, probably first appeared about 6,000 years ago and lasted for about 175 generations, from about 1,400 to 1,000 years ago.The style, found during this period in an area known as the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, was surprisingly consistent in its depiction and the techniques used to create the paintings, and appeared to follow a strict…

Last year was monumental for the AI industry in the U.S. and beyond.  There were 49 startups that raised funding rounds worth $100 million or more in 2024, per our count at TechCrunch; three companies raised more than one “mega-round,” and seven companies raised rounds that were $1 billion in size or larger.  How will 2025 compare? As we enter near the final month of the year, 2025 has already matched 2024 in terms of companies raising rounds that are $100 million and larger. There are also significantly more companies that have raised multiple funding rounds larger than $100 million this year compared to last.   Here…

The U.S. immigration system is complex, difficult to navigate, and costly for immigrants. Startup JustiGuide claims it can help with that thanks to its AI-powered portal. The idea is to help immigrants in the United States, and eventually other countries, understand the law and what visas they can get, connect with immigration lawyers, and make the whole process cheaper and faster. “I think the more accessible we make technology, the more people can fill out forms themselves and understand their options, and the more they can use a lawyer just for the vetting process,” JustiGuide founder Bisi Obateru told TechCrunch.…

In August, parents Matthew and Maria Lane sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman for wrongful death over the suicide of their 16-year-old son, Adam. OpenAI filed its own brief in response to the lawsuit on Tuesday, arguing that it is not responsible for the boy’s death. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT was asked to ask Raine for help more than 100 times during its roughly nine months of use. However, according to the parents’ lawsuit, Lane was able to circumvent the company’s safety features and obtain “technical specifications for everything from drug overdoses to drownings to carbon monoxide poisoning” from…

Redwood Materials, a battery recycler and cathode maker, just raised $350 million in funding and will reportedly cut about 5% of its workforce, according to Bloomberg News. Nevada-based Redwood has about 1,200 employees, so the layoffs will affect dozens of employees. The company was founded in 2017 by former Tesla chief technology officer JB Straubel and initially focused on recycling scrap from battery cell manufacturing, consumer electronics, and used EV batteries. The company extracts materials such as cobalt, nickel and lithium from these wastes and resells them to customers including Panasonic. Redwood later added cathode production. The company recently launched…

French archaeologists have discovered a Roman-era cremation tomb richly decorated with silver coins, gold jewelry and perhaps a ring inscribed with the deceased’s last name.The tomb was discovered unexpectedly during excavations in the medieval settlement of Ramonzy-Saint-Martin, a small town in southwestern France. Archaeologists were excavating beneath a medieval silo when they noticed an unusual burial, according to a November 24 translated statement from France’s National Institute for Preventive Archeology (INRAP).Excavation of the burial site revealed that it was a “bastom,” a type of funeral ritual from Roman times. This involved cremating the deceased directly on the grave and then…

General Motors’ software team has lost three top executives in the last month as the automaker takes over a new chief product officer and consolidates its disparate technology businesses into one organization. Baris Cetinok, senior vice president of software and services product management, will be leaving the company, effective December 12, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. CNBC first reported his departure. Dave Richardson, senior vice president of software and services engineering, and Barak Turovsky, who was hired in March as the automaker’s head of AI, also left last month. Cetinok and Richardson joined GM in 2023. All three had deep…

The second wave of the Shai-Hulud supply chain attack spilled over into the Maven ecosystem after compromising over 830 packages in the npm registry. The Socket Research Team said it has identified a Maven Central package named org.mvnpm:posthog-node:4.18.1 that includes the same two components related to Sha1-Hulud: the “setup_bun.js” loader and the main payload “bun_environment.js.” “This means that the PostHog project has compromised releases in both the JavaScript/npm and Java/Maven ecosystems with the same Shai Hulud v2 payload,” the cybersecurity firm said in an update on Tuesday. Note that Maven Central packages are not published by PostHog itself. Rather, the…

The always fun-filled Slush conference took place in Helsinki last week and, as always, was a show of the growing power of the European ecosystem. Scandinavia in particular is having a moment, this time led by Swedish vibe-coding darlings Loveable. Loveable is seen as an example of a growing ecosystem of successes. Although older names, other standout companies include Klarna and Spotify. This week on Equity, we spoke to Dennis Green-Lieber, founder of AI company Propane, about the rapid growth of the Nordic ecosystem. Green-Lieber is based in Denmark and has been building its ecosystem over the past 15 years.…