Sierra raises $950M as competition to own enterprise AI intensifies
Brett Taylor’s AI startup Sierra has raised $950 million in a funding round led by Tiger Global and GV, the company announced Monday, giving it a post-money valuation of more than $15 billion. The funding brings Sierra more than $1 billion in funding, which the company says it will use to become the “world standard” […]
Anthropic and OpenAI both launch enterprise AI services joint venture
On Monday, Anthropic announced a joint venture focused on deploying enterprise AI services. Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Goldman Sachs will be founding partners in the new venture, which will be backed by a group of VCs, hedge funds and private equity firms including Apollo Global Management, General Atlantic, GIC, Leonard Green and Sequoia Capital. […]
US healthcare market shares citizenship and race data with ad tech giants
Nearly all of America’s 20 state-run health insurance marketplaces shared their residents’ application information with advertising and technology giants like Google, LinkedIn, Meta and Snap, according to a new Bloomberg study. The report highlights privacy concerns posed by pixel-sized trackers that allow website owners to collect information about visitors for web analytics and bug identification. […]
5 days left until your second Disrupt 2026 pass is 50% off
This one. BOGO offer is valid. For a limited time only, buy one pass to TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 and get 50% off a second pass of the same type of ticket. This is a short period of time to bring someone in and you get more out of being there. Bring your colleagues. Co-founder. Partner. […]
Barocal can cool food and drinks by squeezing blocks of plastic crystals
Today’s refrigerators operate on the same basic technology as they did over 100 years ago. You’d think by now I could have come up with something better. And we did, but nothing has been able to dethrone the cheap and reliable vapor compression, the process that keeps milk cold today. One startup wants to change […]
Ouster’s new color LiDAR replaces cameras
For the past decade, the tech industry has been considering whether self-driving cars need LIDAR sensors, cameras, or all of the above. LiDAR company Ouster says it has found a new answer: putting both in the same sensor. On Monday, the San Francisco-based company announced a new lineup of lidar sensors it calls “Rev8.” All […]
Nicolas Sauvage is betting on the boring part of AI
Nicolas Sauvage believes it takes four years for the best bet to be considered wise. I’m thinking about when I said this on stage last week at StrictlyVC’s San Francisco event, co-hosted by TDK Ventures. It’s a theory he’s been trying to prove since 2019, when he founded the Japanese electronics giant’s corporate venture arm, […]
‘This is fine’ creator says AI startup stole art
You’ve seen this cartoon before, right? An anthropomorphic dog sits smiling, surrounded by flames, and says, “That’s it.” The cartoon has become one of the most enduring memes of the past decade, and AI startup Artisan has apparently incorporated it into its advertising campaign. The cartoon’s creator, KC Green, claimed that his art was stolen […]
In Harvard University study, AI provided more accurate emergency room diagnoses than two human doctors
New research investigates how large-scale language models perform in a variety of medical situations, including real-life emergency room cases. There, at least one model appears to be more accurate than human doctors. The study, published this week in the journal Science, is the work of a research team led by doctors and computer scientists from […]
This tiny magnetic e-reader could stop you from doomscrolling
It was love at first sight. It felt like walking around a shopping mall, going in and out of a vast department store, looking for a certain elusive item, and finally finding what you were looking for. However, I didn’t even know I was looking for something like the Xteink X3. Because I never had […]