Google unveils Whoop-like screenless Fitbit Air
Google on Thursday announced a new Fitbit Air, a screenless wearable similar to Whoop, priced at $100. The device includes 24/7 heart rate monitoring, heart rhythm monitoring with AFib (atrial fibrillation) alerts, and health and fitness tracking features such as blood oxygen level, resting heart rate, heart rate variability, sleep stages and duration. The tech […]
2 days left: Get 50% off your second pass to Disrupt 2026
It’s been 2 days. That’s all you need to secure your spot with your partners, co-founders, and colleagues at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. Currently, when you buy one pass, you get 50% off a second pass of the same type of ticket, but that offer ends on May 8th at 11:59pm PT. Then the price goes […]
China’s Moonshot AI raises $2 billion at $20 billion valuation as demand for open source AI soars
Chinese AI companies may not be raking in as much cash as their Western rivals, but their open-source models still have no shortage of interest from people who don’t mind sacrificing performance in exchange for cheaper inference. And investors are paying attention, too. Moonshot AI, the Beijing-based AI lab behind the popular Kimi series of […]
5 architects of the AI economy explain where the wheels come off
Earlier this week, five people from every layer of the AI supply chain gathered at the Milken Global Conference in Beverly Hills to discuss everything from chip shortages to orbital data centers to the possibility that the entire architecture behind the technology is wrong. On stage at TechCrunch: Christophe Fouquet, CEO of ASML. ASML is […]
A 20-minute pitch wins Indian startup Pronto, backed by Lachy Groom
Rashi Groom, one of Silicon Valley’s hottest private investors, decided to back Indian startup Pronto just 20 minutes after his first meeting with the 24-year-old founder. Through this mutual connection, the meeting, held in February, led Groom to invest $20 million in Pronto as an extension of its Series B round, valuing the startup at […]
Barry Diller trusts Sam Altman. But as AGI approaches, “trust becomes irrelevant,” he says.
Billionaire media mogul Barry Diller doesn’t think OpenAI CEO Sam Altman can be trusted, despite recent reports to the contrary. Diller took to the stage this week at the Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything conference to defend AI executives who have been accused by some former colleagues and board members of being manipulative and […]
Is xAI now neocloud?
On Wednesday, xAI and Anthropic announced a surprise partnership in which Claudemaker will “buy out all the computing power.” [xAI’s] The “Colossus 1 data center” has a capacity of approximately 300MW, which allowed Anthropic to immediately increase usage limits. This is a big deal for xAI, likely worth billions of dollars. More importantly, it immediately […]
Microsoft’s AI datacenter push clashes with clean power goals
Microsoft is considering delaying or scaling back one of its most ambitious clean energy goals, as the rapid buildout of AI data centers puts pressure on its ability to meet the goal. Microsoft hasn’t announced it yet, but Bloomberg reports that the company is internally discussing hourly clean energy matching targets. The company said it […]
Robinhood venture fund’s IPO attracted more than 150,000 individual investors, CEO says
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev is touting the success of the fintech’s new Ventures Fund I, which allows retail investors to invest in private technology companies such as Stripe, Oura, Databricks, and OpenAI through exchange-traded funds listed on the New York Stock Exchange. “More than 150,000 retail investors participated in the IPO, so it’s pretty democratized,” […]
Greg Brockman explains how Elon Musk left OpenAI
In late August 2017, key players at OpenAI (then a small nonprofit institute) met to discuss how to create a for-profit entity to commercialize the technology and raise the funding needed to make AGI a reality. Elon Musk wanted complete control of the company and had just given each of his co-founders a Tesla Model […]