Artemis II is NASA’s last lunar mission without Silicon Valley
SpaceX launched its IPO on the same day the United States sent astronauts to the moon for the first time in 54 years. And the timing is right. This is likely the last time NASA will attempt to send people into deep space without significant help from companies emerging from the venture-backed technology scene. NASA’s […]
Microsoft takes on AI rivals with three new basic models
Microsoft AI, the tech giant’s research lab, on Thursday announced the release of three basic AI models that can generate text, audio, and images. The release marks Microsoft’s continued push to build its own stack of multimodal AI models and compete with rival AI labs, even as it maintains ties with OpenAI. According to a […]
United Airlines mobile app now displays TSA wait times for select airports
United Airlines has updated its iOS and Android mobile apps with several new features, including estimated security wait times to help travelers better understand when they should arrive at the airport. The move comes as TSA checkpoints are understaffed due to the ongoing partial government shutdown. In the Travel section of United’s mobile app, travelers […]
Tesla’s low-priced cars aren’t contributing to sales decline
Tesla spent more than a year touting its “more affordable” cars, which finally arrived last October, with stripped-down versions of the Model Y and Model 3 starting at $39,990 and $36,990, respectively. But first-quarter numbers show that new cars don’t have a big impact on Tesla’s overall sales. Tesla on Thursday said it delivered 358,023 […]
Commonwealth Fusion Systems relies on magnets for short-term revenue
Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced Thursday that it will sell its high-temperature superconducting magnets to Realta Fusion. This is the second in a series of deals, suggesting the company will rely heavily on its magnet technology to deliver much-needed revenue in the coming years. “This is the largest transaction of its kind for CFS to date,” […]
Beehiiv expands into podcasting with Patreon in mind
Newsletter platform Beehiiv is introducing native podcast hosting, the company tells TechCrunch. This move allows creators to host, distribute, and monetize their podcasts directly on Beehiiv. Users will be able to publish episodes, share them with subscribers, and track analytics all on the platform. “Podcasting was an obvious move,” Beehiiv co-founder and CEO Tyler Denk […]
De-Fi Platform Drift, Millions of Dollars in Cryptocurrency Stolen in Hack, Deposits and Withdrawals Suspended
Decentralized finance company Drift has announced that it has suspended withdrawals and deposits due to a security incident. In a post on X, the cryptocurrency platform said it was “under active attack” and was working to “contain the incident.” Security researchers and public blockchain data suggest the losses could be significant. Blockchain security firm CertiK […]
Anthropic deleted thousands of GitHub repositories in an attempt to yank leaked source code – the company says the action was an accident
Anthropic accidentally deleted thousands of code repositories on GitHub while attempting to retrieve a copy of the source code for its most popular product from the internet. On Tuesday, software engineers discovered that Anthropic had accidentally included access to the source code of its category-leading Claude Code command-line application in a recent release. AI enthusiasts […]
The reputation of troubled YC startup Delve worsens
The controversy surrounding compliance startup Delve took a turn for the worse this week. Among the new claims by an anonymous whistleblower known as DeepDelver is that Delve allegedly took open source tools and passed them off as proprietary works without proper license attribution or financial agreements with the original developers. The story is about […]
New dating app Sonder has an intentionally cumbersome registration process (and it works)
Sonder’s founders couldn’t bear to come across yet another profile on a dating app where someone boldly declared that their most controversial opinion was that they liked pineapple on pizza. “We didn’t know through user calls or interviews or anything that people were unhappy,” co-founder Mehedi Hassan told TechCrunch. “We learned that through our own […]