Author: GT

On Tuesday morning at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, our senior producer Maggie Nye rolled up her jacket sleeve to show me her new tattoo: a classic, pixelated cursor arrow. TechCrunch’s Becca Szkutak got a matching cursor, while Theresa Loconsolo got a smiling moon. I guessed that at some point during all the Disrupt hoopla, Maggie and Becca wandered off to some trendy San Francisco tattoo shop to cement their friendship with appropriately tech-themed ink (and maybe Theresa was there too?). That seemed like a more logical explanation than the reality, which is that they got these tattoos at Disrupt — yes,…

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership with Apple for its generative AI offering, Apple Intelligence, the release of GPT-4o with voice capabilities, and the highly-anticipated launch of its text-to-video model Sora. OpenAI also faced its share of internal drama, including the notable exits of high-level execs like co-founder and longtime chief…

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is visiting South Korea for the first time in 15 years to unveil new plans and deepen collaboration with major Korean tech companies — including Hyundai Motor, Samsung, SK, and Naver. During this week’s APEC Summit 2025, Nvidia and the South Korean government announced an expanded partnership to boost the country’s AI infrastructure and physical AI capabilities. The announcement comes just days after the U.S. signed technology deals with Japan and South Korea, aiming to deepen strategic ties and boost collaboration on emerging technologies, including AI, semiconductors, quantum computing, biotech, and 6G. South Korea will secure…

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said AI chatbots aren’t a major traffic driver for the social platform despite companies like OpenAI and Google having seen progress in people using AI for search. During Reddit’s Q3 2025 call, the exec noted that Google search and direct access continue to be its top traffic drivers. “[Chatbots are] not a traffic driver today. I think our relationships with the companies that we work for — or work with directly are healthy, and we both learned a lot over the last couple of years, really the value of Reddit’s data and where our respective products…

Adam, one of the most viral startups in Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 batch, has raised a $4.1 million seed round to power its next steps, TechCrunch learned exclusively. After generating over 10 million social media impressions with the launch of its text-to-3D model app, the AI startup had its pick of investors. “We were getting term sheets over email without any meetings,” said CEO Zach Dive (on the right in the picture above). Adam quickly went with TQ Ventures as its lead investor because they agreed on the future of computer-aided design (CAD). Just as importantly, they also agreed on…

Lidar-maker Luminar is warning shareholders that it will run out of cash in early 2026 and has announced a 25% cut to its workforce to help staunch the bleeding — its second layoff of the year — according to a Friday regulatory filing. It’s not immediately clear how many workers will be affected. Luminar started the year with around 580 employees, but the company did not specify the size of the layoff earlier this year. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company also announced its chief financial officer, Thomas Fennimore, is stepping down on…

Apple CEO Tim Cook signaled to investors the company is still open to acquisitions and partnerships to move things forward on the AI front. The comments were made this week during the company’s Q4 2025 earnings call. The exec also offered a brief update about Apple’s next-generation, AI-powered Siri, saying the service was still on track to launch in 2026. “We’re making good progress on it, and as we’ve shared, we expect to release it next year,” Cook said during his opening remarks. One analyst on the call also asked Cook if Apple was still pursuing a three-pronged approach when…

AI search startup Perplexity has signed a multi-year licensing deal with Getty Images, which gives it permission to display images from Getty across its AI-powered search and discovery tools. The deal marks a notable shift for the company, which has been hit by allegations of content scraping and plagiarism, and signals an effort to establish more formal content partnerships.  Perplexity and Getty have been working together for more than a year, a source familiar with the deal told TechCrunch. Though it was never announced, Getty was part of Perplexity’s Publishers’ Program, a plan to share ad revenue with publishers when…

U.S. telecommunications giant Ribbon has confirmed that government-backed hackers had access to its network for almost a year before getting caught, according to a public filing. The telco giant said in a 10-Q disclosure last week with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that a suspected “nation-state actor had gained access to the company’s IT network” as early as December 2024. Ribbon said it notified law enforcement and that it believes the hackers are no longer in its network. The Texas-headquartered Ribbon provides phone, networking, and internet services for companies, enterprises, and critical infrastructure organizations, such as energy and transportation…

Amazon’s cloud infrastructure service, Amazon Web Services (AWS), is on track to record its strongest year of growth in three years, fueled by the AI industry’s unprecedented demand for computing power. AWS is growing 20% year-over-year and ended the third quarter with $33.1 billion in sales through the first nine months of the year, Amazon announced in its third-quarter earnings release on Thursday. The business segment’s operating income increased to $11.4 billion in Q3, up from $10.4 billion at the same point in 2024. “AWS is growing at a pace we haven’t seen since 2022, re-accelerating to 20.2% YoY,” Andy…