Author: GT

India has kicked off a pilot to let consumers shop and pay directly through AI chatbots, with OpenAI’s ChatGPT leading the rollout and integrations with Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude in development, as the South Asian nation becomes the next major market for global AI companies. On Thursday, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the federal body behind the country’s widely used Unified Payments Interface (UPI), partnered with OpenAI and fintech firm Razorpay to enable consumers to shop and pay directly through ChatGPT. Razorpay confirmed to TechCrunch that the pilot is being rolled out nationwide and will become widely…

The explosion of AI companies has pushed demand for computing power to new extremes, and companies like CoreWeave, Together AI and Lambda Labs have capitalized on that demand, attracting immense amounts of attention and capital for their ability to offer distributed compute capacity. But most companies still store data with the big three cloud providers, AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, whose storage systems were built to keep data close to their own compute resources, not spread across multiple clouds or regions. “Modern AI workloads and AI infrastructure are choosing distributed computing instead of big cloud,” Ovais Tariq, co-founder and CEO of Tigris Data,…

Getting design and engineering teams on the same page about what digital product to create and how to build it continues to be a challenge.  A lot of companies find themselves dealing with scattered information, often depending on shared spreadsheets to keep track of design specs and guidelines. Design teams might use tools like Figma, while engineers manage their source code with systems like Git.  This issue becomes even trickier for large organizations juggling multiple brands and various websites. Miscommunication can pile up quickly, resulting in wasted time and inefficiency. That’s where Knapsack comes in. It’s a collaboration platform specifically…

On the Space Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, top investors Celeste Ford, Chris Morales, and Morgan Beller will explore where capital is flowing in the space economy and what startups need to stand out. Together, they’ll dive into what founders must demonstrate to win funding, and how investment strategies are shifting as the commercialization of space accelerates. As governments and private markets place bigger bets on space, the funding landscape is rapidly evolving. If you’re building or thinking of launching a space tech startup — or if you’re already curious about the future of the space tech ecosystem — you…

Duolingo is saying no, non, nein, and nyet to San Francisco. The language learning app is headquartered in Pittsburgh, which isn’t exactly known as a booming hub of startups and venture capital. But Duolingo said in a post on LinkedIn that it will never open a San Francisco office, in part because it helps them maintain the culture they want. “We built our headquarters here because we believe you don’t have to chase trends or sky-high rent prices to do meaningful work,” Duolingo wrote in a blog post last year. “For us, Pittsburgh isn’t a ‘backup plan’ to the Bay…

After OpenAI’s video-generating app Sora surged to the No. 1 position on the U.S. App Store, it has now, technically, experienced a bigger first week than ChatGPT on iOS, according to new data from app intelligence provider Appfigures. Its estimates show that Sora saw 627,000 iOS downloads in its first seven days of availability, compared with ChatGPT’s 606,000 iOS downloads during its first week. Shortly after the publication of this article, OpenAI’s head of Sora, Bill Peebles, announced that Sora reached a million downloads in under five days. He said that it was faster than ChatGPT, despite Sora being in…

Meta is already putting Reels at the center of the Instagram experience on iPad and on mobile in countries like India and South Korea. Now, to allow more people to consume and understand Reels in different languages, the company is adding support for Hindi and Portuguese to its AI-powered translation feature across Instagram and Facebook, as well. The company launched this feature in August with support for English and Spanish after teasing it at its Meta Connect conference last year. With Hindi and Portuguese support, Meta aims to tap into creators from its biggest markets, like India and Brazil, to…

Developing comprehensive screening for early-stage cancer is the key to saving the most lives. Although multi-cancer early detection (MCED) tests are still being researched and lack FDA approval, several are commercially available for consumers who are willing to pay out of pocket. Individuals can ask their doctor to order the Galleri blood test from Grail, or they can opt for a whole-body MRI from companies like Prenuvo or Ezra, which often costs $2,000 or more. Soon, consumers will have another — and rather unique—way to screen for multiple types of cancer. SpotitEarly, a biotech company that’s part of Startup Battlefield…

New York City filed a new lawsuit accusing online platforms of fueling a mental health crisis among children by addicting them to social media.Jgi/jamie Grill | Tetra Images | Getty ImagesNew York City filed a new lawsuit accusing Facebook, Google, Snapchat, TikTok and other online platforms of fueling a mental health crisis among children by addicting them to social media.Wednesday’s 327-page complaint in Manhattan federal court seeks damages from Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms, Google and YouTube owner Alphabet, Snapchat owner Snap and TikTok owner ByteDance. It accuses the defendants of gross negligence and causing a public nuisance.The city joined other governments, school districts and individuals pursuing approximately 2,050 similar lawsuits, in nationwide litigation…

As AI companies mature, the fight for high-quality data has become one of the most competitive areas in the industry, launching companies like Mercor, Surge, and, most prominently, Alexandr Wang’s Scale AI. But now that Wang has moved on to run AI at Meta, many funders see an opening — and are willing to fund companies with compelling new strategies for collecting training data. The Y Combinator graduate Datacurve is one such company, focusing on high-quality data for software development. On Thursday, the company announced a $15 million Series A round, led by Mark Goldberg at Chemistry with participation from…