Author: GT

Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 is almost here, and the pressure has never been greater. With $100,000 on the line, the top 20 early-stage startups know they must deliver their very best on the Disrupt Stage from October 27-29 at San Francisco’s Moscone West. Meanwhile, our VC judges will bring sharp questions, deep experience, and a discerning eye to distinguish the promising from the truly exceptional. Founders can gain invaluable insights into what makes a winning pitch and a sustainable startup from these seasoned VCs. Investors can discover pitch-ready, impactful startups to add to their pipeline. Everyone else can witness the intense startup showdown, where the top 20 TechCrunch-vetted startups pitch for the equity-free prize and…

Google announced on Wednesday that its AI feature that lets users virtually try on clothes is expanding to Australia, Canada, and Japan. The tech giant also announced the feature now lets users virtually try on shoes. The feature works by asking users to upload a photo to see how real clothes might look on them. Now, users can visualize how different pairs of shoes would look on them. To virtually try on a pair of shoes, users need to tap on any product listing on Google, select the “Try It On” button, then add a full-length photo of themselves. After…

A new report from Red Hat finds that 89 percent of businesses are yet to see any customer value from their AI endeavours. However, organisations anticipate a 32 percent increase in AI investment by 2026.The survey finds that AI and security are the joint top IT priorities for UK organisations over the next 18 months, with 62 percent of respondents citing them as necessary. These are followed by hybrid or multi-cloud strategies and virtualisation, showing a clear direction in the technological focus of British businesses.However, the path to AI integration isn’t straightforward. The vast majority of organisations are facing barriers…

Picture taken on September 4, 2023 shows windmills at the Nysted Offshore Wind Farm constructed by Danish windpower giant Orsted in 2002-2003 in the Baltic Sea near Gedser in Denmark.Thomas Traasdahl | Afp | Getty ImagesBeleaguered wind farm operator Orsted announced Thursday that it intends to reduce its workforce by a quarter toward the end of 2027, in a bid to become more competitive and refocus its efforts on Europe.The company has faced headwinds this year as President Donald Trump’s administration clamped down on wind power generation in the United States.Shares were 1% higher in early European trade on Thursday.”Today,…

The Trump administration recently announced a massive change to the H-1B visa program, raising the application fee from $2,000-$5,000 to $100,000 per visa. The change has sent shockwaves through the startup world, with founders warning it could price them out of hiring international talent and undermine U.S. innovation.  Today on TechCrunch’s ⁠Equity⁠ podcast, Dominic-Madori Davis was joined by ⁠Jeremy Neufeld⁠, the director of Immigration Policy at the Institute for Progress, to break down what this H-1B change means for startups, founders, and the future of tech talent in America.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  The massive loophole…

LONDON (AP) — iPhone users have a new tool to combat the scourge of nuisance phone calls: a virtual gatekeeper that can screen incoming calls from unknown numbers. It’s among the bevy of new features that Apple rolled out with last month’s release of iOS 26. The screening feature has been getting attention because of the ever-increasing amount of robocalls and spam calls that leave many phone users feeling harassed. Here’s a run-through of the new function: How to activate call screening First, you’ll need to update your iPhone’s operating system to iOS 26, which is available to the iPhone…

A few weeks ago, President Trump announced the application fee for an H-1B visa would increase to $100,000. The price tag sent shock waves through the tech ecosystem, which heavily utilizes the visa to bring talent in from other countries.  On this week’s Equity, we sat down with Jeremy Neufeld, the director of immigration policy at the Institute for Progress, to talk about the visa changes, what it means, and why it’s happening.  He said the intention of the visa change makes sense, but the implementation of it has “left a lot to be desired.”   “Some of the proposals that…

A new paper from a Samsung AI researcher explains how a small network can beat massive Large Language Models (LLMs) in complex reasoning.In the race for AI supremacy, the industry mantra has often been “bigger is better.” Tech giants have poured billions into creating ever-larger models, but according to Alexia Jolicoeur-Martineau of Samsung SAIL Montréal, a radically different and more efficient path forward is possible with the Tiny Recursive Model (TRM).Using a model with just 7 million parameters, less than 0.01% of the size of leading LLMs, TRM achieves new state-of-the-art results on notoriously difficult benchmarks like the ARC-AGI intelligence…

Despite the well-known environmental benefits of recycling, it’s estimated that less than 10% of the world’s plastic gets recycled. Ganiga Innovation looks to bring that percentage up using AI-enabled robotic waste bins.  Italian startup Ganiga built three products to help better manage waste and recycling. The first is a fleet of robotic waste bins, called Hoooly, that use generative AI to determine what is trash and what is recycling and sort the waste accordingly. The second is a smart lid that can be fitted to existing waste bins with the same functionality as its larger bin counterpart.  The company also…

BVNK co-founders (L to R) Donald Jackson, Jesse Hemson-Struthers and Chris Harmes, at the company’s San Francisco Office.BVNKCiti has invested in stablecoin infrastructure company BVNK, the startup told CNBC on Thursday, as big U.S. banks ramp up their presence in the cryptocurrency and digital asset space.Stablecoins are a type of digital asset pegged to a fiat currency and backed by real-world assets like bonds. The two biggest are USDC and Tether, which issues USDT.BVNK’s core technology is effectively a payments rail to facilitate transactions in stablecoins globally, allowing customers to move money from fiat into the cryptocurrency and back.The company…