Author: GT

SB 53, the AI safety and transparency bill that California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law this week, is proof that state regulation doesn’t have to hinder AI progress.   So says Adam Billen, vice president of public policy at youth-led advocacy group Encode AI, on today’s episode of Equity.  “The reality is that policy makers themselves know that we have to do something, and they know from working on a million other issues that there is a way to pass legislation that genuinely does protect innovation — which I do care about — while making sure that these products are safe,” Billen told TechCrunch.  At its core, SB 53 is a first-in-the-nation bill that requires large AI labs…

Earlier this year, Anker, the Chinese company that makes Eufy security cameras, offered its users money in exchange for videos of package and car thefts.  The popular internet-connected security camera maker said it would pay its customers $2 per video to train its AI systems to help better detect thieves who steal cars and packages.   “To ensure we have enough data, we are looking for videos of both real and staged events, to help train the Al what to be on the lookout for,” the company wrote on its website.   “You can even create events by pretending to be…

Exit planning is no longer optional — it’s an essential conversation on the Going Public Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, happening October 27–29 at San Francisco’s Moscone West. Whether you’re already eyeing a liquidity event or just starting to scale, this is your chance to hear what top VCs and operators are looking for and how to set up your company for long-term success. Three of the best in the business — Roseanne Wincek of Renegade Partners; Jai Das of Sapphire Ventures; and Dan Springer, CEO of Ironclad, former CEO of DocuSign, and long-time Silicon Valley operator — will break…

Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI Inc., during a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025. Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesOpenAI has finalized a secondary share sale totaling $6.6 billion, allowing current and former employees to sell stock at a record $500 billion valuation, according to a person familiar with the transaction.Bloomberg was first to report that the deal had closed.CNBC reported in August that OpenAI was looking to conduct a secondary share sale at a valuation of $500 billion, with investors including Thrive Capital, SoftBank, Dragoneer…

Co-founder and Chief Science Officer at Hugging Face, Thomas Wolf, speaks at the opening ceremony of the Web Summit, in Lisbon, Portugal, November 11, 2024. Pedro Nunes | ReutersCurrent artificial intelligence models from labs like OpenAI are unlikely to lead to major scientific breakthroughs, a tech co-founder said, pouring cold water on some of the hype around the technology and claims by major figures in the field.The comments by Thomas Wolf, co-founder of $4.5 billion AI startup Hugging Face, are in stake contrast to those by major names in AI including OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.When Wolf…

Sheel Mohnot, co-founder and general partner of Better Tomorrow Ventures (BTV), has one simple answer for anyone claiming that investing in fintech has lost some of its attractiveness. “The world of finance is huge. About 20% of global GDP is financial services, and it’s still not digital enough,” he told TechCrunch. Many financial transactions are still handled manually, and Better Tomorrow Ventures — led by Mohnot (a former general partner at 500 Startups) and NerdWallet co-founder Jake Gibson — aims to help change that. “The massive digitization opportunity is still ahead of us,” Mohnot told TechCrunch. The firm’s limited partners…

Several current and former OpenAI researchers are speaking out over the company’s first foray into social media: the Sora app, a TikTok-style feed filled with AI-generated videos and a lot of Sam Altman deepfakes. The researchers, airing their grievances on X, seem torn over how the launch fits into OpenAI’s nonprofit mission to develop advanced AI that benefits humanity. “AI-based feeds are scary,” said OpenAI pretraining researcher John Hallman in a post on X. “I won’t deny that I felt some concern when I first learned we were releasing Sora 2. That said, I think the team did the absolute…

Designing a complex electronic device like a delivery drone involves juggling many choices, such as selecting motors and batteries that minimize cost while maximizing the payload the drone can carry or the distance it can travel.Unraveling that conundrum is no easy task, but what happens if the designers don’t know the exact specifications of each battery and motor? On top of that, the real-world performance of these components will likely be affected by unpredictable factors, like changing weather along the drone’s route.MIT researchers developed a new framework that helps engineers design complex systems in a way that explicitly accounts for…

Einride, the Swedish startup known for its unusual-looking electric and autonomous pods that are designed to carry freight, said Wednesday it has raised $100 million from several new and existing investors, including its largest shareholder, EQT Ventures. The raise included an undisclosed strategic investment from quantum computing company IonQ. Neither Einride, nor its investors, disclosed the company’s post-money valuation. The funding comes as Einride adjusts to a new CEO and tries to scale its three business products: electric big rigs, autonomous pod-like trucks that navigate fixed routes, and planning software designed for shippers. Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli said the funding…

Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted on his account on Wednesday to dispel the myth that the social networking giant is actively “listening” to its users surreptitiously, in order to target them with relevant ads. The idea that Meta would secretly turn on the microphones on users’ phones to record their conversations is an age-old conspiracy theory — and one that the company has disputed before. But, ironically, Mosseri’s new myth-busting claim comes just as Meta has announced it will soon target ads to users across its social apps using data collected from their interactions with its AI products. In other…