Author: GT

Funding season is about to restart in Europe after the summer lull, and if all goes well, it will be counting new unicorns in dozens — plural. While mega-rounds are less common than they were in 2021, this hasn’t prevented 12 European startups from raising rounds at valuations of more than $1 billion during the first half of 2025. As the usual caveat goes, past performance is not indicative of future results, but this bodes well for the rest of the year. Either way, this is also a good indication of the sectors that are hot among investors, from biotech…

Nearly a year ago, GM began selling an adapter to allow existing electric vehicles to use the North American Charging Standard plugs at Tesla Supercharger stalls. EV owners rejoiced in their newfound freedom.  Now, GM is announcing three more adapters. The additional adapters, which help GM customers access EV chargers with different charging rates and standards, is a win for flexibility, but at the cost of simplicity. It’s entirely possible that two-EV households could own four different adapters. Several years ago, the majority of EV models in the U.S. used the Combined Charging System (CCS) standard. That is, with the exception…

A banner for Snowflake Inc. is displayed at the New York Stock Exchange to celebrate the company’s initial public offering on Sept. 16, 2020.Brendan McDermid | ReutersMongoDB’s stock just closed out its best week on record, leading a rally in enterprise technology companies that are seeing tailwinds from the artificial intelligence boom.In addition to MongoDB’s 44% rally, Pure Storage soared 33%, its second-sharpest gain ever, while Snowflake jumped 21%. Autodesk rose 8.4%.Since generative AI started taking off in late 2022 following the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the big winners have been Nvidia, for its graphics processing units, as well as…

Credit reporting giant TransUnion has disclosed a data breach affecting more than 4.4 million customers’ personal information. In a filing with Maine’s attorney general’s office on Thursday, TransUnion attributed the July 28 breach to unauthorized access of a third-party application storing customers’ personal data for its U.S. consumer support operations. TransUnion claimed “no credit information was accessed,” but provided no immediate evidence for its claim. The data breach notice did not specify what specific types of personal data were stolen. In a separate data breach disclosure filed later on Thursday with Texas’ attorney general’s office, TransUnion confirmed that the stolen…

Amid all the “is this a bubble?” talk about artificial intelligence, the supply chain and logistics industries have become breeding grounds for seemingly genuine uses of the technology. Flexport, Uber Freight, and dozens of startups are developing different applications and winning blue-chip customers. But while AI helps Fortune 500s pad their bottom line (and justify the next layoff to Wall Street), the right use of the tech is proving useful to smaller businesses. Netstock, an inventory management software company founded in 2009, is working on just that. It recently rolled out a generative AI-powered tool called the “Opportunity Engine” that…

Oregon could become the second U.S. state to require electric vehicle owners to enroll in a pay-per-mile program as lawmakers began a special session Friday to fill a $300 million transportation budget hole that threatens basic services like snowplowing and road repairs.Legislators failed earlier this year to approve a transportation funding package. Hundreds of state workers’ jobs are in limbo, and the proposal for a road usage charge for EV drivers was left on the table.Hawaii in 2023 was the first state to create a mandatory road usage charge program to make up for projected decreases in fuel tax revenue…

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg departs after attending a Federal Trade Commission trial that could force the company to unwind its acquisitions of messaging platform WhatsApp and image-sharing app Instagram, at U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 15, 2025.Nathan Howard | ReutersMeta on Friday said it is making temporary changes to its artificial intelligence chatbot policies related to teenagers as lawmakers voice concerns about safety and inappropriate conversations.The social media giant is now training its AI chatbots so that they do not generate responses to teenagers about subjects like self-harm, suicide, disordered eating and avoid potentially inappropriate romantic…

What happens when your first 10 hires aren’t people at all? At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, happening October 27–29 at San Francisco’s Moscone West, we’re digging into the new wave of startups replacing or augmenting early employees with AI agents. Think outbound sales, billing, and customer support — automated from day one. This panel, hosted on the Builders Stage, features a mix of technical founders and seasoned operators who are actually doing it, debating where the line between human and machine should be drawn — and how far is too far. Meet the speakers Caleb Peffer, founder and CEO of Firecrawl,…

Investors are clamoring to get onto Swedish vibe-coding startup Lovable’s cap table, making unsolicited offers of investment that value the company at more than $4 billion, reports Financial Times.  Lovable CEO Anton Osika isn’t currently engaging with the flurry of inbound interest, the Times says, which comes a few weeks after the startup announced a $200 million round at a $1.8 billion valuation in a deal led by Accel. A Lovable spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company isn’t fundraising now. Lovable has grown quickly over its short lifespan. In July, the startup said its annual recurring revenue had surpassed $100…

There is a spec war going on among companies to claim the crown of thinnest foldable. Phone manufacturers are playing with fractions of millimeters to boast about their phone’s thickness.
Honor is winning this race on a theoretical basis with its 8.8 mm (when folded) thick Magic V5 foldable. I’m saying theoretical because there is a huge, camera-bump-sized caveat to this. Image Credits:Ivan Mehta The device’s thin frame looks and feels great as long as you hold it with your fingers wrapped around the bottom half of the phone. If your fingers brush against the massive bump, you might feel uncomfortable holding the phone. This adjustment took me a few…