Author: GT

If you, like practically anyone else with a cell phone in the U.S. and beyond, have received a scam text message about an unpaid toll or undelivered mail item, there’s a good chance you have been targeted by a prolific scamming operation. The scam isn’t particularly complex, but it has been highly effective. By sending spam text messages that look like genuine notifications for popular services, from postal deliveries to local government programs, unsuspecting victims click a link that loads a phishing page, they enter their credit card details, and that information is swiped and used for fraud. During a…

Hi, thanks as always for reading TechCrunch. We want to talk with you quickly about something important. We’ve discovered that scammers are impersonating TechCrunch reporters and event leads and reaching out to companies, pretending to be our staff when they absolutely are not. These bad actors are using our name and reputation to try to dupe unsuspecting businesses. It drives us crazy and infuriates us on your behalf. Anecdotally, this isn’t just happening to us; fraudsters are exploiting the trust that comes with established news brands to get their foot in the door with companies across the media industry. Here’s…

Meta has acquired AI voice startup WaveForms for an undisclosed sum, The Information reports. It’s the company’s latest buy to strengthen its new AI unit, Superintelligence Labs, and Meta’s second major AI audio acquisition in the last month after it bought PlayAI.  WaveForms, founded just eight months ago, raised $40 million from Andreessen Horowitz in a round that valued the company at $160 million pre-money, per PitchBook data.  Two of the startup’s co-founders — former Meta and OpenAI researcher Alexis Conneau, and former Google advertising strategist Coralie Lemaitre — have reportedly joined Meta. While at OpenAI, Conneau co-created GPT4-o Advanced…

Startups face more exit options — and more uncertainty — than ever before. That’s why we’re bringing this essential conversation to the Going Public Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, happening October 27-29 in 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 are looking for and how to set up your company for long-term success. Two of the best in the business — Roseanne Wincek of Renegade Partners and Jai Das of Sapphire Ventures — will break down the decision-making process, from when to…

OpenAI is making a serious play for the federal government. The company just announced a deal that gives U.S. agencies access to ChatGPT Enterprise for just $1 per year. Yes, really. It’s part of a new “blanket purchase agreement” aimed at getting OpenAI’s tools into federal departments fast and a clear sign the company wants to lock down the public sector before anyone else can. The move is aggressive, strategic, and could shape how generative AI gets deployed across everything from admin work to national security. It also puts serious pressure on rivals like Anthropic, Google, and Amazon to figure…

The mystery buyer of the former General Motors factory owned by Foxconn in Lordstown, Ohio, is apparently SoftBank, according to Bloomberg News. SoftBank wants to use the factory to build AI servers as part of the Stargate data center project being spearheaded by the Japanese conglomerate, OpenAI, and Oracle. The report comes just a few days after Foxconn announced it had sold the factory, along with electric vehicle manufacturing equipment that was inside of it, to a buyer it only referred to as “Crescent Dune LLC” — an entity that was created in Delaware in late July. Neither company immediately…

OpenAI astounded the tech industry for the second time this week by launching its newest flagship model, GPT-5, just days after releasing two new freely available models under an open source license. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman went so far as to call GPT-5 “the best model in the world.” That may be pride or hyperbole, as TechCrunch’s Maxwell Zeff reports that GPT-5 only slightly outperforms other leading AI models from Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and xAI on some key benchmarks, and slightly lags on others. Still, it’s a model that performs well for a wide variety of uses, particularly coding. And,…

Pinterest CEO Bill Ready told investors on the company’s second-quarter earnings call that the social app and inspirational bookmarking site could be considered an “AI-enabled shopping assistant.” However, he thinks that the agentic web, where AI agents shop on users’ behalf, is still far in the future. The remarks were made in response to a question about the agentic web, which could impact the search funnel and businesses like Pinterest, which positions itself at the early stages of the shopping journey — around the time when users are seeking ideas that could later turn into purchases. Investors are likely concerned…

Following Wednesday’s launch of Instagram’s new Snap Map-like opt-in “Instagram Map” feature — which lets U.S. users share their most recent active location with others and discover location-based content — Instagram head Adam Mosseri is having to reassure people that their location is only visible to others if they decide to share it. Although Meta has made it clear that location sharing is off by default, there have been numerous posts on social media urging users to turn off location sharing, incorrectly claiming that it’s automatically turned on. “We’re double checking everything, but so far it looks mostly like people…

As human-spaceflight missions grow longer and travel farther from Earth, keeping crews healthy gets more challenging. Astronauts on the International Space Station can depend on real-time calls to Houston, regular cargo deliveries of medicines, and a quick ride home after six months. All of that may soon change as NASA and its commercial partners, like Elon Musk’s SpaceX, look to conduct longer-duration missions that would take humans to the moon and Mars. That looming reality is pushing NASA to gradually make on-orbit medical care more “Earth-independent.” One early experiment is a proof-of-concept AI medical assistant the agency is building with…