Author: GT

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Amid rising electric bills, states are under pressure to insulate regular household and business ratepayers from the costs of feeding Big Tech’s energy-hungry data centers.It’s not clear that any state has a solution and the actual effect of data centers on electricity bills is difficult to pin down. Some critics question whether states have the spine to take a hard line against tech behemoths like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta.But more than a dozen states have begun taking steps as data centers drive a rapid build-out of power plants and transmission lines.That has meant pressuring the…

TechCrunch Disrupt isn’t just a tech conference — it’s a launchpad. For 20 years, startups have come to TechCrunch Disrupt to meet their first investors, land their biggest partnerships, and spark the idea that takes them to the next level. In 2025, that launchpad could be your exhibit table. With tables selling fast, now is your moment to get in front of 10,000+ founders, VCs, and tech innovators from October 27-29 in San Francisco’s Moscone West. If you wait, your competitor will grab the spotlight — and the deals. Image Credits:Slava Blazer Photography What you lose if you don’t exhibit…

AI-generated “brain rot” videos are popping up all over the internet and getting a lot of attention. Currently gaining traction among younger users, these clips feature wild characters, like a shark wearing sneakers and a ballerina with a cappuccino for a head. One startup driving this trend is OpenArt, founded by two former Google employees in 2022. It touts around 3 million monthly active users. The company recently launched a new “one-click story” feature in open beta, which allows users to input a single sentence, a script, or even a song and turn it into a one-minute video with a…

Sometimes it’s nice to have a simple app that does one thing well without a lot of fuss. Microsoft Lens was that type of app: a mobile document scanner that turned paper documents, business cards, receipts, and anything else into easily readable digital files. Now that app is being discontinued, Microsoft says, as it directs its users to its Copilot AI chat app instead. According to a new support document, Lens will be retired from iOS and Android devices starting on September 15, 2025, then removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play on November 15, 2025. Existing users…

During a Reddit ask-me-anything session on Friday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and key members of the GPT-5 team were peppered with questions about the new model and requests to bring back its previous model, GPT-4o. They also asked Altman about the most embarrassing — and perhaps funniest — snafu in the presentation, the “chart crime.” One of the new features that GPT-5 rolled out is a real-time router that decides which model to use for a particular prompt, either responding quickly or taking additional time to “think” through answers. But multiple people in the AMA on the r/ChatGPT Reddit complained…

Financial services provider Brex on Thursday announced that it achieved a major milestone: It is now licensed in the European Union. That means it can now directly issue credit and debit cards and offer its spend management products to any business in all 30 EU countries with “no workarounds required,” as co-founder and CEO Pedro Franceschi wrote in a blog post. While the corporate spend management startup previously supported 60 currencies in 200 countries, it could only sell its products to companies with a U.S. presence. With the expansion, Brex is now authorized to sell spend management (complete with issuing…

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…

Gold futures climbed to a record high on Friday after a report that the United States had imposed tariffs on imports of 1-kg gold bars, while spot gold stayed on track for a second straight weekly gain on tariff turmoil and U.S. interest rate-cut hopes.Srinophan69 | Moment | Getty ImagesGold prices fell from a record high Friday after the White House said it will clarify “misinformation” about the precious metal facing tariffs.”The White House intends to issue an executive order in the near future clarifying misinformation about the tariffing of gold bars and other specialty products,” a White House official…

In February, AI coding startup Windsurf was in talks to raise a big new round at a $2.85 billion valuation led by Kleiner Perkins, at double the valuation it hit six months earlier, sources told TechCrunch at the time. That deal didn’t happen, according to a source familiar with the matter. Instead, news broke in April that the startup planned to sell itself to OpenAI for roughly the same valuation: $3 billion.  While that deal famously fell apart, one bigger question remains: If the startup was growing that fast and attracting VC interest, why would it sell at all?  Insiders tell…

Rocket Lab is signaling to investors, yet again, that it’s more than “just” a rocket company. Rocket Lab’s second-quarter results, which were posted Thursday, show revenues continue to be driven by its space systems business rather than launch. The results also highlighted the company’s acquisition strategy and how its purchase of a new optical payloads company will make it more competitive for lucrative government contracts. The company’s space systems brought in $97.9 million of the $144.5 million in total revenues for the second quarter. Rocket Labs’ total revenue, its highest quarterly revenue in the company’s history, jumped 36% from a…