Author: GT

Enterprise security company SonicWall is urging its customers to disable a core feature of its most recent line-up of firewall devices after security researchers reported an uptick in ransomware incidents targeting SonicWall customers.  In a statement this week, SonicWall said it had observed a “notable increase” of security incidents targeting its Generation 7 firewalls where customers have its VPN enabled. The company said it is “actively investigating these incidents to determine whether they are connected to a previously disclosed vulnerability or if a new vulnerability may be responsible.” The company’s alert comes as security researchers say they have identified hackers…

Spotify is expanding access to its audiobooks to more U.S. subscribers. The company on Tuesday announced the launch of its $11.99 per month Audiobooks+ plan in the market, which allows subscribers or their household members on a Family or Duo plan to add 15 hours of audiobook listening during the month on top of the base plan. Though Spotify launched its audiobooks service in the U.S. back in 2022, household members on Duo and Family plans have long been left out. The offering makes audiobooks available to household members for the first time in the U.S. market. Through Spotify Premium,…

TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 marks 20 years of driving the startup world forward — and you’ve got just two days left to join the movement and save up to $675 on your ticket. From October 27-29, Moscone West becomes the home base for over 10,000 movers and makers in the tech world. Join us in San Francisco as we celebrate two decades of startup breakthroughs, VC connections, and industry-shifting ideas. The deadline to lock in savings is August 6 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Don’t wait — register now to save big. Why go to Disrupt 2025? Disrupt is more than a…

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI attends the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference at the Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, U.S., on July 8, 2025. David A. Grogan | CNBCOpenAI is in talks with investors about a potential stock sale at a valuation of roughly $500 billion, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.The talks are in early stages and would involve a secondary sale with shares sold by current and former employees, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are confidential. Thrive Capital, an investor in…

Google DeepMind has revealed Genie 3, its latest foundation world model that can be used to train general-purpose AI agents, a capability that the AI lab says makes for a crucial stepping stone on the path to “artificial general intelligence,” or human-like intelligence.  “Genie 3 is the first real-time interactive general-purpose world model,” Shlomi Fruchter, a research director at DeepMind, said during a press briefing. “It goes beyond narrow world models that existed before. It’s not specific to any particular environment. It can generate both photo-realistic and imaginary worlds, and everything in between.” Still in research preview and not publicly…

Roku is launching an ad-free subscription streaming service called Howdy. The service costs $2.99 per month and features a library of nearly 10,000 hours of content from its partners, including Lionsgate, Warner Bros. Discovery, and FilmRise, alongside select Roku Original titles. The company says subscribers will be able to watch titles like “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “The Blind Side,” “Weeds,” and “Kids in the Hall,” as well as rom-coms, medical dramas, ’90s comedies, and the like. “Howdy is ad-free and designed to complement, not compete with, premium services,” said Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood in a press release. The…

Finding product-market fit isn’t a milestone — it’s a messy, make-or-break journey. And at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, a founder who’s been through the fire and two investors who’ve helped startups hit escape velocity will break down how to do it right. On the Builders Stage, Rajat Bhageria (Founder & CEO, Chef Robotics), Ann Bordetsky (Partner, NEA), and Murali Joshi (Partner, ICONIQ) join forces to unpack the most critical — and elusive — phase in a startup’s life cycle. They’ll dive into smart testing strategies, real-time iteration, and how to listen to your users without getting lost in the noise. Don’t…

A cybercriminal tricked a Cisco representative into granting them access to steal the personal information of Cisco.com users, the company said on Tuesday. Cisco said it discovered the breach on July 24, blaming the incident on a voice phishing or “vishing” call. The hackers accessed and exported “a subset of basic profile information” from the database of a third party cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) system, according to the company’s disclosure.  Cisco said that the stolen data included the customer’s “name, organization name, address, Cisco assigned user ID, email address, phone number, and account-related metadata,” such as the account creation…

The semiconductor industry’s rollercoaster year continues with another major development. President Donald Trump said on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Tuesday that his administration is planning to announce tariffs on semiconductors and chips as soon as next week. However, the specifics of these tariffs remain unclear. Such tariffs could cause quite a disruption for U.S. hardware and AI companies. When the U.S. CHIPs and Science Act was signed in 2022 — providing $52 billion in subsidies to boost domestic chip manufacturing — the U.S. produced only about 10% of global chips. Despite this small manufacturing footprint, more than half of global…

The AI audio-generation unicorn ElevenLabs announced a new model on Tuesday that allows users to generate music, which it claims is cleared for commercial use. This move marks ElevenLabs’ expansion beyond its main focus thus far in its three years of existence, which has been building AI audio tools. ElevenLabs is a leader among companies making text-to-speech AI products, and it has expanded into conversational bots and tools that translate speech into other languages. Alongside the launch, Eleven Labs shared samples of its AI-generated music. One features a synthetic voice rapping about how it “came up through the cracks with…