Author: GT

Spotify announced on Friday that it plans to invest €1 million — or approximately $1.1 million — to boost audiobook production in languages other than English, beginning with French and Dutch. The investment indicates that Spotify is eager for more non-English titles in its limited library as it tries to compete with major players like Audible in the $8.7 billion global audiobooks market. Adoption has been particularly slow in France and the Netherlands, which is why Spotify is starting with these languages. According to the company, less than 3% of French-language books are currently available in audio format, with only…

The proliferation of mainstream artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the last couple of years has stirred the crypto and blockchain industry to explore decentralized alternatives to Big Tech products. The synergy between AI and blockchain is built on addressing the risk of centralized ownership and access to data that powers AI. The theory goes that decentralization can mitigate against the entire AI economy being powered by the data owned by a few tech behemoths like Alphabet (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), Alibaba (9988) and Tencent (0700). It is unclear as yet whether or not this will prove to be a…

Back in 2010, when Matt Rogers founded Nest with Tony Fadell, home heating and cooling wasn’t exactly an area you’d think two ex-Apple engineers would be obsessing about.  That fixation defined a new category of product, the smart thermostat, which is now serving as a beachhead for other companies’ smart home ambitions, even as Google lets Nest whither on the vine, killing products that were once core to the company. “Nest is not necessarily doing everything that I set them out to do years ago,” Rogers told TechCrunch. “It’s one of the things when you sell a company.” But Rogers…

Luxor Technology wants to make bitcoin mining easier. That’s why the firm has rolled out a panoply of products (mining pools, hashrate derivatives, data analytics, ASIC brokerage) to help bitcoin miners, large and small, develop their operations. Aaron Forster, the company’s director of business development, joined in October 2021, and has seen the team grow from roughly 15 to 85 people in the span of three and a half years. Forster worked a decade in the Canadian energy sector before coming to bitcoin mining, which is one of the reasons why he’ll be speaking about the future of mining in…

The business of moving goods in the United States is dominated by trucks, which handle about two-thirds of the 20.2 billion tons of freight that’s transported annually. Parallel Systems founder and CEO, Matt Soule, wants to change that by putting a modern autonomous and electric twist on the centuries-old railroad system.  The Los Angeles-based company is building battery-powered autonomous freight technology that works with existing freight cars and integrates with existing train control software. Soule’s pitch: Parallel’s system makes it less expensive for companies to use rail — not trucks — for short-distance deliveries. Rail has been traditionally underutilized because…

Meta dropped three new AI models over the weekend: Scout, Maverick, and the still-training Behemoth, billed as the next evolution of “open-ish” AI. But instead of excitement, the response was mostly shrugs. Critics called the release underwhelming, saying it lacked the edge expected in today’s breakneck AI race. Meta’s clear attempt to claw back some attention quickly turned messy. Accusations began circulating on X and Reddit around benchmark tampering, a mystery ex-employee, and large gaps between the models’ public and private performance.  Today, on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff, and Anthony Ha are unpacking Meta’s rocky rollout,…

It’s been an exceptionally volatile week, but one measure may be signaling longer-term bullish sentiment for bitcoin. The sell-off in equities began on April 3, spurred by President Donald Trump’s tariff-led uncertainties. Each day since then has been marked by sharp moves in both directions. The panic has hit both the equities and bond markets, while gold has surged to new all-time highs, and the DXY Index has broken below 100 for the first time since July 2023. In response, the S&P Volatility Index (VIX)—often called Wall Street’s “fear gauge” —has surged to its highest level since last August and…

Ireland’s data regulator, the Data Protection Commission (DPC), said Friday that it has opened an investigation into Elon Musk’s X over the social media platform’s use of personal data collected from European users to train Grok. The DPC will investigate how X processes personal data “comprised” in publicly accessible posts by European users for the purposes of training generative AI models, according to a Reuters report. The powerful Irish privacy regulator has issued fines to Microsoft, TikTok, and Meta in the past. Its fines to Meta total almost €3 billion (roughly $3.38 billion). X quietly opted in users to sharing…

Digital payments platform Stripe invites customers to join its management team meetings on a bi-weekly basis so it can get “candid feedback,” according to co-founder Patrick Collison. In an April 8 post on X, the fintech giant’s CEO said the company has a customer join for the first 30 minutes of the meeting, which is attended by about 40 leaders “from across Stripe.” “Even though we already have a lot of customer feedback mechanisms, it somehow always spurs new thoughts and investigations,” he wrote. It’s an interesting strategy from Stripe, which was founded in 2010 and is considered to be…

Bitcoin (BTC) rose over 1.5% to $84,900 Saturday, looking to break a three-month downtrend after the Trump administration issued new guidance on reciprocal tariffs, listing several exemptions like smartphones, computers, chips and other electronics. These exclusions, published by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, list products from President Donald Trump’s 125% China tariff and his baseline 10% global levy. “The US imports over $60 BILLION of smartphones per year. These exemptions cover some of the most crucial imports in another sign of the U.S. conceding in the trade war. After all, the bond market is forcing Trump to concede,” The Kobeissi…