Author: GT

Photo: Marco Bello (Getty Images) Michael Saylor’s bluster about never selling your Bitcoin lost a little oomph this week, as the company he co-founded clarified that, actually, there are some circumstances in which it might need to unload some of its stockpile. “A significant decrease in the market value of our bitcoin holdings could adversely affect our ability to satisfy our financial obligations,” Strategy (MSTR) (formerly MicroStrategy) noted in a regulatory filing on April 7. Those obligations include the interest it owes on $8.21 billion in loans; principal repayments on those loans, which start next year; leases on office space;…

A few years ago, Chef Robotics was facing potential death. “There were a lot of dark periods where I was thinking of giving up,” founder Rajat Bhageria tells TechCrunch of his six-year-old company. But friends and investors encouraged him, so he persevered.  Today, Chef Robotics has not only survived, it’s one of the few food tech robotic companies that is thriving. The startup, which recently raised a $23 million Series A, has 40 employees and marquee customers like Amy’s Kitchen and Chef Bombay. Dozens of robots installed across the U.S. have made 45 million meals to date, Bhageria says. This…

Are we finally reaching a point of stability in the market after an insanely volatile 10-day stretch? The crypto market seems to think so, with Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) up 5.2% over the past 24 hours as of 1 p.m. ET, Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) up 4.6%, and Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) rising 5.3%. The stock market has gained as well on what seems to be hope that rising bond yields and a falling dollar will lead to the Trump administration finding a path away from the trade war that’s currently unfolding. Investors are taking a “risk on” mentality going into the weekend,…

UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty testifies before the Senate Finance Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 1, 2024.Kent Nishimura | Getty ImagesFollowing the massive cyberattack on UnitedHealth Group’s Change Healthcare unit last year, the company launched a temporary funding assistance program to help medical practices with their short-term cash flow needs, offering no-interest loans with no added fees.A little over a year later, UnitedHealth is aggressively going after borrowers, demanding they “immediately repay” their outstanding balances, according to documents viewed by CNBC and providers who received funding. Some groups have been asked to repay hundreds of thousands of dollars in…

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…

LONDON (AP) — Ireland’s data privacy watchdog said Friday it’s investigating Elon Musk’s social media platform X over its use of personal data to train his artificial intelligence chatbot Grok. The Data Protection Commission said it has opened an inquiry into “the processing of personal data comprised in publicly-accessible posts” that European users posted on X. “The purpose of this inquiry is to determine whether this personal data was lawfully processed in order to train the Grok LLMs” under the bloc’s data privacy law, the commission said in a statement posted online. An LLM, or a large language model, is…

A growing number of Tesla owners are putting their used vehicles up for sale, as consumers react to Elon Musk’s political activities and the global protests they have fueled. In March, the number of used Tesla vehicles listed for sale on Autotrader.com skyrocketed, Sherwood News reported, citing data from Autotrader parent company Cox Automotive. The numbers were particularly high in the final week of March, when an average of more than 13,000 used Teslas were listed for sale. Not only was this a record — it’s up 67% from the same week a year earlier. At the same time, sales…

For years, Wall Street criticized bitcoin (BTC) for its volatility, but the situation has dramatically changed as President Donald Trump’s aggressive trade policies diminish the appeal of U.S. assets. Since Trump’s Liberation Day tariff announcement on April 2, the seven-day realized volatility of the S&P 500, Wall Street’s benchmark equity index, has surged from an annualized 50% to 169%, according to data from TradingView. That’s the highest level since the coronavirus crash in 2020. BTC’s seven-day realized volatility has doubled to 83%, yet it remains significantly lower than the S&P 500, hinting at the cryptocurrency’s possible evolution as a low-beta…

OpenAI has launched a legal counteroffensive against one of its co-founders, Elon Musk, and his competing AI venture, xAI. In court documents filed yesterday, OpenAI accuses Musk of orchestrating a “relentless” and “malicious” campaign designed to “take down OpenAI” after he left the organisation years ago. Elon’s nonstop actions against us are just bad-faith tactics to slow down OpenAI and seize control of the leading AI innovations for his personal benefit. Today, we counter-sued to stop him.— OpenAI Newsroom (@OpenAINewsroom) April 9, 2025 The court filing, submitted to the US District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges Musk…

EV startup Lucid Motors has emerged as a surprise winner in the bankruptcy auction for electric trucking company Nikola’s Arizona factory and other assets, according to a late Thursday night court filing. Lucid committed around $30 million in cash and non-cash considerations in exchange for the factory, Nikola’s lease on its Phoenix headquarters, and “certain machinery, equipment and inventory,” according to the filing. As part of the deal, Lucid is planning to make offers to around 300 former Nikola employees, the company told TechCrunch. Those offers will go to both salaried and hourly employees across manufacturing, engineering, software, assembly, vehicle…