Author: GT

Google on Thursday announced the second cohort to take part in its AI Academy: American Infrastructure, which seeks to support companies using AI to address issues such as cybersecurity, education, and transportation.  The four-month program is designed for companies at a seed to Series A stage and provides equity-free support and resources like leadership coaching and sales training. It’s primarily virtual, but founders will convene for an in-person summit at Google. Applications opened in late April of this year and closed mid-May; companies selected had to pass competitive criteria, including having at least six months of runway and having proof…

Diligent Robotics is bulking up its leadership team as the company looks to scale its fleet of humanoid robots that work in hospitals and pharmacies. Austin, Texas-based Diligent announced Thursday it appointed Rashed Haq as its chief technology officer and Todd Brugger as its chief operating officer. Both Haq and Brugger were most recently at Cruise, the GM self-driving subsidiary that shuttered earlier this year. Haq was formerly the vice president and head of AI and robotics. Brugger was Cruise’s COO. Andrea Thomaz, the co-founder and CEO of Diligent Robotics, told TechCrunch it was the right time for the company…

Highly sought-after federal software contracts frequently come with a hidden cost: Achieving government SaaS security compliance, known as FedRAMP, can take years and require substantial resources. Achieving this certification typically takes up to three years and costs more than $3 million, covering everything from security operations engineer salaries to security audits, according to Irina Denisenko, CEO of Knox. Denisenko (pictured above, second from right) launched Knox, a federal managed cloud provider, last year with a mission to help software vendors speed through this security authorization process in just three months, and at a fraction of what it would cost to…

The Earth is awash in data about itself. Every day, satellites capture around 100 terabytes of imagery.  But making sense of it isn’t always easy. Seemingly simple questions can be fiendishly complex to answer. Take this question that is of vital economic importance to California: How many fire breaks does the state have that might stop a wildfire in its tracks, and how have they changed since the last fire season? “Originally, you’d have a person look at pictures. And that only scales so far,” Nathaniel Manning, co-founder and CEO of LGND, told TechCrunch. In recent years, neural networks have…

Elon Musk said in a post on X early Thursday morning that Grok, the chatbot from his AI company, xAI, will be coming to Tesla vehicles “very soon.”  “Next week at the latest,” he said.  The news that Grok would be coming to Tesla vehicles soon comes several hours after xAI debuted the latest flagship AI model, Grok 4. Fans had wondered loudly why Musk spent an hour late on Wednesday talking about Grok with no mention of a Tesla integration, which likely prompted the billionaire’s early morning announcement.  The update also comes as adjustments to Grok have made the…

U.K. authorities confirmed on Thursday they had arrested four individuals for allegedly carrying out a series of hacks earlier this year targeting the British retail sector, including Marks & Spencer, Harrods, and the Co-op. The National Crime Agency said a woman aged 20, two men aged 19, and a youth aged 17 were arrested on Thursday at locations across the U.K. under suspicion of hacking, blackmail, money laundering, and participating in an organized crime group. The suspects weren’t named, but were taken into custody in relation to the hacks, the NCA said. Starting in April, hackers started breaking in and…

A secretive competition to pioneer a new way of communicating with artificial intelligence chatbots is getting a messy public airing as OpenAI fights a trademark dispute over its stealth hardware collaboration with legendary iPhone designer Jony Ive.In the latest twist, tech startup iyO Inc., which already sued Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for trademark infringement, is now suing one of its own former employees for allegedly leaking a confidential drawing of iyO’s unreleased product.At the heart of this bitter legal wrangling is a big idea: we shouldn’t need to stare at computer or phone screens or talk to a…

Google said on Thursday it’s adding an image-to-video generation feature to its Veo 3 AI video generator through its Gemini app. The company had already rolled out this feature in its AI-powered video tool called Flow, which was launched in May at Google’s I/O developer conference. After launching Veo 3-powered video generation in May, Google made the feature available in over 150 countries as of last week. At the moment, only Google AI Ultra and Google AI Pro plan users can generate videos with a three-creations-per-day limit with no carry-over. What image-to-video generation with Veo 3 looks likeImage Credits:Google Google…

Omar Marques | Lightrocket | Getty ImagesMicrosoft’s Outlook email service malfunctioned for several hours Wednesday and Thursday, prompting some people to post on social media about the inability to reach their virtual mailboxes.The issue began at 6:20 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, according to a dashboard the software company maintains. It affected Outlook.com as well as Outlook mobile apps and desktop programs. At 12:21 ET the Microsoft 365 Status account posted that it was rolling out a fix.”Our configuration changes have effectively resolved impact in targeted infrastructure. We’re now deploying the changes worldwide to resolve impact for all users,” Microsoft said in…

In April 2025, a new company called Slate Auto came out of stealth and shocked the car industry. Not only was this startup focused on making an ultra-cheap, customizable electric pickup truck with funding from Jeff Bezos, but it had also been operating in secret for three years in Troy, Michigan — the backyard of major automakers like Ford and General Motors. TechCrunch was first to the story, reporting in early April about the company’s existence, its involvement with the Amazon founder, and its curious and unique business model. The weeks between our report and Slate’s official coming out party…