Author: GT

AI-powered coding tools like Cursor, Replit, Claude Code, and Lovable are helping developers write many lines of code every day to ship products faster. However, app makers still have to rely on either shipping full beta versions of their apps or using simulation software to gauge how upcoming features will work. Blok, a company that is coming out of stealth, allows developers to use AI to simulate different user personas to test an app’s features and learn how to make their apps better. The company was founded by Tom Charman and Olivia Higgs in 2024. Both have been serial entrepreneurs…

The rules of growth have changed. At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, happening October 27-29 at Moscone West in San Francisco, 10,000+ startup and VC leaders will gather to explore how founders are adapting in a market that looks nothing like it did five years ago. And on October 27, on the premier industry stage Going Public, David George of Andreessen Horowitz will take the mic for a fireside chat focused on one of the biggest questions facing founders today — how do you scale and succeed when the old rules no longer apply? What happens when your company stays private longer? Startups…

Earlier this month, Adrian Holovaty, founder of music-teaching platform Soundslice, solved a mystery that had been plaguing him for weeks. Weird images of what were clearly ChatGPT sessions kept being uploaded to the site. Once he solved it, he realized that ChatGPT had become one of his company’s greatest hype men — but it was also lying to people about what his app could do. Holovaty is best known as one of the creators of the open source Django project, a popular Python web development framework (though he retired from managing the project in 2014). In 2012, he launched Soundslice,…

“SaaS is going away,” said Dave Park, co-founder and CEO of Narada AI. The company is betting big on a different future for enterprise software, one powered by agentic AI. Change is coming “in the not-too-distant future,” Park said on Equity, TechCrunch’s flagship podcast. “The typical knowledge worker today deals with anywhere from 17 to 25 different SaaS tools and portals every day, wasting two and a half hours just manually looking up or updating these systems. We believe in a future where it’ll just be the data, the databases, and AI agents or agentic models that take your request…

Marine scientists have long marveled at how animals like fish and seals swim so efficiently despite having different shapes. Their bodies are optimized for efficient, hydrodynamic aquatic navigation so they can exert minimal energy when traveling long distances.Autonomous vehicles can drift through the ocean in a similar way, collecting data about vast underwater environments. However, the shapes of these gliding machines are less diverse than what we find in marine life — go-to designs often resemble tubes or torpedoes, since they’re fairly hydrodynamic as well. Plus, testing new builds requires lots of real-world trial-and-error.Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial…

YouTube is preparing to update its policies to crack down on creators’ ability to generate revenue from “inauthentic” content, including mass-produced videos and other types of repetitive content — things that have become easier to generate with the help of AI technology. On July 15, the company will update its YouTube Partner Program (YPP) Monetization policies with more detailed guidelines around what type of content can earn creators money and what cannot. The exact policy language itself has not yet been released, but a page on YouTube’s Help documentation explains that creators have always been required to upload “original” and…

One corner of the energy market is poised to gain as data centers drive demand for natural gas-fueled power, according to TD Cowen – and a few of those providers pay attractive dividends, too. Midstream natgas companies own pipelines and other infrastructure to move oil and gas products, and the burgeoning demand for gas should continue into the 2030s, according to a team of TD Cowen analysts led by Jason Gabelman. This theme could contribute to consistent earnings and dividend growth compared to other energy companies that have more volatile earnings, they said in a report published Monday. “The largest…

A worker sorts packages on Amazon Prime Day in New York on July 8, 2025.Klaus Galiano | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesU.S. online sales jumped 9.9% year over year to $7.9 billion on Tuesday, the kickoff of Amazon’s Prime Day megasale, according to Adobe Analytics.At that level, it marks the “single biggest e-commerce day so far this year,” Adobe said. It also eclipsed total online spending during Thanksgiving last year, when sales on the holiday reached $6.1 billion.Amazon’s Prime Day bargain blitz began on Tuesday and lasts through Friday. The event, first launched in 2015 as a way to hook new…

On Sunday, Block CEO and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey launched an open source chat app called Bitchat, promising to deliver “secure” and “private” messaging without a centralized infrastructure. The app relies on Bluetooth and end-to-end encryption, unlike traditional messaging apps that rely on the internet. By being decentralized, Bitchat has potential for being a secure app in high-risk environments where the internet is monitored or inaccessible. According to Dorsey’s white paper detailing the app’s protocols and privacy mechanisms, Bitchat’s system design “prioritizes” security.  But the claims that the app is secure, however, are already facing scrutiny by security researchers, given…

Nvidia reached another milestone in its rise to becoming one of the world’s most important companies: the first publicly traded company to reach a market value of $4 trillion. Nvidia and other companies benefiting from the boom in artificial intelligence have been a major reason the S&P 500 has recently climbed to a record. Their explosion of profits has helped to propel the market despite worries about possible pain coming for the U.S. economy from tariffs and other policies of President Donald Trump.The company’s journey to be one of the world’s most prominent companies has produced some eye-popping numbers. Here’s…