Author: GT

A former SpaceX security manager, who was privy to top secret information on U.S. government programs, is suing the company and one of its senior employees for alleged discrimination, sexual harassment, and retaliation.  Jenna Shumway, who was promoted to senior contractor program security officer after being hired in 2022, also alleges the senior employee — Daniel Collins, a former Defense Department official hired to run security compliance for the company’s government work — violated top secret protocols and then concealed this information from the government.  Lawyers for Shumway, Collins, and SpaceX did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. …

Referrals from ChatGPT to news publishers are growing, but not enough to counter the decline in clicks resulting from users increasingly getting their news directly from AI or AI-powered search results, according to a report from digital market intelligence company Similarweb. Since the launch of Google’s AI Overviews in May 2024, the firm found that the number of news searches on the web that result in no click-throughs to news websites has grown from 56% to nearly 69% as of May 2025. Not surprisingly, organic traffic has also declined, dropping from over 2.3 billion visits at its peak in mid-2024…

Concrete has been around for millennia, but Terra CO2 thinks it has a better way to make the ubiquitous building material, and investors appear to agree. The Golden, Colorado-based startup recently closed a $124.5 million Series B to help bring its low-carbon cement replacement to market. Cement — the stuff that binds aggregate together to form concrete — weighs heavily on the climate. The CO2 released by the chemical reaction that makes Portland cement, the most common type of cement, and the fossil fuels that typically power it account for around 8% of all carbon pollution.  It’s why a range…

Perplexity is launching a $200-per-month subscription plan for its power users, the company announced in a blog post Tuesday. The plan, Perplexity Max, offers unlimited access to the startup’s spreadsheet and report generation tool, Labs, as well as early access to new features, including Perplexity’s forthcoming AI-powered browser, Comet. Max subscribers will also get priority access to any Perplexity services using the latest frontier models, such as OpenAI o3-pro and Claude Opus 4. With the launch of Max, Perplexity became the latest AI provider to offer a hyper-premium subscription tier to capitalize on its power users. OpenAI was the first…

Max Financial Services on Wednesday said its insurance subsidiary Axis Max Life Insurance received communication from an anonymous sender about unauthorized access to its customer data. Without disclosing specifics, the Noida-based financial services company said in its stock exchange filing that Axis Max Life Insurance subsequently initiated an information security assessment and data log analysis. “A detailed investigation is also underway in consultation with information security experts to assess the root cause of the incident and take remedial action, as necessary,” the company said. Axis Max Life Insurance is the fifth-largest insurer in India, with a sum assured of ₹21.9…

President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act ends long-standing federal support for solar and wind power, while creating a friendly environment for oil, gas and coal production.The House of Representatives passed Trump’s megabill Thursday ahead of a White House-imposed deadline, after the Senate narrowly approved the controversial legislation Tuesday.Trump has made his priorities on energy production clear. The U.S. will rely on oil, gas, coal and nuclear to meet its growing energy needs, the president said last weekend, bashing wind and solar power.”I don’t want windmills destroying our place,” Trump told Fox News in an interview that aired June…

Even Tesla’s energy storage business, which has been a small, yet notable bright spot, can’t escape the cloud that’s hanging over the company. For the second consecutive quarter, deployments of its Powerwall and Megapack stationary storage products have declined, according to stats released by Tesla. In the second quarter of this year, the company installed 9.6 gigawatt-hours of storage, down 0.8 gigawatt-hours from the first quarter. Tesla’s energy storage division peaked in the fourth quarter of 2024, a three-month period that saw 11 gigawatt-hours deployed. In all, Tesla deployed 31.4 GWh of energy storage products in 2024. Until this year,…

Amazon plans to shut down its stand-alone Freevee app in August, according to an in-app notice to users. The free, ad-supported streaming service is directing viewers to continue watching Freevee content on Prime Video. “Prime Video is the new exclusive home for Freevee TV shows, movies and Live TV,” the notice to readers states. “The Freevee app will be accessible until August 2025. Continue watching your favorite Free Originals and our library of hit movies, shows, and live TV on Prime Video for free, no subscription needed. Download Prime Video to get started and sign-in with your Amazon account.” The…

Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and chief scientist of OpenAI, speaks at Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv, Israel, June 5, 2023.Jack Guez | AFP | Getty ImagesOpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever said he will assume the CEO role at Safe Superintelligence, the artificial intelligence startup he launched last year.Sutskever’s announcement on Thursday comes after Meta poached Daniel Gross, a longtime entrepreneur and AI investor who had been CEO of Safe Superintelligence.In a post on X, Sutskever said Gross’ time at the company has been “winding down,” and that his last day was June 29. Safe Superintelligence co-founder Daniel Levy will now serve as…

Lovable, one of the darlings of the vibe-coding world and one of Europe’s fastest-growing AI startups, is working on raising a fresh round of over $150 million at a near $2 billion valuation, the Financial Times reports. The raise and giant step up in valuation comes just months after the Swedish startup raised a $15 million round led by Creandum in February. The company described that round to TechCrunch as “pre-Series A,” but with numbers this large, it’s safe to say that Lovable has jumped from seed rounds to priced growth rounds, whatever the serial alphabetic label should be. Accel…