Author: GT

Looks like Meta isn’t done poaching talent from OpenAI. Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported that Meta had hired influential OpenAI researcher Trapit Bansal, and according to The Wall Street Journal, it also hired three other researchers from the company. Now The Information is reporting four more Meta hires from OpenAI: Researchers Shengjia Zhao, Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, and Hongyu Ren. This hiring spree comes after the April launch of Meta’s Llama 4 AI models, which reportedly did not perform as well as CEO Mark Zuckerberg had hoped. (The company was also criticized over the version of Llama that it used…

The United States Supreme Court ruled Friday to uphold a Texas law requiring websites with “sexual material harmful to minors” to verify the ages of all visitors. The Free Speech Coalition (FSC), a trade association for the adult industry, had brought the lawsuit against Texas attorney general Ken Paxton challenging the state’s age verification law. “The power to require age verification is within a State’s authority to prevent children from accessing sexually explicit content,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the court opinion. The court sided 6-3 in Paxton’s favor, with Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting.…

Meta bolstered its already considerable renewable power portfolio this week with a string of deals that added over 1 gigawatt of generating capacity. The social media company announced Thursday it will buy 791 megawatts of solar and wind power in Ohio, Arkansas, and Texas from project developer Invenergy. And on Wednesday, Meta said it would buy the environmental attributes from two of Adapture Renewables’ solar farms in Texas, totaling 360 megawatts. The various projects are expected to come online in 2027 and 2028. Meta has been on a renewable buying spree. Last month, it signed a deal to buy 650…

Being a founder often feels like you’re building the plane midflight. You’re juggling fundraising, product-market fit, marketing strategy, hiring — while quietly wondering if you’re even doing it right. TechCrunch AllStage 2025, which is happening on July 15 at the SoWa Power Station in Boston, is built to answer those questions. Whether you’re pitching VCs, recruiting a killer team, or trying to make sense of your startup’s finances (and your own), All Stage offers actionable insights from people who’ve lived it. Expect main-stage conversations, deep-dive workshops, and tactical networking designed to help you scale with confidence. One of the voices…

This week, two major AI companies scored early wins in court, with federal judges siding with Meta and Anthropic in separate lawsuits over how their models were trained on copyrighted material. The decisions represent the first real legal validation of AI companies’ argument that training models on books, images, and other creative works can be considered “fair use” — even if those materials weren’t obtained with permission. It’s a big deal for companies building generative AI, and a potential turning point for the many lawsuits still in motion.  Today, on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Max Zeff and Anthony Ha were…

Petlibro, the pet tech startup known for its automatic feeders and filtered water fountains, has just launched its latest product, the AI-powered Scout Smart Camera, designed to provide pet owners with real-time insights into their furbabies’ activities and behaviors. Scout is similar to other pet cameras on the market; it monitors your pet in real time and features two-way audio, allowing you to communicate with them if they’re getting into mischief. The companion mobile app allows users to control the camera’s movements, although the camera is also designed to detect and automatically follow their pet as they move past it.…

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. Before this newsletter takes a break for the Fourth of July next week, here are the startup stories and funding rounds that caught our eye over the last few days, which have been quite busy. Most interesting startup stories from the week Image Credits:SOPA Images / Contributor / Getty Images This week brought us lawsuit updates, M&As, and a combination of both. AI agents: Data cybersecurity company Rubrik acquired Predibase to accelerate…

A crane collapsed at SpaceX’s South Texas rocket facility this week, and the company’s newly formed city won’t say if anyone was hurt. On June 23, a crane being used to clean up debris from the most recent SpaceX rocket explosion collapsed at the company’s launch complex. Footage of the accident was captured by Lab Padre, one of the content creators who film and photograph the site on a regular basis. But it was filmed from far away, making it impossible to tell whether anyone was harmed or in danger. SpaceX has not publicly acknowledged the collapse and did not…

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman stands on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) after ringing a bell on the floor setting the share price at $47 in its initial public offering (IPO) on March 21, 2024 in New York City.Spencer Platt | Getty Images News | Getty ImagesFor 20 years, Reddit has pitched itself as “the front page of the internet.” AI threatens to change that.As social media has changed over the past two decades with the shift to mobile and the more recent focus on short-form video, peers like MySpace, Digg and Flickr have faded into oblivion.…

We’re thrilled to announce that Ellen Chisa, partner at Boldstart Ventures, will be joining us at TechCrunch All Stage 2025 for an energizing conversation about investing in enterprise startups from day one. She’s one of the standout voices shaping this year’s lineup of founders, funders, and operators gathering July 15 in Boston’s SoWa Power Station, and you won’t want to miss what she brings to the table. All Stage is where startup builders get real answers to real questions — from how to raise your next round to how to manage founder burnout. Whether you’re scaling your team, fixing your…