Author: GT

More invites to Amazon’s upgraded digital assistant, Alexa+, powered by generative AI, have been steadily rolling out. The service, first announced in February, now reaches over a million users, Amazon confirmed to TechCrunch on Monday. However, Alexa+ is not yet publicly available. Instead, Amazon has been working through its waitlist, sending out invites to those customers who originally signed up to test the service when it became available. Over the past several weeks, many people have shared on social media that they’ve received an invite to try Alexa+, whose service offers more natural and personalized interactions, smart home integration, and…

Startups don’t build themselves. The Builders Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, taking place October 27-29 at San Francisco’s Moscone West, is where investors, operators, and founders come to talk tactics — the nitty-gritty of getting something off the ground and making it work. This year, we’re bringing some of the sharpest minds in the game to the stage, including legendary investor Elad Gil, former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, and Flexport founder Ryan Petersen. If you’re looking for real-world insights from people who’ve actually built and backed category-defining companies, this is where it happens. Whether you’re wrestling with your first term…

US President Donald Trump (L) greets Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as he arrives to address troops at the Al-Udeid air base southwest of Doha on May 15, 2025. Brendan Smialowski | Afp | Getty Images It’s a strange thought that launching attacks on other countries could lead to peace, but that seems to be the logic behind the abrupt escalation in conflict in the Middle East beginning Saturday. And now there’s talk of a ceasefire soon.Here’s a quick recap.  On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump authorized air strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, pushing America into Israel’s war with Tehran.On…

Harvey AI, a startup that provides automation for legal work, has raised $300 million in Series E funding at a $5 billion valuation, the company told Fortune. The round was co-led by Kleiner Perkins and Coatue, with participation from existing investors, including Conviction, Elad Gil, OpenAI Startup Fund, and Sequoia. The financing comes just four months after Harvey announced that Sequoia led a $300 million Series D round at a $3 billion valuation. While many AI companies aim to keep headcount low, Harvey is rapidly expanding its staff. The 3-year-old startup already employs 340 people and plans to double that number…

Leaked code suggests xAI is developing an advanced file editor for Grok with spreadsheet support, signaling the company’s push to compete with OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft by embedding AI copilots into productivity tools.  “You can talk to Grok and ask it to assist you at the same time you’re editing the files!” writes reverse engineer Nima Owji, who leaked the finding.  BREAKING: xAI is working on an advanced FILE EDITOR for GROK!It even supports SPREADSHEETS!You can talk to Grok and ask it to assist you at the same time you’re editing the files! pic.twitter.com/9vIKRZj6Wn— Nima Owji (@nima_owji) June 22, 2025…

The Canadian government and the FBI say they are aware of malicious activity targeting telecommunication companies across Canada, attributing the intrusions to the China-backed hacking group Salt Typhoon. In a joint advisory out late Friday, the feds said at least one unnamed Canadian telco was hacked in mid-February this year, in which hackers manipulated three Cisco-made routers to allow stealthy traffic collection from its network. The feds say that separate investigations suggest that Salt Typhoon’s targeting is “broader than just the telecommunications sector.” Salt Typhoon, active since at least late 2024, previously targeted U.S. phone giants and internet providers, and…

Mustafa Hatipoglu | Anadolu | Getty ImagesMeta spoke with artificial intelligence startup Runway about a potential takeover ahead of its multibillion-dollar investment in Scale AI, CNBC confirmed Monday.Runway is best known for its AI video-generation tools and earned a spot on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list earlier this month.The deal talks between Meta and Runway did not progress far and dissolved, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to the confidential nature of the discussions.Bloomberg earlier reported the talks. Meta declined to comment.Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been aggressively pushing to bolster his…

With Monday’s release of iOS 26 Beta 2, Apple has fixed one of the more glaring issues with Liquid Glass, its divisive new user interface design for the iPhone, iPad, and other Apple devices, announced earlier this month at its WWDC 2025. The refreshed user interface modernizes the operating system’s look and feel with a design system inspired by the optical qualities of glass, including the way it refracts light and its translucency. However, early iOS 26 testers, somewhat unfairly, were quick to point out the flaws with the updated look in the early developer beta. Though the beta build…

Andy Konwinski, computer scientist and co-founder of Databricks and Perpelexity, announced on Monday that his personal company, Laude, is forming a new AI research institute backed with a $100 million pledge of his own money. Laude Institute is less an AI research lab and more like a fund looking to make investments structured similar to grants. In addition to Konwinski, the institute’s board includes UC Berkeley professor Dave Patterson (known for a string of award-winning research), Jeff Dean (known as Google’s chief scientist), and Joelle Pineau (Meta’s vice president of AI Research). Konwinski announced the institute’s first and “flagship” grant…

Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty ImagesFiserv is making a big entrance into the stablecoin market.The payments and fintech giant announced on Monday plans to roll out a new blockchain-based digital asset platform anchored by a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin called FIUSD — a product it hopes will bring thousands of banks and millions of merchants into the crypto economy by year’s end.The new offering is designed to plug directly into Fiserv’s sprawling global network, which already processes 90 billion transactions a year across 10,000 financial institutions and 6 million merchant locations. Shares closed about 4% higher Monday.By baking stablecoin support…