Author: GT

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s pick to be the next U.S. surgeon general has repeatedly said the nation’s medical, health and food systems are corrupted by special interests and people out to make a profit at the expense of Americans’ health.Yet as Dr. Casey Means has criticized scientists, medical schools and regulators for taking money from the food and pharmaceutical industries, she has promoted dozens of health and wellness products — including specialty basil seed supplements, a blood testing service and a prepared meal delivery service — in ways that put money in her own pocket.A review by…

Anysphere, the maker of AI coding assistant Cursor, has raised $900 million at a $9.9 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported. The round was led by returning investor Thrive Capital, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, and DST Global. The massive round is Anysphere’s third fundraise in less than a year. The 3-year-old startup secured its previous capital haul of $100 million at a pre-money valuation of $2.5 billion late last year, as TechCrunch was first to report.  AI coding assistants, often referred to as “vibe coders,” have emerged as one of AI’s most popular applications, with Cursor leading the category. Anysphere’s…

“One of the biggest vulnerabilities in companies is actually humans,” CrowdStrike co-founder and former CTO Dmitri Alperovitch told TechCrunch in this week’s episode of Equity. “The more you automate, the more opportunities there are for people to find vulnerabilities in your system.” With the $50 billion Chinese AI market potentially slipping out of reach for U.S. chipmakers like Nvidia, and with cyber threats escalating from state actors and criminal groups alike, it’s a strong reminder of how tightly tech, security, and geopolitics are intertwined. On TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Alperovitch, who is chairman of the Silverado…

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is adding new features for business users, including integrations with different cloud services, meeting recordings, and MCP connection support for connecting to tools for deep research. As part of the launch, ChatGPT is gaining connectors for Dropbox, Box, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Google Drive. This allows ChatGPT to look for information across users’ own services to answer their questions. For instance, an analyst could use the company’s slide deck and documents to build out an investment thesis. OpenAI said that the new feature will follow an organization’s access control hierarchy. Recording and transcription of meetings, now a table-stakes feature…

Omada Health virtual health program.Courtesy: Omada HealthOmada Health priced its IPO at $19 per share on Thursday, in the middle of the expected range.The virtual chronic care company said in a press release that 7.9 million shares are being sold in the offering, amounting to $150 million.Omada, founded in 2012, will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “OMDA.” The company filed its initial prospectus in May and updated the document with an expected pricing range of $18 to $20 per share. At the IPO price, Omada is worth about $1.1 billion, though that number could be higher on a fully diluted…

Venmo aims to be more than just an app for paying friends with its latest update.  On Wednesday, the PayPal-owned payment platform debuted several new debit card benefits and expanded the ability to make payments with retailers such as TikTok Shop and Uber. The updates signal Venmo is trying to become more of a full-service fintech service, not just a peer-to-peer payments app.  The revamped Venmo Debit Card, which was first introduced in 2018, now features a tap-to-pay capability, which could help Venmo position itself to capture a larger share of everyday transactions. Additionally, cardholders now get 15% cash back…

Idrees Abbas | Lightrocket | Getty ImagesIt’s been a bad week for DOGE. And a really bad week for dogecoin.The meme coin, which gained popularity in part because Elon Musk once dubbed it “the people’s crypto,” fell about 10% on Thursday and is down 22% over the past week. That drop corresponds with Musk’s official departure from the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was the centerpiece of his effort to radically downsize the federal government.Musk and Trump had been sparring in recent days, with Musk slamming the president’s spending bill, and Trump withdrawing the nomination…

Payments and subscription infrastructure providers Paddle and RevenueCat have teamed up to launch an alternative to Apple’s in-app purchases in the wake of a U.S. App Store policy change that now allows app developers to process their own payments. The companies on Tuesday announced a new integration that allows users to make purchases from developers’ apps, whether on web or mobile devices. Paddle manages the web-specific payments, along with associated tax and compliance complexities. Meanwhile, thanks to RevenueCat, developers have access to their subscription data and performance across both web and mobile platforms. The ability to even offer links for…

Snap has launched a stand-alone Lens Studio iOS app and web tool, the company announced on Wednesday. The new tools are designed to make it easier for anyone to create AR Lenses through text prompts and simple editing tools. With the Lens Studio app, users will be able to do things like generate their own AI effects, add their Bitmoji, and browse trending templates to create customized Lenses. Up until now, Lens Studio has only been accessible via a desktop application for professional developers. While the desktop application will remain the primary tool for professionals, Snap says that the new…

AMD’s latest acquisition could help reduce Nvidia’s market dominance when it comes to AI hardware. Semiconductor giant AMD on Wednesday announced it acquired AI software optimization startup Brium. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Brium is a startup that appears to be in stealth mode. The startup builds machine learning applications to enable AI inference, the process a trained AI model uses to draw conclusions from new data, across a variety of different hardware options, according to a blog post on Brium’s bare-bones website. Cutting through that jargon a bit, Brium can help retrofit AI software to work with…