Author: GT

Join us for an unforgettable opportunity at TechCrunch Sessions: AI, happening at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall on June 5! We’re on the lookout for enthusiastic volunteers to be part of this exciting event. If you’ve ever wondered what goes into the making of tech gatherings, now’s your chance to find out firsthand. Apply here by May 22. Learn and attend TC Sessions: AI By volunteering, you’ll dive into the inner workings of event production while earning a free ticket to experience TC Sessions: AI before or after your shift. Plus, you’ll receive a complimentary pass to Disrupt 2025, happening on…

President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order on Tuesday aimed at boosting coal’s flagging fortunes, reports Bloomberg. The order will direct the federal government to list coal as a critical mineral and force some coal-fired power plants that had faced closure to keep generating electricity. The Trump administration is expected to couch the directive as part of an effort to ramp up electricity production as demand from data centers surges. While the executive order might forestall some closures, it’s unlikely to reverse coal’s persistent decline in the power sector. Coal’s share has declined steadily since 2001, when…

Bitcoin (BTC) dipped to nearly $75,000 early Wednesday, before slightly recovering, as Trump’s sweeping global tariffs went into effect. Ether (ETH) dived 10%, leading losses among major tokens, with xrp (XRP), dogecoin (DOGE), BNB Chain’s BNB, Solana’s SOL and Cardano’s ADA down more than 5%. Overall market capitalization decreased 6%, extending a 7-day slide to nearly 15%. Smaller tokens showed even deeper losses, with trendy upstart Berachain’s BERA down 20% and memecoins bonk (BONK), pepe (PEPE) and floki (FLOKI) down more than 9%. Traders’ retreat from crypto majors continued, reversing all gains from Tuesday’s relief rally as Trump pushes forward…

Deep Cogito has released several open large language models (LLMs) that outperform competitors and claim to represent a step towards achieving general superintelligence. The San Francisco-based company, which states its mission is “building general superintelligence,” has launched preview versions of LLMs in 3B, 8B, 14B, 32B, and 70B parameter sizes. Deep Cogito asserts that “each model outperforms the best available open models of the same size, including counterparts from LLAMA, DeepSeek, and Qwen, across most standard benchmarks”. Impressively, the 70B model from Deep Cogito even surpasses the performance of the recently released Llama 4 109B Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model.    Iterated Distillation…

Founders, the battlefield is calling! Startup Battlefield 200 applications are now live — and the race has begun. If you’ve got a groundbreaking idea and the guts to pitch it to the world, TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 is your arena. You’ll face elite VC judges. You’ll compete against 199 of the world’s most promising startups. And you’ll fight for $100,000 equity-free — plus a level of global exposure that can change everything. Enter the arena: Submit your application Thousands will apply; 200 will be chosen; 20 will pitch onstage. Only one will claim the crown. You want to rise above the…

The worst fears for risk assets, including cryptocurrencies, are coming true, and that has raised the risk of bitcoin (BTC) falling below $74,000 in a move that could shake out leveraged long bets. On Sunday, CoinDesk discussed the possibility of pronounced downside volatility in risk assets due to a potential unwinding of the Treasury market arbitrage bets, a dynamic that catalyzed the 2020 crash. Per observers, the unwinding of the so-called carry trades, involving hedge funds exploiting minor price discrepancies between Treasury futures and securities, has begun. That’s evident from the nearly 70 basis points rise in the U.S. 10-year…

Oil containers are seen in a field on April 07, 2025 in Yorktown, Texas. Brandon Bell | Getty ImagesU.S. crude oil futures fell more than 6% on Wednesday, as China slapped retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. after President Donald Trump’s sweeping levies took effect. The U.S. benchmark dropped $4.01, or 6.7%, to $55.57 per barrel by 7:53 a.m. ET. Global benchmark Brent tumbled $4.04, or 6.4%, to $58.78.The oil sell-off took a leg lower after Beijing announced tariffs of 84% on U.S. goods in response to Trump’s levies. China’s tariffs take effect on April 10.Traders are worried the world is descending…

Rain, a startup offering an employer-integrated earned wage access (EWA) app coupled with financial-wellness features like overdraft alerts and spending trends, has raised $75 million in an all-equity Series B round. The round was led by Prosus at a post-money valuation of $340 million. Rain plans to use the new funds to help it add credit card and saving products to its roster, co-founder CEO Alex Bradford, exclusively tells TechCrunch. Around 35% of households in the U.S. with an annual income below $50,000 are living paycheck to paycheck, up from 32% in 2019, per a report (PDF) by Bank of…

Cryptocurrencies can be a wild ride. But many patient investors have made a killing by sticking around for the long term. So far in 2025, the values of most major cryptocurrencies have taken a nosedive. But if you’re willing to look beyond the current volatility, it’s possible to lock in attractive valuations that could make you look like a genius many years from now. Don’t know where to start? The two crypto ETFs below have you covered. Suppose you want to get instant exposure to Bitcoin — the most valuable and well-known cryptocurrency in the world — but don’t necessarily…

Zoox, Amazon’s autonomous vehicle unit, is deploying a small fleet of retrofitted test vehicles on the streets of Los Angeles starting Tuesday — a modest, yet meaningful step as the company inches toward offering public rides in Las Vegas and San Francisco later this year.  The data-collection effort marks Zoox’s entrance into its sixth city and lays the groundwork for a future robotaxi service. Unlike rival Waymo, which is already providing paid robotaxi rides in LA, Zoox is still in the early stages. This deployment will send out manually driven Toyota Highlanders equipped with Zoox’s self-driving tech to gather mapping…