Author: GT

In August, parents Matthew and Maria Raine sued OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, over their 16-year-old son Adam’s suicide, accusing the company of wrongful death. On Tuesday, OpenAI responded to the lawsuit with a filing of its own, arguing that it shouldn’t be held responsible for the teenager’s death. OpenAI claims that over roughly nine months of usage, ChatGPT directed Raine to seek help more than 100 times. But according to his parents’ lawsuit, Raine was able to circumvent the company’s safety features to get ChatGPT to give him “technical specifications for everything from drug overdoses to drowning to…

The U.S. immigration system is complex, hard to navigate, and expensive for immigrants. The startup JustiGuide claims it can help with that thanks to an AI-powered portal. The idea is to help immigrants in the U.S. — and eventually in other countries — understand the law and what visas they may be eligible for, and to connect with immigration attorneys, making the whole process cheaper and faster.  “I think the more we make the technology accessible, I think people will be empowered to try and fill their own forms and understand what their options are and that they will be…

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico unveiled plans Wednesday to build what it claims will be Latin America’s most powerful supercomputer — a project the government says will help the country capitalize on the rapidly evolving uses of artificial intelligence and exponentially expand the country’s computing capacity.Dubbed “Coatlicue” for the Mexica goddess considered the earth mother, the supercomputer would be seven times more powerful than the region’s current leader in Brazil, José Merino, head of the Telecommunications and Digital Transformation Agency.President Claudia Sheinbaum said during her morning news briefing that the location for the project had not been decided yet, but…

Last year was monumental for the AI industry in the U.S. and beyond.  There were 49 startups that raised funding rounds worth $100 million or more in 2024, per our count at TechCrunch; three companies raised more than one “mega-round,” and seven companies raised rounds that were $1 billion in size or larger.  How will 2025 compare? As we enter near the final month of the year, 2025 has already matched 2024 in terms of companies raising rounds that are $100 million and larger. There are also significantly more companies that have raised multiple funding rounds larger than $100 million this year compared to last.   Here…

The software team at General Motors has now lost three top executives in the past month as the automaker — with its new chief product officer at the helm — combines its disparate technology businesses into one organization. Baris Cetinok, senior vice president of software and services product management, is leaving the company effective December 12, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. CNBC was the first to report the departure. Dave Richardson, senior vice president of software and services engineering, and Barak Turovsky, who was hired in March as head of AI at the automaker, have also left in the past…

Several public websites designed to allow courts across the United States and Canada to manage the personal information of potential jurors had a simple security flaw that easily exposed their sensitive data, including names and home addresses, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. A security researcher, who asked not to be named for this story, contacted TechCrunch with details of the easy-to-exploit vulnerability, and identified at least a dozen juror websites made by government software maker Tyler Technologies that appear to be vulnerable, given that they run on the same platform.  The sites are all over the country, including California, Illinois, Michigan,…

For Cyriac Lefort, the idea for his new startup, MyHair AI, came two years ago.  The French native was sitting in a hair salon in New York getting a routine haircut when his hairdresser looked at him and said, “You’re starting to lose a bit of hair,” Lefort, who is 32, recalls being told.   “He didn’t say that to my friend sitting next to me, just to me,” Lefort continued. “In my mind, I wasn’t balding, and I still don’t think I am. But when someone tells you you’re losing your hair, you buy whatever they suggest.”  So, he bought the…

Artificial intelligence startup xAI, founded by Elon Musk, told city and county planners in Memphis last week that it plans to build a solar farm next to its Colossus data center — one of the world’s largest facilities for training AI models. The project would occupy 88 acres to the west and to the south of the data center. A 136-acre vacant lot owned by the developer that also owns the Colossus property currently borders the site. Given the proposed size, the solar farm would likely produce around 30 megawatts of electricity, only about 10% of the data center’s estimated…

Ten years ago, raising €1 million in Copenhagen was enough to make waves in the region’s tech scene. Today, the Nordics are turning out billion-dollar companies like Lovable — which hit $200 million in revenue just 12 months after launching.  Dennis Green-Lieber, founder of AI-powered customer intelligence platform Propane, has had a front-row seat to that shift over the last 15 years. His take? The region’s social safety net gives founders room to take real swings without putting their personal lives on the line, and they’re accelerating faster than Silicon Valley as a result.  Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Dominic-Madori Davis caught…

The always-a-good-time Slush conference took place last week in Helsinki and, as always, it was a showcase of the growing power of the European ecosystem. The Nordics, specifically, are having a moment, led this time around by Sweden’s vibe-coding darling Lovable, often regarded as an example of the ecosystem’s growing success. Other standout, albeit older names, include Klarna and Spotify. On this week’s Equity, we sat down with Dennis Green-Lieber, the founder of the AI company Propane, to talk about the booming success of the Nordic ecosystem. Green-Lieber is based in Denmark and has been building in the ecosystem for…