Author: GT

OpenAI announced on Friday it’s launching a research preview of Codex, the company’s most capable AI coding agent yet. Codex is powered by codex-1, a version of the company’s o3 AI reasoning model optimized for software engineering tasks. OpenAI says codex-1 produces “cleaner” code than o3, adheres more precisely to instructions, and will iteratively run tests on its code until passing results are achieved. The Codex agent runs in a sandboxed, virtual computer in the cloud. By connecting with GitHub, Codex’s environment can come preloaded with your code repositories. OpenAI says the AI coding agent will take anywhere from one…

Databricks just snatched up another AI company. This week, the data analytics giant announced a $1 billion acquisition of Neon, a startup building an open source alternative to AWS Aurora Postgres. It’s the latest in a spree of high-profile buys, joining MosaicML and Tabular, as Databricks positions itself as the place to build, deploy, and scale AI-native applications.  Today, on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff, and Anthony Ha unpack the Databricks-Neon deal, where Neon’s serverless Postgres tech fits into the larger vision, and whether $1 billion still counts as “a lot of money” these days (spoiler: Kirsten…

Spotify announced last week that it would roll out public play counts on all podcasts as a way of “helping attract new fans.” But podcasters swiftly responded with criticism of the new feature — mainly, that it would further promote podcasts that already have large audiences while making smaller shows less appealing to new listeners. On Friday, Spotify changed course on its plans, but did not completely eschew the idea. Now, play counts will only appear on shows with at least 50,000 plays each. Instead of showing an exact play count, the designation will only update at specific milestones, like…

TechCrunch is joining forces with VivaTech, Europe’s biggest startup and tech event, to select startups for the prestigious VivaTech Innovation of the Year at VivaTech 2025. This partnership will highlight exceptional creativity, technological ingenuity, and industry-transforming potential among exhibiting startups. The VivaTech Innovation of the Year Award acknowledges and celebrates exhibiting startups at VivaTech 2025 that showcase outstanding innovation, advanced technological capabilities, and significant potential to revolutionize their respective industry. Image Credits:VIVA Technology TechCrunch will curate a shortlist of the top 30 candidates, appoint a jury member to help select the final top five, and participate onstage at VivaTech on…

Roughly a month after Moonvalley, a Los Angeles-based startup developing AI tools for video creation, said it secured $43 million in new funding, the company has raised more, according to a filing with the SEC. The filing, submitted Thursday, reveals that Moonvalley actually landed (so far) around $53 million total from a group of 14 unnamed investors. The filing indicates that this is an additional $10 million in cash, rather than a whole new round. It brings the company’s total raised to about $124 million, estimates PitchBook, following on the heels of Moonvalley’s $70 million seed round last November. Moonvalley declined…

The Nuclear Company is taking an old approach to building new nuclear reactors. Rather than gin up a new design or try to mass manufacture smaller reactors, it wants to develop a series of reactors using existing designs. The two-year-old startup announced a Series A last month led by Eclipse with participation from CIV, Goldcrest Capital, MCJ Collective, True Ventures, and Wonder Ventures, though it did not disclose the amount raised. Now, TechCrunch has learned that the company has secured $51.3 million in a Series A, bringing the company’s total funding to $70 million. The Nuclear Company was founded in…

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! OK, who placed their bet on General Motors being the landing spot for Aurora co-founder and chief product officer Sterling Anderson? Not me. But here we are. A few days after Anderson announced his resignation from his position and the board at Aurora, he spoke to me about his next gig as chief product officer at GM. In short, he will oversee the entire product line of GM’s gas-powered and electric vehicles…

Electric boat startup Arc has a new model that is its cheapest and most approachable watercraft yet. The new boat is called the Arc Coast, and it will start at $168,000. The company is taking preorders now and says the Coast will ship in 2026. The Coast is what’s known as a “center console” boat, which is often used for fishing. It’s the company’s third model, following the limited edition $300,000 Arc One and the $268,000 Arc Sport (which I got to pilot earlier this year). That’s despite coming out of stealth just four years ago. Arc also recently announced…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Microsoft acknowledged Thursday that it sold advanced artificial intelligence and cloud computing services to the Israeli military during the war in Gaza and aided in efforts to locate and rescue Israeli hostages. But the company also said it has found no evidence to date that its Azure platform and AI technologies were used to target or harm people in Gaza.The unsigned blog post on Microsoft’s corporate website appears to be the company’s first public acknowledgement of its deep involvement in the war, which started after Hamas killed about 1,200 people in Israel and has led to the…

AI startup Cohere has acquired Ottogrid, a Vancouver-based platform that develops enterprise tools for automating certain kinds of high-level market research. Sully Omar, one of the founders of Ottogrid, announced the deal Friday in a post on X. He didn’t disclose the terms. Ottogrid will sunset its product, according to Omar, but will give customers “ample notice” and “a reasonable transition period.” “We’re very excited to join the Cohere team and integrate Ottogrid into Cohere’s … platform,” Omar said in a statement. “Through our work with Cohere, we’re [going to] dramatically impact how people can automate their workflows, enrich their data,…