Author: GT

British oil and gasoline company BP (British Petroleum) signage is being pictured in Warsaw, Poland, on July 29, 2024.Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty ImagesBritish oil major BP on Friday said its chair Helge Lund will soon step down, kickstarting a succession process shortly after the company launched a fundamental strategic reset.”Having fundamentally reset our strategy, bp’s focus now is on delivering the strategy at pace, improving performance and growing shareholder value,” Lund said in a statement.”Now is the right time to start the process to find my successor and enable an orderly and seamless handover,” he added.BP CEO Murray Auchincloss,…

TechCrunch All Stage — the ultimate founder summit — is shaping up to be a powerhouse event where 1,200 founders and VCs across all stages will come together to forge meaningful connections and gain practical insights they can immediately apply to scale their startups. Join us on July 15 at SoWa Power Station in Boston and be part of the conversation with scaling experts. Register now and save up to $210! Save even more when you register for a group of four or more. About the breakout session Adding even more value to this already-packed agenda, we’re excited to announce…

President Donald Trump’s recent announcement of new tariffs has sent ripples through global markets, affecting everything from traditional stocks to digital assets. On April 2, 2025, Trump unveiled a broad set of tariffs during a 45-minute address from the White House. The tariffs include a 10% baseline on all goods imported into the United States, with several countries facing higher rates—China at 34%, the European Union at 20%, and countries like Japan and Vietnam seeing similar increases. Trump also imposed a 25% tariff on automotive imports. The impact on global markets was immediate. The S&P 500 lost more than $2…

Spotify announced Gen AI ads, among other changes to its advertising business, at an event in New York City on Thursday. Notably, the company introduced a new programmatic offering, the Spotify Ad Exchange (SAX), which allows advertisers to reach Spotify’s logged-in users via real-time auctions. Expanding on the SAX news, Spotify said it inked new partnerships with Google’s demand-side platform, Display & Video 360, and Magnite, with Yahoo DSP, Adform, and others to come “soon.” The Trade Desk is also supported. SAX will offer “full addressability” and measurement capabilities, the company said. Partners will initially be able to advertise within…

CLS Global, a UAE-based financial services firm, has been fined $428,059 after admitting to wash trading in U.S. cryptocurrency markets. The firm pleaded guilty to market manipulation and wire fraud charges after a sting operation led by the FBI. The charges relate to CLS Global’s role in manipulating cryptocurrency trading volumes to attract investors. CLS Global was sentenced in federal court in Boston on April 2, 2025, and was ordered to pay the fine, which includes both seized cryptocurrency and monetary penalties. Additionally, the company was sentenced to three years of probation, during which it is banned from participating in…

TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has been at the center of controversy in the U.S. for four years now due to concerns about user data potentially being accessed by the Chinese government. Earlier this year, the app experienced a temporary outage in the U.S. that left millions of users in suspense before it was quickly restored. TikTok returned to the App Store and Google Play Store in February.  Nonetheless, TikTok’s future remains uncertain, and a potential second ban on April 5 is looming. A number of investors are competing for the opportunity to purchase the app, and if…

Tim Stokely, the founder of the adult content social-media platform OnlyFans, and the crypto-focused Hbar Foundation submitted an eleventh-hour bid to purchase TikTok this week. The intent to bid was made by Zoop, a social-media app Stokley co-founded with entrepreneur RJ Phillips. Zoop wants to buy the short-form video platform to democratize revenue streams for its creators and users, according to Phillips. Tim Stokely, the founder of the adult content social-media platform OnlyFans, and the cryptocurrency-focused Hbar Foundation submitted a last-second bid this week to buy TikTok from Chinese owner ByteDance, Reuters reported Thursday. The intent to bid was made…

Calling founders, VCs, and startup experts — share your scaling strategies! TechCrunch All Stage 2025 is assembling top minds in startups and venture capital on July 15 in Boston. If you have valuable insights on scaling, now’s your chance to share them with 1,200+ founders, investors, and entrepreneurs. Lead thought-provoking sessions, interactive roundtables, and actionable breakouts to help startups thrive.  This is your opportunity to share your expertise and guide founders through the challenges of scaling. Step up and stand out! Apply now for a chance to compete in the Audience Choice round, where TechCrunch readers vote on who they…

The quality of AI-generated voices is good enough for things like creating audiobooks and podcasts, having articles read aloud to you, and basic customer support. But many businesses don’t think AI voice tech is quite reliable enough to deploy. That’s why two MIT grads, Moin Nadeem and Nikhil Murthy (pictured above), founded Phonic, a company offering an end-to-end voice stack to increase synthetic voice reliability while decreasing latency. Nadeem and Murthy met at MIT, and have known each other for more than seven years. When the duo started building Phonic last year, they felt there weren’t many companies crafting complete…

Luxor Technology wants to make bitcoin mining easier. That’s why the firm has rolled out a panoply of products (mining pools, hashrate derivatives, data analytics, ASIC brokerage) to help bitcoin miners, large and small, develop their operations. Aaron Foster, the company’s director of business development, joined in October 2021, and has seen the team grow from roughly 15 to 85 people in the span of three and a half years. Foster worked a decade in the Canadian energy sector before coming to bitcoin mining, which is one of the reasons why he’ll be speaking about the future of mining in…