Author: GT

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…

OpenAI’s new image-generation feature is on track to be one of the company’s most popular product launches ever. According to Brad Lightcap, who oversees day-to-day operations and global deployment at OpenAI, over 130 million users have generated more than 700 million images since the upgraded image generator launched in ChatGPT on March 25. “[W]e appreciate your patience as we try to serve everyone,” Lightcap wrote in a post on X on Thursday. “[The] team continues to work around the clock.” Lightcap added that India is now the fastest-growing ChatGPT market. OpenAI’s new image generator, which launched for all ChatGPT users…

In the last 100 minutes of trading, DOGE has demonstrated a notable recovery pattern, climbing from a local bottom of $0.156 to stabilize around $0.158. The price action shows an apparent V-shaped recovery with significant volume spikes (16-21 million) during the bottoming process around 14:50-14:52, indicating strong buyer interest at support levels. The $0.158-$0.159 zone has emerged as immediate potential resistance, with multiple tests showing decreasing selling pressure. This recovery aligns with the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement level from the recent decline, suggesting potential continuation toward the 50% retracement at $0.160 if current momentum persists. Price Range: DOGE traded between $0.179–$0.156,…

Consumer-grade phone surveillance apps aren’t only intended to stay stealthy; some of these apps are also making it increasingly difficult to remove them.  TechCrunch has identified a stealthy phone monitoring app for Android that requires a password to uninstall, effectively blocking Android device owners from being able to remove the app. The spyware app, which we’re not naming so as to not give it any publicity, relies on whoever is planting the app to enable a built-in feature in Android that allows apps to “overlay” content on top of all other apps. Once granted this permission, the spyware app uses…

The crypto market has lost 6% of its total market cap within the last 24 hours as President Trump’s announcement of Bitcoin has fallen 6% to $81,000 within the last 24 hours following Trump’s White House speech on Wednesday during which he announced a plan for sprawling new tariffs on foreign imports. Cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin have been hit harder by the news, with Ethereum falling 7%, Solana falling 13%, and XRP falling 8%. The overall value of the entire crypto market has tumbled $160 billion in the last 24 hours, from $2.78 trillion to $2.62 trillion. The crypto market…

Thatch, a startup that aims to transform the health insurance experience for employers and employees alike, has raised $40 million in a Series B round of funding, it tells TechCrunch exclusively. Index Ventures led the financing, which included participation from existing backers Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), General Catalyst, SemperVirens, PeopleTech Partners, The General Partnership, and new investor ADP Ventures. In total since its October 2021 inception, Thatch has raised $84.5 million in equity funding.  While the San Francisco-based startup declined to reveal its new valuation, co-founder Adam Stevenson told TechCrunch that it was about three times higher than its Series A…