Author: GT

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. It’s rare to report on an 11-figure startup acquisition, let alone multiple high-value deals in a single week. And there are more subtle signs that things are looking surprisingly upbeat in startup land. Most interesting startup stories from the week Image Credits:Kimberly White/Getty Images / Flickr (opens in a new window) under a CC BY 2.0 (opens in a new window) license. This week brought us some acquisitions, new startups, and sometimes…

The U.S. government’s move to formalize a strategic Bitcoin reserve was met with skepticism — and, in some corners of the market, outright disappointment. “That strategic reserve was massively underwhelming for the market,” said Imran Lakha, founder of Options Insight at Deribit’s Crypto Options Unplugged podcast. “Everyone was like, oh, they’re going to buy loads of Bitcoin, they’re going to buy loads of Bitcoins. No, we’ve just got a load of Bitcoin and we’re going to hold onto it. And so the market wasn’t very happy with that in the reaction.” This comes as President Donald Trump announced plans for…

Earlier this week, Anthropic rolled out a web search feature for its AI-powered chatbot platform, Claude, bringing the bot in line with many of its rivals. It wasn’t immediately clear which search index might be powering the feature — one possibility was that Anthropic had developed its own. But evidence suggests it’s Brave Search, the search engine maintained by browser developer Brave. As spotted by software engineer Antonio Zugaldia on Friday, Anthropic added “Brave Search” to the “subprocessor list” in its documentation this week — the list of Anthropic partners who process Claude data. British programmer Simon Willison reports that…

On March 22, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) held its first crypto task force meeting to address the growing need for clearer regulation around digital assets. The meeting is the first crypto task force meeting to ensure friendlier laws surrounding digital assets. The task force is lead by SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce. A central issue was whether existing securities laws — some dating back to the 1940s—are still fit for purpose in the age of blockchain technology. Many panelists argued that relying on outdated legal frameworks is creating confusion, hampering innovation, and pushing crypto businesses out of the…

If you haven’t heard the news, TechCrunch has a shiny new home. After years under the ownership of Yahoo — which, in turn, is backed by Apollo Group — the brand is now in fresh hands. Its new parent company: Regent, a dynamic private equity firm with a diverse portfolio spanning media, retail, and manufacturing. Regent was founded 12 years ago by Michael Reinstein, a personable one-time startup founder who quickly realized he might have a brighter future as a PE executive and who has an undeniable passion for TechCrunch. While the financial terms remain undisclosed, one thing is clear:…

Bitcoin is an ideology, a protocol, an asset, and a commodity, Michael Saylor said. He added that Bitcoin is digital scarcity, digital gold, and digital money. Saylor shared his thoughts while giving a presentation of “21 truths of Bitcoin” at the Digital Assets Summit in New York on March 20. Saylor is the co-founder of MicroStrategy — now operating under the name “Strategy” (Nasdaq: MSTR/STRK) who is well-known for his bullish outlook on Bitcoin. He called the cryptocurrency immaculate, ethical, and legitimate at the summit. He added that Bitcoin is corporate, global, and immortal. The Strategy co-founder did not stop…

DeepSeek has gone viral. Chinese AI lab DeepSeek broke into the mainstream consciousness this week after its chatbot app rose to the top of the Apple App Store charts (and Google Play, as well). DeepSeek’s AI models, which were trained using compute-efficient techniques, have led Wall Street analysts — and technologists — to question whether the U.S. can maintain its lead in the AI race and whether the demand for AI chips will sustain. But where did DeepSeek come from, and how did it rise to international fame so quickly? DeepSeek’s trader origins DeepSeek is backed by High-Flyer Capital Management, a Chinese quantitative hedge fund…

Chinese auto maker BYD made waves this week when it announced its new Han L sedan could add as much as 248 miles of range in as little as five minutes. Unfortunately, the company was light on details, and it did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for clarification. So instead, we’ve scoured the web for information, filling in the gaps to determine exactly how BYD was able to make an EV that apparently can recharge as quickly as it takes to refill a gas car.  What we found mostly supports the auto makers claims, with a few caveats. Battery pack…

Maryland State Delegate Adrian Boafo and New York Assemblyman Clyde Vanel believe that fragmented state policies on cryptocurrency could be riskier, urging for a federal policy on the crypto industry. On March 17, the two legislators sent a joint letter to Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Maxine Waters (D-CA-43), and Angie Craig (D-MN-2). The legislators pointed to the influx of state-level crypto laws, with at least 35 states already proposing laws surrounding digital assets. The legislators are sure that without federal oversight, business uncertainty and limited financial opportunities in the U.S. could stifle innovation. “While state legislatures are…

In a blog post last July, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that “selling access” to Meta’s openly available Llama AI models “isn’t [Meta’s] business model.” Yet Meta does make at least some money from Llama through revenue-sharing agreements, according to a newly unredacted court filing. The filing, submitted by attorneys for the plaintiffs in the copyright lawsuit Kadrey v. Meta, in which Meta stands accused of training its Llama models on hundreds of terabytes of pirated e-books, reveals that Meta “shares a percentage of the revenue” that companies hosting its Llama models generate from users of those models. The filing…