A widespread power outage affecting roughly 7,000 PG&E customers in San Francisco has forced Waymo to suspend its robotaxi operations. The Alphabet-owned company confirmed temporary service adjustments as local infrastructure struggles, leaving commuters without access to autonomous transit during the ongoing utility failure.
The release of Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 has triggered a sharp market sell-off and renewed fears over China’s technological trajectory. As the model demonstrates performance competitive with Western frontier systems, Washington is grappling with how to counter a rival that mirrors American innovation while navigating a volatile trade landscape.
The U.S. electric vehicle market is shedding models at a rapid clip, with Honda’s recent decision to ax the Prologue serving as the latest marker of a broader industry retreat. Driven by shifting federal subsidies, aggressive tariffs, and evolving corporate priorities, automakers are pulling the plug on a diverse range of electric offerings.
Federal employees may once again download TikTok on government-issued devices, marking a significant reversal of a 2022 mandate. The Department of Justice issued a memo confirming that new ownership structures surrounding the platform's U.S. operations have effectively neutralized previous federal restrictions on official device usage.
After a disastrous road trip three years ago, a 600-mile trek to Montreal suggests the landscape for electric vehicle drivers has fundamentally shifted. While public charging was once a source of constant frustration and broken hardware, the current reality of the U.S. network suggests that reliability is finally catching up to demand.
Neil Rimer, a co-founder of Index Ventures, recently suggested that the immense wealth generated by the AI boom will inevitably face a redistribution. Whether this shift occurs through voluntary philanthropy or involuntary legislative action, Rimer believes the industry’s leaders stand at a critical juncture in choosing their path forward.
With the application window closing on July 20, Australian founders are making their final push for a place at the Stripe Tour Sydney competition. The winner earns an automatic entry to TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, bypassing the traditional selection process for one of the industry's most high-profile stages.
Vertu, the UK-based manufacturer of high-end handsets, is targeting chief executives with its new Alphafold, a luxury device priced at $6,880. More than just a status symbol, the phone centers on the Hermes Agent—an AI assistant designed to automate complex executive workflows, ranging from contract analysis to business travel planning.
With a fresh funding round pushing its valuation to $188 billion, Databricks has solidified its transformation from a legacy data storage firm into an AI powerhouse. Led by Coatue, the deal underscores a relentless fundraising streak that has seen the company’s market worth nearly triple in less than two years.
Jeremy Levine is fighting the rise of meeting transcription by renaming his Zoom profile to 'Jeremy Levine I do not consent to transcribing or recording.' The venture capitalist’s digital protest highlights a growing friction as AI note-taking apps turn every casual conversation into a searchable, permanent data file.
Agility Robotics has established a 60,000-square-foot facility in Fremont, California, placing its operations just miles from the site where Tesla intends to manufacture its Optimus humanoid robots. This strategic move signals a direct challenge in the race to automate industrial logistics and manufacturing floors.
India’s smartphone market suffered a 10% shipment decline in the April-June quarter, marking its sharpest drop in six years. As manufacturers prioritize high-bandwidth memory for AI data centers, the resulting supply squeeze is pushing up component costs, forcing budget-conscious Indian consumers to delay upgrades or abandon new purchases.
San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu has issued a formal demand for Apple and Google to scrub their marketplaces of software that generates nonconsensual intimate deepfakes. The ultimatum follows reports that both tech giants have continued to profit from apps that strip clothing from subjects in user-uploaded photographs.
Nuclear startup Valar Atomics is negotiating a fresh $1 billion capital injection, pushing the three-year-old firm toward a $6 billion valuation. Sequoia Capital is expected to lead the round, signaling aggressive investor appetite for modular reactor technology capable of fueling the massive electricity demands of modern AI data centers.
Trading a traditional space heater and ceiling fan for a single device, the Dyson Hot+Cool HF1 attempts to solve year-round climate control. After three months of testing this $499 bladeless unit, the convenience of smart scheduling and a compact, easy-to-clean design emerges as its most significant advantage over standard hardware.
A 21-year-old Florida man stands accused of orchestrating a digital heist that funneled malware through the Steam gaming platform, effectively turning legitimate-looking titles into conduits for draining cryptocurrency wallets. Federal agents arrested Zyaire Wilkins this week following a two-year investigation into the theft of at least $220,000.
As parental anxiety over unrestricted digital access grows, a specialized market of kid-friendly hardware is emerging to replace the standard smartphone. These devices range from high-tech handsets with active content monitoring to minimalist landline replacements, all designed to put control back into the hands of caregivers.
Customers of Amazon Web Services logged in Friday to find their billing dashboards displaying astronomical debt, with some accounts showing charges reaching $2.5 billion. The company acknowledged a persistent error within its billing computation subsystem, though it assured users these figures are entirely disconnected from actual service consumption.
Patreon is shifting from passive requests to active enforcement in its battle against unauthorized data harvesting. By partnering with Cloudflare, the platform is now blocking AI bots from training on creator content, effectively abandoning the honor system that previously allowed crawlers to ignore site directives.
I wrote this review entirely on the new reMarkable Paper Pure, testing the company's commitment to a screen-free, analog experience. Priced at $399, this monochrome tablet arrives six years after the reMarkable 2, specifically targeting users who want to escape the constant pull of notifications, multitasking, and digital fatigue.
As AI development cycles accelerate, founders are facing a tightening pre-seed market where investors increasingly demand tangible milestones. At TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, a specialized panel will address whether a compelling vision alone remains sufficient to secure early-stage funding in an environment dominated by rapid product deployment.
A Zoox robotaxi encountered heavy smoke from an uncordoned fire scene in June, triggering a hard-braking event that forced a remote operator to intervene. The Amazon-owned company has now issued a software recall for its 105-vehicle fleet to improve how autonomous systems identify and navigate around active emergency sites.
A $400 million debt financing deal between General Compute and investment firm Upper90 marks a shift in AI infrastructure, as capital begins to flow toward specialized inference hardware rather than traditional GPUs. The arrangement uses inference-specific silicon as collateral, signaling a move to bypass Nvidia's ecosystem for cost-efficient AI deployment.
When thousands of fireworks spectators crowded the waterfront on July 4, the city’s autonomous fleet didn’t just navigate the crush—it collapsed. A gridlock of immobile Waymo robotaxis, left powerless and stranded in active traffic, has prompted Mayor Daniel Lurie to demand an immediate overhaul of California’s state-level vehicle oversight.
A sudden silence fell over the South Texas launch complex Thursday as SpaceX scrubbed the second flight of its upgraded Starship V3. The countdown reached the ignition phase before an automated safety system halted the sequence, grounding the massive booster just weeks after its inaugural attempt in May.
A devastating ransomware strike has forced Coca-Cola to shutter operations at its Fairlife dairy subsidiary, leaving the future of the brand’s production capacity uncertain. The company confirmed the breach in a regulatory filing, noting that its domestic manufacturing systems were hit, though Canadian facilities remain operational.
Ryan Beiermeister, the former OpenAI vice president of product policy, announced her move to Founders Fund on Monday. The transition follows a high-profile exit from the AI company earlier this year and reunites her with a network of colleagues rooted in her early career at Palantir.
While competitors grapple with the volatility of generative video, Google is doubling down on its Workspace platform by integrating custom digital avatars. Users can now generate a video version of themselves using a simple selfie and a voice recording, signaling a major shift for the company’s internal presentation software.
Roblox is lowering the barrier to game design with "Build," a new mobile feature that transforms simple text prompts into playable 3D environments. By bypassing traditional coding, the tool aims to democratize creation, though it simultaneously intensifies industry debates regarding the proliferation of AI-generated content on the platform.
After two decades of experimental betting on climate tech, BP is dismantling its corporate venture arm. The oil giant confirmed plans to sell a majority of its portfolio—encompassing over 10 companies ranging from green hydrogen to autonomous mobility—to the Nordic private equity firm Verdane by mid-2027.
