News Section

Startups & Venture Capital

AI unicorn funding rounds, major technology M&A acquisitions, and emerging venture ecosystem trends.

Wired AIabout 6 hours ago

Ads in Chatbots Have Arrived. Here’s What’s Working—and What’s Not

Anthropic is holding firm on the pledge made in its Super Bowl commercial this year to keep Claude ad-free. The company’s recent IPO filing didn’t even mention the possibility of selling ads to make money from the AI chatbot. It’s easy to maintain the high ground with about $112 billion in investor cash. The chatbot industry, though, may find selling ads necessary to defray the high costs of generating AI responses. OpenAI is all in, with...

6 min read1

Wiredabout 8 hours ago

The Blue Tsunami Swept Doctors and Scientists Into Office

What do Michigan senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, South Carolina senator-elect Annie Andrews, Ohio governor-elect Amy Acton, and North Carolina representative-elect Jamie Ager have in common, beyond their victories in this week’s midterm elections? Each is either a doctor or a scientist. And each had the backing of the political action committee 314 Action Fund, which focuses on electing pro-science voices to public office. “We really benefit...

5 min read4

TechCrunchabout 10 hours ago

Harbinger raises $240M after expanding into defense

Electric truck startup Harbinger has raised a $240 million Series D funding round as it expands its portfolio of products, including battery storage and defense applications. The funding comes almost one year to the day after the Los Angeles-based company announced a $160 million Series C, which included an initial truck order from FedEx. Harbinger has now raised more than $650 million to date, according to Bloomberg News, which first...

2 min read1

The Vergeabout 11 hours ago

The FAA is finally ditching floppy disks

It’s the year 2026 and the Federal Aviation Administration is still running critical pieces of American airspace on 3.5-inch magnetic floppy disks. # The FAA is finally ditching floppy disks Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wants credit for dragging America’s air traffic control out of the 1980s, but retiring 3.5-inch floppies won’t fix a broken system running on overworked controllers and private-sector hype. But those technology...

4 min read2

Wired AIabout 12 hours ago

Reddit Founder Says Building Social Media Apps Is ‘Not Cool Anymore’

Alexis Ohanian wants to figure out the future of user-generated content. According to the Reddit cofounder, building social media apps is “not cool anymore” and so much of the internet has been compromised. “I'm expecting some better version of the group chat to be that new version of UGC,” Ohanian told WIRED senior correspondent Lauren Goode at the inaugural WIRED World Fair. Ohanian has a complicated relationship with the internet. He...

3 min read2

TechCrunchabout 12 hours ago

Axiom Math wants to keep AI slop out of mathematics

It feels like AI is cracking a new math problem every week. Last month, OpenAI alone released 719 manuscripts claiming solutions to some of the field’s hardest problems. Even the computer checks can slip. After years of AI slop, it’s fair to wonder whether math is next. AxiomMath is betting math can avoid that fate, not by slowing down, but by standing on firmer ground. The $1.6B startup wants to build a verified foundation that AI agents...

5 min read1

Wiredabout 12 hours ago

Area Man Feels Joy Online for First Time in Years

When The Onion made a bid to buy conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ *Infowars* two years ago, Donald Trump had just won his second presidential election—and, for many, things were looking dark. “You guys remember ... how fucking hopeless we felt?” Onion CEO Ben Collins asked an audience at the WIRED World Fair in Miami Wednesday. At the time, he asked his partner, researcher and journalist Kat Abughazaleh, if she was up for walking “into a...

4 min read1

TechCrunchabout 12 hours ago

Zipline hits $21.5B valuation as Walmart expands bet on drone delivery

Zipline has raised $1.5 billion and ramped up its partnership with Walmart, a pair of deals that have raised the autonomous drone delivery and logistics startup’s profile and valuation. Zipline and Walmart reached a new multi-year agreement to add 300 drone delivery sites across the United States. The two companies have had a drone delivery agreement since 2021, but this deal is a significant jump from the 21 active drone delivery sites they...

2 min read1

TechCrunchabout 13 hours ago

Dropbox acquires Tigris Data for $350M to bolster its AI infrastructure

Dropbox is making a big push into AI infrastructure with a $350 million acquisition of cloud technology company Tigris Data, marking what appears to be its largest acquisition to date. Announced Thursday, the deal is expected to strengthen Dropbox’s AI infrastructure capabilities and support the development of DBX Agent Cloud, a new storage platform aimed at businesses and developers building AI models and agents. Dropbox told TechCrunch...

2 min read2

TechCrunchabout 14 hours ago

RadianX promises solar-powered devices that never need charging

Batteries have transformed electronics, giving us powerful phones, tablets, e-readers, and smart watches. But eventually, every battery runs flat. Maybe not for long. One startup, RadianX, envisions a world in which portable and edge devices can cut the cord for good without running out of power. The key is a better breed of solar panels. RadianX has developed a new type of solar material from a family known as perovskites. The material is...

3 min read4

TechCrunchabout 16 hours ago

Agility is the first pure humanoid robot company on the stock market. Are you buying?

Almost a year ago to the day, Figure AI CEO Colby Adcock responded to some gentle social media taunting from rival robotics company Agility with a prediction: “You’ll be bankrupt in \<12 months.” Instead, Agility is going public through a reverse-merger that will see it become a publicly-traded company and raise $465 million in new capital from retail investors and a tranche of private funding. The transaction will take place through a...

5 min read7

Tinhte.vnabout 17 hours ago

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan: Millions of AI agents will be the biggest security challenge

In a conversation with Jasper Zhang, CEO of Hyperbolic, Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel, gave important warnings about the future of artificial intelligence. This event took place when Hyperbolic had just successfully raised $30 million, with the participation of Walden Catalyst, a venture capital fund headed by Tan himself. The CEO affirmed that the development momentum of AI will continue and be even greater than the previous Internet revolution....

4 min read8

Wired AI1 day ago

The Blue Wave Has Tech Bros Scrambling for Data Centers in Space

A wave of Democratic candidates across the country—and notably in Texas, a national data center hotspot and home to Elon Musk’s SpaceX—won their state and congressional races on Tuesday, including many candidates who voiced opposition to the data center industry. The results have sent some corners of the tech industry looking to the heavens for answers. In recent hours, data center enthusiasts have proclaimed on social media that they’re...

5 min read10

TechCrunch1 day ago

Almost no one uses AI agents to book their Uber, company says

Very few people are using personal AI agents to order Ubers, apparently. On the transportation giant’s third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, the company said that only four rides were ordered through an AI agent during its busiest week in October: the week of Halloween. While more people used an AI agent to order food through its delivery service, Uber Eats, the volume was still fairly small compared to the overall number of...

3 min read11

Wired AI1 day ago

The Biggest Pro-AI Super Pac Network Didn't Really Impact the Midterms

Leading the Future, the biggest pro-AI super PAC network, is walking away from the midterm elections with just over $20 million still in the bank and a roster of dozens of successful congressional candidates from both sides of the aisle. At first glance, that looks like a win. The details tell another story, though. The donations went overwhelmingly to safe candidates, and the results in the small handful of riskier races that Leading the...

6 min read16

TechCrunch1 day ago

Titan OS raises $46 million to expand its smart TV OS internationally

Barcelona-based smart TV operating system maker Titan OS has raised $46 million in new funding, consisting of both equity and debt, the company announced on Wednesday. The money comes from debt facilities provided by funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, along with existing investors like Highland Europe and Mangrove Capital Partners. The startup, which secured $58 million last year, has now raised $110 million in total. The company said...

3 min read12

SiliconANGLE1 day ago

Oumi’s Frontier AI Engineer now builds AI agents and retrains the models behind them

### Oumi’s Frontier AI Engineer now builds AI agents and retrains the models behind them Enterprise artificial intelligence platform company Oumi PBC today extended its Frontier AI Engineer agent so it can build AI agents for customers and retrain the models those agents run on. The release goes after a problem that tends to surface once agents leave the demo stage. A failing agent might have a bad prompt, a broken tool or a weak underlying...

4 min read15

Tinhte.vn1 day ago

Popular AI: wrong AI installs Quick look for file formats that are not yet available

Quick Look is a feature of MacOS, pressing space allows you to quickly see what the file contains inside, from excel, docs, to adobe apps like ps, image formats like png, jpg, nef, cr2, cr3 3D files like stl... It creates an extremely neat and intuitive habit of previewing files with space because sometimes you just try to see what it is and don't want to click to open the software. But the problem with Quick Look is that there are some...

2 min read11

SiliconANGLE1 day ago

Sentra raises $150M to control what AI agents can reach in corporate data

### Sentra raises $150M to control what AI agents can reach in corporate data Data security startup Sentra Inc. today revealed it has raised $150 million in new funding to expand its platform for controlling what artificial intelligence agents can reach inside corporate data stores. Sentra, which provides data security software, says its business grew more than 300% over the past year. The platform works on data at rest, wherever an...

4 min read15

Ars Technica2 days ago

California fights "preposterous" Trump admin demand to scrap state broadband laws

California is accepting $1.42 billion in broadband grant funding from the Trump administration, but the state is not accepting the Trump administration's demand that it stop enforcing a net neutrality law and other telecom regulations. California's stand against the Trump administration could result in multiple legal battles involving the state, federal government, and Internet providers seeking government funds. Although California told the...

1 min read12

SiliconANGLE2 days ago

Generative media inference startup fal raises $1.3B at a $16B valuation

### Generative media inference startup fal raises $1.3B at a $16B valuation Generative media inference startup fal today announced it has raised $1.3 billion in new funding at a valuation of $16 billion, according to Bloomberg. The company will spend the money on computing power and on hiring beyond its current 185 employees. Fal provides a cloud platform for running image, video and audio generation models, and developers reach all of them...

3 min read35

TechCrunch2 days ago

Orbital Matter 3D printed the first rigid beam in the vacuum of space

A satellite built by the German startup Orbital Matter satellite 3D printed a half-meter long beam out of a custom plastic material, in what executives called a first for a free-flying spacecraft in orbit, and a step toward constructing large structures in space. The company’s small satellite, Replicator-2, was launched on a SpaceX rideshare mission this summer, with four of the company’s 3D printers onboard. Each printer can create a rigid,...

3 min read18

AWS Machine Learning Blog2 days ago

Build a semantic layer for agentic AI with EDB Postgres AI and Amazon Bedrock AgentCore

In this post, we show how to build a semantic layer for agentic AI using EDB Postgres AI. We run a Strands Agents agent on Amazon Bedrock AgentCore that queries the layer to answer customer 360 (C360) questions. Earlier posts in this series built the same C360 pattern with Stardog’s knowledge graph, Denodo’s data virtualization platform, AtScale’s dimensional model, and Strategy Mosaic’s linked models. EDB Postgres AI puts the semantic layer...

20 min read21

TechCrunch2 days ago

Rivian spinout Also was working on an e-moto project in Kenya — until it walked away

Also, the micromobility startup spun out of Rivian in 2025, quietly started and then walked away from an electric two-wheeler pilot project in Kenya earlier this year, as it sought to focus its resources on its consumer e-bike and autonomous vehicle ambitions, TechCrunch has learned. The project received grant funding from the Shell Foundation, an independent charity established by the British oil and gas giant Shell plc. A section of the...

5 min read6