Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Over the 13 years reporting on Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, I have watched the rise, fall, near misses, and rise again of the company and...
Category: Tech Crunch
How Kalshi helped prediction markets go mainstream
Kalshi is the largest prediction market in America, creating an entire trading economy around political, sports, and cultural events. To some, including several states, it’s an illegal effort that requires gambling licenses. To others, including some courts and members of the Trump administration, it’s just a new financial opportunity. In a conversation with TechCrunch’s Maxwell...
ChatGPT adoption skyrockets in India, but monetization may be trailing
ChatGPT has seen India as its largest market by monthly active users and the second largest by downloads, per the external data seen by TechCrunch.
Amazon Kindle’s new feature uses AI to generate recaps for books in a series
Amazon is introducing a new “Recaps” feature for Kindle users to help them recall plot points and character arcs before picking up the latest book in a series. While the company’s press release for the new feature doesn’t mention AI, Amazon confirmed to TechCrunch that recaps are AI-generated. “We use technology, including GenAI and Amazon...
Federal judge allows the EFF’s lawsuit against DOGE and Elon Musk to proceed
A federal judge ruled on Thursday that a lawsuit attempting to stop the Department of Government Efficiency from obtaining records on millions of Americans may proceed. In conjunction with privacy watchdog the Electronic Frontier Foundation and two labor unions, more than 100 current and former federal employees sued DOGE, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management...
Midjourney releases V7, its first new AI image model in nearly a year
Midjourney, one of the first AI-based image generators on the web, has released its first new AI image model in nearly a year. Dubbed V7, the model began rolling out in alpha around midnight EST on Thursday, comes a week after OpenAI debuted a new image generator in ChatGPT that quickly went viral for its...
Amazon’s new AI agent will shop third-party sites for you
Amazon is starting to test a new AI shopping agent, a feature it calls “Buy for Me,” with a subset users, the company announced in a blog post Thursday. If Amazon doesn’t sell something that users are searching for, the Buy for Me feature will display products to users that other websites are selling. Then,...
StrictlyVC is heading to London this May
StrictlyVC is crossing the Atlantic! On 13 May, London will play host to an exclusive StrictlyVC evening, delivering the same high-caliber VC insider content that has made these events a must-attend for investors and startup leaders alike. If you’re a venture capitalist or founder looking to exchange insights with peers and dive into powerful, no-filter...
OpenAI’s o3 model might be costlier to run than originally estimated
When OpenAI unveiled its o3 “reasoning” AI model in December, the company partnered with the creators of ARC-AGI, a benchmark designed to test highly capable AI, to showcase o3’s capabilities. Months later, the results have been revised, and they now look slightly less impressive than they did initially. Last week, the Arc Prize Foundation, which...
Stablecoin issuer Circle takes another stab at a public listing
Circle, the issuer of USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, filed to go public on Tuesday. The company, which makes money from interest earned on its reserve assets, reported that its 2024 revenue and reserve income was $1.68 billion, up from $1.45 billion the year prior. Circle’s 2024 net income was $156 million,...