Category: Tech Crunch

Welcome back to Week in Review! We’ve got lots of news for you this week: There were CEO shake-ups at Instacart and 11x; the web series is back — kind of; Threads is getting video ads; and much more. Let’s get to it! Big move: Instacart CEO Fidji Simo will become OpenAI’s CEO for Applications,...

Google has agreed to pay the state of Texas $1.375 billion to settle two lawsuits accusing the company of tracking users’ personal location, incognito searches, and voice and facial data without their permission. The lawsuits were brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in 2022. Facebook’s parent company Meta agreed to pay a similar amount...

From cybersecurity and aerospace to generative 3D, startup leaders are scaling ambitious companies from European soil and taking on global markets. In this conversation at the StrictlyVC event in Athens, we talked to three founders about what it takes to go from idea to impact while navigating the continent’s unique challenges — and why building...

John Tsioris sold Instashop to Delivery Hero for $360 million. Nate Clarke took Tyme from startup to global digital bank. In this candid conversation at the StrictlyVC event in Athens, the two entrepreneurs open up about what drives them, how they’re choosing their next bets, and why they’re investing in ecosystems that others overlook.

Manus AI is one of the hottest AI agent startups around, recently raising $75 million at a half-billion-dollar valuation in a round led by Benchmark. But two unnamed sources told Semafor that the investment is now under review by the U.S. Treasury Department over its compliance with 2023 restrictions on investing in Chinese companies. Benchmark’s...

Google I/O, Google’s biggest developer conference of the year, is nearly upon us. Scheduled for May 20 to 21 at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, I/O will showcase product announcements from across Google’s portfolio. Expect plenty of news relating to Android, Chrome, Google Search, YouTube, and — of course — Google’s AI-powered chatbot, Gemini. Here’s...

Being a founder often feels like you’re building the plane midflight. You’re juggling fundraising, product-market fit, marketing strategy, hiring — while quietly wondering if you’re even doing it right. TechCrunch AllStage 2025, which is happening on July 15 at the SoWa Power Station in Boston, is built to answer those questions. Whether you’re pitching VCs,...

Josh Raffaelli, who has deep roots as a Silicon Valley investor and has backed a number of Elon Musk companies, is suing his former employer, the massive trillion-dollar AUM Brookfield Asset Management, reports The New York Times.  Much of Raffaelli’s complaint concerns how Brookfield covered pandemic-related real estate losses and alleges the company fired him...

Microsoft employees aren’t allowed to use DeepSeek due to data security and propaganda concerns, Microsoft vice chairman and president Brad Smith said in a Senate hearing today. “At Microsoft we don’t allow our employees to use the DeepSeek app,” Smith said, referring to DeepSeek’s application service (which is available on both desktop and mobile). Smith...

In April, South Korea’s telco giant SK Telecom (SKT) was hit by a cyberattack that led to the theft of personal data on approximately 23 million customers, equivalent to almost half of the country’s 52 million residents. At a National Assembly hearing in Seoul on Thursday, SKT chief executive Young-sang Ryu said about 250,000 users...