Chapter, a Medicare advisory startup co-founded by former Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, has closed a $75 million funding round at a valuation of $1.5 billion led by private equity and venture firm Stripes. The startup helps seniors choose Medicare health plans analyzing doctors, hospitals, and prescription drug coverage. Unlike many other Medicare insurance brokers,...
Category: Tech Crunch
Zoom restores service after an hours-long outage
Zoom says its platform is back online after suffering an outage for much of Wednesday afternoon. “Service has now been restored after the earlier outage, and we sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding,” Zoom said in a post on X at around 2 p.m. Pacific. The trouble began around 11:40 a.m., according to The Verge,...
xAI adds a ‘memory’ feature to Grok
Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, is slowly bringing its Grok chatbot to parity with top rivals like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. On Wednesday night, xAI announced a “memory” feature for Grok that enables the bot to remember details from past conversations with a user. Now, if you ask Grok for recommendations, it’ll give more personalized...
Trump administration reportedly considers a US DeepSeek ban
The Trump administration is considering new restrictions on the Chinese AI lab DeepSeek that would limit it from buying Nvidia’s AI chips and potentially bar Americans from accessing its AI services, The New York Times reported on Wednesday. The restrictions are part of the Trump administration’s effort to compete with China on AI. Months after...
Smashing, the reading curation app by Goodreads’ founder, shuts down
Smashing, an AI-powered app that lets users build a curated list of news and posts, is shutting down, because of its inability to scale rapidly enough.
Grok gains a canvas-like tool for creating docs and apps
Grok, the chatbot from Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has gained a canvas-like feature for editing and creating documents and basic apps. Called Grok Studio, the feature was announced on X late Tuesday. It’s available for both free and paying Grok users on Grok.com “Grok can now generate documents, code, reports and browser games,” wrote...
How Musk manages his growing family: WSJ
Elon Musk says it’s his duty to “make new humans.” Now, a WSJ investigation suggests he may have fathered more than the 14 children already known, with sources claiming the real number could be significantly higher. The report also describes how Musk keeps those details under wraps. At the center of it all, per the...
TS Anil, CEO of Monzo, is joining our StrictlyVC London lineup
StrictlyVC, the boutique brand powered by TechCrunch and known for evening events that invite headliners into smaller rooms to connect with live audiences, is headed back to London on May 13 — and its latest speaker lineup is one of its strongest yet. Joining the stage is TS Anil, CEO of Monzo Bank, the digital...
Nvidia H20 chip exports hit with license requirement by US government
Semiconductor giant Nvidia is facing unexpected new U.S. export controls on its H20 chips. In a filing Tuesday, Nvidia said it was informed by the U.S. government that it will need a license to export its H20 AI chips to China. This license will be required indefinitely, according to the filing — the U.S. government...
Opera adds its Aria AI assistant to Opera Mini browser
Norway-based browser company Opera said today that it is making its AI assistant Aria available to Opera Mini users on Android. This move will help users with low-end devices and data constraints access better AI features. Aria AI can help users get the latest news and information on different topics, learn more about various subjects, and...