AI
Google’s ‘Sidekick’ offers contextual prompts to get better results from AI
10:57 am PDT • May 10, 2023
Google’s going all-in on generative AI at its I/O developer conference today — so much so that it introduced a new tool called Sidekick that aims to help provide better…
Transportation
Cruise expands supervised self-driving ride-hailing to Houston and Dallas
6:57 am PDT • May 10, 2023
Cruise is rolling out its self-driving cars to more cities — specifically, to Houston and Dallas as it expands its Texas-based presence. Cruise already started testing its vehicles in Austin…
Space
Vast and SpaceX aim to put the first commercial space station in orbit in 2025
3:57 am PDT • May 10, 2023
Artificial gravity space station startup Vast announced that it intends to put the first commercial space station in orbit in August 2025 via launch partner SpaceX — which will also…
Meta is monetizing kids as much as they are the rest of us. But this week the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has alleged that…
Enterprise
How Shopify bungled its latest layoffs and made employees feel like NPCs
11:24 am PDT • May 4, 2023
Shopify laid off 20% of its global workforce today — its second sizeable employee culling after a reduction of 10% announced last July. This latest downsizing also includes the wholesale…
Startups
Filling in the learning disability assessment gaps with Stefan Bauer from Marker Learning
12:22 PM PDT • May 2, 2023
Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Stefan Bauer, the co-founder and…
Space
SpaceX’s Starship didn’t self-destruct immediately as planned during test launch
7:30 am PDT • May 1, 2023
SpaceX’s recent Starship test flight, the first during which it flew with its Super Heavy orbital booster, was a bit more of a mess than it even appeared when it…
Jack Dorsey has been using Bluesky, the app he partially funded that’s built upon a federated and open social networking protocol he advocates, to do some truth-telling about Twitter, Elon…
Snapchat Rolled out their generative AI chatbot My AI to their 750 million monthly users, so it feels like the right time to pause and…
Social
Meta says time spent on Instagram grew 24% thanks to TikTok-style AI Reel recommendations
3:17 pm PDT • April 26, 2023
Meta shared some updated engagement info around its platforms on its Q1 2023 quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, with Meta CFO Susan Li joining CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg to…
Startups
Shifting from founder to VC with Russ Wilcox from E Ink and Pillar VC
9:11 AM PDT • April 25, 2023
We’re coming at you live from TechCrunch’s Early Stage in Boston. Darrell and Becca are joined onstage by Russ Wilcox who founded E Ink and…
SpaceX has launched its fully stacked version of Starship, including the upper stage and the Super Heavy booster, for the first time. The combined launch vehicle stands at nearly 400…
Space
Watch SpaceX try to launch Starship to orbit for the first time… again
5:08 am PDT • April 20, 2023
SpaceX is launching its Starship rocket from its Starbase facility in southern Texas today — the first time it’s trying to fly the fully stacked version of the launch vehicle,…
Startups
Curing disease with CRISPR with Trevor Martin from Mammoth Biosciences
12:44 PM PDT • April 18, 2023
Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Trevor Martin the co-founder and…
Featured Article
Goodbye to the fat middle
Adobe debuted its Firefly generative AI initiative last month, showcasing first a model trained on its own Adobe Stock images, and then yesterday it unveiled what it’s working on initially around video and audio editing. The features sound like powerful, efficiency-enhancing additions to a creative workflow — but they also sound poised to replace a…
6:48 am PDT • April 18, 2023
Space
Rocket Lab adds a suborbital launch option aimed at hypersonic defense customers
6:11 am PDT • April 17, 2023
Rocket Lab is adding a new offering to its suite of services: hypersonic suborbital launches. The new service will be available starting sometime in the first half of this year,…
Blue checkmarks on Twitter and Instagram are used by public figures and media outlets to say, “you can trust I am who I say I am and you can trust…
Social
Elon Musk admits he only bought Twitter because he thought he’d be forced to
3:50 am PDT • April 12, 2023
Elon Musk gave a rare interview to an actual reporter late on Tuesday, speaking to BBC reporter James Clayton on Twitter Spaces. During the interview, Clayton pressed Musk on whether…
Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Lauren Makler, the co-founder and…
Biotech & Health
Woolly mammoth de-extinction is definitely not about making real-life Pokémon
11:05 am PDT • April 4, 2023
Colossal Biosciences bills itself as the “de-extinction company” and is seeking to bring back the woolly mammoth, the thylacine (aka the Tasmanian tiger) and the dodo. Onstage at this year’s…
Virgin Orbit, the low Earth orbit small-payload launch company that was spun out of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, has filed for bankruptcy protection with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.…
Featured Article
A knife so sharp you don’t feel it cut
There’s an ongoing and heated debate about whether generative AI — like the technology that powers OpenAI’s ChatGPT — is either an overblown parlor trick or an existential threat to humanity that’s already raging out of control. The truth is, of course, some more nuanced point between these two extremes, but no matter what side…
1:48 pm PDT • April 3, 2023
Startups
Building Generative AI before it was cool with Angela Hoover from Andi
8:30 AM PDT • March 28, 2023
Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Angela Hoover, the co-founder and…
Featured Article
Sonos Era 100 and Era 300 review: The next generation of great, reliable multi-room sound
Sonos Era 100 and Era 300 speaker review. Both speakers punch above their weight in terms of performance and value.
6:00 am PDT • March 27, 2023
Welcome to another episode of The TechCrunch Podcast where we break down the biggest stories in tech news with the people who cover it. This…
Space
Relativity Space’s first launch fails to reach orbit, but proves its 3D-printing rocket tech works
4:00 am PDT • March 23, 2023
Relativity Space has launched its first rocket, roughly eight years after it founded the 3D-printed space launch company.
Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Ben Lamm, the founder and…
Space
Amazon reveals terminal designs for Project Kuiper satellite internet
7:52 am PDT • March 14, 2023
Amazon’s Project Kuiper has been working on building a competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink low-Earth orbit-based satellite internet for years, but it’s on the verge of launching its first actual prototype…
An auction for the remaining assets of the failed Silicon Valley Bank is reportedly underway, with final bids due this afternoon and a result potentially arriving late Sunday, according to…
Austin’s annual SXSW music, arts and tech festival officially kicked off today, and it’s already clear that there’s going to be at least one central focus for the show: The…
