The Latest
Government & Policy
India urges political parties to avoid using deepfakes in election campaigns
12:39 am PDT • May 7, 2024
India’s Election Commission has issued an advisory to all political parties, urging them to refrain from using deepfakes and other forms of misinformation in their social media posts during the…
Climate
Electricity Maps calculates the carbon intensity of electricity consumption to optimize usage at scale
11:30 pm PDT • May 6, 2024
If you’re an electricity nerd, chances are you’ve already spent quite a few hours looking at Electricity Maps and its mesmerizing export flow animations. This open source data visualization project…
Whether you love or hate celebrity culture, the Met Gala is an event. Those less jaded among us get to see all of the biggest stars take their boldest fashion…
Update: The Starliner mission will not move forward until no earlier than May 17, NASA announced. The long delay is to ensure launch provider United Launch Alliance can roll the…
AI
Wayve raises $1B to take its Tesla-like technology for self-driving to many carmakers
4:00 pm PDT • May 6, 2024
Wayve, a U.K.-born startup developing a self-learning rather than rule-based system for autonomous driving, has closed $1.05 billion in Series C funding led by SoftBank Group. This is the U.K.’s…
Featured Article
The Kendrick-Drake feud shows how technology is changing rap battles
It seems we’re all in agreement: Kendrick Lamar defeated Drake in one of the most engrossing rap battles of the decade. To add insult to injury, Drake also threw himself into legal hot water when he deepfaked the late rapper Tupac. The tension between Lamar and Drake goes back decades, but this latest flare-up began…
3:50 pm PDT • May 6, 2024
Featured Article
Apple iPad event: What to expect
So far, the biggest surprise about May 7’s “Let Loose” event is that it’s happening at all. We’re just over a month out from Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference, and yet the company determined there was enough news to warrant a stand-alone event. iPads (including the iPad Pro and iPad Air) will be the focus,…
3:12 pm PDT • May 6, 2024
Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. Let’s jump in! Want to reach out with a tip? Email Aria at aria.techcrunch@gmail.com or send me a message on Signal at 512-937-3988.…
Social
The Net Gala hosts its first event for the stylish and chronically online
2:37 pm PDT • May 6, 2024
The warehouse was dim and slightly misty. But the bar was open, and a photographer was snapping away anyway. On Friday, the crowd followed the white rabbit to Brooklyn for…
Transportation
Lucid loses longtime Apple and Intel exec who steered software division
2:03 pm PDT • May 6, 2024
Lucid Motors’ senior vice president of digital Mike Bell has resigned from his position. The company said in a filing Monday that the longtime Apple and Intel executive’s resignation is…
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San Francisco, CA
Jun 11th
StrictlyVC – Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
May 21st
StrictlyVC – London
London
With U.S. regulators continuing to ramp up their scrutiny of crypto, startups and founders in the space are looking overseas to find friendlier climates to support their growth. One such…
As DocuSign reportedly explores a sale to private equity, it’s acquiring a company itself. On Monday, DocuSign announced that it’s buying Lexion, a contract workflow automation startup, for $165 million.…
Opera’s in-browser AI product, called Aria, can now summarize text-based web pages on Android. The AI-powered web page summarizing tool quickly condenses news articles, blog posts or research papers in…
Venture
TechCrunch Minute: Newchip, Techstars and what happens when startup accelerators fail
9:00 am PDT • May 6, 2024
Building a startup is hard. Building a company that helps startups is similarly difficult. That’s the takeaway from TechCrunch reporting on Techstars and Newchip. In the case of Newchip, the…
An international coalition of police agencies have resurrected the dark web site of the notorious LockBit ransomware gang, which they had seized earlier this year, teasing new revelations about the…
Plenty of founders have a difficult decision to make early in their journey: where to set up shop. For deep tech founders, the decision is complicated by the fact that…
Startups
Dorsey leaves Bluesky, tech giants do more with less, and the next IPO
8:16 AM PDT • May 6, 2024
News that Jack Dorsey is out at Bluesky caused a stir this weekend. After all, Dorsey is a former Twitter co-founder and CEO, so his investment of…
Robotics
Alphabet-owned Intrinsic incorporates Nvidia tech into robotics platform
8:00 am PDT • May 6, 2024
The first bit of news out of the Automate conference this year arrives by way of Alphabet X spinout Intrinsic. The firm announced at the Chicago event on Monday that it…
OpenAI is collaborating with Stack Overflow, the Q&A forum for software developers, to improve its generative AI models’ performance on programming-related tasks. As a result of the partnership, announced Monday,…
Hardware
Biden administration plans $285M in CHIPS Act funding for digital twins
3:00 am PDT • May 6, 2024
President Joe Biden’s administration is looking to fund efforts that improve semiconductor manufacturing by using digital twins. Digital twins are virtual models used to test and optimize physical objects and…
