Tech Crunch

Welcome back to Week in Review. This week we’re looking at OpenAI potentially charging $20,000 a month for a specialized AI agent, the unexpected return of early-internet darling Digg, a company genetically engineering mice to have mammoth-like fur, and more! Let’s do this. OpenAI could charge up to $20,000 per month for specialized AI “agents.” […]

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Last year was a monumental year for the AI industry in the U.S. and beyond. There were 49 startups that raised funding rounds worth $100 million or more in 2024, per our count at TechCrunch. Three companies raised more than one “mega-round” last year, and seven companies raised rounds at $1 billion or larger. How […]

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Something special went down in the desert outside of Las Vegas this weekend: two EVs took on the Mint 400 for the first time. Since the Mint 400 launched back in 1969, vehicles in this iconic desert endurance race have been powered by dead dinosaurs. Spectators and race participants alike are used to the smell […]

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The downsides of doomscrolling and screen addiction are well documented, but while many of us would like to spend less time glued to a smartphone, it’s easier said than done. Much has been written about the so-called dumbphone revival, where individuals regain some respite from pings and push notifications by downgrading to a basic feature […]

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Europe is waking up to the need to invest in defense, and so are European VCs. But with a painful history of Soviet occupations, Lithuania didn’t wait for the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to reach its third anniversary to commit 5% to 6% of its GDP to military spending — and fund […]

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Investor interest in AI-coding assistants is exploding. Anysphere, the developer of AI-powered coding assistant Cursor, is in talks with venture capitalists to raise capital at a valuation of nearly $10 billion, Bloomberg reported. The round, if it transpires, would come about three months after Anysphere completed its previous fundraise of $100 million at a pre-money […]

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Microsoft is accelerating its push to compete with OpenAI, its longtime collaborator, by developing its own powerful AI models and exploring alternatives to power products like Microsoft’s Copilot bot. Microsoft has developed its own AI “reasoning” models comparable to models like OpenAI’s o1 and o3-mini, the The Information reports. OpenAI is said to have refused […]

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SpaceX’s Starship spiraled out of control while in space during a test flight on Thursday, marking the second launch in a row that the vehicle has run into a fatal problem on its way to orbit. The company launched Starship using its Super Heavy booster and things looked normal for the first eight minutes of the […]

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Google co-founder Larry Page is building a new company called Dynatomics that’s focused on applying AI to product manufacturing, according to The Information. Page is reportedly working with a small group of engineers on AI that can create “highly optimized” designs for objects and then have a factory build them, per The Information. Chris Anderson, […]

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Intuitive Machines has landed a second spacecraft on the moon, just one year after accomplishing the feat for the first time ever. Unfortunately, much like that first attempt, it seems the company’s spacecraft may have tipped on its side. The lunar lander, called Athena, touched down on the moon’s surface at around 12:30 p.m. ET […]

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