General Motors is laying off 500 workers at a factory in Canada because of weak demand for its all-electric BrightDrop vans, according to CNBC. GM told CNBC that the cuts were not related to the ongoing trade war being waged by President Donald Trump. The company is cutting one of the two shifts at the […]
Tech Crunch
ChatGPT became the most downloaded app globally in March
ChatGPT became the world’s most downloaded app in March, excluding games, topping the usual contenders for the No. 1 spot, Instagram and TikTok. This is the first time the app has topped the monthly download charts and ChatGPT’s biggest month ever. According to new data, ChatGPT’s installs jumped 28% from February to March to reach […]
YouTube considers a daily timer for users looking to cut back on Shorts
YouTube is looking into potentially offering a feature that would allow users to set a daily timer to limit how long they spend on Shorts. Recent findings from the beta version of the YouTube app, first reported by Android Authority, suggest that the platform is developing a feature to help users stop the endless scrolling […]
Stripe CEO says company management regularly asks customers for ‘candid feedback’
Digital payments platform Stripe invites customers to join its management team meetings on a bi-weekly basis so it can get “candid feedback,” according to co-founder Patrick Collison. In an April 8 post on X, the fintech giant’s CEO said the company has a customer join for the first 30 minutes of the meeting, which is […]
Ireland’s data regulator investigates X’s use of European user data to train Grok
Ireland’s data regulator, the Data Protection Commission (DPC), said Friday that it has opened an investigation into Elon Musk’s X over the social media platform’s use of personal data collected from European users to train Grok. The DPC will investigate how X processes personal data “comprised” in publicly accessible posts by European users for the […]
Parallel Systems is building autonomous electric rail for short-distance freight
The business of moving goods in the United States is dominated by trucks, which handles about two-thirds of the 20.2 billion tons of freight that’s transported annually. Parallel Systems founder and CEO Matt Soule wants to change that by putting a modern autonomous and electric twist on the centuries-old railroad system. The Los Angeles-based company […]
OpenAI is winding down its GPT-4 AI model in ChatGPT
OpenAI will soon retire GPT-4, an AI model it launched over two years ago, from ChatGPT, the company announced in a changelog on Thursday. Effective April 30, GPT-4 will be “fully replaced” by GPT-4o, the current default model for ChatGPT, OpenAI said. However, GPT-4 will remain available in OpenAI’s API. “In head‑to‑head evaluations, [GPT-4o] consistently […]
Less than a month to get your exhibit table for TechCrunch Sessions: AI
TechCrunch Sessions: AI is fast approaching. So, what does that mean for you? It means exhibit tables are nearly gone — and now’s your chance to grab one before they’re all sold out. If you’ve got a game-changing product to showcase to the AI world, don’t keep it quiet. Exhibit your brand in front of […]
Dropbox Chief Customer Officer Eric Cox plans to step down, per filing
Dropbox’s chief customer officer, Eric Cox, plans to step down, according to a document filed with the SEC on Friday. Cox will remain in his current role for “a period of time” to help with the transition, per the filing, and then will continue as a “non-executive” employee through mid-August. Dropbox didn’t immediately respond to […]
Startups Weekly: Enjoying the reprieve
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. Startups aren’t isolated from the world. But this week, funding news felt positively uncorrelated from the overall news cycle, offering somewhat of a reprieve — or perhaps […]