Safe Superintelligence (SSI), the AI startup led by OpenAI’s co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, has raised an additional $2 billion in funding at a $32 billion valuation, according to the Financial Times. The startup had already raised $1 billion, and there were reports that an additional $1 billion round was in the works. […]
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Cofertility’s radical model for women: Freeze your eggs for free by donating half of them
In recent years, focus on career and delayed marriage age is driving some women to consider preserving their fertility through egg freezing. But the steep cost of the procedure, estimated at $10,000 to $15,000 per attempt, means many women can’t afford it during their most fertile years: 20s and early 30s. Cofertility, a startup founded […]
Trump exempts smartphones, laptops, and semiconductors from new tariffs
The Trump administration is carving out big tariff exemptions for the tech industry. While President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would delay many of the market-shaking tariffs that he’d announced the previous week, he kept a universal baseline 10% tariff in place, while also increasing tariffs on Chinese goods to 125% (on top of […]
The xAI–X merger is a good deal — if you’re betting on Musk’s empire
When Elon Musk announced that his AI startup, xAI, had acquired his social media company, X (formerly known as Twitter), in an all-stock deal, it raised some eyebrows. But in many ways, the deal made sense. xAI’s chatbot, Grok, was already deeply integrated with X, X was floundering financially, and Musk needed a way to […]
Forerunner’s long game: As startups stall before IPO, all options are on the table
Thirteen years ago, Forerunner Ventures began helping to usher in a new era of consumer startups, including Warby Parker, Bonobos, and Glossier. None has gone through a traditional IPO process. Warby Parker was taken public through a special purpose acquisition vehicle. Bonobos was acquired by Walmart. Glossier is still privately held, along with many other […]
Meta’s vanilla Maverick AI model ranks below rivals on a popular chat benchmark
Earlier this week, Meta landed in hot water for using an experimental, unreleased version of its Llama 4 Maverick model to achieve a high score on a crowdsourced benchmark, LM Arena. The incident prompted the maintainers of LM Arena to apologize, change their policies, and score the unmodified, vanilla Maverick. Turns out, it’s not very […]
The most interesting startups showcased at Google Cloud Next
Google Cloud announced a long list of impressive AI startups as customers during its Cloud Next conference this week
Law professors side with authors battling Meta in AI copyright case
A group of professors specializing in copyright law has filed an amicus brief in support of authors suing Meta for allegedly training its Llama AI models on ebooks without permission. The brief, filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, calls Meta’s fair use defense “a […]
38 consumer startup founders lobby over Trump tariffs: One faces a surprise $200K bill
Small businesses could be crushed under President Trump’s increased tariffs, according to an open letter by 38 female consumer product founders. While Trump paused his tariff increases for 90 days for various countries – setting the rate at 10% for now – China’s was raised to 145%, which includes the previous 20% levy. In the […]
TechCrunch Mobility: Jeff Bezos backs a secretive EV startup and Lucid snaps up Nikola’s assets
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Tariffs, tariffs, tariffs. If there is one certainty in this uncertain moment, it’s this: U.S. tariff policy is likely to change again. As of Friday morning, there […]