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 […]
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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 […]
Nikola founder Trevor Milton accused of trying to derail bankruptcy case
A court hearing on the sale of bankrupt electric truck startup Nikola’s assets to Lucid Motors was going smoothly on Friday. No objections had been filed to the transaction, and Delaware bankruptcy Judge Thomas Horan verbally approved it without hesitation. Until, that is, a lawyer piped up on the Zoom call towards the end of […]
Blue Water Autonomy comes out of stealth promising autonomous naval ships
A new ship-building startup called Blue Water Autonomy has emerged from stealth with the promise of developing captain-less naval ships. The Boston, Massachusetts-based company has raised a $14 million seed round from Eclipse VC, Riot, and Impatient Ventures. The startup was founded in 2024 by former members of the U.S. Navy, leaders of Amazon Robotics, […]
Ex-OpenAI staffers file amicus brief opposing the company’s for-profit transition
A group of ex-OpenAI employees on Friday filed a proposed amicus brief in support of Elon Musk in his lawsuit against OpenAI, opposing OpenAI’s planned conversion from a non-profit to a for-profit corporation. The brief names twelve former OpenAI employees: Steven Adler, Rosemary Campbell, Neil Chowdhury, Jacob Hilton, Daniel Kokotajlo, Gretchen Krueger, Todor Markov, Richard […]
GM cuts 500 jobs because of weak demand for BrightDrop electric vans
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 […]