Navin Chaddha, managing director of the 55-year-old Silicon Valley venture firm Mayfield, is betting big on AI’s ability to transform people-heavy industries like consulting, law, and accounting. The veteran investor, whose wins include Lyft, Poshmark, and HashiCorp, recently discussed at TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC evening in Menlo Park why he believes “AI teammates” can create software-like margins…
With Meta successfully poaching a number of its senior researchers, an OpenAI executive reportedly reassured team members Saturday that company leadership has not “been standing idly by.” “I feel a visceral feeling right now, as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something,” Chief Research Officer Mark Chen wrote in a Slack memo…
Looks like Apple has its first bona fide box office hit. The company has already produced critically-acclaimed and award-winning films for Apple TV+. In fact, while Netflix has reportedly spent millions on its Oscar campaigns, Apple’s “Coda” remains the only movie produced by a streaming service to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. It…
A group of “very wealthy people” is set to buy short-form video app TikTok, according to President Donald Trump. “We have a buyer for TikTok, by the way,” Trump said in a Fox News interview on Sunday morning. “I think I’ll need probably China’s approval. I think President Xi [Jinping] will probably do it.” Trump…
For those of you wondering if AI agents can truly replace human workers, do yourself a favor and read the blog post that documents Anthropic’s “Project Vend.” Researchers at Anthropic and AI safety company Andon Labs put an instance of Claude Sonnet 3.7 in charge of an office vending machine, with a mission to make…
An open letter from authors including Lauren Groff, Lev Grossman, R.F. Kuang, Dennis Lehane, and Geoffrey Maguire calls on book publishers to pledge to limit their use of AI tools, for example by committing to only hire human audiobook narrators. The letter argues that authors’ work has been “stolen” by AI companies: “Rather than paying…
Looks like Meta isn’t done poaching talent from OpenAI. Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported that Meta had hired influential OpenAI researcher Trapit Bansal, and according to The Wall Street Journal, it also hired three other researchers from the company. Now The Information is reporting four more Meta hires from OpenAI: Researchers Shengjia Zhao, Jiahui Yu,…
Welcome back to Week in Review! Lots of news for you this week — Travis Kalanick is possibly returning to the world of self-driving vehicles, CoreWeave’s CEO is now worth $10 billion, Apple users aren’t happy with how the company is promoting its new “F1” movie, and much more. Quick note that we will be…
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is arguing that the digital identification approach being promoted by Sam Altman’s World project has real privacy risks. Previously known as Worldcoin, World was created under Altman and Alex Blania’s Tools for Humanity. The organization says it can help distinguish between AI agents and human beings by scanning users’ eyeballs and…
Being a founder often feels like you’re building the plane midflight. You’re juggling fundraising, product-market fit, marketing strategy, hiring — while quietly wondering if you’re even doing it right. TechCrunch AllStage 2025, which is happening on July 15 at the SoWa Power Station in Boston, is built to answer those questions. Whether you’re pitching VCs,…
