Elon Musk isn’t the only tech billionaire with power over the federal agencies that regulate his businesses. Since Donald Trump took office, more than three dozen employees, allies, and investors of Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Palmer Luckey have taken roles at federal agencies, helping direct billions in contracts to their companies. Companies owned,…
Sonali De Rycker, a general partner at Accel and one of Europe’s most influential venture capitalists, is bullish about the continent’s prospects in AI. But she’s wary of regulatory overreach that could hamstring its momentum. At a TechCrunch StrictlyVC evening earlier this week in London, De Rycker reflected on Europe’s place in the global AI…
It’s Friday afternoon and I’m listening to Bowdoin College’s radio station, interspersed with ambient car honking noises. I am not in Maine. I am not in a car. I am at my desk. This is Internet Roadtrip. Internet Roadtrip is what I will call an MMORTG (massive multiplayer online road trip game). Neal Agarwal, the…
Google I/O, Google’s biggest developer conference of the year, is nearly upon us. Scheduled for May 20 to 21 at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, I/O will showcase product announcements from across Google’s portfolio. Expect plenty of news relating to Android, Chrome, Google Search, YouTube, and — of course — Google’s AI-powered chatbot, Gemini. Earlier…
OpenAI is poised to help develop a staggering 5-gigawatt data center campus in Abu Dhabi, positioning the company as a primary anchor tenant in what could become one of the world’s largest AI infrastructure projects, according to a new Bloomberg report. The facility would reportedly span an astonishing 10 square miles and consume power equivalent…
Eric Council Jr., 26, was sentenced to 14 months in prison and three years of supervised release on Friday for participating in the hack of the official X account of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The U.S. Department of Justice announced the sentencing in a press release. Council and other hackers took over the…
AI startup Cohere has acquired Ottogrid, a Vancouver-based platform that develops enterprise tools for automating certain kinds of high-level market research. Sully Omarr, one of the founders of Ottogrid, announced the deal Friday in a post on X. He didn’t disclose the terms. Ottogrid will sunset its product, according to Omarr, but give customers “ample…
TechCrunch is joining forces with VivaTech, Europe’s biggest startup and tech event, to select startups for the prestigious VivaTech Innovation of the Year at VivaTech 2025. This partnership will highlight exceptional creativity, technological ingenuity, and industry-transforming potential among exhibiting startups. The VivaTech Innovation of the Year Award acknowledges and celebrates exhibiting startups at VivaTech 2025…
OpenAI announced on Friday it’s launching a research preview of Codex, the company’s most capable AI coding agent yet. Codex is powered by codex-1, a version of the company’s o3 AI reasoning model optimized for software engineering tasks. OpenAI says codex-1 produces “cleaner” code than o3, adheres more precisely to instructions, and will iteratively run…
Epic Games claims that Apple is blocking its Fortnite app from the U.S. and E.U. App Stores. After winning a decisive victory for app developers in a legal battle with Apple, forcing the tech giant to allow external payments in its U.S. App Store without charging commission, Epic Games attempted to resubmit Fortnite to the…
