What happens when your first 10 hires aren’t people at all? At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, happening October 27–29 at San Francisco’s Moscone West, we’re digging into the new wave of startups replacing or augmenting early employees with AI agents. Think outbound sales, billing, and customer support — automated from day one. This panel, hosted on…
With 4 million app downloads, Estonia-based startup Vocal Image aims to help people improve their voice and communication skills with AI-powered coaching. But out of its 160,000 active users, it may be its CEO, Nick Lakhoika, who best embodies its mission. Lakhoika was born in Belarus, didn’t speak English until his relocation to Estonia, and…
Investors are clamoring to get onto Swedish vibe-coding startup Lovable’s cap table, making unsolicited offers of investment that value the company at more than $4 billion, reports Financial Times. Lovable CEO Anton Osika isn’t currently engaging with the flurry of inbound interest, the Times says, which comes a few weeks after the startup announced a…
Billionaire entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban thinks America’s healthcare industry is broken, and he’s not mincing words about it. “No one looks at the financial side of healthcare and says, ‘This is the way it should work,’” Cuban said on this week’s episode of the Equity podcast. “When you go to the doctor and you…
More clean tech manufacturing investments were canceled in the U.S. in the second quarter than were announced, according to a new study from the Rhodium Group and MIT. Companies canceled $5 billion worth of projects, while only $4 billion in new investments was announced. Actual clean tech manufacturing investments, not just announcements, declined by 15%,…
Will Smith posted a video on social media that shows oceans of fans cheering him on during his recent European tour. “My favorite part of the tour is seeing you all up close,” the caption says. “Thank you for seeing me too.” In these thousands-deep crowds, some fans are holding up signs espousing their love…
Fusion power startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems has raised $863 million from a long list of investors that includes Nvidia, Google, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and more. “We’re continuing our trend here of looking into the world and saying, ‘How do we advance fusion as fast as possible?’” co-founder and CEO Bob Mumgaard told reporters in a…
The Trump administration seems intent on controlling Intel’s ability to make key business decisions around its floundering foundry business unit. According to reporting from the Financial Times, at a Deutsche Bank conference on Thursday, Intel’s CFO David Zinsner shared new details about the company’s recent deal with the Trump administration, which gave the U.S. government…
Anthropic is making some big changes to how it handles user data, requiring all Claude users to decide by September 28 whether they want their conversations used to train AI models. While the company directed us to its blog post on the policy changes when asked about what prompted the move, we’ve formed some theories…
An overly broad age assurance law in Mississippi is leading to arguments about which platforms — Bluesky, Mastodon, or others — offer the best solution for avoiding crackdowns on internet freedoms. The company that makes the Bluesky social app announced last week that it would block access to its service in the state of Mississippi,…
