Defense tech has gone from a no-go zone for VCs to a hot investment sector. However, dual use — meaning that the technology must also have civilian applications — is still a requirement for most of them, including the NATO Innovation Fund. Estonian VC firm Darkstar breaks from this trend by sometimes investing in purely…
French AI startup Mistral is in talks to raise up to $1 billion in equity from investors, including Abu Dhabi’s MGX fund, reports Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter. Mistral is also talking to French lenders like Bpifrance SACA to raise hundreds of millions of euros in debt, per Bloomberg. TechCrunch has reached out…
SpaceX is looking to raise fresh capital by selling new shares to insiders in a deal that would boost its valuation to around $400 billion, according to reporting from Bloomberg. The company’s strategy is to raise money via a fundraising round and separately hold a tender offer to allow employees to sell some of their…
Elon Musk announced this weekend that his team at xAI made improvements to their AI chatbot Grok. Days later, Grok has already gone on several blatantly antisemitic tirades such as criticizing Hollywood’s “Jewish executives” and claiming that Jews are often “spewing anti-white hate.” This isn’t exactly new behavior for Grok, an X account operated by…
LangChain, an AI infrastructure startup providing tools to build and monitor LLM-powered applications, is raising a new round of funding at an approximate $1 billion valuation led by IVP, according to three sources with knowledge of the deal. LangChain began its life in late 2022 as an open-source project founded by Harrison Chase, who was…
Also Inc., the micromobility startup spun out of Rivian earlier this year, has raised $200 million from Greenoaks Capital, according to a new report from Bloomberg News. The funding round brings Also’s post-money valuation to $1 billion. The startup raised $105 million from Eclipse Ventures earlier this year when it was cleaved from Rivian. Also…
The U.S. Justice Department has confirmed the arrest of Chinese national Xu Zewei, an alleged prolific contract hacker who carried out cyberattacks for China. Xu was arrested in Italy at the request of U.S. prosecutors. Xu and another Chinese national Zhang Yu, who remains at large, are accused in a nine-charge indictment of “hacking and…
Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, is stepping down from his role later this month, as announced by the company on Tuesday. Sabih Khan, who currently serves as the senior vice president of operations, has been appointed as the new COO. Williams has decided to step down in order to retire and hopes to “spend…
A new report estimates that AI will be a larger-than-ever part of the online shopping process during Amazon’s Prime Day sale, which began Tuesday morning. Amazon’s annual sale, which this year spans four days (July 8-11), is predicted to drive $23.8 billion in online spending across U.S. e-commerce retailers, as other businesses run their own…
Games giant Activision took down “Call of Duty: WWII” due to hackers exploiting a flaw in a specific PC version of the game, which led to several players getting their computers hacked, TechCrunch has learned. Last week, Activision announced that it brought offline the Microsoft Store version of “Call of Duty: WWII,” a 2017 first-person…
