Author: TechBrunch
Circle, one of the world's largest issuers of USDC, is a stubcoin pinned to US dollars, ending its first trading day as a public company at $83.23 per share. The IPO POP shows national investors' interest in cryptocurrencies and ridiculous currencies, particularly amid the Trump administration's supportive stance on cryptocurrencies. A massive surge in Circle's first-day trading could encourage institutional investors to raise IPO prices on future lists. The imminent IPOs include Omada Health, which is priced Thursday, and Klarna, a fintech that is scheduled to list next week. The company, which sold its shares, set its initial market value…
Perplexity received 780 million questions in May, CEO Aravind Srinivas shared it on stage at the Bloomberg Technology Summit on Thursday. Srinivas said that AI search engines are seeing growth of over 20% per month. “If we can maintain this growth rate, we'll give you a year and ask a billion questions per week,” Srinivas said. “And on the first day of 2022 we only did 3,000 queries for one day, so that's pretty impressive. From there to 30 million queries a day, it was incredible growth.” Srinivas noted that the same growth trajectory is possible, especially in the new…
Bonfire Social, a new framework for building communities on the Open Social Web, launched Thursday at the Fediforum Online Conference. Bonfire Social is a Federated App, but it has the same underlying protocol as Mastodon (ActivityPub), but is designed to be more modular and customizable. This means that the bonfire community has more control over what your app features, how features and defaults are in place, and what your roadmap and priorities include. There is clearly a destructive bend in the software. The software describes it as a place where “all living things thrive, communities thrive, and there is no…
X announced Thursday that it would begin an experiment to recognize posts that people who normally disagree with are preferred. This experiment utilizes the platform's crowdsourced community notes feature. This is currently used when content is marked misleading or incorrect. Starting Thursday, a subset of community note contributors will evaluate feedback on a particular post and display callouts to provide feedback. Callouts will be displayed based on similar activity at the beginning of the post. X says this feedback will help develop open source algorithms that can identify posts that people with different perspectives prefer. Image credits: x Contributors are…
On Thursday, Google announced an update to its Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview model. This is what the company claims is superior for certain programming tasks. The company calls it an “updated preview,” and announced by Google about a month ago, based on the upgrade to the Gemini 2.5 Pro. Google says the model will be commonly deployed in “a few weeks” and will be available from today on the AI developer platform AI Studio and Vertex AI and Gemini apps. Image credit: Google “[Gemini 2.5 Pro] In a blog post, Google wrote: [on] A very challenging benchmark that assesses the…
Snapchat announced on Thursday it will launch a WatchOS app that will allow Apple Watch users to access social networks on their wrists. This new app allows users to use Snapchat across mobile, web, tablets and Apple Watch. Users can now preview incoming messages and reply using keyboard, doodles, dictations, or emojis. The company says the new app allows users to do things like “here” when they meet at a restaurant, or quickly letting their friends know that they're “here” when they send quick replies while they run. I was already able to preview Snapchat messages on my iPhone on…
The major developments that demonstrate the potential of Open Social Web were announced on Thursday at an online meeting known as the Fediforum. The makers of Bridgy Fed, a tool for connecting decentralized open social networks such as Mastodon and Bluesky, have developed a new project called Bounce, which allows users to migrate social network followers across networks with different protocols. This is an important step to making the open social web of the lock-in ecosystem offered by high-tech giants like Meta, SNAP, Google, Tiktok and X a more viable alternative. You can also delete your account and delete your…
Starting Monday, Apple will be holding the 2025 Worldwide Developers Conference, with keynote speech scheduled for Monday at 10am (Pt/1 PM ET). The company plans to announce changes to its operating system, iOS, iPados, MacOS, Watchos, TVOS and Visionos. We are also looking forward to a dedicated gaming app and new AirPod features. You can watch keynotes and subsequent sessions via Apple's Events page, or access Apple's YouTube channel to watch. Alternatively, you can bookmark this page and view the keynote through the embed below. The company plans to overhaul the operating system design with the aim of making it…
Apple's annual developer conference, WWDC 2025, starts at 10am Pt/1 PM ET. Monday. Last year's event was notable for its focus on AI, and this year, there has been considerable pressure on the company based on that promise. As in the past few years, the company is focusing on software updates and new technologies that are rumoured to have the most significant design changes since the introduction of iOS 7. Here's how to watch the live stream of the keynote speech: iOS has received the most dramatic design changes for over a decade When Apple introduced a massive overhaul to…
We are the final stretch. The exhibitor table at TechCrunch All Stage, which will be held in Boston on July 15th, is almost completely sold out, with under 48 hours left to officially book. TC All Stage is built for founders This is not just another startup event. Brands connect directly with investors, customers and presses to discover who will discover new and what will come next. If there is anything to display, please display it on the show floor of TC All Stage. Specials to be exhibited at TC at all stages This is a preview of what you've…