Author: TechBrunch

Today's search is full of AI Slops and it's not uncommon for people to add “Reddit” to their queries in the hopes of finding useful answers to their questions. Google is trying to integrate Reddit results into the search interface, noticing trends, and Reddit is also experimenting with its own AI search. However, the company has higher ambitions. It wants to be the go-to search engine that people use. “We're excited to announce that we're hoping to see the team's efforts to meet the needs of our customers,” said Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit during a second quarter conference call…

Will Griffith was nothing more than his job as a venture investor at Iconiq when he met Dylan Field, a 19-year-old college dropout. This leads to one of his signature seed investments at a startup called Figma. On Thursday, Figma was closed to a market capitalization of $115.50 and $47 billion from the opening price of the $33 IPO, and was released after a stock price. And Griffiths couldn't be more enthusiastic about his admiration for the company. “I'm going to one of these user meetings, and there are 15,000 people here and 5,000 have Figma tattoos,” Griffith smiled. From…

Yoel Roth, formerly the director of trust and safety at Twitter, shares concerns during the match about the future of the open social web and the ability to combat misinformation, spam, and other illegal content such as child sex abuse material (CSAM). In a recent interview, Roth was worried about the lack of moderation tools available to Fediverse. This is an open social web that includes apps such as Mastodon, Threads, and Pixelfed and open platforms such as Bluesky. He also recalled key moments of trust and safety on Twitter, like decisions to ban President Trump from the platform, decisions…

Meeting your partner online is no longer a taboo. The evidence is everywhere. It is at your fridge door, where you are cutting wedding invitations of friends you met on Tinder. It's on your Instagram feed. There, a friend shares Sappy's posts about her 1st anniversary with the woman she met at the hinge. However, when Zeke Rothfels tells people that she met her husband online, she doesn't talk about swiping left until she finally finds the man on the right. She talks about fostering relationships across the US-Canadian border with men she met in a Facebook meme group. “Is…

At one point, an app called Twitterrific was one of the most popular iPhone apps for browsing Twitter. These days, the company behind that app and many of the apps have struggled. And AI may be partially responsible. On Wednesday, the company known as IconFactory admitted it was at an intersection and sold several apps due to lack of resources. The announcement positioned the issue as a situation where IconFactory's app catalog has grown to include too many apps to keep up, and doesn't have enough time to do so, but the reality is that today's business has no choice…

Quora's AI platform POE announced on Thursday that it will release an API that will allow developers to easily access different models or bots for their own applications. There is no additional fee for the API. Instead, usage is tracked through the POE's existing point-based subscription plan. There, each model call costs the number of points set. For example, low quality image generation via GPT-4o with a 1:1 aspect ratio and 1024 x 1024 size cost 328 points. Today, Poe's plans include the $4.99/month plan (10,000 points per day), the $19.99/mo plan (1 million points per month), the $49.99/mo plan…

As Tiktok's future remains uncertain, the company is consolidating its core products and trust and safety teams into a single organization, according to an internal memo that was reviewed by Shou Zi Chew, and viewed by TechCrunch. “This new team will help us to better leverage our technical capabilities across both business and safety goals, and help us move faster as we develop next-generation safety technologies,” Chew wrote in a note. As part of the changes, the memo said Adam Presser, head of operations, trust and safety at Tiktok, will become the general manager of Tiktok USDS. Andy Bonillo, current…

The tech layoff wave is still kicking in 2025. Last year saw more than 150,000 job cuts across 549 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. So far this year, more than 22,000 workers have been the victim of reductions across the tech industry, with a staggering 16,084 cuts taking place in February alone. We’re tracking layoffs in the tech industry in 2025 so you can see the trajectory of the cutbacks and understand the impact on innovation across all types of companies. As businesses continue to embrace AI and automation, this tracker serves as a reminder of the human…

TechCrunch took place in 2025, which took place in 2025, October 27th-29th at Moscone West, San Francisco. A candid conversation is coming to the builder stage. Funding routes that don't start in the valley Today's founders have more capital paths than ever before. But how do you navigate them? And do you know which ones actually support your growth? In this session, listen to Erik Allebest, CEO and co-founder of Chess.com. Gale Wilkinson, Vitalize's founder and managing partner. Kay Makishi, Vice President of Lupoff/Stevens Family Office. Each brings a different perspective on how to raise funds without giving up on…

Self-driving cars have long been touted as “around the corner,” but the reality of what is needed to bring self-driving cars onto the streets is not simple. TechCrunch's 2025 will be held at Moscone West in San Francisco from October 27-29, Waymo Co-Ceo Tekedra Mawakana will join the chaotic stage due to the current state of AVS and the wide range of conversations that the industry will take from here. Within the reality check of autonomous driving Headlines often focus on crashes, controversy, or exaggerated promises, but Tekedora has been navigating the real world path to autonomous mobility for years.…