Author: TechBrunch

This week on a StrictlyVC download, TechCrunch editor-in-chief Connie Loizos will sit with Katelin Holloway, co-founder of Seven Seven Six, a generalist company that has raised over $1 billion with three funds. They discuss seven Seven Seven Seven Six unconventional investment thesis spanning AI-powered stone carving robots, all the way to mining the commercial moon. Holloway explains why helium-3 harvested from lunar dust will produce returns within ten years, how climate and space technology converge in unexpected ways, and why maintaining human connections remains important as AI changes its workforce. StrictlyVC downloads posts every Tuesday. Subscribe to Apple, Spotify, or…

According to US National Intelligence Director Tarsi Gabbard, the UK has removed the demand for special access to Apple's cloud systems, or “backdoors,” following negotiations with the Trump administration. “As a result, the UK has agreed to remove its mission to allow Apple to access protected, encrypted data for American citizens and provide a “back door” that has been violated by our civil liberties.” Over the past few months, I have worked closely with my UK partners. @potus and @VPto ensure that private data from Americans remains private and that our constitutional rights and civil liberties are protected. As a…

In a move reminiscent of Facebook's early days, Tiktok is launching a new feature that allows college students to find and connect with others on campus. This feature, known as Campus Verification, allows users to add university campuses to their Tiktok profiles and view a list of students at the school. To access the feature, users go to their profile and[学校の追加]You need to tap the button. From there, they will need to enter the name of the school and then select the year of graduation. To make sure they actually go to the school they went to, they will need…

Spotify introduces new features that allow subscribers to create more professional and personalized playlists. On Tuesday, the company launched a custom transition feature. This allows you to automatically add transitions between tracks in your playlist, or use preset options such as Fade, Rise, Blend to customize your own transitions using other options. To use the feature, open any playlist and select “Mix” from the toolbar to start editing. You can also customize tracks with different transition styles, adjust settings such as volume, EQ, effects, and more, and use the waveform and beat data to find the best spot for each…

Openai launched a new, inexpensive ChatGPT paid subscription plan called £399 ($4.60) a month in India, called ChatGpt Go. The company had turned on local currency prices for all plans a few days ago. The launch also allows users to pay through UPI (Unified Payment Interface), the Indian payment framework. Nick Turley, Vice President of Openai and Head of ChatGpt, said the plan will increase message, image generation and file uploads 10 times in the free tier. The ChatGpt Go plan allows better memory retention for more personalized responses, Turely said. ChatGpt Go has been released in India. This is…

A July data breaches at US insurance giant Allianz Life allowed hackers to steal the identity of 1.1 million customers, according to the data breach notification site. Allianz Life disclosed the data breach in late July, confirming that hackers had stolen the “majority” of their 1.4 million customers and employees from their cloud store's customer relationship database. Allianz had previously refused to accurately check the number of people affected by the violation. I used Pwned. The Data Breach Notification Site, a data breach notification site, warns people when their email addresses get caught up in a data breach, and in…

According to new data from App Intelligence Provider Appfigures, even when App Store downloads are growing, Elon Musk X is struggling with Android devices regarding new installations. In July 2025, Google Play X downloads fell significantly as new installs fell 44% year-on-year, even if iOS downloads increased by 15%. This sudden drop in installations has lowered the overall average for X, with a 26% drop in total mobile download downloads compared to the previous year in July. This is slightly better than the previous month, when total downloads fell 35% thanks to a sudden drop in Android downloads. Image credits:…

You need to keep focused. You cannot open Tiktok, Instagram, or a small phone game you want to play. If it fails, the knitting project will rely on its ability to maintain focus, making anthropomorphic beans very sad. This is the premise of Focus Friend, a productivity app created by Honey B Games and Hank Green. This is a longtime online creator/entrepreneur/educator/sock salesman. The app was released last month, but Focus Friend is currently only gaining momentum on the App Store charts. With Green and his brother John Green posting more, it reaches fourth among all free apps and second…

Substack, the newsletter subscription platform, will begin taking advantage of the US app store options that allow users to purchase outside of Apple's in-app purchase system. This feature is permitted by a change to the App Store rules in May as a result of an anti-trust lawsuit against the tech giant by Epic Games. Since then, many top apps have been moving to provide in-app purchase links pointing to their own websites, such as Spotify, Patreon, and Amazon Kindle apps. In the case of Subscack, external payment support benefits both of the company. This means that there is no need…

Xai's Grok Chatbot website publishes several prompts for its AI persona, including “crazy conspiracyists” designed to hand over users to the belief that “secret global cobalts” control the world. TechCrunch has confirmed the system prompt exposure first reported by 404 media. They include the instructions of various AI personas, like Anni, “silly nerds, but a bit of a nerd.” [her] An edgy look. ” This revelation follows Glock's wild tangent on “Mechahitler,” followed by a planned partnership between Elon Musk's Zai and the US government to make Groke available to federal agencies. Also, following the uproar following the leaked guidelines…