Author: TechBrunch
Spotify released its annual Loud & Clear report on Tuesday, detailing information on Music Streaming Service royalty payments. Spotify revealed earlier this year that it paid $10 billion to the music industry in 2024, but the new report provides detailed figures on payments to dispel reports that the company will not properly reward artists for their work. Artists who received one for every million Spotify streams are 10 times the same stream share would have been generated 10 years ago by the artists who generated an average of over $10,000 in 2024. Spotify advertises the amounts they pay to artists…
Bolt's controversial co-founder Ryan Breslow, who returned as CEO earlier this month, said Monday that he sparked a legal battle and helped him (temporary) expulsion over the $30 million personal loan he took from the company. Breslow has also announced that Bolt will launch “all apps” that will “soon” integrate all one-click checkouts from Crypto to Financial Services. The legal battle over loan began in 2023 when an active Bolt investor sued Breslow. Activant alleged that Breslow added the startup with a $30 million debt by borrowing that amount and paying back the default. The lawsuit was finally resolved, and…
Silicon Valley has been fascinated by the outlook of AI not only as a productivity enhancer, but also as a catalyst for creating successful companies with a team that is far more lean than it had in the past. The rich stories of AI startups are reaching tens of millions of revenues, with fewer people up to 20 people. Due to the low overhead, some startups can be inspired by reducing venture capital funds, especially in the early stages. Terrence Rohan, a fund investor who has been investing in Y-combinator since 2010, says he has noticed a “shift in atmosphere”…
Apple has released a patch for the bug that it “may have been exploited in a very sophisticated attack on a particular targeted individual.” The Zero Day bug was found on WebKit, a browser engine powered by Safari and other apps, and according to Apple, hackers were able to escape WebKit's protective sandbox with “malicious web content.” A sandbox is part of an operating system that prevents hackers from accessing data from other parts of the system, even if it is compromised. The patch was released on Tuesday for Mac, iPhone, iPad, Safari and its Vision Pro headsets. Is there…
Elon Musk's Office of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has fired more than 100 employees working for the US government's cybersecurity agency CISA, including “Red Team” staff. People who asked not to name said that when network access was revoked without prior warning, the affected employees were immediately x. The layoffs that occurred in late February and early March are the latest staff cuts to clash with federal cybersecurity agencies since the start of the Trump administration. CISA spokesman Tess Hier declined to comment on the latest job cuts affecting agencies and did not say how many employees were affected. Hyre told…
Pocket Casts, a podcast app acquired by Automattic in 2021, makes web players free. The company says the move will provide an alternative to the large platform closure ecosystem where algorithm-driven content is prioritized and stored behind the paywall. The podcast was built on open technology. This is an open, distributed standard RSS designed to create online audio and other content such as news and blog posts. Starting Tuesday, Pocketcast will celebrate the open nature of the podcast by making web players at their disposal. This means that anyone can visit the Pocketcast website and stream the episodes they need…
The intersection of robotics and AI continues to attract attention from investors and big technology. The latest indicator? Dexterity, a startup specializing in industrial robots with “human-like” finesse, has raised $95 million with a post-money valuation of $1.65 billion per Bloomberg. Investments, including support from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sumitomo Corp., highlight the growing demand for AI-powered machines, reportedly investigating investments in humanoid robots powered by AI amid waves of excitement from companies such as Meta and Apple. task. In terms of dexterity, the robot is designed to perform repeated, sometimes dangerous tasks in warehouses and factories, such as box…
On Tuesday, OpenAI released a new tool designed to help developers and businesses build AI agents (automated systems) that can use their own AI models and frameworks to accomplish tasks independently. This tool is part of OpenAI's new answers API, allowing you to develop custom AI agents that can perform web searches, scan corporate files, and navigate websites. The answer API effectively replaces Openai's assistant API, which is scheduled to go to sunset in the first half of 2026. The hype around AI agents has grown dramatically in recent years, despite the tech industry having a hard time showing or…
Speaking at the SXSW conference in Austin, high-tech investor and entrepreneur Mark Cuba shared his thoughts on how AI technology can help small businesses outperform the competition. In short, he told the crowd that AI is not the answer in itself. It is intended to serve as an aid that can help entrepreneurs by starting to grow the business and making it easier to answer questions along the way. Cuba suggested that today's entrepreneurs should spend “every moment of learning about AI” on that possibility. “The more rapidly it changes, the more changes there are,” he said, adding that for…
The company, which focuses on helping Fintech, banks and businesses take on small businesses more easily, raised $20 million in the seed funding round, Startup tells TechCrunch exclusively. It's a round seed, especially in these days when capital is difficult to get. However, the founder's history may have something to do with that. Brothers Sal Rehmetullah and Suneera Madhani also founded another fintech company, Stax Payments. They left the startup nearly a decade after being valued “$1.1 billion north.” Madi said after raising $245 million in repeated revenues, over $140 million. (Stax still works, but the pair has not been…