Author: TechBrunch
Elon Musk has denied reports that one of his companies, Tesla, is in talks to split revenue with another company, xAI, and allow it to use the startup's AI models. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that, according to a draft deal outlined to investors, Tesla will use the xAI model for its driver assistance software (FSD, or Full Self-Driving). The AI startup will also help develop software for Tesla's voice assistant in cars and for its humanoid robot, Optimus. Musk wrote on his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) that he had not read the WSJ article, but called…
After weeks of political limbo, France has a new prime minister, former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, but parliament remains deeply divided, creating uncertainty for many sectors of the economy, including the country's dynamic startup ecosystem that has so far benefited from popular support. French Tech is not just a term referring to 25,000 startups in France, but also an initiative supported by the French Tech Mission, a French government agency. The mission's director, Clara Chapaz, is stepping down this month at the end of her three-year contract, she told Les Echos. The timing is coincidental, but noteworthy: Chapaz told TechCrunch…
Bending Spoons, the Italian app company that owns Evernote and Meetup, plans to lay off 75% of the staff at file-transfer service WeTransfer, TechCrunch has learned. Bending Spoons acquired the Dutch company in July for an undisclosed amount. The company confirmed WeTransfer's layoff plans to TechCrunch. Employees who will be let go will be notified once Bending Spoons has gone through local regulations regarding layoffs in each country. Dutch media reported that WeTransfer has more than 350 employees. Bending Spoons CEO Luca Ferrari said the company typically researches the organizations it acquires to determine the best vision for the business…
Like most big tech companies these days, Meta has its own flagship generative AI model called Llama. Llama is somewhat unique among the major models in that it is “open,” meaning developers can download and use it as they like (with certain restrictions). This contrasts with models like Anthropic's Claude, OpenAI's GPT-4o (the basis for ChatGPT), and Google's Gemini, which are only accessible via APIs. But to give developers options, Meta has partnered with vendors like AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure to offer cloud-hosted versions of Llama, and the company has also released tools that make it easier to…
Update 9/8: As always, more rumors are popping up in the days leading up to the event. Some of the more interesting recent ones (all Apple Watch related) include that blood pressure monitoring from the Apple Watch Series 10 won't be coming to the Watch Ultra 2, the Watch's Apple Intelligence features will be limited but will be integrated into future fitness coach-style features, and both models will reportedly have sleep apnea features, though they may not be available at launch. Sometimes a headline is all you need. Apple is unveiling the iPhone 16 at its “It's Glowtime” event on…
Nearly 20 years ago, Andrew Bissell was sitting in the living room of his Edinburgh-area seaside home. He and his wife, Susan Lang Bissell, had just sold their medical imaging startup, and he was thinking about the future. “Am I retiring or am I going to go back?” Bissell told TechCrunch. Around that time, he was leafing through a science magazine when he came across an article about climate change that predicted sea levels could rise by between 30 centimeters and 1 meter by the end of the century. “Wait a minute,” he said to himself, “if that were to…
The most common advice given to startup founders is to identify a problem in your life and find a way to solve it. Multi-exit founder Paul Friedman has a big problem: his beloved Oakland Athletics are relocating to Las Vegas, via Sacramento. “It's interesting how much of an impact a sports team can have on the psyche of a town,” Friedman told TechCrunch, “and when a team decides to abandon a town, it creates heartbreak. Fans have described it as a death in the family, and that death is a family member who hosted a party.” For Oakland sports fans,…
Bluesky continues to grow: The company announced that it had added 3 million new users as of Friday morning, bringing its total user base to more than 9 million. In other words, the social platform's user base has grown by about 50 percent since the Brazilian courts banned X (formerly Twitter). The ban propelled Bluesky to the top of Brazil's free iPhone app rankings, where it now ranks second only to Meta competitor Threads. As well as announcing its latest user numbers, Bluesky assured old and new users that video support is “coming soon.” The platform began as a Twitter-backed…
Warp, an emerging New York payroll startup, has been in the spotlight following some controversial posts from accounts associated with the company. On Thursday, an account posting under the name Vittorio wrote to X, “I prefer white people. White people do more and they are better suited for the roles. I need to climb the Kardashev scale. I let black people run and play basketball.” The account profile included a badge identifying “Vittorio” as affiliated with Warp, whose software focuses on automating state-by-state tax compliance and was in incubator Y Combinator's winter 2023 cohort. The badge, created by X (formerly…
As a young immigrant in Brooklyn, Moe Shaikh often thought about his father's taxi income: His father would say he made $100, but Shaikh couldn't understand why only $60 went home (the rest, he learned, went to middlemen). This childhood experience piqued his curiosity about the financial system, but also made him aware of its shortcomings and the need for change. Shaikh studied finance, economics and psychology at Hunter College before earning an MBA from the University of Rochester. After graduating, he began cutting his teeth in the professional world at companies like BlackRock and Boston Consulting Group. But when…