Author: TechBrunch

To keep the excitement going for TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, we'll be hosting special side events after hours that you don't want to miss out on. Today is the last day to register for free. Maximize your brand's exposure to 10,000 Disrupt attendees and the vibrant Bay Area tech scene during Disrupt Week, running from October 26 to November 1. Choose an event that fits your brand's vibe: a cocktail party, casual happy hour, niche meetup, skill-building workshop, silent disco, comedy night, or more. Please submit your application by tonight's deadline. Benefits of hosting side events Maximize your reach! Engage with…

Instagram is adding new features like photo editing, sticker creation, themes, and more to spice up your inbox. The company is trying to make Instagram more appealing as a messaging app with features that make conversations more engaging. Some of these features may not be new, but they're all about removing friction that can stop users from sending messages. Additionally, inboxes, or DMs (direct messages), are a competitive feature for social apps, including those competing with Twitter/X. Other startups such as Bluesky have integrated DMs directly into their apps, but Instagram X rival Threads still relies on Instagram's existing DMs…

Today is your last chance to get $200 off TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 Student Passes. Maximize your savings by choosing the Student 4+ Bundle and bring four or more friends to join you in the experience. Prices increase after midnight, so don't miss out on this great savings. With the semester in full swing and the job market still competitive for new graduates, we know many students are under financial pressure and this discount is here to help you when you need it most. Network with over 10,000 tech, startup, and venture capital leaders and accelerate your career at Disrupt 2024,…

The Equity Podcast crew wraps up another eventful week, covering real estate, AI agents, gambling, and the secondary market (a form of legal gambling, of course). Mary Ann Azevedo, Becca Szczak, and Devin Caldway acknowledged at the start of this Friday's episode that the X/Twitter ban situation in Brazil is probably too complicated an issue to give an opinion on. Let's think about that for a moment. In this week's Deals, Devin started off by talking about You.com spending $50 million to tackle harder AI tasks — tasks that Google Search can't solve. The company aims to become the go-to…

You can build your own reminder and task management system or use a service that works for your team. But it can be hard to get your family and friends to use the same task management app. iOS app Karo (which means “to do” in Hindi) aims to solve this problem, even if they don't use the app. This isn't Mustafa Yusuf's first task management product. The India-based developer also has another to-do app called Tasks for more complex task management. Yusuf told TechCrunch that he developed Karo because other apps didn't offer the flexibility to assign tasks to people…

Starting a mobile phone company is surprisingly hard — some would say foolish — and OSOM Products, which rose from the smoldering ashes of Essential in 2020, is closing up shop. Android Authority was first to report the news, having obtained an internal announcement from CEO Jason Keats. OSOM's plans to launch a privacy-focused phone have always been a difficult road to navigate, and like Essential before it, the company has dealt with its own legal battles, specifically a lawsuit from a former employee alleging financial mismanagement. Meanwhile, the company has successfully released a mobile device, but it wasn't a…

Salesforce has acquired New Jersey-based data management and protection solutions provider Own Company for $1.9 billion in cash. The acquisition would be Salesforce's largest deal since it acquired Slack for $27.7 billion in 2021. The company reportedly explored buying data management software company Informatica earlier this year but ultimately fell through. Salesforce GM Steve Fisher said in a press release that the acquisition was ” [Salesforce’s] It's our commitment to providing secure end-to-end solutions that protect our customers' most valuable data.” “Data security has never been more important, and Own's proven expertise and products will strengthen our ability to provide…

The Justice Department on Thursday charged five Russian military intelligence officials with hacking into several Ukrainian government agencies, an unnamed U.S. government agency in Maryland and computers in 26 NATO member states. The Department of Justice announced an indictment against five members of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces (GRU), specifically Hacking Unit 29155. The indictment names GRU Colonel Yuri Denisov, head of cyber operations, and Lieutenants Vladislav Borovkov, Denis Denisenko, Dmitry Goloshubov and Nikolai Korchagin, as well as a civilian co-conspirator, Amin Sitgal, who was previously indicted for some of the same crimes. Prosecutors allege that…

Advances in generative AI tools have created a new problem on the internet: the proliferation of synthetic nude images that resemble real people, and Microsoft took a big step Thursday by giving victims of revenge porn a tool to stop their Bing search engine from returning such images. Microsoft announced a partnership with StopNCII, an organization that empowers victims of revenge porn to create digital fingerprints of these explicit images (whether real or fake) on their devices. StopNCII partners then use those digital fingerprints, or what are technically called “hashes,” to remove the images from their platforms. Microsoft's Bing joins…

Vay, the startup that introduced remote car-sharing in Berlin and Las Vegas, is looking to expand into commercial and business-to-business services, boosted by recent deals with French carmaker Peugeot and Belgium-based Poppy. Vay isn't a traditional ride-hailing or car-sharing startup, nor does it operate a robotaxi service, but customers in Las Vegas or Berlin can simply open the Vay app to hail a car, which will arrive without a human at the wheel. The Berlin-based startup, which was founded in 2019 and has raised about $110 million to date, has developed remote-driving technology that allows an employee sitting in an…