Author: TechBrunch
It took 16 weeks to get there, but Anthropic's AI app Claude has hit a notable milestone: It has surpassed $1 million in total mobile app revenue across iOS and Android, with nearly half of that revenue generated by U.S. users, according to new data from app intelligence firm Appfigures. However, Claude still lags far behind top rival ChatGPT, which is #1 in total downloads and #26 in revenue in the U.S. on iOS. Claude only ranks 95th in downloads and 68th in revenue in the Productivity category. Image credit: Appfigures Earlier this year, we reported that Claude's mobile app…
Hey everyone, welcome to TechCrunch's regular AI newsletter. A survey released this week shows that Gen Z, a group that regularly receives attention in mainstream media, has very mixed opinions about AI. Samsung recently surveyed more than 5,000 Gen Zers in France, Germany, South Korea, the UK and the US about their opinions on AI and technology in general, and found that around 70% consider AI to be a “go-to” resource not only for work-related tasks like summarizing documents, meetings and conducting research, but also for non-work-related tasks like finding inspiration and brainstorming. But a report released earlier this year…
Meet Starpath, a startup that aims to make life on Mars possible one day. Starpath is developing a robot that can autonomously mine liquid oxygen from the moon, which could be used to develop fuel for spacecraft, potentially allowing humans to travel farther into space than ever before. The plan is pretty bold — no government or company has ever harvested water ice from the moon before — but the company has raised $12 million in seed funding to back its efforts, plus an $800,000 grant from NASA. Founder Saurav Shroff told TechCrunch: “Life can spread to multiple planets in…
FireHydrant, a New York-based incident management startup founded in 2019, said on Wednesday it had acquired former competitor Blameless. The companies did not disclose the purchase price. Both companies help Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) with the difficult job of keeping software and websites up and running. When an issue occurs, they help the SRE team find it and solve it. When it's over, they help perform a postmortem to understand what happened and what processes should be put in place to prevent similar incidents in the future. FireHydrant founder and CEO Robert Ross said the company has been building out…
Tick tock! You have three days left to save up to $600 on tickets to TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. Make sure you secure this low price by August 23rd at 11:59PM PST. More than 10,000 innovators, founders, and investors will gather at Moscone West in San Francisco from October 28-30. Disrupt 2024 is your chance to scale your startup or, if you're an investor, discover promising ventures that need your investment. What to expect at Disrupt 2024 Disrupt 2024 offers an unparalleled opportunity to network with connections in the startup and venture capital space. Not only will you be able to…
In 2020, while working as a product engineer at Pinterest, Katherine Wu started a side hustle. Wu started a milk tea company, Ohtea, hoping to partner with local grocery stores and gift shops to carry her tea. She quickly realized how difficult it was to not only find all the potential retailers, but also to find contacts for each location. The fragmented market was extremely difficult to navigate, which contributed to the company's demise. “I couldn't achieve product-market fit,” Wu told TechCrunch. “It's very hard to find retail information. I had to pull information from several tools, open big spreadsheets,…
Both Apple and Google will be able to breathe easier after the UK competition watchdog announced on Wednesday that it was closing two investigations into their respective mobile app ecosystems, citing administrative priorities. The UK regulator has been investigating Apple's conduct regarding app distribution on iOS and iPadOS mobile devices since March 2021, focusing in particular on the terms of use governing developer access to the App Store. Since June 2022, a similar investigation has also been looking into Google's conduct regarding app distribution on Android devices, as well as the Play Store's rules regarding its own billing system for…
AI giants like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Stability AI have faced plenty of criticism for scraping data and ignoring others' intellectual property when training and running their underlying models. Now, a startup called Story, which announced $83 million in funding, is looking to redress the balance with a blockchain-based platform that allows IP owners to more effectively track usage. According to CEO and co-founder SY Lee, the aim is to create a more “sustainable” IP ecosystem for the next generation of digital consumers and builders. The startup's approach is to think of IP like Lego and use blockchain to make that…
There's a lot of hype around the promise of AI agents right now, but payment is a major limiting factor. Currently, an AI agent may be able to independently plan a vacation for you, but human intervention is required when entering credit card information. Skyfire Systems wants to change this. Skyfire has created a payment network for AI agents to transact autonomously. Of course, AI agents are currently difficult to control, so the idea of them being tied to a bank account is scary. However, Skyfire has put in a number of safeguards to prevent AI agents from overspending, so…
WeTransfer expiration dates have been a big problem for users, especially creative people. The problem is that if you don't download the file the moment you receive the link or email, you'll forget to download it before the link expires. At that point, you'll have to ask for the link to be resent, which can be quite a hassle for both parties. The company is aware of the issue and is now apparently trying to mitigate it by allowing recipients to change the file expiration date in the mobile app through a new “Save Now” option, but this isn't a…