Author: TechBrunch
Welcome to a recap of Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups. This episode is packed with deals, antitrust insights, AI, and more. First, Kirsten explained the recent court decision that brought some relief to Elon Musk. Earlier this week, one of the many lawsuits Musk is facing over his firing of 6,000 Twitter employees following the company's acquisition in 2022 was dismissed. The lawsuit, filed by Twitter's former head of human resources and another former manager, alleges that Company X paid fired Twitter employees less severance pay than was promised in their contracts. While this outcome may…
Amazon announced Friday that its AI-powered shopping assistant, Rufus, is now available on the Amazon mobile app to all customers in the U.S. The assistant, which appears in the bottom right corner of the app's main navigation bar, is designed to help customers discover products, compare products and get advice on what to buy. Rufus was initially available as a beta within the Amazon mobile app to select customers in the U.S. ahead of its launch on Friday. Amazon said the chatbot is now being tested with “tens of millions of questions” and is available for all U.S. shoppers to…
The founders of HERO Software didn't set out to help small craftsmen in the construction industry. They started to fight the climate crisis. But in doing so, they stumbled upon a way to help the industry as a whole. Now the company has closed a €40 million Series B funding round and has plans to expand across Europe. “I'm a member of the Green Party and did my PhD in solar power,” co-founder Dr. Michael Kessler told TechCrunch over the phone, “looking at the best ways to reduce carbon emissions through things like solar power.” “The German building industry produces…
Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a startup hoping to pioneer nuclear fusion, has shipped two specialized magnets to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, it told TechCrunch exclusively. The move comes years before CFS plans to commission its SPARC demonstration reactor. It is the first contract of its kind, but likely will not be the last. It signals that the fusion sector has matured to support supply agreements in addition to research and development partnerships. “We recognize that magnets can be useful for other things,” CFS CEO Bob Mungard told TechCrunch. “If you're building a ladder, you don't want to kick it over.…
ByteDance's video editing app CapCut will stop offering free cloud storage to host creative assets from August 5. Over the past few days, users have been receiving notifications that CapCut has changed the terms of its free plan. Previously, the company offered 1GB of free cloud storage, but this will no longer be available. From now on, users will have to pay for cloud storage on CapCut. This will probably be the last time you use capcut before this change begins.I don't have the money to pay for the subscription because I have important things to pay for.You'll need to…
US mobile phone giant AT&T confirmed on Friday that it will begin notifying millions of consumers about a new data breach that allowed cybercriminals to steal the call records of “almost all” of its customers, a company spokesperson told TechCrunch. AT&T said in a statement that the stolen data included mobile and landline customer phone numbers, as well as call and text message records for a six-month period between May 1, 2022 and Oct. 31, 2022, including who called and texted who. AT&T said the stolen data also included records relating to a small number of more recent, unspecified customers…
The full text and final version of the European Union's (EU) AI Law, a risk-based regulation of groundbreaking artificial intelligence applications, has been published in the Union's Official Journal. The new law comes into force 20 days later, on August 1, and its provisions will be fully applicable to AI developers 24 months later, by mid-2026. But the law takes a phased approach to implementing the EU's AI rulebook, with various deadlines between now and when it comes into force, and beyond, for different legal provisions to start applying. EU lawmakers signed a political agreement in December on the bloc's…
British chipmaker Graphcore has been officially acquired by Japan's SoftBank. Rumors of the deal have been floating around for a while, but neither company has confirmed anything until now as negotiations and regulatory approvals dragged on. Even today, the company has not acknowledged the one thing most people would be wondering about: how much Japanese multinational SoftBank values the startup that's being touted as a potential rival to AI chip powerhouse Nvidia. The $500 million figure has been floating around in various reports for months, but at a press conference early Thursday, Graphcore co-founder and CEO Nigel Toon was coy…
Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter) continues to develop a downvote feature that will be used to improve how replies are ranked. While the company has yet to officially announce its plans, recent findings suggest that the downvote feature may actually resemble a “dislike” button, rather than a Reddit-style downvote icon. Code references found in X's iOS app show a button that appears as a broken heart icon next to X's heart-shaped “like” button, as well as a direct reference to the “downvote” feature. Twitter tested a downvote feature in 2021 prior to its acquisition by Elon Musk. However, at the…
A data leak at phone monitoring service mSpy has exposed millions of customers who purchased access to phone spyware apps over the past decade, and the Ukrainian company behind them. In May 2024, unknown attackers stole millions of customer support tickets from mSpy, including attachments such as personal information, emails to support, and personal documents. Hacking of spyware providers is becoming increasingly common, but it still attracts attention because the data often contains highly sensitive personal information – in this case, information about customers who use the service. The hack included customer service records dating back to 2014 that were…