Author: TechBrunch
The tools that allow government hackers to break into iPhones and Android phones, popular software like Chrome and Safari browsers, and chat apps like WhatsApp and iMessage are now worth millions of dollars, and the prices of these products has doubled in the last few years. It will be harder to hack. On Monday, startup Cloudfence published an updated price list for these hacking tools. These hacking tools are commonly known as “zero-days” because they exploit unpatched vulnerabilities that are unknown to the software's manufacturer. Companies such as Cloudfence and one of its competitors, Zerodium, claim that they acquire these…
The AI craze is here to stay, whether you like it or feel it's more hype than substance. That means a lot of companies have a lot of funding, a lot of regulatory concerns, a lot of academic work, a lot of corporate work. For startups, this means a huge opportunity to introduce new technologies into many industries that can be polished a bit. But if you read the news, you might notice that men are the most mentioned and discussed people in the field of AI today. So TechCrunch's Dominic-Madri Davis and Kyle Wiggers sat down with some women…
Apple updated its App Store rules on Friday to allow emulators of retro console games worldwide with the option to download titles. However, the company cautioned that developers have a responsibility to ensure they follow copyright rules. Android users already have access to a ton of emulators to play old classics on their devices. Apple's update will probably encourage some developers to bring their emulators to the App Store. The company says these emulator apps must use an in-app purchase mechanism to offer digital items. Since Apple has to adjust its App Store rules due to regulations, these types of…
Social network X is rolling out access to xAI's Grok chatbot to premium tier subscribers after Elon Musk announced the expansion to more paid users last month. The company said in its announcement: Support page In some regions, only Premium and Premium+ users can interact with chatbots. After Musk's xAI announced Grok last year, the chatbot became available to Premium+ users, those who pay a subscription fee of $16 a month or $168 a year. The latest update gives users who pay $8 per month access to the chatbot. Users can chat with Grok in “normal mode” or “fun mode.”…
When IVP recently announced the closing of its 18th fund, I called Eric Liau, the growth-stage firm's longtime general partner, and asked him a few questions. First, squeezing out $1.6 billion in capital commitments from investors at this point will seem much more difficult than attracting commitments during the frothy 2021 period, when IVP announced a $1.8 billion business plan. I also wondered about IVP's successor. IVP includes his Figma and Robinhood, whose founders and early investors still cast a large shadow over the company, both figuratively and literally. Fortune magazine recently noted that photos of the company's founder Reid…
Less than a week after the Wall St. Journal reported that Snapchat's feature called “Solar System” was increasing anxiety among teens, the company is making adjustments to how the feature works. I responded with The current ranking system for paid subscribers shows how close you are to your Snapchat friends by showing them their location in the solar system. For example, a friend with a Mercury position is someone you communicate with often, while a friend with a Uranus position is someone you don't get very close to. Of course, online chats don't necessarily correlate with real-world relationships, and such…
Despite the similarities, Instagram threads are not X. At least it's not X yet. The text-centric social network, and meta answer to Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter), missed its moment to shine on Friday when users turned to X again to discuss the New York/New Jersey area earthquake. The surge in traffic propelled #earthquake to the top of X's trending section, followed by other affected regions such as “East Coast,” “Long Island,” “Philadelphia,” “Manhattan,” and “Brooklyn.” I did. Meanwhile, even though the quake occurred shortly before 10:30 a.m. Friday morning, earthquake-related terms didn't appear in the trending section of the…
Welcome to Startups Weekly — a weekly roundup of must-sees from the world of startups. Sign up here to receive the Startups Weekly newsletter in your inbox. This is the best thing that's happened this year… That's right, we're back with all the must-see companies from the current group of Y Combinator startups. Not surprisingly, AI was the top theme, with 86 out of 247 companies calling themselves AI startups, but given that 187 mentioned AI in their pitches, it's in bubble territory. is reaching. We've rounded up some of his favorites, including the 18 most interesting and his TechCrunch…
At the TechCrunch Early Stage 2024 event in Boston on April 25, there's one session to watch for early-stage companies navigating the turbulent waters of technology and staffing strategies. The session, titled “How to Evolve Your Technology and Staff Strategy for Future Rounds,” will be led by Brad Stanton, Managing Director of Business Development at Sand Technologies. Mr. Stanton leverages his extensive experience in consulting and software development at leading global companies such as Dell and Accenture to delve into the complexities of becoming an operational unicorn, not just a commercial unicorn, even in the face of resource constraints. I'll…
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai took to the stage Wednesday at a Stanford University event hosted by the university's business school to share his thoughts on running one of the world's most valuable technology companies. provided some small insights about. Pichai has been a bit unwell lately, so this was a notable appearance. Google is widely seen as a laggard in its generative AI efforts, trailing behind Microsoft-funded OpenAI. That's due to the fact that Pichai's company has focused on his AI for the better part of the past decade, with Google researchers writing a formative paper on the transformer model…