Author: TechBrunch

Humane AI raised over $230 million before shipping any product. And when the company finally released Ai Pin (priced at $699 plus a $24 monthly subscription), nearly every tech critic came to the same disappointing realization. The much-hyped product that promised to break the dominance of smartphones isn't very good. However, some onlookers are adamant that Marques Brownlee, the wildly popular YouTuber known as MKBHD, is solely responsible if the company ultimately fails. Shortly after Humane AI released its long-awaited product, the conversation turned away from the product itself and instead shifted to what Brownlee had to say about the…

Paris-based Dark Space uses a mobile platform designed to launch, attach, and ultimately deorbit uncooperative objects in space, resulting in a collision with orbital debris. We are tackling serious issues. Dark CEO Clyde Lahane said the company aims to become “the SWAT team of space.” Interceptor, a three-year-old startup, is essentially a rocket-powered boxing glove-like spacecraft that can be launched quickly and gently knock wayward objects out of orbit. The interceptor itself is launched from a specially equipped aircraft. Similar to Virgin Galactic's launch, the plane will carry the rocket high into the noisy lower atmosphere, where it will be…

Over the weekend, another social media platform, AirChat, exploded into the fray. This app is like a combination of Twitter and Clubhouse. Instead of typing your posts, post them with your voice. The app instantly transcribes what you say, and as your followers scroll through their feed, they can hear you along with the transcription. Built by AngelList founder Naval Ravikant and former Tinder executive Brian Norgard, Airchat takes a refreshingly intimate approach to social media. There are people I've known online for years, but it wasn't until we started following each other on AirChat that I realized I'd never…

TechCrunch Early Stage is gearing up for another insightful event on April 25th, with one roundtable session promising to be especially enlightening for early-stage founders . This roundtable, titled “Initial Finance Pre-Hire Finance Fundamentals: A Founder's Guide to Navigating Early Financial Decisions,” explores the financial complexities that often accompany the early stages of a startup venture. provides valuable insight for navigating. This roundtable, led by Dan Kang, vice president of finance at Mercury, aims to shed light on core aspects of early-stage financial management. With years of experience building and scaling fintech companies, Kang brings a wealth of knowledge. From…

LinkedIn, the worker-focused social platform, has quietly begun testing another way to increase revenue. This is a new service for small and medium-sized businesses. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that it is working on a new LinkedIn premium company page subscription. This includes things like AI to create content and new tools to increase your follower count, all for a hefty $99 per month. To use them to increase the company's profile. The move is significant because it highlights how Microsoft-owned LinkedIn is continuing to diversify its business model while becoming more useful overall. LinkedIn has been the subject of…

This year is a big year for Reddit. Post-IPO, the platform has a number of product features planned over the next year, and spoiler alert, most of them will be powered by AI. “I think the IPO was an important milestone, but we're focused on building for our users,” Paris Burt, Reddit chief product officer, told TechCrunch. Reddit's product roadmap includes faster load times, more tools for moderators and developers, and AI-powered language translation features to bring Reddit to a more global audience. “This is actually a very nice use of LLM, allowing us to do translation in a more…

TikTok is rolling out TikTok Notes, a competing service to Instagram, in some markets. The app is available on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store in Canada and Australia, the company said. The company said on X that the app's rollout is in the “early stages.” TikTok said the app is a “space dedicated to photo and text content.” /1 We are in the early stages of experimenting with dedicated spaces for photos and text content using TikTok Notes. Starting today, TikTok Notes is available for download and limited testing in Australia and Canada. — TikTokComms (@TikTokComms) April…

CommentSold, an e-commerce technology startup that provides web and video tools to online retailers, on Wednesday culled live-streamed footage to help sellers access websites, apps, and social media platforms. The “AI ClipHero” feature creates short clips from hours of live streaming sales events. Instead of retailers having to rewatch content or find relevant clips to edit and post, CommentSold's new tools allow customers who missed an event to watch the livestream to get a quick overview of the product. Save time by automatically identifying the most interesting parts. This tool uses speech recognition to generate captions. “Shoppable 'instructor' videos are…

Palo Alto Networks this week responded to a newly discovered zero-day vulnerability in one of its widely used security products after malicious hackers began exploiting the bug to infiltrate corporate networks. Companies are urged to apply the patch. The vulnerability, officially known as CVE-2024-3400, was discovered in a new version of PAN-OS software running on Palo Alto's GlobalProtect firewall products. Palo Alto rated this bug as maximum severity because this vulnerability could allow hackers to gain complete control of affected firewalls over the Internet without authentication. Hackers can easily exploit this bug remotely, putting thousands of businesses that rely on…

This week Boston Dynamics retired its famous hydraulically powered Atlas robot. And today, it announced its new electric-powered Atlas robot. It may seem like not much has changed, but Brian Heater of TechCrunch He told TechCrunch Minute that the now-deprecated hydraulic system is outdated. It's not hard to see why Hyundai's Boston Dynamics wanted to go electric. The new Atlas robot is slimmer and appears to have a better range of motion. Size and the ability to bend and maneuver are not superficial factors for humanoid robots. Robots can unlock new use cases and possible work environments. The new Atlas…