Author: TechBrunch

Pinterest CEO Bill Ready told investors about the company's second quarter revenue call that social apps and inspirational bookmarking sites could be considered “AI-enabled shopping assistants.” However, he believes that the Agent Web, where AI agents shop on behalf of users, is still far away in the future. The remarks were made in response to questions about Agent Web. This can affect businesses like Search Funnel and Pinterest. Investors may be concerned that if AI begins to understand users' interests, instead of using platforms like Pinterest, they can preemptively instruct users to shop from their own personalized recommendations. “I think…

Startups face more exit options and more uncertainty than ever before. So this essential conversation brings to the publication stage of TechCrunch Surprate 2025, which takes place on October 27th-29th in Moscon West, San Francisco. Whether you're already focusing on liquidity events or beginning to expand, this is your chance to hear what top VCs are looking for and how to set up a company for long-term success. The Best Two in Business – Renegade Partners Roseanne Wincek and Sapphire Ventures' Jai Das break the decision-making process from a time when they move to a way to prepare when they…

OpenVibe, an app that allows you to follow open social networks such as BlueSky, Mastodon, Threads, and Nostr in one place, has expanded its capabilities so you can now follow your favorite news sites and blogs. To that end, startups are adding support for RSS (aka very simple syndication or news feed), an open standard that allows you to subscribe to automatic updates from websites such as new articles and blog posts. This addition makes OpenVibe more convenient to keep up with your interests and other important information without switching between multiple newsreaders, websites, or social networking apps. This new…

In February, AI coding startup Windsurf was in talks to raise a major new round at a $2.855 billion valuation led by Kleiner Perkins. Sources familiar with the issue said the transaction did not occur. Instead, the news broke in April, and the startup had planned to sell itself to Openai with roughly the same rating: $3 billion. The deal has become famous, but one big question remains. If startups are growing so rapidly and are attracting VC interest, why would they sell at all? Insider told TechCrunch that it could actually become a money-taking business because of all the…

This week, Instagram introduced a new snapshot-like feature called Instagram Maps. This allows users to share their latest active locations with others and discover location-based content. If you decide to turn on Instagram map locations, the locations will only be updated when you open the app, or only if you are running in the background. This means that no continuous real-time location updates are provided. This is different from a snapmap. This allows users to choose whether the location will be updated or in real time only when the app is opened. Meta says that position sharing is turned off…

After the second quarter's revenue beat, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky shared his thoughts on the company's AI strategy, warning investors that AI Chatbots still can't be considered a “new Google.” This means that while AI chatbots can lead new leads into the travel and services business, they are not entirely replacing the referrals that dominant search engines bring. At least not at this time. “I think we still feel the space,” the executive told investors during a second-quarter revenue call. “My warning is that I don't think AI agents should think of chatbots like Google. I don't think they should…

Duolingo announced Wednesday that it had beaten quarterly revenue estimates despite the company's faced widespread rebound over its choice to accept generate AI over human workers. Duolingo shares rose almost 30% on the news. In April, CEO Luis von Ahn shared that Duolingo would become an “AI-First” company, abolishing the use of contract workers. He also discouraged the team from hiring more employees unless they can automate more work. With the use of generator AI, Duolingo has introduced 148 new language courses. This has more than doubled the previous product. “Without AI, it would take decades to expand content to…

X owner Elon Musk told advertisers in a live discussion Wednesday that the platform plans to introduce ads to Grok's responses, as reported by the Financial Times. The move will help PowerX's struggling advertising business after former CEO Linda Jaccarino retires. “So far, our focus has been on making Grok the smartest and most accurate AI in the world, and I think we've made a large part of it all out,” Musk said during the broadcast. “So we'll focus on how we pay for those expensive GPUs.” Musk told advertisers that X will allow marketers to pay to appear in…

Elad Gil is not ahead of the curve. He actually lives there. Before most of the world asked ChatGpt to their first question, Gil wrote early checks for companies like Perplexity, Charition.ai, Harvey and more. And that's just a part of the story. His achievements include seed or Series A investment in over 30 unicorns, including some of Tech's most iconic names (stripe, Airbnb, Coinbase, Instacart, Concepts, Figma, Flexport, Gitlab, etc.). This October, Gill will take a destructive stage for a chat with a fireplace that will disrupt 2025 at TechCrunch in San Francisco, promising to cover many ground. From…

Bouygues Telecom, France's third largest mobile phone, has identified cyberattacks and data breaches affecting millions of customers. In a statement posted to its website, the telecom giant said the hack has allowed intruders to access personal information from 6.4 million customer accounts. Bouygues said it detected a cyberattack on August 4, but did not give a time frame when the violation was improved. On another page dedicated to CyberAttack victims, Bouygues said the stolen data includes customer contact information and contract data, citizen status (or company data if the subscriber is an expert), Ibans, or international bank account numbers. Bouygues…