Author: TechBrunch
Ryan Breslow is once again the CEO of Bolt, the fintech company told TechCrunch on Wednesday. Bolt shared a recent communication with investors, writing that Breslow is “a challenging few years later.” Justin Grooms, who has been interim CEO since March last year, is currently president of Bolt. Grooms, the company's former sales director, took over as CEO after it was reported that Maju Kuruvilla had been removed by the Bolt board of directors. Bolt's outspoken founder, Breslow resigned as CEO in early 2022. Over the years he misunderstood investors, inflated metrics, violated security laws, and finally claimed he was…
Anna Patterson has a renowned career in Silicon Valley. She founded three startups, including search engines Upstarts Xift and CUIL, as well as Recall.Archive.org, and became an Internet archive. She was Google's vice president of engineering and later launched Gradient Ventures, a seed fund focused on AI. And she's not finished with the building. Patterson told TechCrunch that she had itching to start something new again a few years ago, but she wasn't sure if there was another startup. However, after losing her breast cancer diagnosis and many jobs that year in 2023, she realized she could either go back…
Google is searching for new “AI Mode” experimental features that appear to use popular services such as Perplexity AI and Openai's ChatGPT search. Tech Giant announced on Wednesday that the new mode is designed to be complex and designed to allow you to ask multipart questions and follow-ups. AI mode has been deployed to one Google Premium Subscriber starting this week and can be accessed via Google's experimental arm, Search Lab. This feature uses a custom version of Gemini 2.0 and is especially useful for questions that require further investigation and comparison thanks to advanced inference, thinking and multimodal features.…
The Justice Department has released criminal charges against 12 hackers related to the Chinese government, accused of hacking more than 100 American organizations, including the US Treasury, over a decade. All of the individuals charged played a “significant role” in the employment ecosystem of Chinese hackers, a senior DOJ official said in a background call with reporters, including TechCrunch. Officials added that the people who were claimed, including contract hackers and Chinese law enforcement officials, are target organizations in the US and around the world with the aim of “controlling freedom of speech and freedom of religion.” The DOJ also…
“Silicon Valley is not a necessary and sufficient condition for success. It's just one option,” says Ryan Hinkle. It challenges the longstanding belief that the Bay Area is the ultimate startup hub. Hinkle is the managing director of Insight Partners, a huge New York-based venture capital firm, and invests in high-tech around the world. It has $90 billion in assets under management and raised a new $12.5 billion fund. Today, with equity, Julie Boat sits in a hiinkle to unleash the evolving landscape of the startup ecosystem. They are talking about post-pandemic changes only because many founders have moved to…
If you spend your time online, you will notice that your user experience continues to deteriorate. The website is packed with automatic deployment ads, pop-ups and tracking scripts. Despite the promises of AI generated, customer service chatbots are useless. Social media algorithms support Rage-Bait to keep you scrolling and engaged. Dating apps hide all the good things behind the paywall. Without a monthly subscription, the printer will not work. Oh, and cancel that subscription in less than three times. This is a backwashing of the internet's shift from user-first experiences to experiences designed to maximize engagement, advertising revenue and subscriptions.…
This week's episode of StrictlyVC Downloads has joined Connie Loizos' chief TechCrunch editor, Kevin Rose, who founded Digg. News aggregators have apparently returned in 2004, changing the way people were involved in the news. Kevin worked with his previous rival and Reddit co-founder Alexis O'Hanian, Digg's new CEO Justin Mezzell has renewed Digg and rebooted it for a completely new, expanded audience. In this conversation, Rose shares a story to buy back Digg. Why is the best time to comeback and shares how AI plays a key role in mitigating and enhancing online discourse. StrictlyVC downloads posts every Tuesday. Subscribe…
The European Union is once again urged to expand its Google investigation under the Bloc's Digital Markets Act (DMA). The major goal of the EU's flagship competition reform, which came into effect last spring, was to level the digital arena by forcing the platform giant to trade more fairer with rivals and users. However, alternative search engines Duckduckgo and Seznam.cz, along with a small number of local consumer and civil society groups, have accused Google of fling the rules. In an open letter addressed to the EVPS Teresa Ribera and the Henna Virkkunen committee, they urge the Block to apply…
Are you a leader in the AI space? TechCrunch Sessions: Please let us know what you're talking about as an AI speaker. TechCrunch Sessions: AI can shape what the next in the AI industry and share expertise with 1,200 AI founders, investors and industry pioneers. Help us drive the next wave of innovation on June 5th at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, California. It brings together leaders and shakers in the AI industry to host compelling sessions and interactive roundtables. You can move the industry forward by guiding entrepreneurs, founders and innovators through the rapidly evolving landscape of AI. Host a…
US technology giant Broadcom warns that a trio of VMware vulnerabilities have been actively exploited by malicious hackers to compromise the network of corporate customers. Three vulnerabilities, collectively referred to as “espageape” by one security researcher, affect VMware ESXI, workstations, and fusion. It is a widely used software hypervisor product that allows you to manage multiple virtual machines on a single server. Hypervisors are commonly used to reduce the need to take up space on physical servers. Broadcom, which acquired VMware in 2023, said the vulnerability (tracked as CVE-2025-22224, CVE-2025-22225, and CVE-2025-22226) could allow Virtual Machine administrators or attackers with…