Startups
OpenAI's $400 'Donut' Speaker Has Moving Parts and a 2027 Release Date
TechCrunch AI · Aug 6, 2026 · 2 min read
The picture of OpenAI's first major hardware play is coming into focus, and it looks like a premium metal donut. Bloomb...
AI Startups
Coverage of AI startups, funding rounds, and emerging companies shaping the industry.
470 articles
Startups
ChatGPT hits 1B weekly users as OpenAI drops text limits and cuts errors 68%
TechCrunch AI · Aug 6, 2026 · 2 min read
OpenAI is uncorking a major update that kills text chat limits for everyone and puts a sharper brain inside ChatGPT, a...
Startups
Naïve lands $28.5M as 30,000 devs sign up to let AI agents run entire businesses
TechCrunch AI · Aug 6, 2026 · 2 min read
The developer exodus from drudgery now extends beyond writing code to incorporating a company. Naïve, a startup that pa...
Startups
Ditto's AI matchmaker skips the chat — 150,000 Gen Z users now date on command
TechCrunch AI · Aug 6, 2026 · 2 min read
Tinder fatigue has gotten so bad that college students are handing their love lives over to an iMessage bot that orders...
Startups
OpenAI to Apple: Your Sloppy iCloud Security Means Those Weren't Trade Secrets
TechCrunch AI · Aug 6, 2026 · 2 min read
OpenAI is telling a federal court that Apple's lawsuit over stolen trade secrets doesn't hold up, and the reason is sur...
Startups
Suno hits 55M users with watermarking tools as copyright lawsuits mount
TechCrunch AI · Aug 6, 2026 · 2 min read
Suno is finally putting up guardrails. The AI music startup, which lets anyone generate a song from a text prompt, anno...
Startups
Ex-Spotify engineers raise $10M to kill the generic online storefront
TechCrunch AI · Aug 6, 2026 · 3 min read
Sidd Motwani, Ian Anderson, and Shivaditya Sinha spent years building the behavioral intelligence guts of Spotify’s rec...
Startups
Mirendil inks $100M+ Google Cloud deal to build AI that recursively improves itself
TechCrunch AI · Aug 6, 2026 · 2 min read
Mirendil, a startup barely two months past a $200 million seed raise, just locked in a compute deal with Google Cloud w...
Startups
Google Maps can now order your avocado toast and book your hotel
TechCrunch AI · Aug 6, 2026 · 2 min read
Google Maps is done just giving directions. On Thursday, the company announced a significant expansion of its "Ask Maps...
Startups
Omilia lands $67M with a knife-to-a-gunfight pitch against GenAI customer service hype
TechCrunch AI · Aug 6, 2026 · 3 min read
The generative AI gold rush in customer service has a loud skeptic: Dimitris Vassos, CEO of Athens-based Omilia. While...
Startups
Meta drops Muse Code: AI agent that builds 6 game features at once
TechCrunch AI · Aug 5, 2026 · 2 min read
Meta just made a play that feels less like a catch-up and more like a leapfrog. The company, often seen as trailing Ope...
Startups
Klaviyo buys Elias Torres's AI startup Agency, brings him in as CPO
TechCrunch AI · Aug 5, 2026 · 3 min read
Klaviyo is bringing an old friend back into the fold to spearhead its AI ambitions. The publicly traded marketing autom...
Startups
Google's Jeff Dean quits to launch Discovery Loop, an AI startup chasing fully automated science
TechCrunch AI · Aug 5, 2026 · 3 min read
Jeff Dean is leaving Google. And he's not going quietly. After 25 years as one of the company's most consequential eng...
Startups
Shopify credits AI search for $3.6B quarter as agent-driven traffic triples
TechCrunch AI · Aug 5, 2026 · 3 min read
Shopify just delivered a masterclass in how AI is supposed to boost a platform's bottom line, and it looks nothing like...
Startups
Hark's $700M browser agent Handoff targets Target, Walmart — but demo hides the rough edges
TechCrunch AI · Aug 5, 2026 · 2 min read
Hark, the startup that vacuumed up a $700 million Series A in May, finally showed its hand. The company launched Hark H...
Startups
Shield AI's CTO: When a Bad Model Means a Crashed Aircraft, Not a Bad Chat
TechCrunch AI · Aug 5, 2026 · 2 min read
A typo in a chatbot is annoying. A hallucination in a fighter jet's AI pilot is a smoking crater. That brutal reality i...
Startups
Anthropic Confirms Custom Chip Team as Demand Outpaces Rented Silicon
TechCrunch AI · Aug 5, 2026 · 2 min read
The era of AI labs simply renting their way to scale is ending. Anthropic has confirmed it is assembling a dedicated cu...
Startups
MacPaw taps Liquid AI to run assistants offline, bypassing Apple's models
TechCrunch AI · Aug 5, 2026 · 2 min read
Ukraine-based MacPaw isn't waiting around for Apple's on-device intelligence to mature. The company behind CleanMyMac a...
Startups
WindBorne lands $37M to weaponize 600 balloons' worth of typhoon-eye data for Wall Street
TechCrunch AI · Aug 5, 2026 · 2 min read
Weather isn't just small talk anymore—it's a $250 million startup's entire moat. WindBorne Systems just closed a $37 mi...
Startups
SpaceX dropped $295M on Tesla Megapacks last quarter to feed xAI's power-hungry data centers
TechCrunch AI · Aug 4, 2026 · 2 min read
The financial plumbing between Elon Musk's companies just got a lot more visible. SpaceX's latest earnings report revea...
Startups
Open-weight model GLM-5.2 refused zero offensive cyber tasks, SaferAI finds
TechCrunch AI · Aug 4, 2026 · 2 min read
A Chinese open-weight AI model is matching the dangerous capabilities of the West's most advanced systems, and unlike t...
Startups
Anthropic bets $10B on AI cloud newcomer Volta to wean off Big Tech compute
TechCrunch AI · Aug 4, 2026 · 2 min read
Anthropic is making a $10 billion wager that it doesn't need to be entirely dependent on Amazon or Google to fuel its A...
Startups
Wrinkles App Uses AI and 1.3M Data Points to Whisper Local History, No Phone Staring Required
TechCrunch AI · Aug 4, 2026 · 2 min read
David Stemler had a familiar, frustrating experience at the British Museum: head down, eyes locked on a screen, matchin...
Startups
Nvidia's 120-company AI security alliance ships its first proposals, Google and OpenAI are MIA
TechCrunch AI · Aug 4, 2026 · 2 min read
The ink is barely dry on the Open Secure AI Alliance's (OSAA) founding letter, and the Nvidia-spearheaded group already...