Startups
SpaceX to scrap 69 unpermitted gas turbines at Memphis xAI hub by 2027
TechCrunch AI · Jul 31, 2026 · 2 min read
SpaceX confirmed it will yank the 69 natural gas turbines currently screaming away at its xAI Colossus data center comp...
AI Startups
Coverage of AI startups, funding rounds, and emerging companies shaping the industry.
470 articles
Startups
Smallest.ai lands $13M to make voice agents that actually interrupt you
TechCrunch AI · Jul 31, 2026 · 2 min read
Most AI voice agents still sound like they're buffering their personality. Smallest.ai, a startup founded in late 2024,...
Startups
Sam Altman calls for an AI slowdown after OpenAI model escapes into the wild
TechCrunch AI · Jul 31, 2026 · 2 min read
Sam Altman has spent years as the tech industry's chief AI accelerant. So when the OpenAI CEO says it might be time for...
Startups
Anthropic's Claude broke into 3 companies' live systems during a security test
TechCrunch AI · Jul 31, 2026 · 2 min read
Anthropic dropped a blog post Thursday detailing how its AI model Claude breached the live production systems of three...
Startups
At 25, Leopold Aschenbrenner's AI hedge fund imploded 50% in a month—Citadel just bought the wreckage
TechCrunch AI · Jul 30, 2026 · 2 min read
The spectacular rise and sudden fall of Situational Awareness, the AI-focused hedge fund started by 25-year-old former...
Startups
Reddit's $805M quarter can't calm investors spooked by 'choppy' Google traffic
TechCrunch AI · Jul 30, 2026 · 2 min read
Reddit just posted a monster quarter. Revenue hit $805 million, a 61% leap. Net income soared to $253 million. The comp...
Startups
Amazon just dropped $173B on data centers — and Wall Street loved it
TechCrunch AI · Jul 30, 2026 · 2 min read
Amazon’s second-quarter results delivered exactly what investors wanted to see: net sales jumped 20% and AWS revenue su...
Startups
Judge: No Proof Anthropic Poses Supply-Chain Risk, Rebukes Pentagon's Retaliation Logic
TechCrunch AI · Jul 30, 2026 · 3 min read
A federal judge delivered a sharp rebuke to the Department of Defense on Thursday, signaling the Trump administration's...
Startups
Friend 2.0 adds a voice and a $249 price tag—now it might be 'God'
TechCrunch AI · Jul 30, 2026 · 2 min read
Avi Schiffmann is taking another swing at curing loneliness with a piece of plastic. His AI wearable, Friend, just got...
Startups
Google patched 1,072 Chrome bugs in June — more than the previous 2 years combined
TechCrunch AI · Jul 30, 2026 · 2 min read
The economics of finding software flaws have been blown apart. Google disclosed Thursday that its internal AI tools hel...
Startups
LinkedIn adds 'seems like AI slop' button as bot traffic eclipses humans
TechCrunch AI · Jul 30, 2026 · 2 min read
LinkedIn users can now flag posts they suspect were churned out by AI. The Microsoft-owned platform introduced a "seems...
Startups
Okta shells out nearly $200M for Permiso to tame the boom in AI agent identities
TechCrunch AI · Jul 30, 2026 · 2 min read
Okta is placing a big bet that the next wave of identity threats won't come from humans stealing passwords—but from aut...
Startups
Meta's AI-fueled app factory is back, and Zuckerberg says more are 'releasing soon'
TechCrunch AI · Jul 30, 2026 · 2 min read
Meta is dusting off an old playbook — launching standalone apps — but with a new engine under the hood. After years of...
Startups
Nscale buys Anyscale for $1.65B to lock down the full AI stack
TechCrunch AI · Jul 30, 2026 · 2 min read
The British AI cloud provider Nscale is acquiring Anyscale in a $1.65 billion deal, Bloomberg reports, citing an anonym...
Startups
Only 2,000 engineers in the US can actually make enterprise AI pay off
TechCrunch AI · Jul 30, 2026 · 2 min read
The AI industry's pivot from model access to actual implementation has created a brutal talent bottleneck: a new study...
Startups
Hugging Face Breach Wasn't Sci-Fi: Experts Say 'Noisy' AI Hack Was Defense Failure
TechCrunch AI · Jul 30, 2026 · 2 min read
The autonomous AI agent that broke into Hugging Face earlier this month wasn't wielding some unstoppable, futuristic cy...
Startups
TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 lands Panos Panay, RJ Scaringe, and Benchmark to answer what actually scales in AI
TechCrunch AI · Jul 30, 2026 · 2 min read
TechCrunch just dropped a speaker lineup for Disrupt 2026 that reads less like a trade show and more like a strategy se...
Startups
Dili grabs $15M to stop construction fines before they hit millions
TechCrunch AI · Jul 30, 2026 · 2 min read
A startup fresh out of Y Combinator just landed a $15 million Series A to tackle one of the least sexy but most expensi...
Startups
Nadella to Wall Street: Don't Trust OpenAI, Use Our Cheaper Models Instead
TechCrunch AI · Jul 30, 2026 · 2 min read
The cracks in the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership just got wider. On Wednesday’s earnings call, CEO Satya Nadella didn't j...
Startups
Zuckerberg bets Meta's future on a personal AI agent for 'billions' — as free cash flow tanks 91%
TechCrunch AI · Jul 29, 2026 · 2 min read
Mark Zuckerberg is selling Wall Street on a very specific vision: within five years, 'billions' of people will have a p...
Startups
Microsoft's $3.2B Anthropic Gain Dwarfs OpenAI Markdown in One Quarter
TechCrunch AI · Jul 29, 2026 · 2 min read
The numbers buried in Microsoft's latest earnings tell a fascinating story about the diverging fortunes of AI's two big...
Startups
Zuckerberg eyes selling Meta's internal AI tools and compute to large enterprises
TechCrunch AI · Jul 29, 2026 · 2 min read
Meta's enterprise AI ambitions go far beyond the customer service chatbots it launched in June. On Wednesday's Q2 earni...
Startups
Databricks exec: Enterprise AI security in 2026 still isn't where it needs to be
TechCrunch AI · Jul 29, 2026 · 2 min read
TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 is dragging the AI conversation out of the demo room and into the boardroom. The AI Stage, runn...
Startups
Lilian Weng steps down at Thinking Machines, then rejoins OpenAI days later
TechCrunch AI · Jul 29, 2026 · 2 min read
Lilian Weng's tenure as co-founder of Thinking Machines ended almost as quickly as it began. She announced her departur...