Tech

Plastic recycling startup Novoloop has inked a deal with a major manufacturer to produce its upcycled thermoplastic polyurethane at commercial scale, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. The agreement helps nudge the Menlo Park-based Novoloop through the so-called “valley of death” that many climate tech startups must slog through.  Startups that depend on hardware are particularly susceptible to stumbling in the valley, …

At nearly the same moment as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was expressing surprise over OpenAI’s multibillion-dollar deal with competitor AMD — shortly after his company agreed to invest up to $100 billion into the AI model maker — Sam Altman was saying that more such deals are in the works. Huang appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Wednesday. When asked …

There was barely a breeze on the roof of the MCM studios building in Manhattan last week as six entrepreneurs graced a stage to pitch their businesses. At one point, it was April Wachtel’s turn. She stood and made the case for her company, Cheeky Cocktails, to a judging panel that included the billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper. Men holding …

When Nick Turley joined OpenAI in 2022 as the head of ChatGPT, he was tasked with commercializing the company’s research. He has made great strides toward that goal, growing the product to 800 million weekly active users. Now Turley wants to take an even bigger swing: transforming ChatGPT into a new type of operating system full of third-party apps. I …

After OpenAI’s video-generating app Sora surged to the No. 1 position on the U.S. App Store, it has now, technically, experienced a bigger first week than ChatGPT on iOS, according to new data from app intelligence provider Appfigures. Its estimates show that Sora saw 627,000 iOS downloads in its first seven days of availability, compared with ChatGPT’s 606,000 iOS downloads …

After OpenAI’s video-generating app Sora surged to the No. 1 position on the U.S. App Store, it has now, technically, experienced a bigger first week than ChatGPT on iOS, according to new data from app intelligence provider Appfigures. Its estimates show that Sora saw 627,000 iOS downloads in its first seven days of availability, compared with ChatGPT’s 606,000 iOS downloads …

Elon Musk will settle a $128 million lawsuit with four Twitter executives whom he fired after taking over the company in 2022. One of Musk’s first moves upon buying Twitter was to fire CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and top lawyers Sean Edgett and Vijaya Gadde. The four executives never received severance payments, which they claim is because they …

Amazon announced on Wednesday that it’s debuting prescription vending machines at its One Medical clinics. The new in-office kiosks, which are operated by Amazon Pharmacy, let patients pick up their prescriptions immediately after their appointment. Amazon Pharmacy Kiosks will be available at One Medical locations in Los Angeles starting in December, and Amazon plans to expand to more locations soon after. After …

President Donald Trump made countering immigration one of his flagship issues during last year’s presidential campaign, promising an unprecedented number of deportations.  In his first eight months in office, that promise turned into around 350,000 deportations, a figure that includes deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE (around 200,000), Customs and Border Protection (more than 132,000), and almost 18,000 …

Zendesk announced Wednesday at its AI summit a string of LLM-driven products meant to reshape the company’s reliance on human technicians. The center of the new features is an autonomous support agent that Zendesk believes will solve 80% of support issues without human intervention. That system will be supplemented by a co-pilot agent, which will assist human technicians with the …