Tech

As U.S. giants like Google, OpenAI and Anthropic race to develop the large language models that underpin their AI products, startups such as Sakana AI, Mistral AI, DeepSeek and AI21 Labs are carving out their own niche with specialized models designed for specific regions, industries, or unique features. In pursuit of that goal, Tokyo-based Sakana AI has closed a ¥20 …

In case OpenAI’s structure couldn’t get any weirder—a nonprofit in charge of a for-profit that’s become a public benefit corporation—it now has two CEOs. There’s Sam Altman, chief executive of the whole company, who manages research and compute. And as of this summer, there’s Fidji Simo, the former CEO of Instacart, who manages everything else. Simo hasn’t been seen much …

As Kent Halliburton stood in a bathroom at the Rosewood Hotel in central Amsterdam, thousands of miles from home, running his fingers through an envelope filled with €10,000 in crisp banknotes, he started to wonder what he had gotten himself into. Halliburton is the cofounder and CEO of Sazmining, a company that operates bitcoin mining hardware on behalf of clients—a …

Flatpay, which facilitates card payments for SMBs, has joined the ranks of European fintech unicorns — or startups valued at more than $1 billion — a milestone that has driven some of the region’s biggest exits. These include competitors like Adyen, a Dutch payment processing giant that remains far ahead in scale. However, Flatpay’s fresh funding could help it narrow …

The death of a neighborhood bodega cat named Kit Kat has shaken San Francisco’s Mission District, according to The New York Times. After Kit Kat was run over by a Waymo robotaxi on the evening of October 27, locals created a shrine to memorialize him. The area has also been decorated with competing signs, some criticizing Waymo, others noting the …

When Nigel Morris tells you he’s worried about the economy, you listen. As industry observers know, Morris co-founded Capital One and pioneered lending to subprime borrowers, building an empire on understanding exactly how much financial stress the average American can handle. Now, as an early investor in Klarna and other buy-now-pay-later companies like Aplazo in Mexico, he’s watching something that …

Apple is getting serious about succession planning, according to a new report in The Financial Times. The company’s board and senior executives are reportedly preparing for the possibility that Tim Cook could step down as CEO as soon as early next year. This would come after Apple’s earnings report in late January, giving the new leadership team time to settle …

Amazon’s budding satellite internet program is no longer called Project Kuiper. It is now known simply as “Leo.” The name change comes as the company appears to be shifting its focus from “unserved or underserved” communities to securing larger commercial contracts. The satellite network has been in the works since 2019 and, as Amazon tells it, the name Project Kuiper …

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! It seems like a day doesn’t go by without Waymo making some kind of expansion announcement. Detroit, Las Vegas, Nashville, San Diego, and Washington, D.C., are …

According to a new report from the International Energy Agency, the world will spend $580 billion on data centers this year — $40 billion more than will be spent finding new oil supplies. Those numbers help to illustrate some big shifts in the global economy, and comparing data centers and oil seems particularly apt given concerns about how generative AI …