Tech

With so much money flooding into AI startups, it’s a good time to be an AI researcher with an idea to test out. And if the idea is novel enough, it might be easier to get the resources you need as an independent company instead of inside one of the big labs. That’s the story of Inception, a startup developing …

Google is adding Gemini to Maps in India, along with road safety alerts and more information about routes. The AI integration, launched in the U.S. on Wednesday, brings hands-free AI assistance to Maps, as well as contextual suggestions while navigating and information about places of interest. Miriam Daniel, vice president and head of Google Maps, said the rollout required significant …

Oddly, given the branding of the device, this isn’t entirely Atari’s party. There’s also a trio of Pac-Man games (arcade classic, Atari 2600, and “Speed Up” flavors) and Balls of Steel, a mid-’90s pinball game broken out into its own section, with seven tables based on Atari games. Drifting further, there are 40 titles included from defunct Japanese publisher Jaleco, …

Lagos-based Ventures Platform, one of Africa’s most active early-stage investors, has raised $64 million so far for its second fund, targeting a final close of $75 million, founding partner Kola Aina tells TechCrunch. Among the investors is the Nigerian government, through its Investment in Digital and Creative Enterprises (iDICE) program, which marks the first time this government has invested in …

Discord has rolled out updates to its Family Center, giving guardians more insights into their teens’ usage patterns, including purchases, top interactions, and time spent. The goal is to help parents monitor whether their teen is spending excessive time or money on Discord. The communication platform first launched Family Center in 2023 with an activity dashboard showing which servers their …

Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin is finally ready to try a second launch of its super heavy-lift rocket New Glenn. The company announced on Wednesday that it will attempt the launch as early as Sunday, November 9, from Launch Complex 36 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. New Glenn’s first flight took place back in January, and it was mostly successful. …

While Roy Lee, the founder of Cluely, argues that startups should be thinking harder about social media virality, he also admits that brand awareness alone won’t lead to sustained growth. “I can’t say if it’s a mistake, but maybe we launched too early,” Lee said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 last week. “The whole idea [was] let’s launch something …

Lucid Motors’ chief engineer Eric Bach is leaving the company after more than a decade, the company has announced. Bach, who also served as Lucid Motors’ Senior Vice President of Product, has been with the company since 2015. He joined Lucid after spending three years as Tesla’s Director of Engineering, where he worked alongside Lucid Motors’ former CEO and CTO …

Apple is nearing a deal with Google that would see the iPhone maker pay the tech giant roughly $1 billion a year for a custom version of Google’s Gemini AI model to power its overhaul of Siri, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The move is a big one for Apple, which has traditionally relied on its own technology …

On an earnings call on Tuesday, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready highlighted the promise of open source AI models in helping the company keep its costs down as it expands the use cases for visual AI. The image pinboarding site, which often serves as consumers’ first step in their shopping journey, leverages AI technology to power a variety of features, including …