Tech

The Trump administration might be fond of calling the energy transition the “green new scam,” but that isn’t stopping it from seeking a significant stake in what promises to be the largest lithium mine in the Western Hemisphere. In exchange for renegotiating the repayment period of a $2.26 billion Department of Energy loan, the Trump administration is asking for as …

The Trump administration might be fond of calling the energy transition the “green new scam,” but that isn’t stopping it from seeking a significant stake in what promises to be the largest lithium mine in the Western Hemisphere. In exchange for renegotiating the repayment period of a $2.26 billion Department of Energy loan, the Trump administration is asking for as …

YouTube will finally allow you to hide the pop-up recommendations that appear at the end of videos, the company announced on Wednesday. Now when you see an end screen, you can tap a new “Hide” button in the top-right corner of the video player to hide the pop-ups from the current video you’re watching. Selecting this button will only hide …

On Wednesday, Enterprise AI model-maker Cohere said it raised an additional $100 million — bumping its valuation to $7 billion — in an extension to a round announced in August. The August round was an oversubscribed $500 million round at a $6.8 billion valuation, the company said at the time. Cohere also announced an interesting twist on a partnership. While …

Microsoft is leaning into its new partnership with OpenAI’s chief rival, Anthropic. Starting Wednesday, the software giant will incorporate Anthropic’s AI models into its AI assistant Copilot, which has previously been fueled mainly by OpenAI.   The deal signals yet another step toward the slow disentangling between the erstwhile exclusive partners, and comes a couple of weeks after Microsoft inked …

Go-to-market is often where great startups stumble — but it doesn’t have to be. At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 in San Francisco this October 27-29, GTM pros Max Altschuler, Alison Wagonfeld, and Marc Manara take the Builders Stage to show founders how to build a go-to-market engine that doesn’t just support the product, but also scales with it. Register now to …

A couple of months ago, the founders behind YC-backed social app Candle were in “pivot hell,” cycling through more than a dozen ideas after joining Y Combinator’s Fall 2024 batch, while the clock on their seed money ticked down. Alex Ruber, previously an engineer at Apple, and Parth Chopra, formerly an engineer at Asana and Twitter, had built multiple projects …

Instagram has grown to 3 billion monthly active users, according to announcements by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram Head Adam Mosseri. This is a notable milestone for the Meta-owned platform, which hit 1 billion users back in 2018. “If you look at the last few years, almost all of our growth has been driven by DMs, Reels, and recommendations,” …

Oracle is reportedly looking to raise funds just weeks after the company inked a historic AI infrastructure deal with OpenAI.   Cloud infrastructure giant Oracle is looking to raise $15 billion through corporate bond sales, according to reporting from Bloomberg, citing sources. The sale could include up to seven different parts, with the potential for one said part to be an uncommon 40-year bond, Bloomberg reported.   TechCrunch reached out to Oracle for more information.   …

The launch of Apple’s latest operating system, iOS 26, introduced a new design language called Liquid Glass. The interface makeover, one of Apple’s largest since the shift from skeuomorphic to flat design in 2013, adds a translucent, glass-like material to Apple’s software. This is used across iOS elements like buttons, sliders, media controls, switches, notifications, tab bars, app sidebars, and …