Tag Archives: TechCrunch Disrupt 2025

Instead of signing expensive contracts with companies for their data, AI labs these days are trying a new tack: tapping former senior employees from those companies for their industry knowledge, Mercor CEO Brendan Foody said at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 on Tuesday. Speaking on a panel onstage, Foody cast Mercor’s marketplace as one of the main channels connecting the former employees …

Welcome to the third and final day of TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 at Moscone West in San Francisco! The excitement here is still in full swing, and there’s no slowing down. If you thought it was too late to join, think again — there’s still time to register with a 50% discount and be part of the action. Don’t wait a …

After two days full of live demos and pitches, it’s time to announce the five finalists at this year’s Startup Battlefield. These finalists were selected from an initial pool of thousands of applicants, with TechCrunch’s editorial team narrowing the field down to the 200 companies that all joined us here at Disrupt, with the Top 20 competing on the Disrupt …

If you were wandering the Expo Hall at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, or watching our pitch stage earlier Tuesday, you might have noticed a familiar face from Pied Piper. Thomas Middleditch, who starred in HBO’s popular “Silicon Valley” show that prominently featured Disrupt back in 2014, had a planned takeover of Australian startup (and Battlefield 200 competitor) Othelia’s presentation at the …

Self-driving truck startup Waabi shared Tuesday at TechCrunch Disrupt the launch of a new autonomous truck made in partnership with Volvo, the Volvo VNL Autonomous truck. The unveiling comes eight months since the Uber- and Nvidia-backed startup announced it was partnering with Volvo Autonomous Solutions to build a custom-built truck based on Volvo’s autonomy platform using Waabi’s software stack. Waabi …

If every good startup begins with a problem, this one may have begun with a bad Slack conversation. As CEO and co-founder Tom Bachant tells it, he remembers seeing the chaos of Slack-based support — the haphazard ticketing, the jumble of DMs, and little chance for insight into the underlying problems. “The first point was just seeing that Slack was …

As companies push to increase efficiency and stay competitive, they’re encouraging, or in some cases outright requiring, workers to know how to use AI tools. However, the push for AI use has exposed a training gap.  “There are few solutions available on the market that are dedicated to non-technical people,” Aureliusz Gorski, founder and CEO of Warsaw-based CampusAI, told TechCrunch.  …

Even after reviewing résumés, cover letters, and interviews, choosing the right candidate for a job can be a mysterious process. Hiring managers often rely on their biases about the world or gut feelings to inform their decision, making the process far from an exact science. That’s why Sarah Lucena built Mappa, an AI-powered behavioral intelligence platform that aims to take …

Tutoring is one of the most effective tools for improving a child’s education, yet very few kids in the U.S. receive it. A 2023 survey of the nation’s largest school districts found that fewer than 10% of students received tutoring. One factor is that tutoring is too expensive for many families, often costing hundreds or thousands of dollars a month. …

Katie Hill’s dream home isn’t on the market — but one day, it will be, and she wants dibs. That, and a bit of neighborly envy, is how she got the idea for her startup, Unlisted Homes, which is a Top 20 Startup Battlefield finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. “I’ve always imagined myself as an old lady with a big …