Author: Editor-in-Chief

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) law enforcement arm Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) has signed a contract worth $3 million with Magnet Forensics, a company that makes a phone-hacking and unlocking device called Graykey. The contract, which appeared on Tuesday in a federal government procurement database, said it is for software licenses for the phone-hacking tech for HSI “to recover digital evidence, process multiple devices, & generate forensic reports essential to mission of protecting national security & public.” While the contract doesn’t mention the name of the product, it’s likely referring to Graykey, a forensic system to unlock smartphones and…

The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday unsealed federal charges against British teenager Thalha Jubair, who prosecutors accuse of being involved in at least 120 cyberattacks, including the U.S. Courts system, and the extortion of dozens of U.S. companies. Jubair, 19, was arrested on Tuesday at his home in East London, according to a statement by the National Crime Agency. He appeared in court on Thursday morning in London alongside another teenager, Owen Flowers, 18. Both are accused of involvement in a 2024 cyberattack targeting Transport for London, the government body that oversees the London public transit system, which resulted…

With friendship apps continuing to gain popularity, Bumble announced on Wednesday the relaunch of its BFF app. With younger generations seeking to expand their social circles, the revamped app aims to help users connect with new friends beyond the traditional one-on-one matching that BFF has been known for. The app is built on Geneva, the community-focused social platform Bumble acquired last year. This also means that the Geneva app will be shutting down. The move should not be a surprise: in Q2 2025, Bumble told investors that Geneva had not generated any revenue as of June 30. The company says…

Electric commercial trucks are starting to take off. And that progress comes with a new slate of challenges for operators grappling with how to build out charging infrastructure for their growing EV fleets. Given grid constraints, that’s not always possible. EV trucks are one of several energy users currently searching for space on an increasingly crowded electrical grid. And while today’s demand is small — only a few thousand units are currently operating — over half of fleets are piloting the technology, according to McKinsey. One startup, EV Realty, is hoping to fill the void by finding free space…

Productivity software giant Atlasssian is making its largest acquisition yet to add a developer productivity tool to its product suite. Atlassian announced Thursday it has agreed to acquire the developer productivity insight platform DX for $1 billion in cash and restricted stock. Enterprises use DX to analyze how productive their engineering teams are and identify bottlenecks slowing them down. DX was launched five years ago by Abi Noda and Greyson Junggren. Noda told TechCrunch in 2022 that he founded the company to find a better way to understand what hampered engineering teams. At the time, he felt the metrics he was using as a product manager at GitHub weren’t giving him the full picture, and he wanted to build something better…

Zoom on Wednesday launched new products at its Zoomtopia conference, including an upgraded AI companion that can work across meeting apps, as well as the ability to add your own notes, AI-powered meeting scheduling, and AI avatars that resemble users. With these features, the company aims to compete with verticalized meeting startups and productivity suites. The company has long offered an AI bot that can record and transcribe Zoom meetings. However, cross-application meeting notetakers like Read AI, Otter, Fireflies, Granola, and Circleback have made great progress. To tackle that, Zoom is making its AI companion work with other platforms such…

On Wednesday, AI security firm Irregular announced $80 million in new funding in a round led by Sequoia Capital and Redpoint Ventures, with participation from Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport. A source close to the deal said the round valued Irregular at $450 million. “Our view is that soon, a lot of economic activity is going to come from human-on-AI interaction and AI-on-AI interaction,” co-founder Dan Lahav told TechCrunch, “and that’s going to break the security stack along multiple points.” Formerly known as Pattern Labs, Irregular is already a significant player in AI evaluations. The company’s work is cited in…

The founders who previously sold their livestreaming video startup Periscopeto Twitter are back with a new startup — and no surprise, it’s an AI-focused company this time around. On Wednesday, former Twitter head of product Kayvon Beykpour announced the launch of Macroscope, an AI system aimed at developers and product leaders that summarizes updates to a codebase and catches bugs, among other things. The startup was co-founded by Beykpour, now Macroscope CEO, in July 2023, along with childhood friend Joe Bernstein, also previously of Periscope and their prior enterprise startup, Terriblyclever, which was sold to Blackboard in 2009. They’re…

Tesla is “working on” redesigning its door handles so they are less likely to trap people inside the company’s cars, chief designer Franz von Holzhausen told Bloomberg News on Wednesday. The news comes just one day after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened an probe into Tesla’s door handles, and one week after a Bloomberg News investigation highlighted multiple instances where owners or passengers were stuck in their cars following a crash. Von Holzhausen didn’t specify when Tesla made the decision to rethink how its door handles work, according to Bloomberg. China has already been pushing automakers to…

Luxury car-maker Jaguar Land Rover said Tuesday it will not resume vehicle manufacturing operations until at least September 24 due to a cyberattack earlier this month. In a new statement, the company said it informed colleagues, suppliers, and partners that the halt in production will extend into its third week. The company said this was due to “the controlled restart of our global operations, which will take time,” the company wrote. Laura Savvas, a spokesperson for Jaguar Land Rover, which is owned by Indian giant Tata Motors, declined to provide more updates when reached by TechCrunch. The BBC reported…