Author: Editor-in-Chief

On Friday morning, University of Pennsylvania alumni, students, staff, and community affiliates received several emails from hackers purporting to represent the university’s Graduate School of Education (GSE). “We have terrible security practices and are completely unmeritocratic,” read the email. “We love breaking federal rules like FERPA (all your data will be leaked).” A PARTIALLY REDACTED EMAIL SENT BY HACKERS WITH ACCESS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA EMAIL SYSTEM.IMAGE CREDITS:TECHCRUNCH (SCREENSHOT) This message was sent from a variety of different Penn-affiliated email accounts, such as the GSE, as well as purporting to come from several senior members of staff across the…

U.S. telecommunications giant Ribbon has confirmed that government-backed hackers had access to its network for almost a year before getting caught, according to a public filing. The telco giant said in a 10-Q disclosure last week with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that a suspected “nation-state actor had gained access to the company’s IT network” as early as December 2024. Ribbon said it notified law enforcement and that it believes the hackers are no longer in its network. The Texas-headquartered Ribbon provides phone, networking, and internet services for companies, enterprises, and critical infrastructure organizations, such as energy and transportation…

Peter Williams, the former general manager at defense contractor L3Harris, has pleaded guilty to selling surveillance technology to a Russian broker that buys “cyber tools,” the U.S. Department of Justice confirmed Wednesday. “The material, stolen over a three-year period from the U.S. defense contractor where he worked, was comprised of national-security focused software that included at least eight sensitive and protected cyber-exploit components,” read the DOJ’s press release on Wednesday. “Those components were meant to be sold exclusively to the U.S. government and select allies.” TechCrunch previously exclusively reported, citing four former Trenchant employees, that the company was investigating a…

Bending Spoons, one of Europe’s largest mobile app developers, announced on Wednesday that it has agreed to buy AOL from Yahoo, which is backed by private equity giant Apollo. Bending Spoons says it has secured a $2.8 billion debt financing package to support the purchase. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of the year and is subject to closing conditions and regulatory approvals. “AOL is an iconic, beloved business that’s in good health, has stood the test of time, and we believe has unexpressed potential,” said Bending Spoons CEO and co-founder Luca Ferrari in a press release.…

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 of investment banks, consulting houses, and law firms with AI labs that are looking to automate those industries. Some of Mercor’s customers include OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta. “There is an argument that Goldman Sachs doesn’t love the idea of…

Online marketplace Etsy said on Wednesday that its long-time CEO, Josh Silverman, would step down by the end of the year. Kruti Patel Goyal, Etsy’s president and chief growth officer, will become the company’s next CEO. Silverman, who headed the marketplace for eight years, will become its executive chairman. Goyal worked at Etsy for more than 10 years until she was named the CEO of social-commerce platform Depop, which Etsy bought four years ago. She has been in her current role for about seven months. Etsy has faced challenges in growing its business and may be looking to Goyal’s experience…

U.S. President Donald Trump touched down in Asia this week, not just for diplomacy, but to sign deals that could shape the next chapter of the global technology race. The U.S. inked Technology Prosperity Deals (TPD) with Japanand South Korea with an eye toward spurring collaboration on AI, semiconductors, quantum computing, biotech, space, 6G, and other technologies. The agreements aim to enhance cooperation, strengthen strategic ties, align regulations, and support economic and national security objectives, among other objectives. The new agreements follow roughly a month after the U.S. strengthened tech ties with the U.K. The U.S. is effectively locking in partnerships…

Teenagers are trying to figure out where they fit in a world changing faster than any generation before them. They’re bursting with emotions, hyper-stimulated, and chronically online. And now, AI companies have given them chatbots designed to never stop talking. The results have been catastrophic. One company that understands this fallout is Character.AI, an AI role-playing startup that’s facing lawsuits and public outcry after at least two teenagersdied by suicide following prolonged conversations with AI chatbots on its platform. Now, Character.AI is making changes to its platform to protect teenagers and kids, changes that could affect the startup’s bottom line.…

When Phia‘s founders Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni decided to build an AI startup, they targeted an area they understood well: online shopping. The founders, who met at Stanford when they were randomly paired up as roommates, understood e-commerce because they had spent hours upon hours trying to find the right items to expand their wardrobe. And AI, they realized, had the potential to help people discover, shop, and buy in new ways. They also realized that capability was a market opportunity. “There felt like there was this giant white space for, like, what should we actually buy, and why…

Netflix has rolled out a new TV experience for kids’ profiles on its service globally, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Tuesday. The update, which aims to simplify the design and navigation, is the company’s latest attempt to more quickly connect users to content they’ll like. In May, Netflix introduced a similar redesign of its TV homepage for standard profiles, which added an AI-powered search tool, better recommendations, and more visible shortcuts, among other changes. Now the company says the same update has arrived on kids’ profiles, along with other tweaks aimed specifically at Netflix’s youngest users. The new design…