Author: Editor-in-Chief

If you’ve been thinking about applying to volunteer at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, this is it — applications close tonight at 11:59 p.m. PT. Whether you’re a student, aspiring founder, marketer, event pro, or just looking to get your foot in the door of the tech world, this is your chance to: Get a behind-the-scenes look at how one of the biggest startup events in the world comes together. Network with top VCs, founders, operators, and press from around the globe. Sit in on sessions featuring tech’s most influential voices. Learn the inner workings of startup culture, innovation cycles, and event…

OpenAI began testing a new safety routing system in ChatGPT over the weekend, and on Monday introduced parental controls to the chatbot — drawing mixed reactions from users. The safety features come in response to numerous incidents of certain ChatGPT models validating users’ delusional thinking instead of redirecting harmful conversations. OpenAI is facing a wrongful death lawsuit tied to one such incident, after a teenage boy died by suicide after months of interactions with ChatGPT. The routing system is designed to detect emotionally sensitive conversations and automatically switch mid-chat to GPT-5-thinking, which the company sees as the best equipped model for high-stakes safety work. In particular, the GPT-5 models were trained with a new…

The social network Bluesky will begin verifying users’ ages in the state of Ohio to comply with new regulations, starting on Monday, September 29. The company — which offers an open and decentralized competitor to X and Threads — says it will enable the Kids Web Services’ (KWS) age verification solution in the state. This is the same solution that Bluesky is already using in South Dakota and Wyoming to comply with similar laws. Bluesky announced the move in Ohio on Sunday via its Bluesky Safety account, and in an update to last month’s blog post about the matter. The…

Making democracy work isn’t easy, as recent events have made clear. Some critics would argue that technology is making it worse. But one startup is hoping that AI could help bridge some differences instead of widen them. “I had an a-ha moment one day when I realized people are asking AI to explain something like they’re five years old,” Tommy Lorsch, co-founder and CEO of Complex Chaos, told TechCrunch. “What if we use it as a facilitator to help people understand each other and find common ground?” He and co-founder Maya Ben Dror are developing tools to help people arrive…

The U.K. government has confirmed it will guarantee a commercial bank loan of £1.5 billion ($2bn) for carmaking giant Jaguar Land Rover after a hack forced the company to shut down its carmaking production lines and left downstream suppliers at risk of bankruptcy. In a statement on Sunday, U.K. ministers said that the government-backed loan will “bolster JLR’s cash reserves so it can support its supply chain which has been greatly impacted by the shutdown.” JLR will have five years to pay back the loan. Companies across the U.K. that supply parts and products to JLR, many of which are…

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Oura Health CEO Tom Hale didn’t discuss reports that the company is raising new funding that would value the health-tracking ring maker at nearly $11 billion, but he did talk about whether he has ambitions to take Oura public. “We’ve certainly hit the thresholds of size, trajectory, scale and growth,” Hale said. “We could go public. Is that in our plans? It’s certainly an option. And when the moment is right, we’ll let everyone know.” Oura recently announced that it expects to generate $1 billion in revenue this year, doubling its…

Manny Medina, previously best-known as the founder of sales automation startup Outreach ($4.4 billion valuation), has wowed investors with his young startup, Paid. Paid just closed an oversubscribed $21.6 million seed round led by Lightspeed. With the €10 million pre-seed round it raised in March, London-based Paid has already raised $33.3 million and hasn’t even hit its Series A yet. A source familiar with the deal says the startup’s valuation is over $100 million. Paid came out of stealth in March offering an interesting contribution to the AI agentic world: The company doesn’t offer agents. It offers a way for…

Despite millions spent on financial software, many finance teams still rely on Excel to close their books and reconcile numbers while preparing them for audit. Two former Microsoft executives view it as a problem — and they have started Maximor to replace spreadsheets with AI agents for the grunt work finance teams perform. Excel spreadsheets are everywhere in finance. Even with dedicated ERP, CRM, and billing systems, many mid-sized companies and enterprises still export transactions into Excel for manual reconciliation. Teams often treat spreadsheets as makeshift databases, sometimes even relying on functions like VLOOKUP — a function used to…

Social network X on Monday said it would appeal an Indian court ruling that upheld a content takedown system, calling the government-run operation “secretive” and claiming it “has no basis in the law.” The platform said last week’s decision by the Karnataka High Court lets police issue “arbitrary” content removal orders through the online portal, called Sahyog. The ruling was in response to a petition by X, filed in March, that challenged the government and the system, which the company described in court as a “censorship portal.” India launched Sahyog (“assistance” in Hindi) in late 2024 to automate content…

Automotive giant Honda and lunar startup Astrobotic are teaming up to explore how a regenerative fuel cell system could help keep the lights on during long nights on the Moon. The companies on Monday partnered up to study whether Honda’s regenerative fuel cell (RFC) can be integrated into Astrobotic’s LunaGrid, a scalable power service built around solar arrays. The two will conduct “illumination studies” at potential lunar south pole landing sites, and evaluate system scalability as well as hardware and software integration. A key challenge for lunar exploration is surviving the two-week-long lunar night, when temperatures can plunge to as…