Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch: Reliable Robotics, which develops an autonomous flight system, raised a $115M extension for its $160M Series D, pushing its valuation to $1B+ — Reliable Robotics has been working for nearly a decade to commercialize autonomous flying technology that can be installed on existing aircraft.
Dominic-Madori Davis / TechCrunch: Town, which develops enterprise AI assistants, raised a $108M Series B at a $1B valuation, after announcing a $55M Series A in June — Town, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup developing AI assistants, nabbed a unicorn valuation on Monday, announcing a $108 million Series B funding round co-led …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Developers and vibe coders are using AI tools like Claude Code to get rid of sponsored ads on their smart TVs, disable tracking features, and more — The latest use case for AI? Dumbing down your smart TV to get rid of the bloat. A number of developers and vibe coders have recently …
TechCrunch: CEO Amjad Masad says Replit is no longer working with Anthropic, citing cost and saying “ChatGPT is better now”; source: the partnership is still in place — Replit, the AI coding platform that has become a favorite of startup founders and developers, is no longer working with Anthropic …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Bluesky expands Attie, its AI tool for building custom feeds, with a “social vibe coding” feature to create sites, games, quizzes, and more on the AT Protocol — Open social network Bluesky is once again expanding beyond its flagship app. At TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 on Thursday …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Flock CEO Garrett Langley defends his company's cameras, arguing that reducing crime means sacrificing privacy in return and that “we shouldn't pause progress” — Flock's founder and CEO Garrett Langley doesn't think the risks of introducing surveillance technology at scale outweigh the rewards.
TechCrunch: Quartermaster, which builds a SmartMast for ships to relay real-time maritime data, raised a $140M Series B, with $100M in equity, after a $43M Series A in May — The tech enables real-time awareness for what Quartermaster calls the “largest blind spot on Earth.”
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: Meta says its rejection of ads promoting the new documentary about Elon Musk “was an error and the ads are being restored”; YouTube is also allowing the ads — At least two companies appear to be reversing their stance on whether to accept advertising for director Alex Gibney's upcoming documentary about Elon Musk.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Sources: Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg announces a new board and new advisers; board members include two founders of IRL and the author of the Silo book series — Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg has rebuilt the company's board just weeks after its previous directors tried, and failed, to oust him.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Ema, which uses AI agents to automate corporate processes across HR, IT, and finance, raised a $77M Series B led by Creaegis, taking its total funding to $140M — Ema, a startup that uses teams of AI agents to automate corporate processes across HR, IT, and finance, has raised $77 million …
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch: Vantora, formerly UP.Labs, which builds AI-native startups designed to solve problems for corporate customers, raised $100M+ from Silversmith Capital Partners — Four years ago, a startup lab launched that wasn't quite an incubator, accelerator program, or venture firm.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: India requires caller ID and call-management apps to share users' spam reports with telcos; Truecaller calls it a “one-way exchange” that is “anti-competitive” — India has extended its anti-spam regime to require caller-ID and call-management apps to share users' spam reports …
Dominic-Madori Davis / TechCrunch: Comp AI, which uses AI agents to draft security policies, collect audit evidence, conduct continuous compliance monitoring, and more, raised a $34M Series A — Comp AI, a cybersecurity and compliance startup, announced that it has raised a $34 million Series A round. The round was led by Roo Capital and Grand Ventures.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Automattic confirms Matt Mullenweg has returned to his position as chairman and CEO “with full support of the board”, after an attempted ouster this week — After a tumultuous week, which saw WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg ousted from his position as CEO of Automattic …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Amazon adds a Shop tab to Prime Video's X-Ray feature for related products while watching shows, and Shop the Scene powered by Amazon Lens in the Shopping app — Amazon is going to make it easier to shop when you're watching TV. The retail giant on Thursday announced a series of new features …
Julie Bort / TechCrunch: Mach Industries, which makes unmanned military vehicles and weapons, raised $600M in an extension to its $300M Series C, doubling its valuation to $3.7B — Defense tech startup Mach Industries has raised a fresh $600 million in capital in a Series C extension round that has doubled its valuation …
Sean O'Kane / TechCrunch: Poseidon Aerospace, which plans the first test flight of its pilotless cargo plane by year-end, raised a $60M Series A led by TQ Ventures, after an $11M seed — Silicon Valley is known for embracing the ethos of “move fast and break things.” Poseidon Aerospace's co-founder and CEO David Zagaynov just wants to move things fast.
Sean O'Kane / TechCrunch: The NHTSA opens a probe into Tesla's decision to launch its new Cybercab on public roads in Austin with no steering wheel or pedals — The United States' top automotive safety regulator has opened an investigation into Tesla decision to launch its new Cybercab on public roads with no steering wheel or pedals.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Indian edtech startup upGrad closes its acquisition of rival Unacademy in an all-stock deal valuing Unacademy at ~$206M, down from its peak $3.5B valuation — Unacademy, once one of India's most valuable edtech startups, has been acquired by rival upGrad at a valuation of just over $200 million …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Microsoft says it is testing a fix to an outage affecting Exchange Online and Outlook, lasting for 17+ hours from around 11:30AM ET on Monday — Snow day? Microsoft on Monday confirmed a widespread, multi-hour outage affecting Outlook users, leading to email delays and failures, authentication issues, and other problems.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Meta's India and Southeast Asia VP Sandhya Devanathan is joining OpenAI to oversee consumer growth and enterprise adoption across SE Asia and Australia — Meta's India and Southeast Asia vice president, Sandhya Devanathan, is leaving the social media giant to join OpenAI, the ChatGPT maker told TechCrunch.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Bluesky launches a feature to let users hide their posts from non-followers in its Discover feed; other AT Proto apps can choose whether to respect the opt-out — After adding support for longer videos just yesterday, open social network Bluesky on Thursday introduced a new algorithmic opt …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: OpenAI launches ads on its ChatGPT Free and Go subscription tiers in India, where it has 100M+ weekly active users, and plans to launch an ad manager next month — It seems there is no escaping the ad industry. — OpenAI said on Thursday that it will start showing ads on its ChatGPT Free and Go subscription tiers in India.
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: WhatsApp upgrades its two-step verification, letting users replace the six-digit PIN with a longer alphanumeric password, and adds support for multiple passkeys — WhatsApp announced Tuesday that it's launching new security features and updates to help users keep their accounts secure …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman unveil the $250 Luffu Link, a screenless, jewelry-inspired LTE health and safety band, set to ship in early 2027 — Luffu, a new startup from Fitbit's co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman, on Tuesday launched Luffu Link …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Sources: Flipkart Minutes, the quick commerce service of Walmart's Flipkart, is now delivering 1.1M-1.2M orders per day, up from ~390K-400K in November 2025 — Indian startups spent years getting consumers accustomed to having groceries and everyday goods delivered within minutes.
Anna Heim / TechCrunch: London-based Inherent, founded by DeepMind alumni and with $50M in seed funding, says its new Faraday agent beats GPT-5.5 at reproducing research paper findings — Inherent, a London AI lab founded by Google DeepMind alumni, says its AI agent just outperformed much larger models from Anthropic and OpenAI using a fraction of the size.
Marina Temkin / TechCrunch: Source: AI training data startup Micro1's gross annual run rate grew from $100M to $500M in the past eight months, putting net annual run rate at $150M-$200M — The near-bottomless demand for unique AI training data from top labs and corporations is driving a massive boom for a cohort of data-labeling startups.
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch: Nevada approves permits letting Tesla deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis in the Las Vegas area over the next year, while Waymo and Uber are each allowed up to 1,000 — Nevada, get ready for the robotaxis. — The Nevada Transportation Authority unanimously approved three permits Thursday that will allow Tesla …
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Binance launches Agent OS, a platform that lets AI agents analyze markets and execute trades on users' behalf; users set limits on AI agents' access and trades — Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange with more than 300 million registered users, on Thursday launched a platform …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Google unveils the $899+ Pixel 11, $1,099+ 11 Pro, and $1,299+ 11 Pro XL, with Tensor G6, new Gemini features, Magic Capture to pick the best frames, and more — For the last few years, Google's Pixel has been a showcase of new AI features, with few hardware changes from the previous year's devices.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Google adds Venmo as a payment option on Google Play for games, apps, add-ons, subscriptions, and more in the US, expanding support beyond PayPal and Cash App — Google said that it is adding Venmo as a payment option today on Google Play for purchases including games, apps, add-ons, and other digital content.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Athens-based Omilia, which builds self-learning AI agents that work across different customer contact points, raised a $67M Series B led by Expedition Growth — The customer support industry has seen a massive influx of startups like Sierra, Decagon and Parloa trying to infuse AI …
Kate Park / TechCrunch: Horizon3, whose AI penetration testing platform NodeZero helps find and exploit attack paths in production systems, raised a $250M Series E at a $2B valuation — Cybersecurity startup Horizon3 has raised a $250 million Series E at a $2 billion valuation, more than tripling its valuation in 14 months.
Tim Fernholz / TechCrunch: June, which aims to help enterprise AI deployment by finding bottlenecks and building agents, emerges from stealth with $20M led by Marc Benioff's Time Ventures — It's so hard for big businesses to get AI tools working reliably that whole new organizations of forward-deployed engineers or FDEs …
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: YouTuber Hank Green faces online criticism after using ChatGPT to help research a script, and says his LLM usage “is not healthy for me or good for the world” — Hank Green, a novelist, comedian, and YouTuber with 3.2 million subscribers, recently apologized to his audience for his growing reliance on AI chatbots.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Sensor Tower: India's mobile app market generated a record $345M in consumer spending in Q2, up 35% YoY; ChatGPT ranked No. 1 by downloads and No. 2 by revenue — For years, India was the world's largest app download market but one of its toughest places to make money.
Julie Bort / TechCrunch: Lake Mary, Florida-based Spur Intelligence, which helps distinguish human and bot traffic to find fake users and threats, raised $200M led by Insight Partners — Spur Intelligence, a cybersecurity startup based in Lake Mary, Florida, has raised a $200 million round led by Insight Partners.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Fish Audio, which offers AI voice models for creators and enterprises and has $21M in ARR, raised a $50M seed led by Coreline Ventures and Capital Today — The market for AI-generated voice models is massive. Creative use cases require AI voice models to be more expressive …
Russell Brandom / TechCrunch: Richard Socher's Recursive Superintelligence signs a $410M, multiyear AWS compute deal to support its self-improving AI systems, after raising $650M in May — On Tuesday, the AI company Recursive Superintelligence announced a $400 million compute deal with Amazon Web Services.
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch: Baidu begins testing its purpose-built Apollo Go RT6 robotaxis with human safety operators in outer London; Baidu plans to offer the taxis on Lyft's Freenow — Chinese tech giant Baidu has started testing autonomous vehicles in London as part of its partnership with Lyft and Freenow …
Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch: Mobileye founder and CEO Amnon Shashua plans to step down after nearly three decades, as the company pushes into robotaxis and humanoid robots — Mobileye founder and CEO Amnon Shashua plans to step down from the top leadership post after nearly three decades, just as the company pushes into robotaxis and humanoid robots.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Meta launches Meta Business Agent globally on WhatsApp and Instagram DMs, after a two-year pilot of the customer support AI bot in India, Mexico, and others — For years, WhatsApp has been a communication layer for businesses of all sizes around the world.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Boston-based software monitoring startup Coralogix raised a $200M Series F at a $1.6B post-money valuation, up from $1B+ after a $115M Series E in June 2025 — Coralogix, a Boston-headquartered software monitoring startup founded in Israel, has raised $200 million in a new funding round …
Lucas Ropek / TechCrunch: With Microsoft's GitHub Copilot shifting to token-usage billing on June 1, many developers bemoan massive cost increases and the end of flat-rate subscriptions — The golden age of Microsoft's Github Copilot appears to be at an end — for the little guy, at least.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Google's keyword ad practices face renewed criticism after the Delhi High Court ruled against Google in a trademark dispute involving Indian company Hindware — A recent Indian court ruling against Google's keyword advertising practices has gained fresh attention after founders said competitors …
Kate Park / TechCrunch: Xcena, whose MX1 chip performs data orchestration and KV cache management directly within memory modules, raised a $135M Series B at a $570M valuation — Every time you ask ChatGPT a question, your request triggers a data relay race. Information leaves memory, passes through a CPU for preprocessing …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Visa makes an undisclosed investment in Replit; the two will explore how Replit developers can use Visa Intelligent Commerce and the Trusted Agent Protocol — Visa has announced an undisclosed investment in AI coding platform Replit. The two companies are also exploring …
Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch: Milan-based social travel startup WeRoad raised a $58M Series C led by Airbnb, taking its total funding to ~$100M, to expand into the US, starting in Austin — WeRoad, the Milan-based group travel startup, has raised a $58 million Series C round led by Airbnb as it prepares for its first major expansion outside Europe.
Julie Bort / TechCrunch: Atlanta-based e-commerce logistics company Stord raised a $250M Series F led by Strike at a $3B valuation, up from $1.5B after a $200M Series E in May 2025 — E-commerce logistics company Stord has raised a $250 million round at a $3 billion valuation, it announced Tuesday.