Topic: techcrunch coverage
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Stop Zoom from Recording You With This Hack
Venture capitalist Jeremy Levine now appears on Zoom calls as “Jeremy Levine I do not consent to transcribing or recording” to protest the growing norm of always-on AI transcription in meetings. The rise of AI note-taking apps has led to widespread recording of professional meetings and even pers...
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Marketing OS Nectar Social raises $30M Series A from Menlo
Nectar Social, an AI-powered marketing startup, raised $30 million in Series A funding led by Menlo Ventures and its Anthology Fund, with participation from Kinship Ventures, GV, and True Ventures. The platform acts as an agentic operating system using autonomous AI agents to manage brand activit...
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Why Wispr Flow is Betting Big on Voice AI in India
Wispr Flow, an AI voice input startup, has identified India as its fastest-growing market due to ingrained voice habits, and it is focusing on Hinglish support and Android launch to tap into this potential. The company's growth in India surged to roughly 100% month-over-month after recent campaig...
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Fintech startup Parker files for bankruptcy
Parker, a fintech startup offering corporate credit cards for e-commerce businesses, has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and ceased operations, despite its website still promoting over $200 million in total funding. The company, which emerged from Y Combinator and secured Series A funding from Val...
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How Lovable’s 10% Pay Raise Fights Toxic Company Culture
Lovable offers all full-time employees a guaranteed 10% annual salary increase on their work anniversary, a rare policy in corporate America that provides direct cash raises with no strings attached. The policy is feasible due to Lovable's explosive revenue growth, having surpassed $400 million i...
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Musely raises $360M from General Catalyst, no equity given
Musely secured over $360 million in non-dilutive capital from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund through a revenue-share-like agreement, with no equity stake or traditional interest-bearing loan. The company has been cash flow positive for years, growing revenue at 50% year-over-year and serv...
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Coby Adcock’s Scout AI raises $100M for war training models
Scout AI, a defense startup founded in 2024, has raised a $100 million Series A funding round to develop its "Fury" AI model for operating military assets, initially for logistics but intended to eventually control autonomous weapons. The company is training its AI on rugged, unmarked terrain usi...
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Bezos-Backed EV Startup: Key Facts and Details
Slate Auto, a stealth EV startup backed by Jeff Bezos, launched in April 2025 with a plan to produce a highly customizable, ultra-affordable electric pickup truck starting under $20,000, a price reliant on a federal tax credit. The company generated significant consumer interest, surpassing 150,0...
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ChatGPT Pro Plan Launches at $100 Monthly
OpenAI has introduced a new $100 monthly ChatGPT Pro plan, positioned between its $20 Plus plan and a $200 Pro option to compete with Anthropic's Claude. The key difference between the $100 and $200 Pro plans is their rate limits, with the $200 tier offering substantially higher capacity for dema...
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Anthropic Expands Claude Code's Capabilities With Guardrails
Anthropic's Claude Code introduces an "auto mode" that allows the AI to independently execute safe actions, aiming to accelerate developer workflows without sacrificing security. The system uses real-time AI safeguards to evaluate and block potentially dangerous operations, like unauthorized acce...
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India's AI Ambitions Meet the Creator Economy's Ad Crisis
The digital creator economy is maturing, with top creators diversifying beyond advertising into product lines and direct-to-consumer ventures to build sustainable brand empires. A global race in AI is underway, with India actively positioning itself as a key player by fostering innovation and foc...
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Amazon scraps Blue Jay robotics project in under six months
Amazon has discontinued its Blue Jay warehouse robotics project, a multi-armed prototype for sorting packages, less than six months after its public introduction. The core technology from Blue Jay will be applied to other robotics initiatives, reflecting Amazon's strategy of iterative innovation ...
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First EU Alternative App Store Announces Shutdown
Setapp Mobile, a subscription-based alternative app store in the EU, will shut down by February 2026, citing Apple's complex and evolving fee structure, including the Core Technology Fee, as the primary reason. The closure highlights the difficulty for companies to build sustainable strategies un...
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AMD Debuts New AI PC Processors for Gaming & Productivity at CES
AMD has launched its next-generation Ryzen AI 400 Series processors, designed to bring advanced AI capabilities to consumer PCs and offering significant performance gains over competing chips. The new chips feature 12 CPU cores and 24 threads to handle demanding AI workloads, with AMD supporting ...
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Mesa Ends Mortgage-Rewards Credit Card
Mesa has permanently shut down its Homeowners Card program, closing all accounts and halting its unique rewards system for mortgage and household spending. The startup, which launched with significant funding, offered a novel credit card targeting home-related expenses but has not disclosed its f...
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Spoor's Bird Monitoring AI Software Takes Flight
Spoor's AI-powered software uses cameras to detect and identify birds with 96% accuracy, helping industries like wind farms minimize avian collisions through operational adjustments. The technology addresses a regulatory gap by replacing outdated manual monitoring, and its applications are expand...
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AWS re:Invent's AI Push: Are Customers Prepared?
AWS made a massive strategic bet on AI at re:Invent, focusing on enterprise tools, but questions remain about customer readiness for this accelerated vision. Analysts note a gap between AWS's advanced offerings and market maturity, as most enterprises are still piloting AI and not yet seeing a re...
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Legal AI Startup Harvey Hits $8 Billion Valuation
Harvey, an AI legal tech startup, has achieved an $8 billion valuation after a $160 million funding round, reflecting rapid growth and strong investor confidence in AI's potential to transform legal services. The company has surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue and secured contracts...
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Snapchat Launches 'Topic Chats' for Public Conversations
Snapchat is launching Topic Chats, a new feature enabling public discussions on global events and niche interests, shifting the platform from its private messaging focus. The feature prioritizes user privacy by hiding profiles from non-friends and employs advanced moderation tools, including LLM ...
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Runlayer Secures $11M from Khosla, Felicis to Launch MCP AI Security
Runlayer has launched with $11 million in seed funding to secure the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which is widely adopted by major tech companies and has already attracted clients like Gusto and Instacart. The MCP, an open-source standard for AI agents to interact with external systems, lacks bu...
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