Technology
Online creators and their business models were on our mind this week after mega-popular YouTuber MrBeast announced that his company is buying fintech startup Step, followed by Hollywood studios sending a flurry of cease-and-desist letters to ByteDance over the launch of its new video generation model Seedance 2.0. Those seemingly unconnected headlines suggest a media…
Apple has invited the tech press to a “special Apple experience” on March 4, but it might unfold a bit differently than the company’s standard press event. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that instead of announcing everything at a single keynote, Apple is planning a “three-day flurry of announcements” — presumably announced online, and culminating in…
Quantum computing will not be replacing supercomputers in 2026, let alone reaching industrial scale. And yet, investor appetite for companies pursuing the elusive quantum advantage hasn’t dwindled — it has increased. Quantonation Ventures, a venture firm investing in quantum and physics-based startups, has closed its oversubscribed second fund at €220 million, or approximately $260 million….
Before heading on a trip to Tahoe last weekend, GM offered me the use of the company’s 9,000-pound monument to excess – the new 2026 electric Escalade IQL (starting at $130,405) – for a week to test-drive. Before you continue, note that I’m not a professional car reviewer. TechCrunch has excellent transportation writers; I am…
Microsoft announced a major gaming shakeup on Friday, with Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer departing the company, along with Xbox President Sarah Bond. Spencer will be replaced by former Instacart and Meta executive Asha Sharma. With Sharma’s most recent role as the president of Microsoft’s CoreAI product, these moves suggest that Microsoft might be doubling…
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman addressed concerns about AI’s environmental impact this week while speaking at an event hosted by The Indian Express. For one thing, Altman — who was in India for a major AI summit — said concerns about AI’s water usage are “totally fake,” though he acknowledged it was a real issue when…
Wikipedia editors have decided to remove all links to Archive.today, a web archiving service that they said has been linked to more than 695,000 times across the online encyclopedia. Archive.today — which also operates under several other domain names, including archive.is and archive.ph — is perhaps most widely used to access content that’s otherwise inaccessible behind…
An 18-year-old who allegedly killed eight people in a mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, Canada, reportedly used OpenAI’s ChatGPT in ways that alarmed the company’s staff. Jesse Van Rootselaar’s chats describing gun violence were flagged by tools that monitor the company’s LLM for misuse and banned in June 2025. Staff at the company debated whether…
Scott Rogowsky is a comedian — he knows how to make fun of himself. That’s how he ended up roaming New York City Comic Con with his own photo printed out like a “Wanted” poster, filming himself asking strangers, “Have you seen this man?” These passersby showed a flicker of recognition, looking at the tall,…
Sarvam, an Indian AI startup focused on building models for local languages and users, on Friday launched its Indus chat app for web and mobile users, entering a fast-growing market dominated by global players including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. The launch comes as India has become a key battleground for generative AI adoption. Recently, OpenAI…
