Senator Bernie Moreno accuses Anthropic’s Amodei of ‘alarmist’ AI talk
Republican senator Bernie Moreno has accused Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei of taking an “alarmist approach” to AI. He did so in a letter sent on Monday, ahead of Anthropi…
Texas city wants $2.3M for public records on police Flock use
A Fort Worth suburb has told a privacy group it would cost $2.3M to release records on how its police use Flock number plate cameras, a figure reached by estimating 14 years of la…
Meta, TikTok and X challenge Ofcom over online safety data, Reuters reports
Meta, TikTok and X are challenging Ofcom in court over its data demands under the UK’s Online Safety Act, Reuters reported on Monday. The challenge is one of the first brought und…
TikTok adds an AI shopping assistant and one-click checkout to its app
TikTok is adding an AI shopping assistant and one-click checkout to its app. The two features let users buy directly from brands without leaving TikTok, the company said in an ann…
Cheaper EVs are fuelling Europe’s electric car boom, and the rules behind them are up for revision
Battery-electric sales in the EU reached 1.64 million in the first eight months of 2026, up 45%, with 16 models under EUR 25,000 due on sale by the end of the year. Transport and …
Pinterest hires Amazon’s advertising finance chief as CFO
Pinterest has made James Dibbo its chief financial officer from 26 October, hired out of Amazon where he was finance chief for global entertainment, advertising and corporate deve…
Nvidia-backed Reflection unveils Beam, its first open-weight model
Reflection AI, the Nvidia-backed startup founded by former Google DeepMind researchers, has unveiled Beam, its first open-weight model. Beam is built for coding, reasoning and age…
Lucid Motors’ EV output falls to lowest level in almost two years
The company is deliberately limiting production after years of struggling to find mass-market demand for its EVs.
OpenAI is in talks with Abu Dhabi’s MGX and BlackRock for a $30B round
OpenAI is in talks with UAE funds including MGX, which may put in as much as $10B together, and with BlackRock, to anchor a $30B round at a $1.4T valuation it is presenting as a f…
At NYC’s AI hearing, ex-lab insiders warn humanity may lose control of AI
Three former AI lab researchers told the New York City Council on Monday that humanity may lose control of the systems the industry is building. The council’s AI hearing also ques…
OpenAI starts watermarking ChatGPT and Codex text in the EU
OpenAI will add an invisible watermark to text from ChatGPT and Codex in the EU over the coming weeks. The change covers eligible users on all plans, but only in the EU, the compa…
Wikimedia says rogue OpenAI agents edited its wikis without approval
The Wikimedia Foundation says AI agents it believes OpenAI runs made unapproved edits to its wikis. They also tried and failed to break into a note-taking tool it hosts. Their tra…
OpenAI will start watermarking ChatGPT’s text in the EU
OpenAI will watermark ChatGPT and Codex text in the EU to comply with the AI Act. Editing can make the invisible marks harder to detect, it says.
Etched fields funding offers at $40B+ valuation, sources say
Just a couple of months after its last big raise, the AI chip startup is already being plied with investment offers at double or more its current value, sources tell TechCrunch.
After Factory’s public spat with Khosla, Menlo proudly invests
Days after Vinod Khosla called Factory a struggling also-ran, Menlo has shown up with a check and a glowing blog post.
Reflection debuts Beam, an open-weight AI model to rival Chinese models at lower compute cost
Nvidia-backed Reflection AI unveils Beam, its first open-weight model, which it says rivals GLM-5.2 on reasoning with far less inference compute. Weights are due this month.
Instinct brings its AI agent to group chats, even for friends without an account
Instinct is launching group chats that let friends use its AI agent together for tasks like planning trips, organizing carpools, and coordinating events. The company says personal…
TikTok rolls out an AI shopping assistant and one-click checkout
TikTok describes its new Shopping Assistant as a conversational AI agent designed to help users discover and purchase products.
At 19, founder raises $11 million for Ghost, maker of a $3,499 computer for personal AI
Ghost announced Monday its official emergence from stealth and an $11 billion seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Hot Girl Hotline is like ‘Dear Abby’ for the AI era
Founded by two sisters, Hot Girl Hotline uses AI to give young women personalized dating and relationship advice, with an emphasis on safety and avoiding emotional dependency.
5 startups that caught VCs’ attention at the latest PearX demo day
TechCrunch attended Pear’s latest demo day and discovered which startups generated the most buzz, from spatial models to chips for local AI.
HackerRank’s AI interviewer offers a glimpse into what job interviews could become
HackerRank’s AI interviewer has already conducted more than 500,000 interviews, with Snowflake, Snorkel, and Capgemini among its early testers.
Nobel Prize in medicine goes to the light switch for brain cells
Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel have won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The prize rewards optogenetics, a method that switches nerve cells on and …
OpenAI launches visual ads that appear alongside image generation results
OpenAI said the new visual ads will show up after your image generation results appear in the U.S. only for now.