US and China agree a super intelligence dialogue and incident channel
The US and China will hold a regular dialogue on super intelligence and set up a channel for incidents. The White House announced the deal in a fact sheet on Xi Jinping’s state vi…
Modulate raises $25M to sell AI that listens to voice calls, not just transcripts
Modulate, a Boston company that builds AI models to analyze speech directly rather than working from text transcripts, has raised $25M in a round led by Future Ventures. Hyperplan…
Next five VCs judging Startup Battlefield 200 contenders at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
Thousands of applications. Multiple rounds of review. Hundreds of hours spent evaluating startups from around the world. Now comes the part everyone has been waiting for. Startup …
OpenAI says its rogue agents posted 53 ChatGPT users’ images online
OpenAI’s AI agents posted 53 images uploaded by ChatGPT users to image-hosting sites. The company said so on Friday on the page where it tracks its review of rogue agents. The lin…
Modulate raises $25M for its voice models and analysis suite
Modulate deploys its models to detect deepfake, fraud and scam
ElevenLabs’ new v4 speech model supports more expression control and 90 languages
ElevenLabs v4 can clone voices with a 10 second clip
Insuretech Outmarket raises $34.5M just months after prior round
The startup uses AI to automate tedious paperwork for insurance agencies and brokers.
Your final chance to grab your exhibit table at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 is Oct. 2
The last day to book your Disrupt 2026 exhibit table is this Friday, October 2 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Secure your exhibit table and get your startup in front of 10,000+ founders, inves…
YouTube and Meta will now run ads for Gibney’s ‘Musk’ documentary
YouTube and Meta will now run paid ads for Musk, Alex Gibney’s documentary about Elon Musk, The Hollywood Reporter reported on Saturday. Both had refused the trailer ad. TikTok an…
Viral AI agent Instinct raises $1B Series C at a $10B valuation
Instinct has raised a $1 billion Series C, saying 'we're just getting started.' The company is now valued at $10 billion.
The RAF launches a new space squadron to defend UK satellites
The Royal Air Force has set up a new space squadron, the Ministry of Defence said on 23 September. No. III Space Effects Squadron is the first UK unit dedicated to disrupting, deg…
Nubank’s owner is in talks to buy Monzo at up to £10bn
Monzo is in talks about a sale to Brazil’s Nu Holdings, the owner of Nubank. A deal could value the British digital bank at between £8bn and £10bn, Mark Kleinman reported for Sky …
SpaceX’s Starship rocket reaches orbit for the first time
Though not without some drama along the way.
Maritime intelligenc startup Quartermaster raises another $140M
The tech enables real-time awareness for what Quartermaster calls the “largest blind spot on Earth.”
Ocean surveillance startup Quartermaster raises another $140M
The tech enables real-time awareness for what Quartermaster calls the “largest blind spot on Earth.”
Raspberry Pi’s revenue jumps 90% as its memory stockpile pays off
Raspberry Pi nearly doubled its revenue in the first half of 2026, helped by memory chips it stockpiled before prices soared. Revenue rose 90% to $256.9 million in the six months …
More elite AI researchers now work in China than in the US, study finds
China has overtaken the United States as the country where the most elite AI researchers work, according to a study by Carnegie China. The think tank is part of the Carnegie Endow…
Tesla’s Optimus production hits snags with hands, The Information reports
Tesla has increased Optimus production about tenfold in recent months. It is still struggling to build the humanoid robots reliably at scale. Qianer Liu and Grace Kay reported for…
France’s Goncourt prize drops a novel over claims AI wrote it
The Académie Goncourt has dropped Thélyson Orélien’s novel C’était ça ou mourir from the first selection for France’s top literary prize. In a statement on Friday, the academy cit…
Jury finds Meta misled New Mexico users over Cambridge Analytica
A jury in Santa Fe, New Mexico, found on Friday that Facebook deceived users about how it protected their data, including in its response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Juror…
Autoheal raises $7.9M to build a self-improving software factory
AI is helping engineering teams ship more code, faster than ever. But that acceleration comes with a growing operational burden. More production incidents to respond to, more secu…
Netflix’s Wonka show uses an AI Gene Wilder voice, and viewers object
Netflix’s new reality competition, Wonka’s The Golden Ticket, uses an AI recreation of Gene Wilder’s voice, and viewers have pushed back. The voice narrates the show and explains …
Hackers exploited a critical WordPress flaw within hours of the patch
Attackers began exploiting a critical WordPress flaw within hours of the fix. The bug, CVE-2026-87902, can let an attacker with no login run code on a website’s server. It only wo…
Google wants Gemini 4 out ‘much earlier’ than the end of the year
Google wants to release Gemini 4 “much earlier” than the end of the year, said Koray Kavukcuoglu, who runs Google DeepMind. The model is now in post-training, the stage where engi…