Agriculture is a thirsty industry, consuming 70% of all fresh water used worldwide. In some countries, like India or Chile, it can be more than 90%. For Mario Bustamante, who lives in Chile, the problem hits close to home. “Lack of water is a big issue here,” he told TechCrunch. Bustamante is betting that AI … Read more
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made a rare public appearance at Italian Tech Week in Turin on Friday and used the opportunity to predict that millions of people will be living in space “in the next couple of decades,” the Financial Times reports. Speaking with John Elkann, a scion of Italy’s Agnelli dynasty, Bezos, who also … Read more
Naveen Rao, who was formerly the head of artificial intelligence at Databricks, is in talks to raise $1 billion at a $5 billion valuation for a new startup called Unconventional, Inc., that’s building a new type of computer, according to four people familiar with discussions. Andreessen Horowitz has agreed to lead the investment, and Lightspeed … Read more
OpenAI has acquired Roi, an AI-powered personal finance app. In keeping with a recent trend in the AI industry, only the CEO is making the jump. Chief executive and co-founder Sujith Vishwajith announced the acquisition on Friday, and a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch he is the only one of Roi’s four-person staff to join OpenAI. Terms of … Read more
OpenAI’s Sora app for AI videos is a viral hit, despite being invite-only for now and limited to users in the U.S. and Canada at launch. On its first day, Sora saw 56,000 downloads, and is now ranked as the No. 3 Top Overall app on Apple’s U.S. App Store, according to new data from … Read more
Amazon will restart its drone delivery service in Arizona beginning Friday as two federal agencies continue to investigate a crash that occurred earlier this week. Amazon suspended operations in the West Valley of the Phoenix Metro area — currently its only commercial market — following a crash Wednesday. Two of the company’s Prime Air delivery … Read more
While AI coding startups like Cursor close brow-raising rounds on barely three years of existence, Replit’s path to a $3 billion valuation has been anything but swift. For CEO Amjad Masad, who’s been building tools to democratize programming since 2009, it’s a story of muscling through multiple failed business models, years stuck at the same … Read more
The Department of Energy said Wednesday night it was canceling 321 awards worth $7.56 billion that were largely focused on clean energy. The agency hasn’t publicly released a list of the affected projects and, at the time of publication, it had not provided one to TechCrunch. According to E&E News and Heatmap, which have obtained … Read more
Instagram Threads, Meta’s X rival that now has over 400 million monthly active users, is officially launching a new feature that could redefine how its app is used: Communities. On Thursday, Meta said it’s introducing over 100 communities to the app, where users worldwide can have casual conversations around topics like basketball, television, K-pop music, … Read more
Einride, the Swedish startup known for its unusual-looking electric and autonomous pods that are designed to carry freight, said Wednesday it has raised $100 million from several new and existing investors, including its largest shareholder, EQT Ventures. The raise included an undisclosed strategic investment from quantum computing company IonQ. Neither Einride, nor its investors, disclosed … Read more
