Latest news and articles about startups
From Reddit exploring identity verification to Android implementing new security processes for app sideloading, tech platforms are simultaneously tightening access controls in response to AI-generated content and bot armies. This convergence reveals a fundamental crisis: the internet's trust infrastructure was never designed for the age of accessible AI automation.
There could be one more step required before creating an account and posting on Reddit in the future. According to Reddit's CEO, Steve Huffman, the social media platform is exploring different ways to...
Blue Origin's plan to launch 51,600 satellites as orbital AI data centers represents more than just another space venture—it reveals how the explosive energy demands of AI training are forcing the industry to literally escape Earth's constraints. This development, combined with increasing regulatory pressure on terrestrial data centers, suggests we're witnessing the beginning of a profound geographic shift in where computation happens.
A group of former Twitter investors have prevailed at a federal civil trial over Elon Musk's actions amid his $44 billion acquisition of the social platform in 2022. A jury in San Francisco found Frid...
From OpenAI combining ChatGPT with its browser and code tools to Google testing desktop Gemini integration, major AI companies are abandoning the multi-app strategy. This consolidation reveals a critical shift in how tech giants view AI's future—and suggests the experimental phase is definitively over.
Pinterest's CEO has thrown his support behind an Australia measure banning social media for younger teens and is calling for governments around the world to implement similar bans. "Social media, as i...
Last year, Belkin released a couple of cases for the Nintendo Switch 2 just in time for launch, including one that came with a handy battery pack. That one was simple and effective, but it felt a bit...
DoorDash's new program paying delivery workers to create AI training data signals a fundamental shift in the gig economy model—one where human labor increasingly serves machine learning rather than customers. This development raises questions about whether we're witnessing the birth of a new economic category or simply a temporary bridge to full automation.
Blue Origin has filed with the FCC to deploy Project Sunrise, a constellation of 51,600 satellites designed to operate as orbital AI data centers. The initiative aims to provide computing capacity for artificial intelligence at lower costs than terrestrial data centers by leveraging solar power and eliminating land and grid infrastructure needs, joining SpaceX in pursuing space-based AI computing infrastructure.
Alphabet's life sciences business Verily is restructuring and raising money as a new corporate entity. Verily announced that with its $300 million investment round, it will change from an LLC to a cor...
OpenAI is acquiring Astral, a company focused on Python developer tools, to accelerate growth of its Codex AI model. The acquisition aims to enhance OpenAI's capabilities in powering next-generation Python development tools.
Amazon has acquired Rivr, a Zurich-based autonomous robotics startup previously valued at $110 million, to enhance its logistics and package delivery capabilities. Rivr's four-legged robots with wheels are designed to navigate stairs and uneven surfaces, with the company having just released its second-generation model. The acquisition supports Amazon's broader automation strategy, including its goal to automate 75% of its operations.
Starfield is officially coming to PS5, with a launch date set for April 7. Preorders are open right now for both the digital and physical versions. It's long been rumored that Bethesda's sci-fi RPG wo...
Gecko Robotics has secured the U.S. Navy's largest robotics deal yet, a five-year IDIQ contract worth $54 million initially with a $71 million ceiling. The Pittsburgh-based company will deploy robots and sensors to inspect Navy ships and create digital twins for predictive maintenance, starting with 18 vessels in the Pacific Fleet, to help the Navy achieve its 80% ship readiness goal by 2027.
NVIDIA and European rideshare company Bolt announced a partnership to develop autonomous vehicles, with Bolt providing real-world driving data to train NVIDIA's AI models. Bolt will use NVIDIA's Cosmos, Omniverse, Alpamayo, and Drive Hyperion platforms to build a learning engine for autonomous mobility services tailored to European roads.
A judge has ruled that publisher Krafton must reinstate Ted Gill as CEO of Unknown Worlds Entertainment, according to a report by Bloomberg. The company fired Gill and two other co-founders last year...
ByteDance's emergency suspension of its AI video tool following cease-and-desist letters from Disney and Paramount marks a pivotal moment in generative AI's evolution. Unlike text or image generation, video AI is colliding head-on with Hollywood's entrenched intellectual property infrastructure—and the industry's response suggests that the tolerance for 'move fast and apologize later' has officially expired.
Samsung will reportedly end Galaxy Z TriFold sales in South Korea on March 17, three months after the device went on sale, according to South Korean newspaper Dong-A Ilbo. Samsung has not yet confirme...
Apple's latest acquisition could be a hint towards improvements for Final Cut Pro. The tech giant acquired MotionVFX, as seen on the company's website and first reported by MacRumors, which is known f...
After years of controlled pilots and safety-driver rides, Uber's Las Vegas robotaxi launch signals a crucial shift in the autonomous vehicle industry—one where actual passengers, not test metrics, become the measure of success. This marks the transition from endless testing to real-world viability.
Ahead of its acquisition by Paramount Skydance, Warner Bros. dominated the 2026 Oscars with 11 wins primarily for Ryan Coogler's Sinners and Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another. Netflix al...
In an unexpected twist, humans have taken some jobs back from AI. Embark Studios' CEO Patrick Söderlund recently told GamesIndustry.biz that the studio "re-recorded" some of the AI-generated voice lin...
As AI agents gain the ability to book flights, make purchases, and access sensitive systems, a cluster of recent incidents reveals the industry's uncomfortable truth: we're deploying autonomous capabilities faster than we can secure them. From Amazon blocking Perplexity's shopping bots to researchers struggling with prompt injection defenses, the gap between agent ambition and agent safety has never been more apparent.
You're responsible for your own Spotify algorithm now. On stage at SXSW, Spotify's co-CEO, Gustav Söderström, announced the Taste Profile feature, which allows users to personally customize exactly wh...
Digg has shut down, for now, just a few months after its open beta launched. Justin Mezzell, the company's CEO, has explained on the home page that it noticed hours after the beta launched that it was...
Canopii, a Portland-based robotics startup, has achieved a major milestone by developing an autonomous robotic greenhouse that can grow crops from seed to harvest without human intervention, producing up to 40,000 pounds of produce annually while using minimal water and space. The company has raised approximately $3.6 million primarily through grants and strategic investors, deliberately avoiding venture capital early on to avoid the pitfalls that plagued other indoor farming companies like Bowery Farming and Plenty.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the union that covers warehouse workers, drivers and a diverse collection of other laborers, has come out against Paramount Skydance's merger with Warner Br...
Adobe's long-time CEO has shared that he plans to step down. Shantanu Narayen has been the chief exec at the tech company for 18 years, a tenure where he led Adobe in the major shift to become a softw...
OpenClaw, a popular open-source AI agent tool in China that can autonomously complete device tasks, has sparked a cottage industry of entrepreneurs offering installation services and configuration support. Early adopters like Feng Qingyang have turned the trend into profitable businesses, with thousands of orders and growing interest from major tech companies and local governments backing OpenClaw-related ventures.
NASA will soon give it another go on April Fools' Day. On Thursday, NASA said it's targeting April 1 at 6:24 PM ET for the Artemis II mission's next launch attempt. In case that date doesn't pan out,...
Uber has partnered with UK self-driving startup Wayve and Nissan to pilot a robotaxi service in Tokyo starting in late 2026, using Nissan Leaf EVs equipped with Wayve's AI Driver technology. The pilot will begin with trained drivers behind the wheel while vehicles gather real-world data on Tokyo's complex urban driving conditions, with plans to expand the service to over 10 cities globally.
From NVIDIA's NemoClaw platform to DeepMind's decade of AlphaGo research sharing, major AI companies are increasingly embracing open-source approaches. This strategic shift reveals a fundamental tension in the industry: the more powerful AI becomes, the more companies need collaborative development to manage risk, interoperability, and trust.
Nuro, an autonomous vehicle startup backed by NVIDIA, Toyota, and Uber, has begun testing self-driving vehicles on Tokyo's streets as part of its broader expansion plans. The company aims to achieve Level 4 autonomy and plans to launch a robotaxi service with Uber and Lucid in San Francisco this year, while also exploring autonomous delivery applications beyond ride-sharing.
In 2024, Microsoft caused a lot of head-scratching and general bemusement with the launch of its "This is an Xbox" marketing campaign. Now, though, it appears the quandary over what is and isn't an Xb...
Niantic Spatial, an AI company spun out from Niantic, is leveraging 500 million crowdsourced images from Pokémon Go players to build a visual positioning system that helps delivery robots navigate urban environments with centimeter-level precision. The technology addresses GPS unreliability in dense cities and has been deployed with Coco Robotics, which operates around 1,000 autonomous delivery robots across US and European cities.
NVIDIA is reportedly developing NemoClaw, an open-source AI agent platform designed for enterprise use, with a focus on security features to address concerns about autonomous AI agents running unpredictably in business environments. The company has allegedly pitched the platform to major software companies like Salesforce, Cisco, and Google, with plans to potentially announce it at its upcoming developer conference.
Meta is acquiring Moltbook, a Reddit-like social network for AI agents founded in January, with creators Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr joining Meta's Superintelligence Labs. The platform was built using OpenClaw, a tool for creating AI agents that interact with multiple applications, and represents Meta's effort to develop infrastructure for AI agent collaboration.
Qualcomm's dual announcements this week—partnering with Neura Robotics and launching the Arduino Ventuno Q—signal a fundamental shift in the robotics industry. We're witnessing the emergence of chipmakers as the central orchestrators of robotic development, creating platforms that determine which startups succeed and which hardware architectures become standard.
Shazam is now available within ChatGPT, if you don't want to launch the music discovery app on your phone for, well, reasons. You will have to link the Shazam app with the chatbot first from its Apps...
Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, who has led the upstart social platform since 2021, is stepping down from her role as its top executive. Toni Schneider, who has been an advisor and investor in Bluesky, will t...
German robotics startup Neura Robotics has partnered with Qualcomm to develop humanoid and general-purpose robots using Qualcomm's Dragonwing Robotics IQ10 processors and Neura's Neuraverse simulation platform. The collaboration represents a broader trend of robotics startups partnering with major tech companies to accelerate physical AI development, similar to Boston Dynamics' partnership with Google DeepMind.
Mark Gurman at Bloomberg is back with the latest rumors about what's afoot with Apple's future plans, and how its ongoing difficulties with artificial intelligence seem to be creating further delays f...
Amazon's Zoox announced it will begin testing autonomous vehicles in Dallas and Phoenix using retrofitted Toyota Highlanders before deploying purpose-built robotaxis. The expansion brings Zoox's operational footprint to 10 US cities and comes as the robotaxi market intensifies with competition from Waymo and Tesla, while regulators prepare to address autonomous vehicle safety.
Deepak Pathak, a robotics professor at Carnegie Mellon University, has received a 2026 Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research for his project on enabling AI systems to learn through exploration and self-supervised reasoning in real-world environments. His research aims to develop more adaptable AI that can generalize like humans, with applications to disaster-response robots, industrial automation, and autonomous systems. Pathak is also CEO of Skild AI, a startup developing general-purpose AI control systems for robots.
OpenAI is acquiring Promptfoo, an AI security platform designed to help enterprises identify and remediate vulnerabilities in AI systems during development. The acquisition strengthens OpenAI's capabilities in AI safety and security testing infrastructure.
The hype for Gang of Dragon, the debut game from Nagoshi Studio, may already be getting derailed. According to a Bloomberg report, Chinese tech giant NetEase is going to stop financing Nagoshi Studio...
Here comes another disappointment for ChatGPT users. As first reported by Sources' Alex Heath, OpenAI is yet again delaying its "adult mode" for ChatGPT. A company spokesperson told Heath that "we're...
Three seemingly unrelated acquisitions this week—Netflix buying Ben Affleck's AI film startup, Oura acquiring gesture recognition company DoublePoint, and Descript's multilingual dubbing expansion—reveal a critical shift in how established companies are approaching AI. Instead of building everything in-house, industry leaders are strategically acquiring narrow-AI specialists to solve specific workflow problems.
The ongoing public feud between the Department of Defense and AI company Anthropic over its technology has raised a deep open question: does the law actually allow the US government to conduct mass su...
Life EV has completed a court-approved acquisition of Rad Power Bikes, granting a second life to the troubled e-bike brand. The Florida-based Life EV now owns Rad's brand, intellectual property, inven...
