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In the last few years, AI-powered dictation tools have taken off. In addition to existing dictation apps like Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, Willow, and Monologue, new ones are being launched every week. On Thursday, hardware company Nothing launched a competitive product of its own, called Essential Voice. The core idea is similar to other dictation apps, as Essential Voice works in any app to turn your speech into formatted text, removing filler words like “um” and “ah” along the way. The company said that you can also create custom voice shortcuts for words, links, templates, and repeated phrases. For instance, you…

Tim Cook plans to step down from his CEO role in September, handing the reins to hardware chief John Ternus.   Ternus may be inheriting one of the most durable businesses in tech, but he’s also stepping into a very different ecosystemthan the one Cook spent decades shaping. The App Store’s 30% cut is under pressure, the behind-the-scenes power Apple once held over developers is being challenged, and vibe-coded apps are changing what it means to build on Apple’s platform.  Watch as TechCrunch’s Equity podcast hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into what this transition means for startups and a closer look at some of the week’s…

Pronto, an Indian instant house-help startup, is finalizing a funding round led by tech investor Lachy Groom that would value the fast-growing company at about $200 million after investment, TechCrunch has learned. The deal is expected to bring in about $20 million in fresh capital and would mark a sharp jump from the $100 million valuation at which the company raised $25 million in a Series B round led by Epiq Capital in early March, doubling its valuation in a matter of weeks, two people familiar with the matter said. Bengaluru-based Pronto completed about 500,000 orders last month and is…

XChat, X’s stand-alone messaging app, launched to the public on Friday. Initially available on iOS devices, the new app allows users to connect with their X contacts for messaging, file sharing, audio and video calls, as well as group chats. The company first began publicly testing XChat with a small group of beta users earlier this year to get their feedback about the new experience. The XChat app is a key piece to the strategic vision for the company, which sees the social network as a jumping-off point for other services, like messaging or payments. (The latter is also being…

Weiyao Wang spent eight years at Meta — his first job out of college — helping build multimodal perception systems and contributing to open-world segmentation projects, including SAM3D. His final day at Meta was last week, and he has since joined Thinking Machines Lab (TML). His move to TML comes as the AI startup expands on multiple fronts. It just signed a multibillion-dollar cloud deal with Google, giving it access to Nvidia’s latest GB300 chips and making it one of the first startups to run on the hardware. The agreement, announced this past Tuesday at Google Cloud Next, follows an…

Series, a social networking app, announced that it raised a $5.1 million pre-seed round, with investors including Venmo co-founder Iqram Magdon-Ismail, Pear VC, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, and GPTZero founder Edward Tian. The company was founded early last year by Yale students Nathaneo Johnson and Sean Hargrow, both still seniors at the university.  Series considers itself to be a next-generation social networking platform, rather than an AI app, and hails itself as one of the first to work entirely through iMessage, Johnson, the CEO, told TechCrunch. Users text a phone number (Series AI) on iMessage, explaining who they are and…

Silicon Valley tends to tolerate a certain amount of founder exaggeration when pitching investors, often dismissing it as part of selling a vision. But some choices cross the line and can lead to jail time for founders and scandal for their investors. A case in point is Joseph Sanberg, whose once high-flying fintech startup Aspiration Partners was backed by a roster of tech celebrities, including former Microsoft CEO and current Clippers owner Steve Ballmer. In August 2025, Sanberg pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud and defrauding multiple investors and lenders, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a…

I’ve used ChatGPT to help me build a budget before, and it was genuinely helpful. After I input my monthly salary as well as my standard utilities and recurring expenses, the chatbot drafted a few solid options, and I tweaked them into penny-pinching perfection. I’m admittedly part of the growing number of people turning to chatbots, like Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, for financial advice.“Millions of people turn to ChatGPT with money-related questions, from understanding debt to building budgets and learning financial concepts,” says Niko Felix, an OpenAI spokesperson, when reached for comment. “ChatGPT can be a helpful…

Cohere, the Canada-based enterprise AI unicorn, announced Friday that it would merge with the Germany-based enterprise AI company Aleph Alpha. The deal, which has yet to close, will value the newly formed company at $20 billion, the FT reported. Schwarz Group, one of Aleph Alpha’s top backers, will also invest $600 million in Cohere’s Series E round, which is expected to close later this year, CNBC reported. A handful of Silicon Valley players continue to dominate the AI commercial landscape, which is busy with consolidation activity. A press release announcing the Cohere-Aleph Alpha union said one goal of the merger was to…

As a general rule, global instability leads to higher prices, and boy, is the world a doozy right now. Airfare hasn’t escaped the tumult: US airfares are up 14.9 percent compared to a year ago, according to NerdWallet, largely due to fuel price spikes linked to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz caused by blockages, bombs, and blockades.While the medium-term outlook for the airline business isn’t great, there are still a few smart and tricky ways to save a little money when flying this summer. These are tips I’ve learned from covering transportation for more than a decade, and from…

Palantir has helped the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigations office probe a variety of financial crimes in the U.S. for much of the last decade, The Intercept reported. The IRS has paid the firm $130 million since 2018 to use its data analysis software to pore over financial records for investigative purposes, the outlet reported citing public records detailing Palantir’s IRS contract that were obtained by the nonprofit watchdog group American Oversight. It was previously known the IRS was using Palantir’s products, and that the agency sees the software as a way to automate and modernize audits. Last summer, it…

With his deep brown eyes, wide grin, and almost comically chiseled body, Jae Young Joon is the platonic ideal of a hunky male influencer. On Instagram, where he has more than 320,000 followers, he regularly posts himself trying on sheet masks at home, enjoying soju and karaoke with his friends, or posing in front of the Ferris wheel at Coachella. Occasionally, he’ll promote his music, including his recent LP Pressure Release, which features a BDSM-inspired album cover, his back muscles rippling underneath a harness and chains.It’s an impressive online presence, and Jae’s fans eat it up: his comments are filled…

ABC World News Tonight with David Muir remained America’s most-watched newscast in total viewers and the Adults 25-54 demo; however, it was the only newscast that was down in both categories for the week of April 13.During a week that saw less escalation in the Middle East than in prior weeks, none of the evening broadcasts recorded any growth in total viewers. Still, NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas and CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil finished with gains in the A25-54 demo.Meanwhile, WNT’s demo lead over Nightly News fell to below 100,000 viewers during the just-concluded week, with 67,000…

X-energy’s stock popped today in its debut on the Nasdaq, opening at $30.11 before closing at $29.20, up 27% over its initial public offering of $23 per share. Investors can’t get enough nuclear power, apparently. Even the initial share price had been revised upward from the $16 to $19 target floated by the company during its investor roadshow. At close, the company was valued at $11.5 billion. Just five years ago, such interest in a nuclear startup would have come as a surprise to many.  Back then, the nuclear industry was haunted by delayed projects and massive cost overruns at…

Two companies that launched last year with plans to create gene-edited babies have already shut down, citing money issues and internal conflict.One of them, Manhattan Genomics of New York, closed abruptly shortly after announcing a team of scientific advisers in October that included a prominent fertility doctor, a data scientist who worked for de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences, and a scientist who pioneered a “three-parent” IVF technique. The other, California-based Bootstrap Bio, said it ceased operations in late 2025, as first reported by Mother Jones.Manhattan Genomics and Bootstrap Bio had ambitions to edit DNA in human embryos with the goal of…

Top of the Ticker: The White House Correspondents’ Dinner will take place this Saturday, and for the first time in his presidency, President Donald Trump will attend the gala.The president’s presence at the annual dinner will be heavily scrutinized due to his treatment of the press. The cable news nets will be offering live coverage of this year’s “Nerd Prom,” and this is how they are covering it: C-SPAN will provide live, uninterrupted coverage beginning with red carpet arrivals at 6 p.m. ET. CNN will have John Berman and Laura Coates anchoring from the network’s Washington bureau beginning at 8…