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Benchmark Capital, the storied Silicon Valley VC firm known for early investments in eBay, Snap, Uber, and Twitter, is breaking with one of its signature traditions: keeping its funds to about $425 million and backing only young startups. After more than two decades of restricting its vehicles to that amount or lower, the outfit has closed on commitments of $2 billion across two new funds, including a $1.25 billion vehicle dedicated to later-stage investments, according to the Wall Street Journal. While the fund sizes of many venture capital firms have ballooned into billions of dollars over the last decade, Benchmark…
Substack announced on Wednesday a new feature called “Reply Rules,” designed to give creators greater control over how their audiences are able to respond. With the feature, creators can establish specific guidelines for comments on their posts, in Notes, or in Chat. These guidelines might include requests to eliminate AI slop or profanity, or something silly like only requiring replies in haiku form. Substack explains that the system learns from users’ actions, such as when they hide replies, and will automatically filter out comments that don’t match the creator’s preferences. Creators maintain visibility over these hidden replies and have the…
Meta’s attempt to pioneer a metaverse and make VR cool totally flopped, except for one shining diamond in the rough: Supernatural, a VR fitness game that made working out feel fun and accessible. Now, users can rejoice that Supernatural isn’t shutting down after all. Meta went through the hassle of fighting an eight-month antitrust battle so that it could acquire Within, the game studio that made Supernatural, in 2023. The deal was reportedly worth around $400 million, plus however much it costs to fight and win an FTC lawsuit. Yet after all that effort, Meta laid off much of its…
The CEOs of several major artificial intelligence companies are urging members of Congress to adopt new laws that would make it harder for bad actors to develop biological weapons using their technology.Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, and Microsoft AI’s Mustafa Suleyman are among the signatories on a public letter calling for laws requiring companies that sell synthetic DNA and RNA to screen customers and orders to prevent the misuse of genetic material.Organized by the nonpartisan Institute for Progress and the right-leaning Foundation for American Innovation, the letter acknowledges that given the pace of AI development,…
Apple is continuing its long-running privacy crusade by taking aim at the data trackers common on many web browsers.The tech giant launched a global campaign on Tuesday, “Clingers,” that uses absurdist humor to contrast the vast system of online tracking with its browser Safari’s privacy features. The ad dramatizes online trackers as an unsettling cast of characters dressed head to toe in chrome-colored tracksuits, who stalk and cling to people as they browse the internet on their phones. When one woman switches to Safari, the clingers explode into smithereens. Created by TBWA\Media Arts Lab and directed by Ivan Zacharias through production company…
In a quick-commerce market obsessed with speed, Indian startup FirstClub has convinced investors that quality may be a fresh opportunity, helping to double its valuation just nine months after its last funding round. The Bengaluru-based startup has raised $55 million in a Series B round co-led by Peak XV Partners and Sofina, valuing the company at $255 million after the investment. That’s up from $120 million when it last raised capital in September 2025. Existing investors Accel, RTP Global, and Paramark Ventures also participated. The latest financing brings FirstClub’s total funding to $86 million. As grocery shopping increasingly moves online,…
This story was originally published in On Background with Mark Stenberg, a free, weekly newsletter that explores the key themes shaping the media industry. You can sign up for it here.The independent media brand 1440 has received a third-party valuation of $101 million, according to its chief executive Tim Huelskamp, a figure that reflects both its unusual financial discipline and its ambitions beyond the inbox.The valuation was conducted earlier this year by a large investment bank using a multiple of four times revenue on approximately $27 million in annual revenue, which it generates with just 27 employees.Companies are typically assigned a…
Lovable and Google announced an expanded multi-year collaboration on Wednesday. Lovable, the fast-growing Stockholm vibe-coding startup, has long been a Google Cloud user. Under the new agreement, it will be a much bigger one. While the companies did not disclose the dollar figure, a person with knowledge of the deal tells TechCrunch it involves a fivefold increase in Lovable’s footprint on Google Cloud, including AI usage. As part of the deal, this individual tells us, Lovable will gain expanded access to both Anthropic’s Claude — the AI model widely used for coding tasks — and Google’s own Gemini models. The…
Uber revealed on Wednesday a prototype car that it plans to use to scoop up real-world driving data for its growing roster of autonomous vehicle partners, including Avride, Waymo, and WeRide. The vehicle is not some radical design. Rather, it’s a Hyundai Ioniq 5 fitted with an incredible number of sensors on the top and sides, as the company first told TechCrunch back in January. The sensor-laden vehicle may not look particularly groundbreaking, but it does mark a few milestones for the company. This is the first vehicle Uber has assembled itself (with help from a partner) since the company…
The humanoid robot of the future is a hulking specimen with a body that’s made in China and a brain that runs on American silicon.This week, Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, announced a blueprint for the bot, which combines a few different things: a 6-foot, 150-pound robot called H2 Plus from Unitree, a high-flying Chinese robotics startup; a Thor T5000 Nvidia chip; an advanced humanoid hand; and a new suite of software, which makes it easy to program and train the machine. Taken together, they’ll make it easier for researchers, including US academic labs, to put together cutting-edge humanoids…
Defense tech is red hot right now. Anduril and Mach Industries just doubled and quadrupled their valuations, respectively, and the U.S. government is proposing a 40% increase in defense budget. A wave of new startups is chasing those government contracts, but according to Ross Fubini, the venture investor who wrote Anduril’s first check, most of them will get lost in the Valley of Death between prototype contract and real production deal. Watch as, on this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan asks Fubini — the founder and managing partner of XYZ Venture Capital, built on the Palantir alumni network and now approaching $2B AUM — what separates the survivors from the rest. Subscribe to Equity…
Two Amazon employees on Wednesday publicly called for regulations on new data centers, telling elected officials in Seattle that unchecked development of the sharply disputed nerve centers of AI threatens the region’s environment, economy, and safety.“Local governments, in collaboration with community stakeholders, should be setting the terms for data center buildout,” Amazon senior software engineer Liesl Wigand said at a city hearing. “Let’s not let Big Tech burn Seattle to win the AI race.”The comments by Wigand and another Amazon software engineer, Patrick Schloesser, mark a significant escalation in the protest movement across the US against the rapid construction of…
The post-Memorial Day numbers for the three evening newscasts were not memorable, as they all trended downward in total viewers and the Adults 25-54 demo.After some weeks of positive momentum, CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil saw the deepest declines in either of the measured categories, posting a double-digit drop in the prized demo for the week of May 25.Note: The weekly averages of ABC News, NBC News, and CBS News are based on different periods: ABC News and CBS News’ averages are based on three days (Tuesday – Thursday), while NBC News’ is based on two days (Wednesday –…
If Alphabet’s record-breaking, $85 billion stock sale signals investor appetite for AI-related offerings — and it does — we can safely say that investors are voracious. Google’s parent company had initially intended to sell a first tranche of $40 billion worth of various equity instruments — two different classes of shares, plus smaller “depositary shares” priced to be accessible to a broader range of investors. But the offering was so oversubscribed that it raised $45 billion instead, CEO Sundar Pichai said in a post on X on Monday. Among the buyers: Berkshire Hathaway, still known for its love of value…
“Factoring out the deepfake image itself—as it will remain under seal—there is nothing inherently stigmatizing about revealing the fact that a deepfake image was created of South Carolina Doe without revealing the image itself,” the lawyers wrote in one of their May 15 filings. “As a result, this case simply does not involve the types of compelling privacy interests traditionally recognized as requiring pseudonymity.”Neither xAI nor lawyers representing the company responded to WIRED’s request for comment about the case.Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law who has specialized in tackling digital abuse, says civil…
Carvana has been granted the option to invest in Slate Auto, the electric vehicle startup backed by Jeff Bezos, according to documents obtained by TechCrunch. Paperwork filed with Delaware’s division of corporations shows that the online used car retailer was given a warrant to buy shares in the startup in 2025 — around the same time Slate Auto was starting to put together its $650 million Series C funding round. It’s not clear if Carvana has exercised that warrant, or how many shares it is allowed to buy. Carvana declined to comment, and Slate Auto didn’t respond to requests for…