General Fusion laid off at least 25% of its employees last week, just days after hitting a key milestone for its latest fusion demonstration device. CEO Greg Twinney posted an open letter on the company’s website Monday saying that while its new LM26 device had been able to compress a plasma — something necessary for fusion
A hacker has exploited a vulnerability in TeleMessage, which provides modded versions of encrypted messaging apps such as Signal, Telegram, and WhatsApp, to extract archived messages and other data relating to U.S. government officials and companies who used the tool, 404 Media reported. TeleMessage came into the spotlight last week after it was reported that
YouTube is testing a new two-person Premium subscription plan in select countries, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Monday. The tier is being piloted in India, France, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The news was first reported by Money Control. “We’re experimenting with new ways to provide greater flexibility and value to our YouTube Premium subscribers,
DoorDash has asked a California Superior Court judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Uber that accuses the food delivery company of stifling competition by intimidating restaurant owners into exclusive deals. DoorDash argues in its motion that Uber’s claim lacks merit on all fronts. On a post on its website on Friday, DoorDash said, “the
A new venture firm aims to prove that the most successful startup ideas don’t have to be born or scaled in Silicon Valley. Fluent Ventures, a global early-stage fund, is backing founders replicating proven business models from Western markets in fintech, digital health, and commerce across emerging markets. The more cynical might describe this as
Months after first testing ads in select markets, including the U.S., Meta on Wednesday announced that its Instagram Threads app would now expand ads to all advertisers worldwide. The expansion will allow eligible advertisers to reach Threads’ over 320 million monthly active users, and it will include access to an inventory filter to control the sensitivity level
Khosla Ventures-backed Fireflies.ai, an AI-powered note-taking app, on Wednesday released a set of domain-specific “mini apps” to extract insights from meeting transcripts automatically. With the widespread availability of automatic speech recognition models and generative AI, meeting intelligence startups like Otter, Read AI, Circleback, Krisp, and Granola have registered impressive growth. Fireflies, similarly, has seen 8x
Bluesky’s launch of a verification system has raised a slew of questions among its user base, from who will be picked — and why — to what outside organizations might be involved and whether the self-verification process will end. TechCrunch has some answers. After a leak last week, Bluesky officially announced Monday the arrival of
Meta announced on Tuesday that it’s officially launching Edits, its CapCut-like video-creation app. Releasing globally, Edits will allow creators to do things like keep track of video ideas, get inspiration for new content, and create videos with effects and AI tools. The app is available on iOS and Android. All of the app’s features will
As an AI engineer at Meta, Boris Valkov helped build PyTorch, one of the world’s largest machine learning libraries. During his time there, Valkov realized that artificial intelligence “was about to unlock capabilities…in the application layer in the software stack.” He left Meta in late 2021 to start Lace AI, a startup that has developed
