Latest AI News

Data centers are turning to old jet engines as the wait for power grows

December 24, 2022 | TechCrunch AI
Data centers are turning to old jet engines as the wait for power grows
The engines, pulled from retired aircraft and rebuilt to burn natural gas, aren’t anyone’s idea of a permanent power plant. But they’re another sign of how far power supply has fallen behind the AI buildout. For companies stuck in those lines, the main draw of converted jet engines is how quickly the engines can be up and running. “It’s all about getting power as fast as possible,” Rystad Energy analyst Audun Martinsen told the Times. With jet-powered unit

Meta acquires AI coding startup Conductor

April 18, 2024 | TechCrunch AI
Meta acquires AI coding startup Conductor
The news was originally reported by Axios, and Conductor shared news of its acquisition on its blog. “I have big news: Conductor is joining Meta,” wrote the startup’s founder and CEO, Charlie Holtz, on Wednesday. “We have some big, crazy plans for the next interface,” he added, teasing that the company would have “something new” for customers to use by “early next year.” On X, Holtz also noted that he was looking forward to working with Alexandr Wang, Meta

Almost no one uses AI agents to book their Uber, company says

April 9, 2024 | TechCrunch AI
Almost no one uses AI agents to book their Uber, company says
While more people used an AI agent to order food through its delivery service, Uber Eats, the volume was still fairly small compared to the overall number of trips. Uber’s chief financial officer, Balaji Krishnamurthy, told Wall Street analysts on the call that the company handled around 320 million trips and orders across Uber and Uber Eats during the week of Halloween, but only 500 Uber Eats orders were placed by an AI agent. “It is very, very early and

Claude can now analyze your spending with its new Personal Finance tool

September 12, 2024 | TechCrunch AI
Claude can now analyze your spending with its new Personal Finance tool
By letting Claude connect directly to bank and credit card accounts, Anthropic is positioning its chatbot as a financial companion that can help people understand their spending and make sense of their money, rather than simply offering them generic advice. With the launch, Claude is playing catch-up to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which introduced similar personal finance tools in May that also let users connect their financial accounts and ask questions about every

Tesla will stop making the Cybertruck in 2027

October 30, 2024 | TechCrunch AI
Tesla will stop making the Cybertruck in 2027
Tesla is killing off the Cybertruck at a moment when it is trying to become an AI- and robotics-focused company. A big part of that is its robotaxi ambitions. The company has spent the last two months putting Cybercabs on the streets in its hometown of Austin, Texas. With no major incidents to date, the company has said it plans to expand the Cybercabs operations to other cities, starting with Dallas later this month. (Tesla also operates robotaxi versions

Musk says Tesla will refund some Cybertruck deposits, defends decision to end production

April 12, 2017 | TechCrunch AI
Musk says Tesla will refund some Cybertruck deposits, defends decision to end production
Tesla will shut down production of the Cybertruck in about eight months Musk said in an X post on Monday. He also said the company will try to make as many of the vehicles as possible before then, though Tesla will “have to return deposits for a lot of people.” Musk argued the Cybertruck was not unprofitable, and that Tesla was ending production because the “opportunity cost of the complexity of Cybertruck is vastly outweighed by the value of incremental C

Meta warns that election backlash against data centers could make AI expansion harder

March 1, 2019 | TechCrunch AI
Meta warns that election backlash against data centers could make AI expansion harder
Speaking at the WSJ Tech conference on Wednesday, the Meta exec pointed out that the backlash against data centers — which was very much on the ballot during this election season — was also tied to people’s feelings about AI technology overall. “The visible sort of manifestation of AI is a data center, and it’s something that people can say, ‘I don’t want this in my community,’” she explained. “I think there’s an underlying bigger issue, which is how peopl

Meta says US users can now video chat with their Muse AI avatar

December 14, 2023 | TechCrunch AI
Meta says US users can now video chat with their Muse AI avatar
First introduced at Meta’s Connect developer conference in September, the video-chatting feature involves new AI models, Muse Realtime Avatar and Muse Realtime Voice technology, which help power the digital avatar that chats with the user. While other AI competitors offer voice chat features, Meta’s Muse offers a cute, animated avatar (nicknamed Jolly), which users interact with as they ask questions or request tasks to be handled on their behalf. Users ca

Airbnb says it’s launching an AI travel agent in the first half of 2027

November 5, 2020 | TechCrunch AI
Airbnb says it’s launching an AI travel agent in the first half of 2027
Chesky today reiterated that belief, telling analysts on the earnings call that people won’t use one AI agent for everything. “Today’s AI agents like Muse and Instinct are good at simple routine tasks like making a restaurant reservation or scheduling an appointment. But planning a trip is different,” he said. “Travel is aspirational. Discovering where to go and where to stay is part of the experience. In fact, 80% of travelers say they enjoy spending time

Palo Alto Networks in talks to buy AI agent security startup Clutch for $500M

November 12, 2022 | TechCrunch AI
Palo Alto Networks in talks to buy AI agent security startup Clutch for $500M
Three-year-old Clutch was last valued at $85 million when it raised a $20 million Series A round in January 2025, led by Lightspeed and SignalFire, according to our source. The startup is currently approaching $10 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). That means the acquisition, if completed, would value Clutch at about 50 times its ARR, a standard way of pricing software companies. Palo Alto Networks and Clutch Security did not respond to a request f

Physicl raises $10M to make the digital world real enough for robots

December 30, 2016 | TechCrunch AI
Physicl raises $10M to make the digital world real enough for robots
His new venture, Physicl, has raised $10 million in seed funding led by Inovia Capital to help world model designers and robot builders solve thorny training problems with more realistic simulations. Founder and CEO de Vigan spent the last decade building nfinite, which made it easy for brands and retailers to create 3D models of their goods and display them online. The arrival of transformer-based AI models led that company to focus more on generative ima

Underdog shows off a 32MB speech model in new demo

May 9, 2026 | TechCrunch AI
Underdog shows off a 32MB speech model in new demo
One such startup, Underdog, has released a game built with its new voice model called Woof that’s only 32MB large. The game features a room with a retro tech theme, a typewriter, and a CRT monitor. There is a desk lamp, which makes a sound when you click its switch. The intro warns users about “intrusive” cloud providers in the town — ostensibly a jab at cloud-based models. You can interact with the typewriter and music tuner. We made a game for our new fr

After blocking Muse, Amazon now lets users text Alexa to help them shop

November 4, 2019 | TechCrunch AI
After blocking Muse, Amazon now lets users text Alexa to help them shop
The move comes after Amazon blocked Meta’s Muse from querying its site in September. The company is rolling the features out just before the start of the holiday shopping season. The e-commerce giant said select U.S. customers will get a text asking them to enable the shopping feature. Those with access can text Alexa to shop on Amazon using natural language queries, spanning everything from searching for items, adding them to cart, and purchasing. Image C

Ramp data shows AI spending stalling just as Anthropic nears its IPO

November 18, 2022 | TechCrunch AI
Ramp data shows AI spending stalling just as Anthropic nears its IPO
A new report from Ramp shows AI spending flatlined over late summer even as token volumes rose, a sign that price competition and savvier customers may be capping revenue for OpenAI and Anthropic. According to Ramp’s data, token spend only grew 1.5% across August and September. To compare, in July, it grew 42% from the previous month. As Anthropic gears up for its IPO, the data suggests investors might be wrong to assume AI companies will keep growing at b

Meta introduces Spaces, a new way to collaborate with your Muse agent

March 14, 2022 | TechCrunch AI
Meta introduces Spaces, a new way to collaborate with your Muse agent
“Describe an idea in chat, and Muse builds a space for you, whether that’s a tracker, a planner or a project board,” Meta says. Image Credits:Meta Spaces can also be easily integrated with third-party apps and information, Meta says. “Connect the apps you use, and your spaces keep themselves up to date in the background, so new concert dates, price changes, or savings progress show up without you having to ask,” the company says. On Friday, Mark Zuckerberg

Hundreds of Artex AI hacking tools found publicly exposed to the web

August 17, 2020 | TechCrunch AI
Hundreds of Artex AI hacking tools found publicly exposed to the web
The hacking software, called Artex, is an open source autonomous penetration testing tool, meaning software that automatically probes computer systems for weaknesses, and it’s been linked to several cyberattacks since its public release in July. As open source software, it’s free for anyone to download and run on their own servers, making it a popular tool for those who cannot access Anthropic or OpenAI’s most advanced cybersecurity AI models for discoveri

Crusoe sells troubled Wyoming data center project to Google

October 14, 2025 | TechCrunch AI
Crusoe sells troubled Wyoming data center project to Google
Google, which Crusoe had tried and failed to land as a customer for the project, is taking over the development after reportedly raising concerns about its cost and construction timeline under Crusoe’s management. Crusoe initially announced the project last year with Blackstone-backed infrastructure company Tallgrass, planning to eventually scale it to 10 gigawatts of power capacity. Google did not disclose how much it paid Crusoe for the unfinished projec

From the front row to the hot seat — what the midterms mean for Big Tech

August 11, 2018 | TechCrunch AI
From the front row to the hot seat — what the midterms mean for Big Tech
For the past two years, many of Silicon Valley’s biggest names have built closer ties with President Donald Trump and his administration. Several attended White House events, some companies scaled back diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, and some executives donated millions to super PACs supporting his campaign and allied candidates. Administration policies also benefited the industry, including tax breaks, the pausing of some federal investig

After the midterms, things are looking rocky for Elon Musk and data centers

August 24, 2020 | TechCrunch AI
After the midterms, things are looking rocky for Elon Musk and data centers
Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Democrats’ historic victory in this week’s midterm elections could also have a dramatic effect on the tech industry. In dozens of local ballot measures, voters rejected data centers. And even when they weren’t voting on the issue directly, they were electing politicians — like Texas’ new governor-elect Gina Hinojosa — who campaigned on the promise of restricting data centers. On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s

Nvidia will investigate CEO Jensen Huang’s relationship with possible Chinese spy

April 7, 2019 | TechCrunch AI
Nvidia will investigate CEO Jensen Huang’s relationship with possible Chinese spy
“I owe my family and all of you an apology,” Jensen Huang wrote. “I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.” Huang added that he’d “fallen short” of his responsibility to the company. “To my colleagues at NVIDIA, including those I have worked alongside for decades, and to our board, partners, and shareholders around the world: you deserve better from me,” he said. As the AI race