New DOJ proposal still calls for Google to divest Chrome, but allows for AI investments

The US Department of Justice is still calling for Google to sell its web browser Chrome, according to a Friday court filing.  The DOJ first proposed that Google should sell Chrome last year, under then-President Joe Biden, but it seems to be sticking with that plan under the second Trump administration. The department is, however, […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Google scrubs mentions of ‘diversity’ and ‘equity’ from responsible AI team webpage

Google has quietly updated the webpage for its Responsible AI and Human Centered Technology (RAI-HCT) team, the team charged with conducting research into AI safety, fairness, and explainability, to scrub mentions of “diversity” and “equity.” A previous version of the page used language such as “marginalized communities,” “diverse,” “underrepresented groups,” and “equity” to describe the […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Judge allows authors’ AI copyright lawsuit against Meta to move forward

A federal judge is allowing an AI-related copyright lawsuit against Meta to move forward, although he dismissed part of the suit. In Kadrey vs. Meta, authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Ta-Nehisi Coates have alleged that Meta has violated their intellectual property rights by using their books to train its Llama AI models, and […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

9 US AI startups have raised $100M or more in 2025

Last year was a monumental year for the AI industry in the U.S. and beyond. There were 49 startups that raised funding rounds worth $100 million or more in 2024, per our count at TechCrunch. Three companies raised more than one “mega-round” last year, and seven companies raised rounds at $1 billion or larger. How […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Cursor in talks to raise at a $10B valuation as AI coding sector booms

Investor interest in AI-coding assistants is exploding. Anysphere, the developer of AI-powered coding assistant Cursor, is in talks with venture capitalists to raise capital at a valuation of nearly $10 billion, Bloomberg reported. The round, if it transpires, would come about three months after Anysphere completed its previous fundraise of $100 million at a pre-money […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Microsoft reportedly ramps up AI efforts to compete with OpenAI

Microsoft is accelerating its push to compete with OpenAI, its longtime collaborator, by developing its own powerful AI models and exploring alternatives to power products like Microsoft’s Copilot bot. Microsoft has developed its own AI “reasoning” models comparable to models like OpenAI’s o1 and o3-mini, the The Information reports. OpenAI is said to have refused […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

SXSW 2025: What we’re paying attention to

TechCrunch will be on the ground at SXSW 2025 — the annual tech, music, comedy, and film conference that kicked off Friday in Austin — in search of the zeitgeist of this AI-centric era. Yup, we’re one sentence in and AI has already made its entrance. And why not? A quick scan of the massive […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Signal President Meredith Whittaker calls out agentic AI as having ‘profound’ security and privacy issues

Signal President Meredith Whittaker warned Friday that agentic AI could come with a risk to user privacy. Speaking on stage at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, the advocate for secure communications, referred to the use of AI agents as “putting your brain in a jar,” and cautioned that this new paradigm of computing — […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

US lawmakers have already introduce hundreds of AI bills in 2025

Just over two months into 2025, the number of pending AI bills in the U.S. has grown to 781, according to an online tracking tool. The tool, maintained by consulting firm MultiState, shows that the number of pending U.S. bills pertaining to AI now exceeds the total number of AI bills proposed in all of […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Google debuts a new Gemini-based text embedding model

Google on Friday added a new, experimental “embedding” model for text, Gemini Embedding, to its Gemini developer API. Embedding models translate text inputs like words and phrases into numerical representations, known as embeddings, that capture the semantic meaning of the text. Embeddings are used in a range of applications, such as document retrieval and classification, […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.