Ceacer

As “vibe coding” gains in popularity and tech companies push devs in their employ to embrace generative AI tools, a platform that scans for vulnerabilities in AI-generated code has raised a fresh round of funding. Ox Security, which models risk across both AI- and human-produced code, on Wednesday announced that it closed a $60 million Series B. The round was led by DTCP with participation from IBM Ventures, Microsoft, Swisscom Ventures, Evolution Equity Partners, and Team8, and it brings Ox’s total raised to $94 million. Neatsun Ziv and Lior Arzi founded New York- and Tel Aviv-based Ox in 2021. Software and IT engineers by trade, the pair met at Check Point, where they worked on the security firm’s threat prevention product lines. Ox’s platform, which TechCrunch last profiled in 2022, is aimed at both security teams and developers, offering tools to scan code in applications and secure a company’s broader supply chain. Ox can model threats and even recommend fixes, assisting with code reviews and generating executive reports that highlight breaches and possible reasons they occurred. “Over the past year, AI has significantly transformed software development,” Ziv told TechCrunchw. “While these tools accelerate development for both experienced developers and beginners, they often lack the critical thinking and judgment needed to catch subtle security flaws … Ox frees up developers’ time, allowing them to focus on innovation, while simultaneously improving the organization’s overall security posture.” Ox provides tools to secure code, including AI-generated code.Image Credits:Ox SecurityZiv claims that Ox is analyzing over 100 million lines of code daily for around 200 customers, including eToro, SoFi, and two of its investors, Microsoft and IBM. “Our customer base spans from Fortune 10 companies to small- and medium-sized businesses,” Ziv said. “We also count military and government entities as clients, as well as federal agencies.” Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW According to Ziv, Ox’s new capital will be put toward growth and expansion as the 150-employee startup competes for market share against rivals such as Snyk, Veracode, Synopsis, and Checkmarx. Ox is generating around $10 million in annual recurring revenue — a figure Ziv anticipates will double by the end of the year — and plans to be cash-flow-positive within the next 2-3 years. “We want to position ourselves for long-term success and this way we can focus on scaling and reaching our bigger goals,” ZIv said. “We’ve seen significant growth in revenue, and received offers that give us the opportunity to make a leap forward. We felt it was the right time to take this step for the company.”

Mitsubishi Motors is in talks with Taiwan-based Foxconn’s electric vehicle division to source an OEM electric car model that the Japanese automaker plans to sell in Australia and New Zealand in the latter half of 2026. Mitsubishi said on Wednesday that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Foxtron Vehicle Technology to develop the EV, and would hold further discussions to reach an agreement. Foxtron is a joint venture between Foxconn and Taiwan-based Yulon Motor Co, which assembles and makes cars for Nissan. Mitsubishi and Nissan are also tapping their three-way alliance with Renault to augment their EV lineups in North America. Mitsubishi said it will start selling a rebadged version of the Nissan Leaf electric car in the second half of 2026 in North America, while Nissan would sell a rebranded plug-in hybrid electric vehicle model made by Mitsubishi, also in North America next year. Mitsubishi said it would also similarly sell rebranded EV models made by Renault in Europe.

Amazon Web Services is building a new AI-powered code generation tool codenamed “Kiro,” Business Insider reported, citing internal documents it had viewed. The tool can use prompts and existing data to generate code in “near real-time” by connecting with AI agents, the report said. The tool is said to have web and desktop apps, multimodal capabilities, and can be configured to work with third-party AI agents as well, Business Insider reported. Kiro can also create technical design documents, flag potential issues, and optimize code, the report said. The company already has an AI-powered coding assistant called Q Developer, which is akin to GitHub Copilot. Amazon was mulling launching Kiro towards the end of June, but those plans might have changed, Business Insider reported. AI-powered coding tools are a hot property in tech right now. Cursor maker Anysphere has reportedly raised funding at a $9 billion valuation. Its rival Windsurf is reportedly close to being acquired by OpenAI in a $3 billion deal.

OpenAI sees itself paying a lower share of revenue to its investor and close partner Microsoft by 2030 than it currently does, The Information reported, citing financial documents. The news comes after OpenAI this week changed tack on a major restructuring plan to pursue a new plan that would see its for-profit arm becoming a public benefit corporation (PBC) but continue to be controlled by its nonprofit division. OpenAI currently has an agreement to share 20% of its top line with Microsoft, but the AI company has told investors it expects to share 10% of revenue with its business partners, including Microsoft, by the end of this decade, The Information reported. Microsoft has invested tens of billions in OpenAI, and the two companies currently have a contract until 2030 that includes revenue sharing from both sides. The deal also gives Microsoft rights to OpenAI IP within its AI products, as well as exclusivity on OpenAI’s APIs on Azure. Microsoft has not yet approved OpenAI’s proposed corporate structure, Bloomberg reported on Monday, as the bigger tech company reportedly wants to ensure the new structure protects its multi-billion-dollar investment. OpenAI and Microsoft did not immediately return requests for comment.

Marathon Venture Partners, a venture firm in Athens that prides itself on being “day one partners to Greek tech partners,” just closed its newest fund with €75 million in capital commitments, according to partner Panos Papadopoulos. The vehicle brings the firm’s total assets under management to €175 million — a meaningful amount for an eight-year-old, seed-stage investor in Greece and a reflection, too, of some sizable exits. Among them was the sale last year of Marathon’s portfolio company Augmenta to CNH, a maker of farm machinery and construction equipment in a cash deal that valued Augmenta at $110 million. Marathon also sold some of its shares in Hack the Box, a cybersecurity upskilling and talent assessment platform, to the investment firm Carlyle in a secondary transaction. We chatted with Papadopoulos ahead of an in-person sit-down with him as part of TechCrunch’s first StrictlyVC evening in Athens on Thursday, May 8, a night that will also include a deep dive with Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis. What we wanted to know — and what the central questions will be Thursday night — is: why Greece, and why now? Greece has historically seen less venture investment than other European countries. What, if anything, has changed locally that enabled you to raise a €75 million fund when global fundraising has become more challenging? For starters, Marathon I is a top percentile performer globally in [realized returns]; we built a portfolio that captured the current zeitgeist well before, for example, AI-assisted scientific research, robotics or defense became the norm. What is your firm’s thesis and how does this newest fund’s thesis differ given the extended timeline we’re seeing for exits globally? We are backing founders who do something hard in important markets. It can be hard because it requires unique knowledge, like a research PhD, or high agency, meaning understanding of a regulated or overlooked industry like power grid management. And we’re going to continue doubling down on our fast-growing community, which has been accumulating experience and expertise, along with ambition. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW Greek startups have traditionally faced challenges scaling beyond the domestic market. How are you evaluating a company’s international growth potential in this environment where capital efficiency matters more than rapid expansion? I beg to differ. Greek startups leverage local talent to serve leading global customers and markets from day one. Across our portfolio there is virtually no revenue coming from the domestic market. But they are serving the best part of Fortune 500. At the same time, capital efficiency and team grit are second nature to our community. We’re seeing fewer IPOs globally and extended holding periods for venture-backed companies. How did this affect your conversations with your limited partners about expected timelines and returns? We don’t need decacorns for our fund economics to work. We invest early on, maintain substantial equity positions, and keep our fund sizes small. These provide for various opportunities for meaningful returns, including secondaries and strategic M&A, well before an IPO. We did secondaries back in 2021 when most of the market was promising infinite holding times. In our culture, cash is king. It seems that many others forgot it. Many European VCs are emphasizing deep tech and AI. Is Marathon taking a similar approach, or do you see different opportunities specific to the Greek ecosystem? Of course we all are, but the definition of deep tech is stretched and means many different things to different people. We are not focusing on any specific sector per se – instead, we are focusing on people changing their sectors. We were perhaps the first generalist VC to invest in defense before the Ukraine war. Greek founders have historically received less funding than counterparts in Berlin, Paris, or Stockholm. Are you seeing valuations for Greek startups that reflect this discount, and does this create opportunities for better returns? In our experience, this is not about geography or price. We are backing founders in non-consensus opportunities that most VCs would ignore. We move fast with conviction and we don’t ask who else is investing. These might sound like table stakes; they still are not. Given the challenging global exit environment, how are you advising your portfolio companies about strategic alternatives like secondary sales or acqui-hires? We work with our portfolio companies toward default alive scenarios. Starting from there, all options are on the table. We see founders truly want to run their companies for the long term. We believe a secondary sale can actually help towards that, and most often we are supportive of such scenarios. The EU has emphasized supporting startups through various funding mechanisms. How important is non-dilutive capital from these sources to your portfolio companies compared to five years ago? We welcome any such initiative. We advise, however, our portfolio founders not to waste time on non-market related activities. How has Greece’s improved macroeconomic situation affected both your fundraising process and the quality of startups you’re seeing? It’s always good when you are not making the press headlines, but what we do is less relevant to local macro. When it comes to the talent front, I would say truly based on naive empiricism that, if there is any correlation, that is inverse. Adversity is the mother of all invention. Many American VCs have pulled back from European investments. Has this created more opportunities for local funds like Marathon, or has it made syndicating deals more challenging? It is definitely a different market but also creates increased opportunity for European investors. I do not think the flood of capital in 2021 truly changed the opportunity for European companies. We must always count on ourselves and be aligned with founders for the long term.

It’s 2025, but business cards are still in vogue — just visit any conference or industry expo and you’ll end up with a pile that’s likely to be discarded sooner rather than later. But as smartphones have become our repositories of information and contacts, people are understandably keen to try out digital alternatives to business cards. Blinq, a startup out of Melbourne, bet that trend would take off when it started off as a hobby project in 2017, offering a digital business card app with a QR-code widget. Today, the company is making off with a bag of gold: It now has more than 2.5 million users — both individual customers and across 500,000 companies in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia. Off the back of that progress, the startup has now raised a $25 million Series A funding round led by Touring Capital. Returning backers Blackbird Ventures and Square Peg Capital also participated in the round, as did new investor HubSpot Ventures. “[The Blinq’s QR] was a simple, personal way to share who you are, and it worked well between iPhone users. But it wasn’t until late 2019 when most Android devices caught up on QR scanning, and adoption started to grow,” Jarrod Webb, CEO and founder of Blinq, told TechCrunch. “Then came COVID — QR codes went mainstream, in-person meetings became more intentional, and Blinq’s focus on making those moments seamless and memorable started to take off.” The startup has taken the B2C2B route ever since. The app lets users create several customized digital business cards for different needs and connect with contacts using them. The app can also automatically capture details and sync them with CRM systems such as HubSpot or Salesforce by using QR codes, email signatures, NFCs, short links, or video call backgrounds. Blinq is used by individuals, small businesses, and global enterprises, and 80% of its customer base is located in the U.S., Webb said. Its team has scaled from five employees based in Melbourne to 67 across Sydney, Melbourne, New York, and San Francisco, supporting its product development and go-to-market efforts. “Every time someone uses Blinq, they’re introducing it to someone new. And further, we see more frequent usage by active users the longer they’re on the platform,” Webb said. “That built-in virality drives organic growth and keeps our customer acquisition costs low. On the business side, companies pay per seat. As more employees adopt the product, teams grow organically, creating expansion revenue over time.” Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW Blinq competes with several companies providing similar digital business card services, including Mobilo, Popl, Wave, and Wix. Of course, the app also has to contend with social networking platforms like LinkedIn, landing pages, and services like Linktree. But Webb feels Blinq is more suited to building relationships and provides users more ways to follow up and engage with new contacts. Webb sees digital business cards as more than just an end point. “They’re our wedge. Because when you are the trusted tool at the moment a relationship begins, you earn the right to shape what follows. We’re focused on giving people everything they need to turn first impressions into real momentum — from dynamic, context-rich profiles to smart ways to stay top of mind. That means expanding into new markets, deepening our presence with businesses and enterprises, and continuing to evolve how people connect in a world that’s changing fast.”

Instacart has launched a new drinks and snack delivery app called Fizz, the company announced on Tuesday. The 21+ app is built for friends and family and is designed to make it easier to stock up for a party or get-together. The host of a party can invite guests into their Fizz cart to allow everyone to choose what they want to bring to the gathering. The app aims to eliminate the headache of splitting the bill, so everyone pays for what they add to a cart. “It’s becoming more and more common when people gather that they share in contributing to what it takes to put together a party, but then they do this kind of bill-splitting thing,” Daniel Danker, Instacart’s chief product officer, told TechCrunch. “Afterwards, they open up Venmo, and they kind of divide up the cost. And while we think that that’s great, certainly better than a more manual way of doing it in the past, we actually think there’s an opportunity to just completely eliminate that step and make it even more effortless.” With the launch of Fizz, Instacart is diversifying its revenue streams and offerings, all while appealing to new types of customers. The social, party-planning aspect of Fizz enables the company to tap into a younger demographic that may not be using Instacart. As the host on Fizz, you can create a party cart and drop the link into your group chat. Guests can add to the party cart even if they don’t have the Fizz app downloaded. You decide when to place the full order and get it delivered immediately or scheduled in time for your party for a flat $5 delivery fee. Guests don’t have to pay for a delivery fee or any other sort of fee. Image Credits:InstacartUnlike Instacart, which allows you to place orders across grocery, restaurant, retail, and express partners, Fizz is focused on a specific category: drinks and snacks. This includes things like beer, seltzer, non-alcoholic drinks, chips, dip, healthy snacks, or party supplies. When you buy drinks, you earn “Snack Bucks,” which can be redeemed for discounts on snacks. The items in a party cart will be shopped from a nearby grocery store on Instacart’s platform and delivered by an Instacart shopper. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW Danker said Instacart developed the idea for Fizz after recognizing that the way people gather and socialize is evolving. For instance, the older generations would pay for everything when hosting an event and choose what they’re going to serve. However, the younger generation is doing things a bit differently, as Gen Z and millennials tend to feel a need to share in the cost of a gathering, Danker notes. Plus, they want to ensure that everyone’s needs are considered, whether it’s someone who doesn’t drink or someone who follows a gluten-free diet. Fizz aims to address this evolving landscape in an affordable way, he says. While the app is designed for groups, Danker believes there’s an opportunity for Fizz to be used by individuals who may prefer the new app over Instacart. “Instacart is designed for the weekly recurring shop and then filling in orders in between,” Danker said. “The Fizz experience is a very lightweight experience. You don’t even have to choose a store up front. It’s $5 flat, and you get your order delivered. You don’t have to have a membership, where most customers that use Instacart, they come back every week. So the membership makes a ton of sense. Fizz, no membership required, really lightweight, really simple concept. You’re earning Snack Bucks as you shop. So, it’s designed for a different demographic and different audience than tends to use Instacart.” Image Credits:InstacartAs part of the launch, event planning app Partiful has integrated Fizz directly into invites for hosts and guests. You and your guests will be able to tap the Fizz link to get started on a party cart. Everyone on the event page can see the whole cart right within Partiful. “With our new Fizz integration, we’re solving another big logistical headache: stocking up for a gathering and making sure everyone’s tastes are accounted for — bringing your whole event to life in a just a few taps,” Partiful CEO Shreya Murthy said in a statement to TechCrunch. The launch of the new app comes a year after Uber shut down alcohol delivery service Drizly after acquiring it in 2021. Although Drizly and Fizz share some similarities, Instacart is taking a different approach by incorporating a social aspect in its new app, as it aims to capture the attention of Gen Z and millennials to drive its success. Plus, while Drizly was focused on alcohol delivery, Fizz features snack and party supplies. Fizz complies with local laws and jurisdictions regarding how alcohol sales are handled. The app is available in Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana (some parts), Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico (some parts), New York, Nevada (some parts), North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming.

YouTube continues to dominate the podcasting space, but Spotify is actively working to close the gap. The latest development: a new feature that lets users see how many times an audio-only or video podcast episode has been actively listened to or watched. The streaming giant revealed its new podcast metric called “plays” on Tuesday, making it possible for users to see which podcast episodes are most popular. This is the first time a podcast metric like this will be viewable for creators and users. The plays will appear next to a podcast episode throughout the app, including the home page, episode page, and show page. It’s also available for creators on Spotify for Creators and Megaphone. With this new metric for podcasts, Spotify aims to encourage users to explore podcasts they may not be familiar with, especially if they see that other listeners highly favor these episodes. For creators, this information sheds light on which episodes resonate most with audiences and, more importantly, allows them to benchmark their performance against competitors. Spotify’s announcement follows its first-quarter earnings, revealing a gain of 5 million premium subscribers, totaling 268 million. This marks the second-highest total ever and the largest first-quarter increase since 2020.

Uber is expanding its presence in Turkey with its latest acquisition. The ride-hail and delivery giant has acquired an 85% controlling stake in Trendyol Go, the online meal and grocery delivery business based in Istanbul, for about $700 million in cash. The deal gives Uber instant market share for Uber Eats in the country, where Uber currently only operates a ride-hail service. Uber’s acquisition announcement comes a day before the company is scheduled to report its first-quarter earnings. And with consumer spending projected to fall in 2025 due to President Trump’s tariffs, investors will want reassurance that Uber is still poised for growth, even as the company recently pulled out of its $950 million bid for Delivery Hero’s Foodpanda business in Taiwan. Uber has been laying the groundwork for expansion in other arenas, too. It seems like every few weeks, Uber announces a new autonomous vehicle partnership across its ride-hail, delivery, and freight verticals. Trendyol Go is the food delivery arm of parent company Trendyol Group, a fashion and retail e-commerce platform, which is majority owned by Alibaba. The company said in a filing that it delivered more than 200 million orders in 2024, generating $2 billion in gross bookings, which was up 50% from the previous year. There are more than 90,000 restaurants and 19,000 couriers on its marketplace. The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of 2025. When it does, users will be able to keep using the Trendyol Go app, and Uber will “introduce key capabilities over the coming years from Uber Eats,” the company said. TechCrunch has asked Uber for more information. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW Uber’s latest acquisition comes as it struggles for market share back home in the U.S. due to competition from DoorDash. In February, Uber filed suit against DoorDash, alleging anticompetitive behavior. DoorDash has urged the courts to dismiss the case. Earlier today, DoorDash announced two major acquisitions to expand its presence in Europe: The U.K.’s Deliveroo for $3.86 billion and SevenRooms for $1.2 billion.

The autonomous navigation market — where ships, guided by AI, steer themselves, resulting in fuel and time savings — is projected to sail past $11 billion by 2028. As a result, companies in this space are pushing on an open door. The latest is Orca AI, which closed a Series B funding round of $72.5 million led by Brighton Park Capital. Existing investors Ankona Capital and Hyperlink Ventures also participated. The London-based company has now raised over $111 million, including a $23 million funding round last year. So what drove the new round? In a word: defense. Founded in 2018 by CEO Yarden Gross and CTO Dor Raviv, Orca AI applies AI-powered decision-making and autonomous capabilities to ships based on a marine visual dataset of over 80 million nautical miles. By employing AI in navigation, it’s possible to significantly reduce collisions and allow crews to focus attention on other aspects of the voyage. “The main business still is in the commercial sector. We already have collaborations and POCs,” Gross told TechCrunch. “But we see opportunities in defense coming from navies around the world around autonomy,” he added, “where they want more cost-effective assets that can operate more efficiently with less human intervention. We’ve already signed the first contract in the defense field, deployed on a navy ship.” Orca’s growth is also benefiting from the expansion of Starlink, which allows real-time data to be transmitted to Orca AI for mapping routes, traffic monitoring, and sharing critical information. “Starlink enables us to collect data at scale directly from the ship sensor. We see that as a huge opportunity,” Gross said. The company claims that a 2024 analysis of Orca AI’s alerts system showed a 54% reduction in close-encounter events leading to an average of $100,000 savings in fuel per vessel per year. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW Other companies working on autonomous navigation at sea include Avikus (subsidiary of Hyundai HD) and Sea Machines.

Elon Musk may have a sizable fan base, but residents of the upscale Austin suburb of West Lake Hills, Texas, are unimpressed by their celebrity neighbor, reports The New York Times. Instead, a $6 million home Musk purchased in 2022 has become the center of a battle after his team erected an unauthorized 16-foot chain-link fence, installed a metal gate, and mounted outward-facing cameras. “I call that place Fort Knox,” says Paul Hemmer, a Tesla owner and retired real estate agent who lives across the street and serves as president of the neighborhood homeowners association. Musk’s visibly armed security personnel and their vehicles have disrupted the tranquil street, and the prospect of Musk’s return from Washington has some worried over more than his failure to obtain construction permits. “If you follow him at all in the news, he’s always guilty of building stuff and then asking for permission later,” Hemmer complained in a planning meeting. For Hemmer, the billionaire’s proximity may come at the steepest price. Per the Times, Musk’s security team once reported Hemmer to police, claiming he was naked in the street. Hemmer, who has flown drones over Musk’s house looking for ordinance violations, countered he was on his own property in his underwear.

Employer.com has acquired MainStreet.com for an undisclosed amount, the latest fintech startup to get snapped up by the workforce management company. In a post on X, Employer.com chairman and co-founder Jesse Tinsley said the two companies were “merging forces to simplify business back office solutions into one powerhouse platform.” Tinsley confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch. MainStreet, a San Jose, California-based startup founded in 2019, built a business around helping startups uncover research and development tax credits. The startup generated revenue by taking a cut from the pool of credits. MainStreet had some success in its first year, crossing the $1 million ARR run rate threshold and helping the average client save $51,000. In 2021, MainStreet’s revenue crossed $15 million, per industry newsletter Not Boring. Signs of potential trouble appeared in 2022 when MainStreet laid off about 30% of its staff, citing “an incredibly rough market.” At its prime in 2021, MainStreet was valued at $500 million. The company was said to have closed on a financing in 2022 at a $200 million valuation. It’s unclear what MainStreet’s balance sheet looked like immediately prior to this acquisition, although Tinsley told TechCrunch in an interview the company was profitable. In total, MainStreet raised about $75 million in known venture capital from investors such as SignalFire, Tusk Ventures, Shrug, Moxxie Ventures, Weekend Fund, Gradient Ventures, Sound, and SV Angels. One of MainStreet’s investors introduced the company to Employer.com, according to Tinsley. MainStreet’s 15-person team will be joining Employer.com as part of the transaction, which has about 500 employees across all its companies. With the acquisition, Employer.com is valued at just north of $700 million, Tinsley said. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW The San Francisco-based company has been on a shopping spree recently. In late 2024, Employer.com announced it was acquiring Bench, a VC-backed accounting startup that left thousands of customers locked out of their accounts after it suddenly shut down, in a fire sale. Last week, Bench conducted a round of significant layoffs. And in January, Employer.com had offered to acquire Level, a fintech startup that abruptly shut down after failing to find a buyer, but that deal didn’t go through. “When we originally started Employer.com and then bought Bench, the overarching theme… is basically automating an end-to-end platform for the G Suite for the business back office,” he told TechCrunch in an interview. Buying MainStreet is in line with that goal, Tinsley said. In late January, Tinsley and Employer.com was reportedly teaming up with YouTuber MrBeast and others to save TikTok by submitting an all-cash bid for the app, according to a report in Bloomberg. It’s unclear what happened to that alleged buyout attempt, although Tinsley publicly confirmed in March that he was part of that $30 billion bid. This story was updated post-publication to reflect MainStreet’s accurate funding amount.

Individuals may work closely with AI agents as they become increasingly prevalent in the workplace. According to a report by Boston Consulting Group, the market for AI agents is expected to grow at a 45% compound annual growth rate over the next five years. Just like human employees, AI agents could be onboarded to learn various roles, access company information and business contexts, and integrate into workflows. In addition, unlike traditional automation tools, AI agents have the potential to constantly adapt and improve their operations. Relevance AI, a San Francisco- and Sydney-based startup developing an AI agent “operating system” to enable businesses to build teams of AI agents, has raised $24 million in Series B funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Returning investors King River Capital, Insight Partners, and Peak XV also participated, bringing Relevance’s total raised to $37 million. The company did not provide its valuation. The fundraising comes about a year and a half after the startup closed its Series A. Relevance says that it has experienced rapid growth, with 40,000 AI agents registered on its platform in January 2025 alone. Customers include Qualified, Activision, and Safety Culture. Relevance has to compete with players in the AI agent space like Retell, Qeen.ai, SmythOS, Gooey.AI, Cykel AI, and Microsoft. The 5-year-old company sees agent builder platforms, vertical agent software, and agent engineering frameworks as its competition, according to co-CEO and co-founder Daniel Vassilev. “[W]e’ve even seen incumbents like Salesforce make a big bet on the value of agents,” Vassilev told TechCrunch in an interview. “[Relevance] enable[s] training the agent to really specialize in the niche workflows of their organization. We’re also tool- and model-agnostic, allowing our customers to leverage their entire tech stack across their entire business rather than just a single vendor’s ecosystem.” Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW Relevance says that it’ll use its new funding to further enhance the product capabilities of its AI agents and provide support to customers in its primary markets of Australia and the U.S. Vassilev has relocated to San Francisco to open Relevance’s office and build up its go-to-market team there. The company says it has 80 people across its San Francisco and Sydney offices today, up from 19 employees in 2023. Coinciding with its Series B funding, Relevance is introducing two new features on its platform. “Workforce” is a no-code multi-agent system designed to help non-technical professionals and engineers build specialized teams of agents to collaborate like human employees, completing complex processes from start to finish. “Invent” is a tool that lets users create AI agents using text prompts.

In 2017, Raghav Gupta set out to solve a personal problem: He wanted easy access to the home-cooked meals he grew up eating without having to spend time cooking or spend money on takeout or hiring a private chef. He turned to robotics, which led him to found the startup Posha. Posha, a former TechCrunch Startup Battlefield company, builds countertop robots that make meals using computer vision. Users scroll through a list of recipes, select the one they want, add the proper amounts of the requested ingredients, and the machine makes the meal from there. The process is designed to be customizable and forgiving, Gupta told TechCrunch, so the machine allows people to make substitutions, and Posha still works if a user doesn’t measure their ingredients perfectly. “It’s like a coffee machine for food,” Gupta said. “So when you want to drink a cup of coffee, you choose a brew of coffee on your coffee machine. You put beans, sugar, and milk in different containers. You tap brew, and out comes a cup of coffee. Posha does something similar, but for food.” A coffee machine is a good, but not perfect, comparison to Posha, as Posha requires a bit more labor than a coffee maker. While Posha does a substantial amount of the work by cooking these meals, consumers still play an active role in shopping for ingredients and prepping everything that goes into the device. Chopping, especially, can take up a fair amount of a recipe’s cook time. Gupta agreed that some people are just not going to go for a solution that still requires them to do some of the cooking. He said that Posha has found the most success thus far with customers who like to cook two to six times a week anyway and are looking to lighten the load a few of those evenings. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW “These people are already spending an hour in the kitchen every single day, deciding what to eat, shopping for ingredients, cooking a meal, [and] cleaning up afterwards,” Gupta said. “We help them shave off at least 70% of this time, so they now end up spending only about 10 to 20 minutes every single day.” Posha, formerly known as Nymble, originally started out as a robotic arm, Gupta said, but the company’s time in Bosch’s accelerator program prompted them to change course. They learned consumers didn’t want something that moved around their kitchen or that would be hard to clean. The company has kept in close contact with its early customers ever since. “We have been super focused and super obsessed with customers from day one,” Gupta said. “We don’t use Zendesk to chat with them; we have WhatsApp conversations with over 100 of our customers. Most customers know me personally. I moved to the U.S. in the middle of the pandemic, just to be close to my customers.” That system can’t scale, but clearly works for Posha for now. Gupta said that, so far, Posha has mainly relied on word-of-mouth marketing for the $1,750 direct-to-consumer countertop device. Posha recently raised an $8 million Series A round led by Accel with participation from existing investors, including Xeed Ventures; Waterbridge Ventures; and Binny Bansal, the co-founder of Flipkart; among others. Gupta said that Posha will use the funding to continue to develop the product. In particular, the company wants to add more recipe options and the ability for people to suggest recipe ideas and have generative AI turn those ideas into instructions and add them into the device quickly. The company launched its Posha robots in January 2025 and has since sold out of its first batch — and is taking preorders for its second. “If you look at your microwave, your dishwasher, your refrigerator, at some point in time, these devices were countertop devices,” Gupta said. “They became so indispensable over time in consumer homes that builders started installing these devices in your homes. We feel Posha will have the same fate very soon.”

Agree.com says its AI-powered e-signature platform is different from competitors because it includes invoicing and payment processing. That’s why the company might have a shot at tackling the industry Goliath, Docusign. Because the startup makes its money from transaction fees for any money movement facilitated by its platform, Agree.com has made e-signatures free to all users. And now it’s raised a $7.2 million seed round, the company tells TechCrunch exclusively. Founded in February 2024, Agree also raised $3 million in a pre-seed round of funding last year led by Sheel Mohnot, general partner at Better Tomorrow Ventures. This latest financing was oversubscribed and led by Tyler Hogge at Pelion Venture Partners, according to Agree.com co-founder CEO Marty Ringlein. Funding for the raise only took two weeks, according to a source familiar with the transaction. Agree.com uses AI on top of optimal character recognition (OCR) software so that it can auto-detect and label all of a contract’s input fields and signature blocks. Its technology can also identify and extract “any and all” payment terms to dynamically generate invoices. “At the end of almost every signature, someone has to pay someone money,” Ringlein told TechCrunch. “We combine what has historically been a disjointed and fragmented workflow to make signing better and payments faster.” Ringlein believes that because of its multitasking approach, Agree.com can potentially replace traditional e-signature software and invoicing and accounts receivable tools such as Bill.com. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW “Agree extracts every character, indentation, semicolon, and hyphen to not only understand the type of contract being signed, but make it fully editable and collaborative with commenting, redlining, and version control,” Ringlein told TechCrunch. Although it primarily competes with Docusign, Agree’s business model is a fintech company through B2B payments. So far, its trajectory seems promising. In its first three months, after launching in early September 2024, it hit 10,000 users. Seven weeks later, it doubled to over 20,000 users. Today, it has over 25,000 users, including ad networks such as Beehiiv and Product Hunt, B2B SaaS startups such as Rho and TaxGPT, and enterprise sales teams like Brico and Thoropass, it says. Agree offers a premium offering for larger teams that charges a traditional monthly SaaS fee per seat. It also will monetize invoicing and billing logic on transaction volume. Presently, Agree has seven employees, including co-founders Will Hubbard (COO) and Evan Dudla (CTO). All of the founders have launched and sold multiple previous startups. Ringlein, for instance, previously sold design agency nclud to Twitter in May 2012 for an undisclosed amount. In 2016, Ringlein, Dudla, and Agree’s CPO Mike Dick sold a startup called nvite to Eventbrite. In 2020, that trio also sold Gather to Brex. Hubbard started his first company, air-quality monitory startup ChemiSense, as a junior at UC Berkeley. He ran it for about six years and sold it to Kaiterra in 2019. Hubbard then started his next company, Niche (verticalized community marketplaces), shortly thereafter, and it was acquired by Opera Event in 2020. More recently, Hubbard and Ringlein also started early-stage venture firm Adventure Fund, which has invested in the likes of Mercury and Beehiiv. As for the growth plan for Agree, Pelion partner Tyler Hogge told TechCrunch that “the smartest way to get massive adoption would be to use e-signature as the wedge, give it away for free, and make it impossible for incumbents to reply.” Hogge added that Agree’s “business model is truly unique: free software, monetized through invoicing and payments.” Blank Ventures also participated in the seed round, along with angel investor Gokul Rajaram. All existing backers, including Better Tomorrow Ventures, 8-Bit Capital, Sophia Amoruso’s Trust Fund, Hustle Fund, Everywhere Ventures, Singh Capital Partners, and Firsthand VC doubled down on their investment. While the company primarily operates in the United States today, it intends to expand internationally later this year, starting with the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

NewLimit, a startup that aims to increase how long people can live a healthy life by genetically programming their cells, has raised a $130 million Series B led by Kleiner Perkins. New investors Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and Khosla Ventures also invested, as did returning backers Founders Fund, Dimension Capital, Elad Gil, Garry Tan, Patrick Collison, and others. The fundraise comes two years after the company raised a $40 million Series A. Founded over four years ago by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong (pictured above), former GV partner Blake Byers, and stem cell professor Jacob Kimmel, NewLimit claims it has made significant progress toward developing treatments that can restore youthful characteristics to aged cells. Kimmel told TechCrunch the company has discovered three prototype medicines that reprogram liver cells. NewLimit’s lab experiments, he said, demonstrate this rejuvenation can restore the cells’ ability to process fat and alcohol. The company measures its progress by contrasting how cells from a younger individual and an older person respond to the substances. An older liver cell that has gone through NewLimit’s epigenetic reprogramming behaves more like a younger cell, Kimmel said. Promising early results notwithstanding, NewLimit is still a few years away from starting human trials. In the meantime, the company wants to continue developing new anti-aging medicine using an AI model and then testing the most promising of these machine-generated drugs in its laboratory. “What the AI model allows us to do is run all those experiments in simulation and then only follow up on the most promising subset,” Kimmel said, adding that the data points from the experiment are then used to retrain the AI model in a process known as “lab in a loop.” Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW Other noteworthy biotech startups developing drugs that aim to increase lifespan include Retro Biosciences, which raised $180 million from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman two years ago and is reportedly raising a $1 billion Series A; and Altos Labs, which launched with $3 billion in 2022 and is backed by Jeff Bezos.

Every developer has their own unique style of writing code. Despite companies establishing best practices and drawing up documentation, it can be hard for developers to understand someone else’s codebase. To solve this problem, Dennis Pilarinos built a tool called Unblocked — an AI-powered assistant that answers contextual questions about lines of code. Pilarinos is a seasoned professional at building developer tools. He has worked as a director at Microsoft and Amazon, working on Azure and Amazon Web Services. Later, Pilarinos built a continuous integration platform for remote teams called Buddybuild, which was acquired by Apple in 2018, and he worked at Apple for around two years on the Xcode Cloud platform. “Developers trying to get the information they want is quite painful and time-consuming,” Pilarinos told TechCrunch in a phone interview. “We wanted to use all the data, code, and tribal knowledge of conversations to present developers with easy answers.” Pilarinos added that with more AI programming tools seeping into developers’ workflows, the aforementioned problems are going to get worse. Image Credits:UnblockedUnblocked integrates with development environments and apps like Slack, Jira, Confluence, Google Drive, and Notion. The tool gathers intelligence about a company’s codebase and helps answer questions such as “Where do we define user metrics in our system?” Developers can also use the platform to search for the person who made changes to a particular module and quickly gain insights from them. Unblocked offers admin controls that can be easily adopted by a company’s system admin, and the startup is working on integrating with platforms like Cursor and Lovable to improve code explainability. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW Beyond this, Unblocked is developing tools that actively help developers with projects rather than simply answer questions. One, Autonomous CI Triage, supports developers in testing code through different scenarios. Unblocked counts companies such as Drata, AppDirect, Big Cartel, and TravelPerk as customers. Pilarinos claims that engineers at Drata were able to save one to two hours per week using Unblocked’s platform. Image Credits:UnblockedUnblocked said Tuesday it has raised $20 million in Series A funding from B Capital and Radical Ventures. The round takes the company’s total capital raised to $30 million from investors, including Amplify Partners, First Round Capital, and XYZ Capital. Rob Toews, a partner at Radical Ventures, said that as AI-generated code proliferates, products like Unblocked will become extremely valuable. “There is a thesis that much of the software in the future will be written by AI,” Toews said. “There will be second- and third-order effects of that, creating new challenges. One of them is that people won’t understand when, why, and how [a particular piece of code] was written.” Toews thinks that, just as AI-powered Glean enabled enterprises to make sense of their troves of data, Unblocked will help devs understand their increasingly complicated codebases.

Google on Tuesday announced the launch of Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview (I/O edition), an updated version of its flagship Gemini 2.5 Pro AI model that the company claims tops a number of widely used benchmarks. Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview (I/O edition) is available via the Gemini API and Google’s Vertex AI and AI Studio platforms, and is priced the same as the Gemini 2.5 Pro model it effectively replaces. It’s also in Google’s Gemini chatbot app for the web and for mobile devices. Very excited to share the best coding model we’ve ever built! Today we’re launching Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview 'I/O edition' with massively improved coding capabilities. Ranks no.1 on LMArena in Coding and no.1 on the WebDev Arena Leaderboard. It’s especially good at building… pic.twitter.com/9vRaP6RTTo — Demis Hassabis (@demishassabis) May 6, 2025 The model’s release comes ahead of Google’s annual I/O developer conference (hence the “I/O edition” designation), where Google is expected to unveil a host of models, as well as AI-powered tools and platforms. The company is competing fiercely for mindshare and marketshare in the cutthroat AI race; rivals like OpenAI and xAI are on the cusp of releasing models that are expected to be highly performant. According to Google, Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview (I/O edition) has “significantly” improved capabilities for coding and building interactive web apps. The model is also better at tasks like code transformation — that is, modifying a piece of code to achieve a specific goal — and code editing, the company says. Image Credits:GoogleIn a blog post, Google notes that Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview (I/O edition) leads the WebDev Arena Leaderboard, a benchmark measuring a model’s ability to create aesthetically pleasing and functional web apps. Gemini 2.5 Pro Preview (I/O edition) also has state-of-the-art performance in video understanding, achieving a score of 84.8% on one popular benchmark, VideoMME. “For developers already using Gemini 2.5 Pro, this new version will not only improve coding performance but will also address key developer feedback including reducing errors in function calling and improving function calling trigger rates,” wrote Google in its blog post. “By default, the model has a real taste for aesthetic web development while maintaining its steerability.”

Google’s iOS app is getting a new “Simplify” feature that uses AI to make complex or technical text on the web easier to understand, all without leaving a web page. Simplify features a prompt refinement approach developed by Google Research and uses Gemini to make complicated text more digestible, without losing key details. Google says its testing found that the simplified text allowed users to better understand and retain the original information. By offering a built-in feature like Simplify, Google is likely hoping that people will stay within its ecosystem of tools and services for help with complex topics, rather than turning to popular third-party tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. You can use Simplify by selecting any text on a web page you’re visiting in the Google app and then tapping the “Simplify” icon that appears. You’ll then see a simpler version of the text to help you digest the information and allow you to continue reading. Image Credits:GoogleGoogle’s research blog shares an example of what this feature could look like. For example, you may come across a passage that reads: “The complex pathology of this condition involves emphysematous destruction of lung parenchyma, diffuse interstitial fibrosis, changes in the composition of lung immune cells, increased production of immunomodulatory factors, and the prominent remodeling of pulmonary vasculature.” The simplified text would then read: This complex condition involves damage to the lung tissue from emphysema, a disease that damages the air sacs in the lungs, and widespread scarring of the lung tissue, called fibrosis. The immune cells in the lungs change, and the body makes more immunomodulatory factors, substances that control the immune system. The blood vessels in the lungs also change a lot.” Google says the idea behind the feature is to make it easier for people to grasp complex topics they might come across when trying to learn something new on the web. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW “Our goal requires models to paraphrase complex ideas accurately without introducing errors or omitting key details,” Google said in a blog post. “The rewritten text must help the reader understand challenging material without sacrificing the integrity of the original information.” Simplify is rolling out to iOS users this week.

Finom, an Amsterdam-based digital bank for small- and medium-sized businesses, has raised €92.7 million (roughly $105 million) in a growth investment from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund, the company tells TechCrunch exclusively. The capital infusion “will be used exclusively and only for growth” and not for operational expenses or product development, Kos Stiskin, Finom’s chairman and co-founder, told TechCrunch. He described it as a nontraditional funding round in which General Catalyst doesn’t take any equity. “[O]ur core operations are generating positive cash flow, and all new investments and funding go directly toward attracting new clients,” Stiskin said. Finom is primarily in the banking business, but this year, the company expanded its offerings beyond digital banking services. In February, Finom unveiled what Stiskin described as an “autonomous AI accounting agent” for entrepreneurs and freelancers in Europe. And in March, the startup expanded into direct lending, which incorporates an AI-powered scoring engine. Finom’s credit offering, available in the Netherlands, will be expanded across Europe by year-end, Stiskin added. Today, Finom counts over 100,000 businesses across Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy as customers, reporting positive unit economics in all markets. Its revenue model is primarily subscription-based. Finom also generates revenue through transaction fees for certain services and offers a competitive cash-back program. The recent expansion into lending also opened a new revenue stream through interest on credit lines. Image Credits:FinomStiskin declined to reveal hard revenue figures, but he told TechCrunch that Finom doubled its annual recurring revenue in 2024 and that the company is “EBITDAM [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization, and marketing] profitable.” Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW In an interview, Stiskin described Finom’s closest competitor as Qonto, a Paris-based challenger bank that in January 2022 announced a massive €486 million (~$552 million) Series D funding round. But Stiskin believes that Finom has a “stronger localization strategy and more comprehensive product suite.” Presently, Finom has 505 employees, up 31.5% compared to last year. Last September, the company named Alessandro Camilotti, former head of finance and analytics EU at Klarna, as its CFO. In total, Finom has raised nearly €190 million (roughly $214 million) since its inception in 2020. In February 2024, Finom announced it had raised €50 million (roughly $56 million) in a Series B equity round of funding co-led by General Catalyst and Northzone. The startup has declined to reveal its valuation. According to PitchBook, Finom was valued at $150.7 million post-money in November 2021 after a €30 million (roughly $33.8 million) seed funding round from VCs Target Global, Tal Ventures, and General Catalyst. Zeynep Yavuz, partner at General Catalyst, believes that Finom has “shown strong execution in a market that is still deeply underpenetrated.” She also thinks its modular infrastructure gives the company the ability “to scale efficiently” across geographies, “leveraging shared capabilities while localizing where needed.” “We see Finom’s proprietary anti-money laundering and know-your-customer engine as a standout advantage — not just for compliance, but for customer experience,” Yavuz said.

Particle, the startup behind an AI-powered newsreader that aims to help publishers, not just steal their work, is bringing its product to the web. On Tuesday, the company announced the launch of the new Particle.news website that connects news consumers with headlines and AI summaries from a variety of sources, plus the ability to delve into various categories like Technology, Sports, Entertainment, Politics, Science, Crime, Economics, and Video Games, in addition to browsing the day’s most popular stories on the home page. The company thinks that bringing its product to the web will help to reach more readers, giving them a different way to keep up with the news using AI technology enhancements. Like the existing Particle mobile app, the site offers AI tools designed to help consumers better understand the news. Instead of just summarizing stories into key bullet points for quicker reading, Particle also extracts key quotes and allows users to ask questions about the story via an AI chatbot. These questions and answers from users are available on the new website, but the site doesn’t yet offer the ability to interact with the AI directly. While reading the news on Particle, if you want to learn more about a topic, you can access “entity pages” that detail information about a specific person, product, or organization mentioned in the story. For instance, when you see the word “Trump” or “Knicks” or “Nintendo Switch” highlighted in a headline or news summary, you can click through to a page offering basic information pulled from Wikipedia and links to more stories about the subject. ScreenshotImage Credits:ParticleParticle also highlights the news outlets covering a story by sharing links to their stories directly alongside its AI summaries. In early tests on mobile, the company found that readers were clicking through to the publishers’ sites via these links, leading Particle to begin partnering with specific publishers like Reuters, Fortune, and the AFP to display their links more prominently. On the new website, Particle also displays links to related reporting at the bottom of its AI summaries to keep users clicking through to read more. Plus, when users share a link from Particle’s mobile app, it will connect readers with the dedicated landing page on the website, opening up access to Particle’s content to more readers, including those who don’t have the app installed. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW The addition of AI into the news and journalism market has been controversial at times, particularly when some publishers attempted to outsource reporting to AI bots, leading to much backlash. But Particle’s founders want to find a way to use AI to help readers better understand the news, without stealing traffic from publishers. Particle was founded in 2023 by the former senior director of product management at Twitter, Sara Beykpour, and a former senior engineer at Twitter and Tesla, Marcel Molina. It’s backed by $4.4 million in seed funding and a $10.9 million Series A led by Lightspeed. Particle joins other efforts to leverage AI for news summaries, including TechCrunch’s former parent company, Yahoo, which acquired the Artifact news app from Instagram’s co-founders to revamp its News app with AI-powered features. Bloomberg, Gannett (USA Today), The Wall Street Journal, and others have also been experimenting with AI article summaries. However, readers are likely less forgiving of AI’s mistakes on the news outlets’ websites where they’re directly reporting the news, compared with an independent app devoted to AI summaries and Q&As.

Nearly three years after unveiling the concept version of the flagship Cadillac Celestiq EV, GM has finally released the real thing: a “mid-$300,000” electric vehicle that oozes luxury and a come-gawk-at-me exterior designed to lure in passersby. But is this bespoke EV enough for Cadillac to regain its position as the “Standard of the World”? I spent a day navigating this behemoth around Los Angeles in a bid to find out. Sliding behind the steering wheel of the new flagship fastback is a good start. I am surrounded by buttery leather — my rear end comforted by the cushy seat, which is adjustable in every way and then some. The fit and finish is precise and elevated like a Richard Mille watch and everything I touch has that distinct honed-by-hand aesthetic. And yet in 115 cases, those parts have been 3D printed, including the center of the steering wheel, window switches, parts of the console decor, and even some structural pieces. Cadillac clearly wanted to build an EV with zero compromises. The battery pack layout, however, presented certain design challenges. The modules in the Cadillac Celestiq’s battery pack aren’t uniform. Unlike the Lyriq, which has a flat battery pack, the Celestiq has different configurations of modules in the battery pack that are different heights. The modules under the front seats are about nine inches tall, but the ones under the rear passenger footwell are only six inches in height. The rear seats are brought up with modules that are 12 inches tall. Engineers needed to place some modules under the center console to get to a 111 kWh battery with 303 miles of range. The result is a shallow storage compartment that’s hardly big enough to fit my wallet and glasses. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW Cadillac Celestiq EV: The drive Image Credits:Emme HallThe looks I received while piloting the Celestiq made up for that teeny center console storage. There is nothing on the road that looks this graceful, with its dancing LED light signature in the front, long nose, and sculpted rear end. In a town full of manufactured beauty, the real-deal Celestiq stands out. I start off on the rough streets of Hollywood, where I intentionally aim for broken pavement and manhole covers. My tester is shod with 22-inch wheels — although 23-inch wheels are available — and Michelin Pilot Sport EV tires with very little sidewall. Having this little rubber between the car and the pavement often results in a harsh ride, but the Celestiq sports a compliant air suspension that keeps it all in check. Bigger events like potholes certainly make their presence known, but city driving is quiet and smooth. Make no mistake, this car is a biggun. The Cadillac Celestiq has a larger footprint than a two-door Chevrolet Silverado, made slightly more nimble with rear steering. Sure, it’s a bit hard to find street parking in this bad boy, but this car is more likely to find itself at the valet. Leaving Hollywood, I head to the hills to see just what 655 horsepower and 646 pound-feet of torque can do on a curvy road. Here the Magnetic Ride Control shines, reacting quickly to the road as well as the car’s weight transfer to provide a confident feeling of control. Aided by active roll control, the car feels flat through the turns despite its zaftig proportions. The steering here is a bit numb, but it’s weighted nicely and the brake regen provides a new skill to conquer. I find that at max regen, if I can time my throttle lifts right, I never have to hit the mechanical brakes before heading into a corner. The weight still transfers to the front so I have the grip to turn, but I’m also getting free electrons at the same time. I love it. I crank up the Dolby Atmos sound system pouring out of 38 internal AKG speakers — there are four outside the car that produce cool EV sounds for those unlucky enough to be walking — and head out to the highway. Of course, GM’s Super Cruise advanced driver-assistance system is here, so I take my hands off the wheel and let the car take over for a while in traffic. The Cadillac Celestiq EV has a problem Image Credits:Emme HallAnd therein lies the biggest problem with the Celestiq. I’m not necessarily mad that all GM electric vehicles run Google Built-In over Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Google Maps is great in this vehicle, accurately predicting my range when I arrive at a location, offering up charging stations and preconditioning the batteries if needed. It’s just that I can’t reliably get the system to hook up with my phone for hands-free texts and phone calls. And it’s not just in the Celestiq. In both the Optiq and the Escalade IQ, the process was persnickety. There are multiple settings on my iPhone that have to be correct, sometimes I have to reconnect if I turn off the car, and a few times it just refuses to tell me I have an incoming text. High-end customers demand simplicity and ease of use. This smartphone integration system is neither. The Cadillac Celestiq EV interior Image Credits:Emme HallBut at least the screens look great. Stretching across the width of the dash, there are 55 inches of high-resolution goodness. The passenger gets their own screen for streaming media and internet browsing and all climate controls are on a smaller screen below the dash. I would give my kingdom for some physical HVAC buttons, but on a car like this I’ll settle for a separate screen where at least I don’t have to scroll through a bunch of menus just to turn on the air-conditioning. Massaging seats are here, of course, and they seem to stay on a bit longer than in other luxury vehicles I’ve driven. There is no heated and cooled cup holder, an omission I think is tantamount to forgetting to serve crème fraîche with your caviar, but Cadillac told me it could add the feature if someone really wanted it. I dig the glass roof that can dim up to 20% opacity in any of the four zones. Each person in the car can customize how much light they want to let into their part of the vehicle. Image Credits:Emme HallI’m not 100% sold on the power doors, as my mind just goes to the worst-case scenario of being stuck inside the car in the Whole Foods parking lot or something. Still, it’s kind of cool to just press the brake pedal and have my door close automatically. There is also an icon on the lower screen that will close the doors, so passengers can get in on the high-tech, low-effort bandwagon. Bespoke Cadillac EV experience Image Credits:CadillacEach Celestiq will be made by hand at General Motors’ Global Technical Center in Michigan. I got a little taste of what customers will experience as I worked with a designer to select my favorite colors and materials. Choosing from what might have been 50 shades of everything was a bit overwhelming, but I walked out with my dream Celestiq in Kingfisher Tricoat, a brilliant blue that I think goes well with the long wheelbase and fastback profile, and an interior of Sheer Gray and Bahia Orange with Phantom Blue Accents. What can I say? I dig blue and orange. As the day progressed, I was treated to the Cadillac concierge service that customers will experience as they go through the buying process. Someone made sure I always had a cold Diet Dr Pepper in my hand and lunch options were tailored to my immature culinary tastes. In other words, I had tater tots for lunch and I’m not even embarrassed about it. While Celestiq customers will likely use their concierge to field logistics requests and not request copious amounts of carbs and caffeine, the point is that they will have someone to cater to their every car-buying whim. There isn’t too much out there in the uber-luxury EV market. The Cadillac Celestiq’s primary competition might be the Rolls-Royce Spectre EV with its cool starry-night headliner. Still, the Celestiq mostly sits alone in the ultra-luxury, battery-electric sector. Bentley doesn’t have a full battery-electric offering yet, just hybrids, and even Mercedes hasn’t fully electrified the Maybach S-Class sedan, although you can get a Maybach EQS SUV. If you want one in your garage, well, good luck. Cadillac will produce a limited run of 25 vehicles for 2025 and nearly all are spoken for. The company won’t give specific numbers for 2026, only saying that production will be capped at less than two Celestiqs a day.

OpenAI said on Monday it is pursuing a new restructuring plan after conversations with Delaware’s and California’s attorneys general, both of whom were closely watching as OpenAI tried to break free of its odd corporate structure. Currently, OpenAI’s nonprofit board governs the organization’s for-profit operations. Under the new plan, OpenAI’s for-profit arm will become a public benefit corporation (PBC) but will still be controlled by OpenAI’s nonprofit. The new restructuring plan may be enough to appease regulators and OpenAI’s investors, who’ve poured billions into the company in expectation of a return someday. But it could also throw a wrench into OpenAI’s future plans, particularly if the company seeks to one day go public. The IPO route Last December, OpenAI outlined a path that would’ve allowed it to spin its for-profit arm out from under the control of its nonprofit board, which is bound by certain obligations, including a clause in its charter to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all humanity. That plan went out the window on Monday. Now OpenAI intends to have its nonprofit control and be a large shareholder of the aforementioned PBC. Besides allowing OpenAI to operate more like a conventional company, a simpler structure could open the door to OpenAI raising additional capital by going public via an IPO. Given OpenAI’s scale, the huge amount of cash it burns, and the public’s massive interest, an IPO seems like something OpenAI might eventually explore. Stephen Diamond, a corporate governance professor at Santa Clara University, told TechCrunch there’s a very narrow path to OpenAI becoming a public company under its newly proposed transition plan. While nonprofits can’t go public, PBCs can. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW However, there is a question as to what OpenAI’s PBC would own were OpenAI to IPO. “My sense is there’s enormous intellectual property value at the OpenAI nonprofit level,” said Diamond in an interview. “But if the PBC doesn’t own and control the core IP, but are just licensed to use it, then what’s the IPO? That’s the challenge.” Diamond noted that we don’t know the exact details of OpenAI’s plan and that it’s unclear if it’ll even be successful in the end. In an email to TechCrunch, OpenAI spokesperson Steve Sharpe said OpenAI’s nonprofit will continue to control the company’s technology and that while OpenAI has no intention of going public at this time, an IPO would be “theoretically” possible under the proposed structure. If OpenAI’s nonprofit really is in control of the organization’s critical technology, shareholders wouldn’t have much of a say in the company’s decisions, said Rose Chan Loui, the founding executive director for UCLA’s Law Program on Philanthropy and Nonprofits. Unlike buying stock in a typical company, shareholders in OpenAI would have to know that their influence over the corporation is limited. “I think an IPO is much harder in this scenario,” said Loui in an interview with TechCrunch. Bending to pressure OpenAI has been squeezed on all ends during its attempted restructuring. Just last week, a group of former OpenAI employees asked California’s and Delaware’s attorneys general to block the startup’s conversion, claiming it was at odds with OpenAI’s charitable roots. Both attorneys general told TechCrunch that they’re reviewing OpenAI’s new plan. OpenAI’s proposal also needs to appease the company’s largest private investors, including Microsoft and SoftBank, whose multibillion-dollar investments reportedly hinge on OpenAI getting some sort of restructuring over the finish line. OpenAI’s new plan gives the company a more conventional capital structure, meaning employees, investors, and the nonprofit will hold equity directly. Microsoft has not yet given its blessing to OpenAI over the new corporate structure, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The cloud provider wants to ensure the new structure adequately protects its multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI. It’s unclear if other key stakeholders have approved the deal. No one has put more pressure on OpenAI’s restructuring than Elon Musk. The billionaire who co-founded OpenAI and now competes with it through his AI startup xAI submitted a $97 billion takeover bid to raise the price of OpenAI’s nonprofit assets and gum up the ChatGPT maker’s for-profit transition. Musk has also made OpenAI’s restructuring a focal point in his lawsuit against the startup and Microsoft. At its core, Musk’s lawsuit accuses OpenAI of abandoning its nonprofit mission to develop AGI and distribute it broadly. Last week, a federal judge denied several of OpenAI’s motions to dismiss claims in Musk’s suit. According to Diamond, this was a modest win for Musk and may have played a role in OpenAI’s changing course. However, in a briefing with members of the press on Monday, Altman reportedly denied the suit had any impact on OpenAI’s plans. Marc Toberoff, Musk’s lead counsel in his case against OpenAI, told TechCrunch the new corporate restructuring plan “changes nothing,” implying that Musk won’t be so quick to drop the case.

Uber announced its third partnership with a Chinese autonomous vehicle company this week, revealing the ride-hail and delivery giant’s appetite for global domination in the emerging robotaxi sector. Uber said Tuesday it would work with Guangzhou-based Pony AI, which late last year went public on the Nasdaq at a $5.25 billion valuation, to launch robotaxis on the Uber platform in “a key market in the Middle East” later this year. The Pony tie-up comes a day after Uber shared plans for two other strategic deals with Chinese firms: Momenta and WeRide. Uber said it would work with Momenta to launch robotaxis on its app in Europe in 2026, and with WeRide to expand into 15 cities across the Middle East and Europe over the next five years. Uber and WeRide have already launched a commercial robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi. The deals with Pony, Momenta, and WeRide add to Uber’s growing list of more than 15 autonomous vehicle partnerships across ride-hail, delivery, and freight. Most of Uber’s partners, which include Waymo and May Mobility, are based in the U.S., with a few outliers like the U.K.’s Wayve. As Uber faces perceived threats from companies like Tesla, which intends to launch its first robotaxi service in Austin next month, federal probes for allegedly misleading subscription practices, and an expected consumer spending pullback in 2025, the company is moving fast to reassure investors that there’s still plenty of room for expansion. Pairing up with Chinese companies could be a smart way to achieve that growth. Chinese AV firms are already expanding internationally. Aside from Abu Dhabi, WeRide is operating commercial services in Beijing and France, and testing in several other markets across China and Europe. Pony offers paid robotaxi rides in three Chinese cities and recently began testing in Luxembourg. Waymo, the only AV company in the U.S. that’s operating a commercial, driverless service today, has only just begun data collection in Tokyo. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW Pony’s partnership with Uber opens up the firm to the Middle Eastern market. Uber already had a strong presence in countries like the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan — a presence that expanded in 2019 when Uber acquired its Middle Eastern rival Careem. In a press release, Pony said the goal of its Uber’s deal is to scale deployment to additional “international markets” in the future. As with Uber’s other launches, when Pony joins the app, Uber customers will have the option to have their trip fulfilled by an AV. During the initial pilot phase, the vehicles will have a safety operator onboard until the companies’ full commercial launch. Uber’s first-quarter earnings call is this week, so we’ll likely get more color on the company’s plans for growth — including its move to acquire a controlling stake in a Turkish food delivery company — and how it plans to navigate current challenges.

Thanks to a recent ruling that ordered Apple to stop charging a 27% commission on purchases through iPhone apps, Amazon’s Kindle iOS app now has a “Get Book” button that makes it easier to buy titles. “We regularly make improvements to our apps to help ensure we are providing customers the most convenient experience possible,” Amazon spokesperson Tim Gillman told The Verge, which first reported the news. “By selecting ‘Get Book’ within the Kindle for iOS app, customers can now complete their purchase through their mobile web browser.” Prior to this change, buying titles through the Kindle or Amazon app, or even viewing their prices, wasn’t allowed. Amazon isn’t the only tech giant that’s taking advantage of the recent ruling, as Spotify started allowing users to access pricing information and external payment links last Friday. While Apple is being forced to comply with the court ruling, the tech giant filed an appeal on Monday after previously stating that it strongly disagreed with the decision.