#startups

Avi Schiffmann's AI companion necklace returns with audio output and repositioned positioning—from loneliness remedy to undefined spiritual confidant.

The AI Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 will address enterprise AI security gaps, real-time visual reasoning, and the emergence of GTM engineering as a critical new job category.

Fish Audio, a voice synthesis startup with 8M users and $21M ARR, closes seed round led by Coreline Ventures to scale customizable voice models across creative and business applications.

US tech leaders split sharply on whether to restrict Chinese open-weight models, with 200+ startups opposing a ban while safety-focused giants push for controls.

The startup founded by former OpenAI executives releases its flagship multimodal model, challenging the dominance of closed-source systems.

TechCrunch announces Builders Stage agenda for October event, centering on startup scaling challenges including fundraising, hiring, and go-to-market strategy amid AI market saturation.

Founders have four days to register for TechCrunch's flagship November conference in Boston, with discounts up to $190 ending June 26 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

OpenAI's former CTO discusses real-time AI interfaces and reflects on the November 2023 leadership crisis at her new startup Thinking Machines Lab.

A new startup positions itself between large language models and end users, using deterministic rules plus targeted LLM rewrites to catch compliance violations faster than conventional approaches.

Final deadline to lock in up to $410 savings on tickets to October's flagship startup and innovation conference in San Francisco.

Early Bird discounts of up to $410 on individual passes and 30% on group tickets expire tomorrow at 11:59 p.m. PT for the October 13–15 conference in San Francisco.

Databricks co-founder argues enterprise AI adoption hinges on operational stability, not model performance—a reality most startups still misunderstand.

Founders and investors are systematically inflating ARR figures by substituting contracted revenue, creating a credibility crisis in AI startup valuations.

The startup uses AI and a 100K-creator network to optimize viral video clips across platforms, backed by Slow Ventures and others.

Venture-backed startups including Exa Labs and Parallel Web Systems are raising hundreds of millions to build alternatives to traditional search and ChatGPT's search interface.

Richard Socher's new startup wants to create AI that redesigns itself autonomously — no humans required.

A buy-one-get-one-half-off ticket deal for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 expires before midnight Pacific on May 8, as six programming stages signal where AI is actually deploying.

iRobot founder Colin Angle debuts Familiar Machines & Magic with an AI-powered quadruped companion robot targeting eldercare and family markets.

Replit CEO Amjad Masad says strong margins and 300% net revenue retention give the company the financial footing to stay solo — for now.

YC-backed doola has built an MCP integration that lets users file a business entity directly from within Claude or Replit, collapsing legal paperwork into a conversational workflow.

The social app embeds AI characters into shared conversations, positioning itself as a mental-health-conscious alternative to solo AI companionship.

Cambridge startup Eka has built a robot arm that does what no commercial arm can — and its founders say scaling is all that stands between here and a revolution.

David Silver, who built AlphaGo at DeepMind, argues large language models are fundamentally capped by human data and has founded Ineffable Intelligence to pursue reinforcement learning instead.