Category: info1

OpenAI’s Sora app for AI videos is a viral hit, despite being invite-only for now and limited to users in the U.S. and Canada at launch. On its first day, Sora saw 56,000 downloads, and is now ranked as the No. 3 Top Overall app on the U.S. App Store, according to new data from…

Instagram Threads, Meta’s X rival that now has over 400 million monthly active users, is officially launching a new feature that could redefine how its app is used: Communities. On Thursday, Meta said it’s introducing over 100 communities to the app, where users worldwide can have casual conversations around topics like basketball, television, K-pop music,…

Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted on his account on Wednesday to dispel the myth that the social networking giant is actively “listening” to its users surreptitiously, in order to target them with relevant ads. The idea that Meta would secretly turn on the microphones on users’ phones to record their conversations is an age-old conspiracy…

As visa crackdowns and diplomatic tensions block traditional study-abroad routes, India’s Leverage Edu is helping students reroute their dreams — from Canada to Germany, and from India to Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. That agility is paying off: The startup has doubled its revenue, turned profitable, and is now expanding its global footprint. Over the past…

In a video on OpenAI’s new TikTok-like social media app Sora, a never-ending factory farm of pink pigs are grunting and snorting in their pens — each is equipped with a feeding trough and a smartphone screen, which plays a feed of vertical videos. A terrifyingly realistic Sam Altman stares directly at the camera, as…

New York City regulators have extended Waymo’s autonomous vehicle testing permit through the end of the year, the company said Wednesday.   The permit was initially granted in August to allow Waymo to test its robotaxis in the city until the end of September. The terms of the extended permit are the same: Waymo can deploy up to eight of its…

Starbase is a city without a police department, but not without police. For months, Cameron County sheriff’s deputies have patrolled the roads and beaches surrounding SpaceX’s sprawling rocket facility in South Texas. Now, less than a year after Starbase residents voted to incorporate, the city has signed formal agreements making those deputies its de facto…

The U.S. Department of Energy has taken equity stakes in Canadian company Lithium Americas and its Nevada mining joint venture with General Motors as part of a renegotiation of a federal loan. Under the new terms, the U.S. government will take a 5% equity ownership in Lithium Americas and a 5% ownership in the Lithium…

What happens when your first 10 hires aren’t people at all? At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, happening October 27–29 at San Francisco’s Moscone West, we’re digging into the new wave of startups replacing or augmenting early employees with AI agents. Think outbound sales, billing, and customer support — automated from day one. This panel, hosted on…

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership…