Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
Jon McNeill brings the operator’s playbook to TC All Stage
Founders are often told to chase product-market fit before anything else, but what if scaling too soon, too fast, is what’s really holding them back? At TechCrunch All Stage 2025 on July 15 in Boston, Jon McNeill, CEO and co-founder of DVx Ventures (and former president of Tesla and COO of Lyft), will take the…
ICEBlock, an app for anonymously reporting ICE sightings, goes viral overnight after Bondi criticism
ICEBlock, an iPhone app that allows users to anonymously report sightings of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, has rocketed to one of the coveted top spots in Apple’s U.S. app store rankings. The upshot: criticism from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi helped get it there. ICEBlock had about 20,000 users, mostly in Los…
Congress just greenlit a NASA moon plan opposed by Musk and Isaacman
Legacy aerospace giants scored a win Tuesday when the U.S. Senate passed President Trump’s budget reconciliation bill that earmarks billions more for NASA’s flagship Artemis program. The $10 billion addition to the Artemis architecture, which includes funding for additional Space Launch System rockets and an orbiting station around the moon called Gateway, is a rebuke…
Everything you need to know about the AI chatbot
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…
Cloudflare launches a marketplace that lets websites charge AI bots for scraping
Cloudflare, a cloud infrastructure provider that serves 20% of the web, announced Tuesday the launch of a new marketplace that reimagines the relationship between website owners and AI companies — ideally giving publishers greater control over their content. For the last year, Cloudflare has launched tools for publishers to address the rampant rise of AI…
Next-gen procurement platform Levelpath nabs $55M
Levelpath, a procurement software startup founded by the duo behind Scout RFP, has raised $55 million in Series B funding led by Battery Ventures as the company looks to quadruple its revenue this year. The funding round also saw participation from existing investors, including Benchmark, which led Levelpath’s $14.5 million seed round, and Redpoint, the…
Tesla sends driverless Model Y from factory to customer to promote its robotaxi tech
Just a few days after launching a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, Tesla pulled off an additional stunt meant to show off the progress of its self-driving car software. The company let a Model Y SUV drive roughly 15 miles from Tesla’s factory to the apartment complex where the car’s new owner lives, completing…
Spotify revamps its Discover Weekly playlist after ten years
Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist, which shares new listening recommendations every Monday, is getting an update. Ten years after the debut of Discover Weekly (yes, we feel old, too), Spotify Premium users will see new controls at the top of the playlist, which allow them to push their recommendations toward certain genres. So, if you mostly…
Why AI will eat McKinsey’s lunch — but not today
Navin Chaddha, managing director of the 55-year-old Silicon Valley venture firm Mayfield, is betting big on AI’s ability to transform people-heavy industries like consulting, law, and accounting. The veteran investor, whose wins include Lyft, Poshmark, and HashiCorp, recently discussed at TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC evening in Menlo Park why he believes “AI teammates” can create software-like margins…
Trump says he’s found a buyer for TikTok
A group of “very wealthy people” is set to buy short-form video app TikTok, according to President Donald Trump. “We have a buyer for TikTok, by the way,” Trump said in a Fox News interview on Sunday morning. “I think I’ll need probably China’s approval. I think President Xi [Jinping] will probably do it.” Trump…
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