How Silicon Valley’s influence in Washington benefits the tech elite
Since Donald Trump took office, more than three dozen employees, allies, and investors of Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Palmer Luckey have taken roles at federal agencies, helping direct billions in contracts to their companies.
Read moreUS man who hacked SEC’s X account to spike Bitcoin price sentenced to prison
The Department of Justice announced Eric Council Jr. was sentenced to 14 months in prison for the hack.
Read moreAI startup Cohere acquires Ottogrid, a platform for conducting market research
AI startup Cohere has acquired Ottogrid, a Vancouver-based platform that develops enterprise tools for automating certain kinds of high-level market research. Sully Omar, one of the founders of Ottogrid, announced the deal Friday in a post on X. He didn’t disclose the terms. Ottogrid will sunset its product, according to
Read moreArc’s new 24-foot electric boat is its cheapest yet
Electric boat startup Arc has a new model that is its cheapest and most approachable watercraft yet. The new boat is called the Arc Coast, and it will start at $168,000. The company is taking preorders now and says the Coast will ship in 2026. The Coast is what’s known
Read moreTechCrunch Mobility: Google’s Gemini is coming to your car, chaos comes for Luminar, and the Amazonification of Uber 2.0
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! OK, who placed their bet on General Motors being the landing spot for Aurora co-founder and chief product officer Sterling Anderson? Not
Read moreThe Nuclear Company raises $51M to develop massive reactor sites
The funding round arrives as tech companies and utilities are struggling to secure power for data centers.
Read moreThe State Department reportedly pressured African countries to adopt Elon Musk’s Starlink
After The Washington Post earlier this month revealed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had instructed the State Department to help Starlink expand in order to fend off Chinese technological influence, an extensive ProPublica article published Thursday dove deeper into what those campaigns looked like at the ground level. According
Read moreAI video startup Moonvalley lands $53M, according to filing
Roughly a month after Moonvalley, a Los Angeles-based startup developing AI tools for video creation, said it secured $43 million in new funding, the company has raised more, according to a filing with the SEC. The filing, submitted Thursday, reveals that Moonvalley actually landed (so far) around $53 million total from
Read moreTechCrunch and VivaTech Partner for the VivaTech Innovation of the Year
TechCrunch is joining forces with VivaTech, Europe’s biggest startup and tech event, to select startups for the prestigious VivaTech Innovation of the Year at VivaTech 2025. This partnership will highlight exceptional creativity, technological ingenuity, and industry-transforming potential among exhibiting startups. The VivaTech Innovation of the Year Award acknowledges and celebrates
Read moreSpotify responds to creator backlash at public podcast play counts
Spotify announced last week that it would roll out public play counts on all podcasts as a way of “helping attract new fans.” But podcasters swiftly responded with criticism of the new feature — mainly, that it would further promote podcasts that already have large audiences while making smaller shows
Read more