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OpenAI might rebrand its data centers as ‘AI compute campuses’

Data centers are deeply unpopular. But what if we called them something else?

AI can make tech CEOs’ lives easier. What about everyone else?

On Equity, we discuss why tech CEO statements can seem so tone deaf.

TechCrunch Mobility: A new, bigger AV boom is here

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, the role AI is playing in it.

Binance resumes withdrawals following $6.3 billion breach

The cryptocurrency exchange said it's now covered 95% of the stolen assets.

Pixel 11 Pro Fold: Sturdy rectangle in a wide wide world

Google made a sturdy phone, but there is increasing competition in the foldable world.

Here’s what ‘renoa’ — the first new fiber in 25 years — feels like

Startup Everbloom's new material, renoa, is the first new fiber in 25 years, and it feels very familiar.

Data centers are now a midterm issue, even in Brooklyn

At a Brooklyn midterm party five days before Election Day, every conversation, from a council member’s fireside chat to a debate about the Democratic Party, kept circling back to AI and data centers.

Apple CEO says the company doesn’t ‘want to ship AI for AI’s sake’

Apple's new CEO defended the company's current position in the AI landscape.

4 days left: How TechCrunch Founder Summit helps you make more useful connections to scale

On November 4 at Boston’s SoWa Power Station, get ready for a full day packed with meaningful networking opportunities, actionable insights, and connections that could change the trajectory of your idea and startup. Register before all prices go up at the door.

Judge allows NAACP lawsuit over xAI data center pollution to move forward

An NAACP lawsuit accuses the SpaceX-owned AI company of violating the Clean Air Act.

OpenAI reportedly lowers funding target for new round

OpenAI’s latest funding round doesn't seem to be living up to expectations.

From restaurant guides to payments, here’s how TikTok is building a super app

TikTok may be working to become the app that people use for most of their digital activities.

I took two iPhones on vacation. The Duo won me over.

The iPhone Duo has its frustrations, but it’s also fun and engaging enough that I didn’t want to switch back to my Pro Max.

Pile-ins, payouts, and pacing pressure: the investors behind the VCs open up

The money behind the money is thrilled, mostly.

Nvidia weighs playing the cosigner for Nscale’s AI data center in West Virginia

When investors get nervous about AI spending, it helps to have the chipmaker that sells the chips offer to cosign the loan.

Salesforce’s M&A spree continues with a reported $375M deal for defense tech startup Rune

The AI logistics startup will bolster the CRM giant's Missionforce defense platform.

Ollie, a privacy-focused AI assistant, is shutting down

As an increasing number of AI assistants flood the market, the founder of Ollie, an assistant that respected its users' privacy, says it will be shutting down in a week.

Intel’s stock crashes, knocking $12B from government’s stake

Intel is being hurt by PC sales as the AI industry gobbles memory and other components causing PC prices to rise.

Anthropic expected to receive high ‘junk’ rating from credit agencies following IPO, FT report says

Blackstone's forecast is just a prediction, but naturally, a high junk rating would make it more difficult and costlier for Anthropic to raise the money to keep funding its massive spending that has undergirded its business.

Applebee’s exposed customers’ personal data after leaving database password in app

EXCLUSIVE: A security researcher discovered the hardcoded credential in Applebee's app, allowing unrestricted access to customers' personal data.

Last-minute Halloween costumes for tech nerds

No Halloween costume? Just be a deceptively cute AI agent icon, a PHP vulnerability, or sleepy time Bryan Johnson.

Cracks are emerging in the AI spending boom

Big Tech is pouring billions into AI infrastructure, but mounting debt, negative cash flow, and growing investor skepticism are raising questions about the sustainability of the AI spending boom.

AI law firm Crosby bids on disintegrating, famed firm Weil Gotshal

Like a real-life episode of "Suits," the demise of famed white-shoe Wall Street law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges has been the talk of the legal industry. And now an AI firm has entered the picture.

Satlyt takes another step toward turning satellites into space data centers

Satlyt ran a successful test this month bringing it closer to turning spacecraft, starting with satellites, into virtual data centers.

Zest’s new AI agent finds restaurants and books reservations over text

Can't agree on where to eat? Zest's AI concierge can combine everyone's tastes, put restaurant options to a vote, and make the reservation.

Technology•TechCrunch•20 Oct 2026

Google’s first data center satellite is online and writing poetry

The first TPU in space is running a Google DeepMind Gemma 4 model and writing cheesy poetry.

Walmart’s Flipkart is quietly building a food delivery challenger in India

Flipkart has expanded access to its food-delivery service to thousands of employees ahead of its public launch.

Technology•TechCrunch•20 Oct 2026

Mamdani says feds have abdicated on AI, urges New Yorkers to push back

Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Monday night that New Yorkers must resist the narrative that an AI takeover is inevitable and demand regulations that protect the public and put power back in their hands.

Nscale and Anthropic are reportedly in talks for yet another $45B compute deal

If the deal goes through, it would be the latest in a long string of giant compute deals Anthropic has struck over the past year.

Embedded AI evaluators won’t be an easy solution, Hugging Face’s policy chief says

The idea of embedded evaluators — in which supposedly "neutral" third-party observers are placed inside AI organizations — has been popularized over the last several months, as AI labs grapple with a rash of safety incidents that have spurred concerns over the potential harms of their technology.

Microsoft says AI agents are like insider threats as ‘frontier models can’t be trusted’

Microsoft wants enterprises to closely watch the agents that employees use with systems not controlled by AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic.

Amazon is taking its biggest shot at Nvidia yet with new TorchNeuron dev tool

Amazon wants to break Nvidia’s hold on PyTorch, the free toolkit used to build most AI apps, so that more developers run their apps on alternative chips like its own.

Hackers hit AI coding tool OpenCode, running up charges on users’ AI accounts

OpenCode is an open source AI coding agent that's become a popular alternative to Claude Code and Cursor. But hackers got into part of its online platform and stole some users’ API keys, and the AI tools it turned to for help kept refusing to look at the malicious code.

Tolan snags $30M for its AI companion that helps users navigate life

AI companion app Tolan has raised another $30 million after attracting more than 250,000 active users.

Replika’s founder built the AI assistant she pitched at Disrupt 12 years ago

Eugenia Kuyda's newest startup Wabi is positioned to take advantage of an idea she had more than a decade ago. Wabi offers a personal AI assistant with a twist, free and downloadable to anyone today.

Tenstorrent hits $6.2B valuation to scale open-weight AI chips

After drawing acquisition interest earlier this year, the Nvidia challenger raised $1.5 billion to remain independent.

AI assistant startup Town nabs unicorn valuation 4 months after launch

AI assistant startup Town nabbed a unicorn valuation on Monday, announcing a $108 million Series B round co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Menlo Ventures.

Rivian’s CEO says autonomy will enable ‘dramatically different’ vehicle designs

Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said he thinks autonomy will allow his company to build radically different kinds of vehicles than the outdoorsy SUVs and trucks it currently makes.

Amazon to fund 12 small nuclear reactors at former Indiana coal plant

Amazon and X-energy have inked another deal to deploy nuclear power to the grid. This one will generate nearly 1 gigawatt of electricity.

People are using AI to make their smart TVs dumb again

Fed up with ads, tracking, and sluggish interfaces, some smart TV owners are turning to AI agents to strip away bloatware and take back control of their TVs.

Nvidia launches new open models to run agents in the enterprise and on PCs

Nvidia is leaning hard into the trend of enterprise companies wanting to run their own open models in their own data centers and also trying to make on-device, private AI agents a thing.

Apple updates guidelines to ban nudify apps masquerading as regular apps to pass review

The company updated its guidelines with strong language around AI and user-generated content, and how app developers should include enough preventative measures to moderate objectionable or offensive content.

Musk pledges to give ‘every kid in America’ one of his SpaceX shares

Musk's post came just a few hours after Anthropic promised to put 5% of its shares into a new "public benefit fund," which it intends to use to make "large donations to traditional nonprofits or direct distributions to specific populations" after its upcoming IPO.

Khosla Ventures doubles down on Even Healthcare to challenge India’s hospital economics

Even Healthcare reaches a $300 million valuation in a Khosla Ventures-led round as it plans to expand its hospital network in India.

No agenda, no rush, no leaving San Francisco: Benchmark’s partners on investing in a frenzied market

Benchmark may have grown its funds and swapped out some partners, but onstage the five who are left sounded like friends who just happen to be running one of the Valley’s most storied firms

Anthropic says it’s committing 5% of its shares to a ‘public benefit fund’

Anthropic said that it will commit 5% of its shares to the fund.

Everyone’s watching the Elizabeth Holmes documentary ‘You Can See Everything’

"You Can See Everything" is having the second biggest opening weekend ever for a documentary film.

Disney agrees to hire the majority of Character.AI’s workforce

The filing also says that the “vast majority” of Character.AI employees who were offered jobs at Disney accepted them. However, this is a stalking horse bid, so another company could come forward with a higher offer.

TechCrunch Mobility: Rivian’s next act

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, the role AI is playing in it.

Meta removes language that raised scraping and AI training concerns

A Meta spokesperson insisted that the updated terms did not reflect a change in the way Meta crawls the web.

TikTok permanently bans ‘Musk’ documentary advertising account

A four-hour documentary about Elon Musk continues to meet resistance from social media platforms.

Anthropic says its workforce has become less junior and is spending more time in meetings

The composition of Anthropic’s workforce and the type of work getting done have changed significantly in the past year.

Replit makes OpenAI its default over Anthropic, CEO says

Over the weekend, Masad clarified that OpenAI would replace Anthropic as its default model provider. Claude will still be available to customers on the platform.

Ember’s new temperature-controlled mug makes my nightly tea ritual even better

The biggest change about Ember's new mug is that you no longer have to open the app to adjust your drink’s temperature.

Mark Wahlberg wants to take on the longevity-startup crowd with an affordable gym concept

Mark Wahlberg, who once sank money into a gym chain that got kicked off the NYSE, is now building his own, and he promises you’ll get a cold plunge, a blood panel and a protein muffin without needing a trust fund.

Replit is no longer working with Anthropic, CEO says

Masad said the decision was made for a number of different reasons, including cost. Replit announced a partnership with OpenAI in August, but there was never any indication that it was no longer with Anthropic.

Porsche’s electric Macan Turbo is an automotive existential crisis

The 2026 Porsche Macan Turbo EV is a two-row crossover with 630 horsepower and a 100-kilowatt-hour battery.

India becomes the latest country to report rogue AI agent activity

The agents got in through credentials and connection settings left exposed in app configurations, public code repositories, and overly permissive cloud roles.

An Nvidia insider-turned-VC on why robotics hasn’t hit its ChatGPT moment, yet

Amulya Vishwanath, who spent seven years leading product marketing for NVIDIA’s robotics platforms, says robotics is currently in its “Lego era,” with the basic building blocks like actuators, robotic hands, software, and safety standards still being rebuilt. This view runs counter to those who believe that robotics, powered by a general foundation model, is about to have […]

Waymo’s robotaxis are headed to Canada

The company will start off by testing its self-driving vehicles on Toronto's streets.

Elorian’s first AI model wants to reason with images, not just about them

According to Elorian's evaluations, Glimpse outperforms even GPT-6 Astra on scientific chart reasoning and short-form video captioning, with competitive results on other visual reasoning tasks.

Tressfecta wants to make hair braiding a less arduous task for hairstylists

Tressfecta builds products for textured hair. Its first project is a tool called Plait Pilot that helps braiders with the initial process of separating hair from packs before braiding begins.

In ‘You Can See Everything,’ Elizabeth Holmes meets her equal in comedian Nathan Fielder

Nathan Fielder's documentary about disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes has created a constellation of colliding personas that interrogate the very nature of authenticity.

Jev is Vercel’s fastest-adopted AI model ever

The data comes from Vercel's AI gateway, a unified API service similar to OpenRouter.

Mark Wahlberg on using AI in film ‘the right way’ and being open to an AI clone carrying on his legacy

Actor and angel investor Mark Wahlberg says he's OK with using AI in filmmaking, provided it's used "to enhance what you're doing."

Veritas expands its anti-counterfeit chip to jewelry, trophies, and fragrance bottles

Counterfeiters are getting better at replicating brands' marks and passing off dupes, known as "superfakes," as genuine items. A startup called Veritas wants to tackle the problem with its own chip that verifies goods.

Replit’s CEO says the future of work is the ‘self-driving company’

Replit CEO Amjad Masad envisions a future of “self-driving companies,” where AI agents handle day-to-day tasks and people focus on higher-level decisions.

Even Benchmark thinks AI is eroding the venture pact against backing rivals

Benchmark says the Valley’s rule against backing rivals is getting harder to keep.

Tesla reveals SpaceX-powered Roadster that flies and falls with style

The new car used thrusters to leap over a Cybercab, Cybertruck, Tesla Semi, Model Y, and Model 3 at a demo in Texas.

When it came to Cal AI’s viral success, a small army of influencers paid off

The company generated over $30 million in revenue in two years and was acquired by MyFitnessPal for an undisclosed amount of money in March.

And the winner of Startup Battlefield at Disrupt 2026 is: Intero Biosystems

Intero Biosystems beat out 199 other Startup Battlefield companies to take home the $100,000 grand prize at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026.

Amazon devices chief Panos Panay on the importance of failure and bouncing back from it

Panay said that it's possible to recover and learn from all sorts of failures, even catastrophic ones, when building products.

Meta launches an open-weight AI model that runs on Macs

Meta and Apple have teamed up for the launch of the social media giant's newest model, Muse Spark Open, which will run locally on Apple silicon.

Amazon devices chief Panos Panay sees a future where AI devices replace the need to use apps

Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt, Amazon devices chief Panos Panay described a future where ambient AI devices work in the background, anticipating users' needs instead of waiting for commands.

Bluesky wants to make it easier to buy, sell, and fundraise on the network

The executives argued that advertising isn’t the only path to monetization, and that there are alternative models that are feasible when it comes to monetization.

Anthropic is letting METR researchers look under the hood with employee-level access

METR will publish its own assessments of Anthropic’s risks, incidents, and practices, and the frontier AI model maker has given up the right to block them.

Bluesky expands its AI-powered Attie app to let anyone build websites, games, and more

Bluesky is bringing “social vibe coding” to its experimental Attie platform, allowing users to create interactive experiences like games, quizzes, and websites that can tap into the social network's audience.

Last chance to save up to $200 on your TechCrunch Founder Summit pass: Early booking ends October 16

Savings of up to $200 end October 16 for TechCrunch Founder Summit. These savings for Founder and Investor Passes vanish after Friday. Join 1,000 founders and investors on November 4 at Boston’s SoWa Power Station. Bring your toughest questions and make the day count for your business.

Volvo makes a bigger bet on Nvidia for hands-free automated driving

Volvo is leveling up its automated driving system through an expansion of its nearly decade-long partnership with Nvidia that will extend beyond its battery electric vehicles.

SK Hynix bargains for chip equipment exports to its China facility in return for building a factory in US

SK Hynix’s Solidigm is reportedly seeking U.S. approval to send more chipmaking equipment to China as it weighs building a new NAND chip factory in America.

AI agents are coming to Rivian’s cars

We'll likely learn more about how this will work at the company's upcoming "AI & Autonomy Day" event in December.

Ramp reaches $60B valuation as it pushes deeper into AI

The funding comes as Ramp's annualized revenue crosses $2B, and its customer count reaches 85,000.

Google’s Universal Cart shopping tool launches in the US

The new shopping tool is available in the U.S. across Google Search and the Gemini app.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026: Last day

Last day to be part of TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. Join 10,000+ tech leaders for a day of connections and insights. Save 75% on your pass now.

Amazon’s Bee launches two new personal AI devices, starting at $75

Amazon-owned Bee has launched its first new AI devices since its acquisition, including an updated wearable and a credit-card-sized recorder that attaches to smartphones. The devices can summarize conversations, create to-do lists, and integrate with Alexa and Amazon shopping, with prices starting at $74.99.

Governments are hacking people with ‘zero-click’ spyware by showing them online ads

The digital rights unit found evidence that dozens of devices at media organization Al Jazeera were hacked after being shown malicious online ads.

Figma announces new features to define how agents work on its platform

Figma is also releasing its code layers feature in open beta.

Ricursive Intelligence is betting on AI-designed chips to help solve the compute crisis

The founders detailed how their startup is developing AI that can design chips, learn from each iteration, and improve subsequent designs, all with the goal of automating and accelerating the chip design process.

Flock CEO defends surveillance technology amid national backlash: ‘We shouldn’t pause progress’

At TechCrunch Disrupt, Flock CEO Garrett Langley defended his company's surveillance technology despite growing privacy concerns, arguing that its crime-fighting benefits outweigh the risks of abuse.

Meet the five companies competing in the Startup Battlefield finals at Disrupt 2026

It’s time to unveil the five companies that will be competing in the Startup Battlefield finals.

Gudea leverages AI to help organizations prevent social media crises before they erupt

Every day, conversations unfold across social media and websites around the world. A seemingly insignificant post—whether it involves AI-generated misinformation, hate speech, or a damaging rumor—can quickly snowball into a much larger public controversy. Gudea, a company that tracks how stories and rumors spread online that describes itself as the “storm tracker for the internet,” […]

Intero Biosystems wants drugmakers to test on mini human intestines, not animals

Intero Biosystems is selling lab-grown human intestines to drugmakers as regulators push for alternatives to animal testing, while the startup looks to scale production and expand its organoid technology.

CedarDB wants one database to handle both transactions and analytics, as AI agents raise the stakes

Databases have traditionally been designed either for analytical data or for operational data. But database engine CedarDB supports both, and its approach has gained relevance with the rise of agentic AI.

Ambani’s Jio seeks to raise $3.2B in what could be India’s biggest IPO

Jio plans to use most of its IPO proceeds to repay debt as it expands beyond telecom.

Flock CEO says its microphones detect ‘just gunshots’ — its website says different

Langley’s comments come amid mounting scrutiny of Flock from privacy advocates, including the ACLU, and members of the public who are concerned about the misuse of its technology.

Colossal Biosciences announces new AI platform to help accelerate de-extinction efforts

Colossal announced a new AI platform to help accelerate its de-extinction efforts and Peter Diamandis has launched a new fund to back startups who use it.

Flock CEO: We haven’t ‘fired’ any police departments as customers

Flock CEO Garrett Langley said that the surveillance company has not canceled contracts of any police department or law enforcement agency, despite reports of abuse.

Electric vehicle sales in the US are showing signs of life

The electric vehicle market in the U.S. has been growing for the last three consecutive quarters.

TimeTeller puts our internal clocks at the center of personalized medicine

German startup TimeTeller has developed a saliva test kit to help anyone understand their circadian rhythm; it aims to reduce side effects from cancer treatments.