A hotel check-in system left more than one million customer passports, driver’s licenses, and selfie verification photos to the open web after a security lapse. The data is now offline after TechCrunch alerted the company responsible. The hotel check-in system, called Tabiq, is maintained by the Japan-based tech startup Reqrea. According to its website, Tabiq…
Tesla Robotaxis have crashed at least twice since July 2025 while a teleoperator was remotely driving the vehicles, according to newly unredacted information submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Both crashes happened in Austin, Texas and occurred at low speeds. In each case, there was a safety monitor behind the wheel and…
On Friday, OpenAI launched a new set of personal finance tools in preview for ChatGPT Pro subscribers in the U.S., letting them connect their accounts and ask questions ranging from spending analysis to future financial planning. OpenAI has partnered with the financial connection service Plaid to manage the account connections. Users can connect to over…
Meridian Ventures was born out of a shared experience: deferred MBAs. Now, founders Devon Gethers and Karlton Haney have raised a $35 million fund to back pre-seed and seed-stage companies started by people like them. Gethers, 29, told TechCrunch the idea for a firm arose after he met Haney in Harvard’s MBA deferred admission program…
AI video generation startup Runway doesn’t have the typical Silicon Valley pedigree. No Stanford founders, no ex-Google founders, no nine-figure seed round that bought them time to ignore revenue. Its three founders — two from Chile, one from Greece — met at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and built the company in New York….
Want to make money? Start building data centers. Or build batteries to power data centers. Or: pivot to defense. This is not financial advice, but it’s certainly what seems to be winning over public markets and private investors lately. Ford’s nascent energy storage business — a fraction in size to Tesla’s and won’t be ready…
As AI models increasingly become commoditized, startups are racing to build the software layer that sits on top of them. One interesting entrant into this space is Osaurus, an open source, Apple-only LLM server that lets users move between different local AI models, either locally or in the cloud, while keeping their files and tools…
Jada Jones/ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways Your Sonos speakers have a built-in voice assistant. Sonos Voice Control isn’t as smart as other assistants, but it’s not useless. Daily alarms, weather reports, and timers can elevate your experience. I’m not a smart-home enthusiast, but I do have several Sonos…
Uber is expanding its technology footprint in India with new engineering campuses and a data center partnership aimed at supporting its overall product development and infrastructure operations. On Thursday, Uber detailed plans to open two new campuses that can fit around 9,600 people in Bengaluru and Hyderabad by the end of 2027. The offices will…
In the past few years, creative marketplaces and platforms have realized they are sitting on a data gold mine, and they can either use that data to develop AI models or turn it into a source of revenue by licensing it to other AI labs. Wirestock, which previously helped photographers distribute and sell their work…