Indian ride-hailing company Rapido said on Friday it had raised $240 million in fresh funding at a $3 billion valuation to compete better in the country’s growing but challenging mobility market. Led by Prosus, the equity round saw participation from existing investors, including WestBridge Capital and Accel. The round was part of a larger $730…
President Trump and a delegation of U.S. officials left Beijing on Friday after two days of high-level talks with the Chinese government, led by President Xi Jinping. Before boarding Air Force One, White House staffers and reporters had to surrender various items collected during the trip, including staff burner phones, credential badges, and lapel pins…
The largest electrical grid in the U.S., the PJM Interconnection, saw prices nearly double over the last year, according to a report published yesterday by Monitoring Analytics, an independent market monitor that serves as a sort of watchdog for the PJM grid. The culprit? Data centers. Wholesale prices for one megawatt-hour of electricity rose to…
One of the most entertaining moments in VC this week was a piece of rage-bait marketing from General Catalyst. In a now-viral post on X that parodies the old Mac vs. PC commercials, the venture firm — better known as GC — posted a “VC vs GC” video on Wednesday. The VC was played by…
Investors can’t seem to get enough of RJ Scaringe or his ideas. In less than a decade, the serial entrepreneur best known for his EV company Rivian, has raised more than $12.3 billion from venture capital firms, as well as strategic and institutional investors for his three — and counting — startups. If the latest…
It’s no secret that AI data centers have been straining the grid. But Silicon Valley has been relatively insulated from it all, thanks to high land and power prices that have pushed hyperscaler projects elsewhere. The tech elite might soon get a taste of the power crunch, though. The Bay Area’s vacationland, Lake Tahoe, has…
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…