Carvana has been granted the option to invest in Slate Auto, the electric vehicle startup backed by Jeff Bezos, according to documents obtained by TechCrunch. Paperwork filed with Delaware’s division of corporations shows that the online used car retailer was given a warrant to buy shares in the startup in 2025 — around the same…
Benchmark Capital, the storied Silicon Valley VC firm known for early investments in eBay, Snap, Uber, and Twitter, is breaking with one of its signature traditions: keeping its funds to about $425 million and backing only young startups. After more than two decades of restricting its vehicles to that amount or lower, the outfit has…
Google Labs, the tech giant’s team devoted to experimental product design, has launched a new AI-fueled app for iOS and Android that will quite literally animate your life. Behold, Dreambeans. Why is it called that? We’ll get to that later. First, what is it? Gozde Oznur, the product lead behind the new app, told TechCrunch…
Substack announced on Wednesday a new feature called “Reply Rules,” designed to give creators greater control over how their audiences are able to respond. With the feature, creators can establish specific guidelines for comments on their posts, in Notes, or in Chat. These guidelines might include requests to eliminate AI slop or profanity, or something…
In a quick-commerce market obsessed with speed, Indian startup FirstClub has convinced investors that quality may be a fresh opportunity, helping to double its valuation just nine months after its last funding round. The Bengaluru-based startup has raised $55 million in a Series B round co-led by Peak XV Partners and Sofina, valuing the company…
Lovable and Google announced an expanded multi-year collaboration on Wednesday. Lovable, the fast-growing Stockholm vibe-coding startup, has long been a Google Cloud user. Under the new agreement, it will be a much bigger one. While the companies did not disclose the dollar figure, a person with knowledge of the deal tells TechCrunch it involves a…
If Alphabet’s record-breaking $85 billion stock sale signals investor appetite for AI-related offerings — and it does — we can safely say that investors are voracious. Google’s parent company had initially intended to sell a first tranche of $40 billion worth of various equity instruments — two different classes of shares, plus smaller “depositary shares”…
Defense tech is red hot right now. Anduril and Mach Industries just doubled and quadrupled their valuations, respectively, and the U.S. government is proposing a 40% increase in defense budget. A wave of new startups is chasing those government contracts, but according to Ross Fubini, the venture investor who wrote Anduril’s first check, most of them will get lost in the Valley of Death between prototype contract…
Uber revealed on Wednesday a prototype car that it plans to use to scoop up real-world driving data that can be used by its growing list of autonomous vehicle partners such as Avride, Waymo, and WeRide. The vehicle is not some radical design. Rather, it’s a Hyundai Ioniq 5 fitted with an incredible number of…
Meta’s attempt to pioneer a metaverse and make VR cool totally flopped, except for one shining diamond in the rough: Supernatural, a VR fitness game that made working out feel fun and accessible. Now, users can rejoice that Supernatural isn’t shutting down after all. Meta went through the hassle of fighting an eight-month antitrust battle…