The Reinforcement Gap — or why some AI skills improve faster than others
AI tasks that work well with reinforcement learning are getting better fast — and threatening to leave the rest of the industry behind.
The Young Minds App wants to protect and educate children online and will show its tech at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025
Young Minds gives parents control over what their kids do on the internet, while also protecting their children’s privacy and teaching them good online habits.
Newsom signs bill giving Uber and Lyft drivers in California the right to unionize
Drivers for ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft will soon have the right to unionize in California as independent contractors, thanks to a bill signed Friday by Governor Gavin Newsom.
If you’re not an AI startup, good luck raising money from VCs
New PitchBook data illustrates how dramatically AI is dominating startup investment, with 2025 on-track to become the first year when AI accounts for more than half of all VC money invested.
Startups and the U.S. government: It’s getting complicated
Equity co-hosts Anthony Ha, Kirsten Korosec, and Max Zeff explore the how startups are navigating a topsy-turvy relationship with the U.S. government.
Instacrops will demo its water-saving, crop-boosting AI at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025
Agriculture consumes a vast amount of water, and some countries are under more stress than others. Instacrops pivoted to AI to help farmers cut water use by 30%.
Sam Altman says Sora will add ‘granular,’ opt-in copyright controls
OpenAI may be reversing course on how it approaches copyright and intellectual property in its new video app Sora.
Event startup Partiful wasn’t stripping GPS locations from user-uploaded photos
The event planning startup, which has raised over $27M from a16z and others, fixed the bug after TechCrunch found that Partiful was not removing granular location data from users’ profile photos.
Tesla’s insurance arm accused of ‘egregious delays’ and ‘systemic failures’ by CA regulator
California’s Department of Insurance has been warning Tesla to fix its claims process since 2022, but consumer complaints have skyrocketed anyways.
Bezos predicts that millions will live in space kind of soon
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made a rare public appearance at Italian Tech Week in Turin on Friday and used the opportunity to predict that millions of people will be living in space “in the next couple of decades,”