Programmers bore the brunt of Microsoft’s layoffs in its home state as AI writes up to 30% of its code
Microsoft’s Washington layoffs hit coders hardest as the tech giant embraces AI.
Y Combinator says Google is a ‘monopolist’ that has ‘stunted’ the startup ecosystem
Fabled startup investor and accelerator Y Combinator has some choice words for Google in an amicus brief it just submitted in the U.S.’s monopoly case against the search giant. In the brief, YC charged that Google is a “monopolist” that has ̶…
The US is reviewing Benchmark’s investment into Chinese AI startup Manus
Manus AI is one of the hottest AI agent startups around, recently raising $75 million at a half-billion dollar valuation in a round led by Benchmark. But two unnamed sources told Semafor that the investment is now under review by the U.S. Treasury Depa…
The Department of Labor just dropped its investigation into Scale AI
The U.S. Department of Labor has dropped its investigation into Scale AI’s compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act, according to a source directly familiar with the matter. The FLSA is a federal law that regulates misclassification of employ…
Microsoft employees are banned from using DeepSeek app, president says
Microsoft employees aren’t allowed to use DeepSeek due to data security and propaganda concerns, Microsoft vice chairman and president Brad Smith said in a Senate hearing today. “At Microsoft we don’t allow our employees to use the DeepSeek app,”…
Fastino trains AI models on cheap gaming GPUs and just raised $17.5M led by Khosla
Tech giants like to boast about trillion-parameter AI models that require massive and expensive GPU clusters. But Fastino is taking a different approach. The Palo Alto-based startup says it has invented a new kind of AI model architecture that’s intent…
A stealth AI model beat DALL-E and Midjourney on a popular benchmark. Its creator just landed $30M.
Recraft, the startup behind a mysterious image model that beat OpenAI’s DALL-E and Midjourney on a respected industry benchmark last year, has raised a $30 million Series B round led by Accel, it exclusively told TechCrunch. Other investors in th…
AI chatbots are ‘juicing engagement’ instead of being useful, Instagram co-founder warns
Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom says AI companies are trying too hard to “juice engagement” by pestering their users with follow-up questions, instead of providing actually useful insights. Systrom said the tactics represent “a force that’s hurting …
Fintech Bench conducts layoff while others still work month-to-month
Bench, the accounting and tax startup that was bought in a fire sale last December, has conducted a round of significant layoffs, it confirmed to TechCrunch. Bench didn’t specify how many people were affected, but one person who works there estimated t…