As deal rumors fly, Alphabet and HubSpot would be a strange pairing

Reuters reported on Thursday that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is exploring the possibility of buying Boston-based HubSpot, a CRM and marketing automation company with a market cap of over $33 billion – a number that has been climbing on those reports. If such a deal were to happen, the cost …...Read More

Facebook's Oculus acquisition turns 10

Every year, Time Magazine issues a list of the 200 best inventions of the past 12 months. Frankly, I don’t know how the editors do it. The dirty secret of this job is that true, game-changing inventions rarely cross your desk. In fact, you’re extraordinarily lucky if you average one …...Read More

Against games industry doldrums, Bitkraft Ventures raises $275M to back studios and platforms

Bitkraft Ventures — a games investor based out of Denver, Colorado, but with European founders — has raised its third fund, coming in at $275 million. The fund will make seed and Series A investments in gaming studios, and platforms to support game production. The moves comes at a time …...Read More

Ford delays new EVs once more, showing why legacy automakers need to adopt a startup mentality

Ford announced Thursday that it’s delaying the production of two electric vehicles, a next-generation EV pickup and a three-row EV SUV. The pair are now slated to arrive in 2026 and 2027, delays of one and two years respectively. In their place, the automaker will be introducing hybrids across its …...Read More

YC's latest Demo Day shows fascinating wagers on healthcare, chip design, AI and more

The second half of Y Combinator’s Winter 2024 cohort presented on Thursday, once again bringing dozens and dozens of new startups before a chunk of the venture investing community. As we did on Wednesday, a number of the TechCrunch crew watched the entire run of presentations, picking out a handful …...Read More

X warns that you might lose followers as it does another bot sweep

X warns that you might lose followers as it does another bot sweep X is warning users they may see a reduction in their follower counts as the company attempts to clear the network of some spammers and bots in a large sweep. Via an announcement published by X’s Safety …...Read More

OpenStack improves support for AI workloads

OpenStack allows enterprises to manage their own AWS-like private clouds on-premises. Even after 29 releases, it’s still among the most active open-source projects in the world and this week, the OpenInfra Foundation that shepherds the project announced the launch of version 29 of OpenStack. Dubbed ‘Caracal,’ this new release emphasizes …...Read More

Net neutrality won't survive a Trump presidency

Net neutrality’s long trip toward (then away from, then toward again, then away, and now once more toward) federal protections against broadband meddling may be entering its final chapter, either to die forever or be enshrined in law — dependin, like so many things, on the outcome of the election …...Read More

Fintech funding slows to the lowest level since 2017

When it comes to funding, the fintech sector didn’t have a very good start to the year. Fintech funding slid by 16% quarter-over-quarter during the three-month period, according to CB Insights’ Q1 2024 State of Venture Report. But even more troubling than the double-digit dip was the fact that the …...Read More

Agility Robotics lays off some staff amid commercialization focus

Agility Robotics on Thursday confirmed that it has laid off a “small number” of employees. The well-funded Oregon-based firm says the job loss is part of a company-wide focus on commercialization efforts. “As part of Agility’s ongoing efforts to structure the company for success, we have parted ways with a …...Read More