YC's Winter 2024 Demo Day confirms that we are indeed in an AI bubble

Springtime means rain, the return of flowers and, of course, Y Combinator’s first demo day of the year. During the well-known accelerator’s first of two pitch days from the Winter 2024 cohort, a covey of TechCrunch staff tuned in, took notes, traded jokes and slowly whittled away at the dozens …...Read More

WhatsApp was down in Meta's second big outage this year

For the second time in just over a month, Meta’s apps, including WhatsApp, and to some extent, Messenger and Instagram, faced outages and intermittent issues. While it’s rare for services as large as those operated by Meta to go down entirely, Meta’s status page detailed disruptions to key business services, …...Read More

Nightside's ambient lamp rethinks the reading light

Nightside is the brainchild of Jess Gupta. The $350 LED bedside lamp is an intentionally simple product. It doesn’t have Wi-Fi or Alexa built in, but it does have a few clever tricks up its sleeve. “I went to design school at CCA [in San Francisco], studying furniture design. I …...Read More

Brave is launching its AI assistant on iPhone and iPad

Brave announced on Wednesday that it’s bringing its AI assistant, called Leo, to iPhone and iPad users. The AI assistant allows people to ask questions, summarize pages, create content and more. The iOS rollout follows the launch of the AI assistant on Android and desktop. The iOS launch of Leo …...Read More

OnePlus went ahead and built its own version of Google Magic Eraser

OnePlus has always marched to the beat of its own drummer — for better and worse. Take, for example, the company’s latest foray into mobile artificial intelligence, the AI Eraser. Before you ask, no, this is not simply a rebadged version of Google’s longstanding and very good Magic Eraser. Nope, …...Read More

HAX at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024: Empowering hard tech founders

Discover the forefront of hard tech innovation in an exclusive session sponsored by HAX at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024. Led by SOSV general partner Duncan Turner and HAX chief science officer Dr. Susan Schofer, and moderated by SOSV’s Sabriya Stukes, this session offers a deep dive into the world of …...Read More

Facebook takes on TikTok with a new, vertical-first video player

Facebook is introducing a new, full-screen video player on Wednesday, which offers a more consistent design and experience for all types of video lengths, including short-form Reels, long-form videos and even Live content. The upgraded player, which will first launch in the U.S. and Canada, aims to streamline the experience …...Read More

TechCrunch Minute: Yahoo buys Artifact news app from Instagram’s co-founders

News that Yahoo is buying Artifact stirred the technology watercooler yesterday. Artifact was an interesting app, employing AI to help its users find and consume more, and more targeted news. It had some devoted fans, but never reached the sort of scale that would have made it an attractive long-term …...Read More

'A Brief History of the Future' offers a hopeful antidote to cynical tech takes

Cynicism is a quality taken almost for granted in tech journalism, and certainly we are as guilty as the next publication. But both the risk and the promise of technology are real, and a new documentary series tries to emphasize the latter while not discounting the former. “A Brief History …...Read More

Microsoft to unbundle Office and Teams globally following years-long criticism

Microsoft will introduce a new version of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 subscription service that excludes Teams, unbundling a suite following scrutiny from the European Union regulator and complaints from rival Slack. The move follows Microsoft agreeing to sell Office 365 suite sans Microsoft Teams offering in the EU and …...Read More