TechCrunch Industry News

Audio streaming company Spotify said Tuesday that it paid $10 billion to the music industry last year. The company added that it has given nearly $60 billion in industry payouts since its inception. This is another effort from Spotify to dispel reports that the company doesn’t reward artists properly for their work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Replacing inexpensive fossil fuels is a tall hurdle, but Lydian thinks it has cracked the problem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Since Chinese AI company DeepSeek released an open version of its reasoning model R1 at the beginning of this week, many in the tech industry have been making grand pronouncements about what the company achieved, and what it means for the state of AI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

LG Electronics is betting on robotics as its next big growth driver. The South Korean electronics company said on Friday that it has agreed to acquire an additional 30% stake in Bear Robotics, a California-based startup it previously backed that is building AI-powered server robots for restaurants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Flip is a social commerce app that lets shoppers become creators. They can share honest reviews and earn cash based on engagement on the platform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Streaming service Plex has long since grown beyond its original focus of being a home for personal media to offer a more comprehensive solution for discovering, streaming, and sharing content across services, including Plex’s own ad-supported free TV and movies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is launching so-called “strategic market status” (SMS) investigations into the mobile ecosystems of Apple and Google. The investigations constitute part of the new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCCA) which passed last year and came into effect in January. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A four-year-old London startup backed by Peter Thiel has raised a $55 million Series B round as it sets about “fixing the broken clinical trial industry.” The announcement comes as artificial intelligence is shaping up to revolutionize drug discovery and development. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Truecaller for iOS has been updated with live caller ID support for its premium iPhone users. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

French startup Karmen has secured a small funding round so that it can improve its instant financing products. The company offers short-term loans to small companies facing a working capital crunch. It’s a €9 million equity-and-debt round ($9.4 million at today’s exchange rates) with Seventure Partners buying a stake in the small startup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/...

Friend, a startup creating a $99, AI-powered necklace designed to be treated as a digital companion, has delayed its first batch of shipments until Q3. Friend had planned to ship devices to pre-order customers in Q1. But according to co-founder and CEO Avi Schiffman, that’s no longer feasible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Top LLMs performed poorly on a high-level history test, a new paper has found. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Leading AI developers, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, are threading a delicate needle to sell software to the United States military: make the Pentagon more efficient, without letting their AI kill people. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A new AI orchestration startup from the founders of Lithuanian unicorn Nord Security is setting out to help enterprises put their AI projects into production, with an initial focus on bringing greater visibility, security and adaptability to large language models (LLMs). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Climate tech may have had a down year in 2024, but new data also shows a maturing sector with larger deal sizes. Venture investment in the climate tech sector was down 7% to $12.9 billion, $1 billion shy of 2023’s tally, according to data in a new PitchBook report. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google has agreed to purchase 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide removal credits from Indian startup Varaha. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Russia-linked ransomware group is threatening to leak data stolen from almost 60 Cleo Software customers if ransoms aren't paid Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hinge today launched a new AI-powered feature called “Prompt Feedback,” which aims to improve your dating profile by analyzing how you answer prompts and assessing if it needs to be more specific or authentic.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Former SoftBank exec Akshay Naheta's startup, Distributed Technologies Research, is trying to bridge the gap between banking and blockchain tech. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

App stores are filled with different services that are designed to help you cut down on your screen time and count your steps. A new iOS app called Steppin combines these two ideas to help users do both at the same time to bridge the gap between physical and mental health Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Shortly after OpenAI released o1, its first “reasoning” AI model, people began noting a curious phenomenon. The model would sometimes begin “thinking” in Chinese, Persian, or some other language — even when asked a question in English. Given a problem to sort out — e.g. “How many R’s are in the word ‘strawberry?'” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

OpenAI on Monday published what it’s calling an “economic blueprint” for AI: a living document that lays out policies the company thinks it can build on with the U.S. government and its allies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 2023, the U.K. made a big song and dance about the need to consider the harms of AI, giving itself a leading role in the wider conversation around AI safety. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s a new year, but drama in the WordPress community keeps going. Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com, said that it would reduce its contribution to WordPress core, the open-source project that acts as the backbone of most of Automattic’s products and ensures the longevity of WordPress as a technology and community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TV providers and streamers’ real competition isn’t each other, it’s social video. Or at least that’s what the president of Comcast Advertising, James Rooke, said during an interview on Wednesday at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices