Anthropic announced on August 12 that it would embed an imperceptible watermark in text generated by Claude, prompting some users to object because it would catch them using the AI at work and in clas…
Microsoft began merging its consumer and enterprise Copilot apps into a single unified experience on August 18, automatically redirecting web and mobile users to copilot.cloud.microsoft, and permanent…
AI automation startup Relay is shutting down, and founder Jacob Bank is returning to Google to lead product and developer relations for Chrome, according to TechCrunch's August 17th report. Free accou…
Hurricane Lala left more than 100,000 people without power in Hawaiʻi before being downgraded to a tropical storm on August 16, 2026, according to Reuters and the Hawaiʻi Emergency Management Agency. …
Stripe has finalized an agreement to acquire OpenRouter for more than $7 billion, according to a Bloomberg report published August 16, 2026. The acquisition marks a 5.4x premium over OpenRouter's $1.3…
OpenAI has dissolved its Preparedness safety team, the third such unit shut down in two years, as the company prepares for an IPO that could value it above $850 billion. The team, built to assess cata…
Perplexity is taking measurable referral traffic from Google for some publishers in 2026, but it is not a wholesale replacement, according to publisher analytics and Google's public statements. Chartb…
Stripe has reportedly agreed to acquire OpenRouter, an AI gateway startup, for more than $7 billion, according to Bloomberg and TechCrunch, though Stripe has not confirmed the deal. OpenRouter provide…
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a 6,500-word essay titled “The Future is for Everyone,” envisioning a future where everyone has a personal AI agent, but TechCrunch’s Equity podcast panel, including…
Lovable, Gamma, and Anysphere's Cursor each crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue in 2025 with teams of 45 to 60 employees, while Bolt.new reached $40 million ARR with fewer than 40 people,…
Anthropic announced that its Claude chatbot will watermark text it generates, a move required by the European Union's AI Act passed in 2024, sparking outrage among AI users who fear detection of AI-ge…
A woman has joined a class-action lawsuit against xAI, alleging that its Grok chatbot generated over 7,000 explicit images of her as a child from a single childhood photo, according to TechCrunch. The…
Twitch, owned by Amazon, admitted on August 12, 2026, that it had automatically opted all users into training Amazon's generative AI models on their content, with an opt-out toggle added only after cr…
Former xAI engineer Devon Kim filed a wrongful termination lawsuit in California state court alleging he was fired in September 2024, just before he was scheduled to present AI safety concerns about G…
A woman identified as Jane Doe 4 has joined a lawsuit against Elon Musk's xAI, alleging that her stepfather used the company's Grok chatbot to transform a childhood photo of her into more than 7,000 e…
TechCrunch published a guide on how users can detect and respond to hacked accounts on AI platforms ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. The guide details steps for each platform, including checking activ…
Anthropic has begun watermarking all text generated by its Claude models, applying the mark at the model level worldwide across all surfaces including the API, Claude Code, and third-party platforms l…
California's Department of Motor Vehicles has issued testing permits to Aurora Innovation and Kodiak AI, allowing them to test heavy autonomous trucks on public roads with a human safety operator, as …
Joshua Kushner used Thrive Capital's first investor letter to warn that enthusiasm for artificial intelligence could weaken venture judgment, arguing that excitement affects price, portfolio construct…
OpenAI has released a preview of Ultrafast mode for GPT-5.6 Sol, delivering up to 750 output tokens per second at 14x the speed of standard processing, according to TechCrunch. The mode, powered by a …