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Microsoft Built a Fake Marketplace to Test AI Agents — They Failed in Surprising Ways
Microsoft researchers unveiled an open‑source synthetic environment called the “Magentic Marketplace” to evaluate AI agents in a controlled, multi‑agent setting. In initial trials, 100 customer‑side agents interacted with 300 business‑side agents using leading models such as GPT‑4o, GPT‑5 and Gemini‑2.5‑Flash. The study uncovered notable weaknesses, including susceptibility to manipulation, performance drops when agents faced many options, and difficulty coordinating without explicit instructions. These results suggest current agentic models lack the robustness needed for autonomous commerce and collaboration.
SoftBank, OpenAI Launch New Joint Venture in Japan as AI Deals Grow Ever More Circular
SoftBank and OpenAI have created a 50‑50 joint venture, SB OAI Japan, to localize and sell OpenAI’s enterprise AI tools, branded as “Crystal intelligence,” to Japanese corporations. The venture’s first customer is SoftBank itself, which plans to deploy the solution...
Former Meta Employees Launch a Ring to Take Voice Notes and Control Music
Sandbar, founded by former Meta interface designers Mina Fahmi and Kirak Hong, is launching Stream, a voice‑controlled smart ring that lets users record notes, interact with an AI chatbot, and manage music via a touch‑pad and built‑in microphones. The ring...
Amazon Sends Legal Threats to Perplexity over Agentic Browsing
Amazon has issued a cease‑and‑desist letter to AI search startup Perplexity, demanding that its agentic browsing tool, Comet, stop facilitating purchases on Amazon without clearly identifying itself as a bot. Amazon argues that third‑party agents must disclose their status and...
People Inc Forges AI Licensing Deal with Microsoft as Google Traffic Drops
People Inc., a leading U.S. media publisher owned by IAC, signed an AI licensing deal with Microsoft, becoming a launch partner in Microsoft’s new publisher content marketplace where AI services pay per use for content. The agreement follows a prior...
Rivian Creates Another Spinoff Company Called Mind Robotics
Rivian announced the formation of Mind Robotics, an industrial AI and robotics spinoff aimed at leveraging Rivian's operational data to create a robotics data flywheel for manufacturing efficiency. The venture, chaired by CEO RJ Scaringe, raised a $115 million seed round...
Google’s AI Mode Gets New Agentic Capabilities to Help Book Event Tickets and Beauty Appointments
Google announced new agentic capabilities in its AI Mode, allowing users to book event tickets and beauty or wellness appointments directly through Search. The feature searches multiple sites in real time, curates options, and links to booking pages, building on...
Shopify Says AI Traffic Is up 7x Since January, AI-Driven Orders Are up 11x
Shopify reported that AI‑driven traffic to its merchants’ stores has surged seven‑fold since January and AI‑generated orders have risen eleven‑fold, underscoring the company’s push into "agentic commerce" after partnering with OpenAI, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. The e‑commerce platform highlighted its...
Anthropic Projects $70B in Revenue by 2028: Report
Anthropic forecasts up to $70 billion in revenue and $17 billion in cash flow by 2028, driven by rapid uptake of its AI models through API sales and a growing roster of enterprise partners such as Microsoft, Salesforce, Deloitte and Cognizant. The...
Nvidia, Deutsche Telekom Strike €1B Partnership for a Data Center in Munich
Nvidia and Deutsche Telekom have inked a €1 billion partnership to build an “Industrial AI Cloud” data center in Munich, deploying more than 1,000 Nvidia DGX B200 systems and up to 10,000 Blackwell GPUs that will raise Germany’s AI compute capacity by roughly...
ClickUp Adds New AI Assistant to Better Compete with Slack and Notion
ClickUp unveiled version 4.0, adding two AI agents—a channel‑wide assistant that proactively answers questions using internal knowledge and external sources, and a general‑purpose assistant called Brain that can generate ideas, schedule meetings, draft content and interact with tools like Google Drive, OneDrive,...
Alexa+ Comes to the Amazon Music App
Amazon announced that its AI‑enhanced assistant, Alexa+, will be integrated into the Amazon Music app on iOS and Android, initially available to users in the Alexa+ Early Access program across all subscription tiers. The new assistant supports natural‑language conversations, enabling...
Studio Ghibli and Other Japanese Publishers Want OpenAI to Stop Training on Their Work
A Japanese trade organization, CODA, representing publishers including Studio Ghibli, sent a letter to OpenAI demanding that the company cease training its AI models on members' copyrighted works without permission. The appeal follows the popularity of OpenAI’s image generator and...
Dia’s AI Browser Starts Adding Arc’s ‘Greatest Hits’ to Its Feature Set
Dia, the AI‑native web browser acquired by Atlassian for $610 million, will incorporate several of Arc’s most popular features such as sidebar mode, vertical tabs, pinned‑grid view and Google Meet picture‑in‑picture, while leveraging a new architecture that promises better speed, security...
Microsoft’s $15.2B UAE Investment Turns Gulf State Into Test Case for US AI Diplomacy
Microsoft announced a $15.2 billion investment in the United Arab Emirates over the next four years, including the first U.S.‑licensed shipments of Nvidia’s most advanced GPUs to the Gulf state. The deal builds on $7.3 billion already spent since 2023—covering a $1.5 billion...
Microsoft Inks $9.7B Deal with Australia’s IREN for AI Cloud Capacity
Microsoft signed a five‑year, $9.7 billion contract with Australia’s IREN to secure AI cloud capacity built on Nvidia’s GB300 GPUs, to be deployed at IREN’s 750‑megawatt facility in Childress, Texas, through 2026. IREN is concurrently investing about $5.8 billion in GPUs and...
LG Founder’s Grandson, Production Firm Partner up to Bring AI to Filmmaking
LG Group founder’s grandson Brian Koo, via investment firm Stock Farm Road, has launched a 50‑50 joint venture with AI film producer Utopai Studios called Utopai East. The JV will develop AI‑focused infrastructure, anchored by a planned 3‑GW data center...
Kevin Rose’s Simple Test for AI Hardware — Would You Want to Punch Someone in the Face Who’s Wearing It?
Kevin Rose, a general partner at True Ventures, uses a visceral “punch‑in‑the‑face” test to evaluate AI wearables, arguing that devices that feel invasive should be avoided. Drawing on his board experience at Oura and personal use of failed products like...
Google Pulls Gemma From AI Studio After Senator Blackburn Accuses Model of Defamation
Google removed its Gemma model from the AI Studio platform after U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn accused the chatbot of fabricating false rape allegations against her, citing a specific hallucinated response that linked her to a nonexistent 1987 scandal. Blackburn also...
Sam Altman Says ‘Enough’ to Questions About OpenAI’s Revenue
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told a podcast that the company’s annual revenue is "well more" than the reported $13 billion and is growing steeply, while the firm faces over $1 trillion in compute‑infrastructure commitments for the next decade. He brushed off detailed...
Meta Has an AI Product Problem
Meta’s latest earnings reveal a $7 billion year‑over‑year rise in operating expenses and nearly $20 billion in capital outlays, driven by an aggressive AI build‑out that includes two new data centers and an estimated $600 billion U.S. infrastructure spend over three years. CEO...
AI Researchers ’Embodied’ an LLM Into a Robot – and It Started Channeling Robin Williams
Andon Labs equipped a simple vacuum robot with six leading large language models—including Gemini 2.5 Pro, Claude Opus 4.1, GPT‑5, Gemini ER 1.5, Grok 4 and Llama 4 Maverick—to test how well they could execute a multi‑step office task of fetching butter. The models were scored on perception, planning...
Perplexity Strikes Multi-Year Licensing Deal with Getty Images
Perplexity, an AI‑powered search startup, has signed a multi‑year licensing agreement with Getty Images that permits the company to display Getty’s stock photos in its search and discovery tools with proper attribution and links to the original source. The deal,...
Tim Cook Says Apple Is Open to M&A on the AI Front
Apple CEO Tim Cook told investors on the Q4 2025 earnings call that the company remains open to acquisitions and partnerships to accelerate its AI roadmap, maintaining a three‑pronged strategy of in‑house foundation models, third‑party LLM collaborations, and targeted M&A. He...
YC Alum Adam Raises $4.1M to Turn Viral Text-to-3D Tool Into AI Copilot
AI startup Adam, a YC Winter 2025 alum, raised a $4.1 million seed round led by TQ Ventures with participation from 468 Capital, Pioneer, Script Capital, Transpose Platform and several angels. The funding follows a viral text‑to‑3D model that generated over...
Nvidia Expands AI Ties with Hyundai, Samsung, SK, Naver
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang visited South Korea during the APEC 2025 summit, announcing a $5‑trillion‑valued company’s expanded partnership with the Korean government and leading firms Hyundai Motor, Samsung, SK Group and Naver. South Korea will procure over 260,000 Nvidia GPUs—about...
Bevel Raises $10M Series A From General Catalyst for Its AI Health Companion
Bevel, a New York health‑tech startup, announced a $10 million Series A round led by General Catalyst to accelerate its AI‑powered health companion. The app aggregates data from wearables, sleep, fitness and nutrition trackers into personalized insights and has grown more than eightfold in...
Figma Acquires AI-Powered Media Generation Company Weavy
Figma announced the acquisition of AI‑powered image and video generation startup Weavy, adding its 20‑person team and creating a new brand called Figma Weave. Weavy, founded in 2024 and backed by a $4 million seed round, offers a node‑based platform that lets...
The Prompting Company Snags $6.5M to Help Products Get Mentioned in ChatGPT and Other AI Apps
The Prompting Company, a Y Combinator‑backed startup founded by Kevin Chandra, Michelle Marcelline and Albert Purnama, raised $6.5 million in seed funding to commercialize generative engine optimization (GEO), a service that creates AI‑friendly pages so large language models like ChatGPT can...
Solana Co-Founder Anatoly Yakovenko Is a Big Fan of Agentic Coding
Solana co‑founder and CEO Anatoly Yakovenko told TechCrunch Disrupt that he now relies heavily on agentic coding tools such as Claude, allowing him to step back from hands‑on development. He highlighted Solana’s robust financial results, reporting $2.85 billion in annual revenue...
ElevenLabs CEO Says AI Audio Models Will Be ‘Commoditized’ over Time
ElevenLabs co‑founder and CEO Mati Staniszewski told TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 that AI audio models will become commoditized within the next few years, even as the company continues to solve current architecture challenges that give it a short‑term edge. He said ElevenLabs will...
Character AI Is Ending Its Chatbot Experience for Kids
Character.AI announced it will eliminate open‑ended chatbot conversations for users under 18, phasing out access by November 25 with a shrinking daily time limit and robust age‑verification measures. The decision follows lawsuits and two teen suicides linked to prolonged AI...
Grammarly Rebrands to ‘Superhuman,’ Launches a New AI Assistant
Grammarly announced it will rename its corporate entity to Superhuman following its July acquisition of the Superhuman email client, while the Grammarly product name remains unchanged. The company launched Superhuman Go, an AI assistant built into the Grammarly extension that provides...
Phia’s Founders on How AI Is Changing Online Shopping
Phia, an AI startup founded by Stanford roommates Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, launched a browser extension and app that aggregates pricing data from more than 150 second‑hand platforms, covering over 350 million items, to help shoppers compare prices and assess...
Mappa’s AI Voice Analysis Helps You Find the Best Job Candidates and Will Show Off Its Tech at TechCrunch Disrupt...
Mappa, an AI‑powered behavioral intelligence platform founded in 2023, uses voice‑pattern analysis to gauge traits such as empathy and confidence and then ranks job candidates by role compatibility. The startup has raised $3.4 million in a seed round led by Draper...
Super Teacher Is Building an AI Tutor for Elementary Schools — Catch It at Disrupt 2025
Super Teacher, founded by ex‑Google product manager Tim Novikoff, offers an AI‑powered tutoring app for elementary students at $15 a month (or $10 with an annual plan) and has signed up roughly 20,000 families, with public schools in New York, New Jersey...
Inside CampusAI’s Mission to Close the AI Training Gap for Everyday Workers — Check It Out at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025
CampusAI, a Warsaw‑based startup, is launching an AI education platform aimed at non‑technical workers, offering a consumer subscription (Me+AI) at $250 per year and a B2B package (Team+AI) at $25,000 per year that combines avatar‑driven courses, a metaverse campus, an...
Sam Altman Says OpenAI Will Have a ‘Legitimate AI Researcher’ by 2028
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that the company aims to create an AI system capable of functioning as a “legitimate AI researcher” by 2028. The roadmap hinges on two pillars: continued breakthroughs in core algorithms and a dramatic increase in...
Elloe AI Wants to Be the ‘Immune System’ for AI — Check It Out at Disrupt 2025
Elloe AI founder Owen Sakawa pitched his platform as an “immune system” for artificial‑intelligence, a layer that sits on top of any large language model to filter bias, hallucinations, errors, misinformation and compliance breaches. The startup, a Top 20 finalist in...
VC Vinod Khosla Says the US Government Could Take 10% Stake in All Public Companies to Soften the Blow of...
Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, proposed that the U.S. government acquire a 10% equity stake in every public company and redistribute the proceeds to citizens as a way to share the wealth generated by artificial general intelligence (AGI). He...
Mem0 Raises $24M From YC, Peak XV and Basis Set to Build the Memory Layer for AI Apps
Mem0, a Y Combinator‑backed startup founded by Taranjeet Singh and Deshraj Yadav, announced a $24 million financing round (including a $20 million Series A led by Basis Set Ventures and a $3.9 million seed). The company offers a model‑agnostic "memory passport" that lets AI applications...
Adobe Launches AI Assistants for Express and Photoshop
Adobe unveiled AI assistants for its Creative Cloud apps Express and Photoshop, with Express offering a toggleable mode that generates images and designs from text prompts, and Photoshop’s closed‑beta sidebar assistant capable of understanding layers, auto‑selecting objects, creating masks and...
Adobe Firefly Image 5 Brings Support for Layers, Will Let Creators Make Custom Models
Adobe unveiled Firefly Image 5, boosting native generation resolution to 4 megapixels and improving human rendering, while introducing layered and prompt‑based editing that lets users modify objects without losing detail. The update adds a closed‑beta feature for creators to build custom image...
OpenAI Offers Free ChatGPT Go for One Year to All Users in India
OpenAI will give all users in India a free one‑year subscription to its ChatGPT Go plan if they sign up during a promotion that begins on November 4. The offer applies to new and existing ChatGPT Go subscribers, a tier that costs under...
Zoom CEO Eric Yuan Says AI Will Shorten Our Workweek
Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan told TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 that AI assistants—exemplified by Zoom’s new “digital twin” avatar that can speak for users—will enable a shorter workweek. He demonstrated the avatar in a recent earnings call and said Zoom...
Mbodi Will Show How It Can Train a Robot Using AI Agents at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025
Mbodi, a New York‑based startup, will showcase its AI‑agent‑driven robot‑training platform at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 as a Top 20 Startup Battlefield finalist. The cloud‑to‑edge system lets users issue natural‑language prompts, which a network of AI agents breaks into subtasks to quickly...
Biotech Nephrogen Combines AI and Gene Therapy to Reverse Kidney Disease — Check It Out at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025
Nephrogen, a biotech startup founded by Demetri Maxim, is leveraging AI‑driven screening to create a novel CRISPR‑based delivery system that targets polycystic kidney disease (PKD) cells. The company claims its platform transports gene‑editing medicines to the kidney 100 × more efficiently...
Oxford Spinout RADiCAIT Uses AI to Make Diagnostic Imaging More Affordable and Accessible — Catch It at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025
Oxford spinout RADiCAIT, founded on a 2021 Oxford generative‑AI model, has emerged from stealth with $1.7 million in pre‑seed funding and opened a $5 million seed round to advance clinical trials that turn standard CT scans into PET‑quality images. The company claims...
Mercor Quintuples Valuation to $10B with $350M Series C
Mercor announced a $350 million Series C financing that lifts its valuation to $10 billion, a five‑fold increase from the $2 billion post‑Series B round. The round was led by Felicis Ventures with participation from Benchmark, General Catalyst and new investor Robinhood Ventures. The company,...
Pinterest Experiments with New AI-Powered Personalized Boards
Pinterest announced a rollout of AI‑powered upgrades to its boards, starting in the U.S. and Canada and expanding globally in the coming months. The new "Styled for you" collage lets users mix and match saved fashion pins to create personalized...