The governing body overseeing India’s popular UPI payments rail is considering easing its proposed market share cap for operators like Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm as it struggles to enforce limitations, two people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which reports to India’s central bank, is considering increasing the market share that UPI … [Read more...]

Palmer Luckey, the Hawaiian-shirt wearing founder who sold Oculus VR for $2 billion before co-founding the military tech company Anduril, is back in the headset business — in a sense. Anduril has teamed up with Microsoft to embed its software into the Integrated Visual Augmentation System headset developed by Microsoft for the U.S. military in 2021.  According to Wired, the software … [Read more...]

Motional, the autonomous vehicle startup backed by Hyundai, is shaking up its leadership ranks. Karl Iagnemma, an early pioneer in the autonomous vehicle industry whose startup Nutonomy lies at the foundation of Motional, is stepping down as president and CEO. Iagnemma will move over to a senior strategy advisor role, while CTO Laura Major will become interim CEO, according to a company … [Read more...]

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark plans to donate $100 million to further strengthen U.S. cybersecurity, addressing what he sees as a growing threat from foreign governments, he tells the WSJ. Half the funds will focus on protecting power grids and other infrastructure from cyberattacks; half will be earmarked to educate people about so-called cybersecurity hygiene.  Newmark, 71, has donated … [Read more...]

Social networking startup Bluesky, which is building a decentralized alternative to X (formerly Twitter), offered an update on Wednesday about how it’s approaching various trust and safety concerns on its platform. The company is in various stages of developing and piloting a range of initiatives focused on dealing with bad actors, harassment, spam, fake accounts, video safety, and more. To … [Read more...]

Fal.ai, a dev-focused platform for AI-generated audio, video, and images, today revealed that it’s raised $23 million in funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Black Forest Labs co-founder Robin Rombach, and Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas. It’s a two-round deal. $14 million of Fal’s total came from a Series A tranche led by Kindred Ventures. The remaining $9 million is from … [Read more...]

A House committee overwhelmingly voted to approve a bill that would require new cars to be built with AM radio at no additional cost to the owner. The AM for Every Vehicle Act will now head to the House floor for final approval. If successful, it’ll go to the president’s desk to be signed into law, pending a veto.  Advocates for the bill have argued the decline of AM radio, a consequence of … [Read more...]

TechCrunch spent some time with the $1,119 Vive XR Elite portable headset that had Meta’s Quest Pro firmly in its sights. The new Vive Focus Vision, which was announced on Wednesday, is a fair bit larger and $1,000 less expensive than that system. The new headset looks to swim in similar waters as Apple’s Vision Pro, Microsoft’s Hololens, and the Magic Leap 2. It’s a mixed reality headset, … [Read more...]

Bankrupt EV startup Fisker is reversing course just a few days after telling owners that they would have to pay labor costs for recall repairs. The company edited the FAQ page on its website to say “Fisker will provide the necessary parts (including the labor) at no cost to you.” Fisker originally broke the bad news to thousands of Ocean SUV owners on Sunday night when it published the FAQ. The … [Read more...]

With the launch of iOS 18, Apple is taking iPhone customization to a new level. Before, you could easily add widgets to your Home Screen or rearrange its pages, apply your own wallpaper, and, more recently, customize your Lock Screen. Meanwhile, power users downloaded apps that allowed them to customize their icons by way of iOS Shortcuts or even created their own icons using icon designer tools … [Read more...]

LinkedIn may have trained AI models on user data without updating its terms. LinkedIn users in the US — but not the EU, EEA, or Switzerland, likely due to those regions’ data privacy rules — have an opt-out toggle in their settings screen disclosing that LinkedIn scrapes personal data to train “content creation AI models.” The toggle isn’t new. But, as first reported by 404 Media, LinkedIn … [Read more...]

Hiya, folks, welcome to TechCrunch’s regular AI newsletter. If you want this in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. It’s been just a few days since OpenAI revealed its latest flagship generative model, o1, to the world. Marketed as a “reasoning” model, o1 essentially takes longer to “think” about questions before answering them, breaking down problems and checking its own … [Read more...]

Last week, the FBI took control of a botnet made up of hundreds of thousands of internet-connected devices, such as cameras, video recorders, storage devices, and routers, which was run by a Chinese government hacking group, FBI director Christopher Wray and U.S. government agencies revealed Wednesday. The hacking group, dubbed Flax Typhoon, was “targeting critical infrastructure across the U.S. … [Read more...]

Luminate’s wearable device for hair retention during chemotherapy treatment is getting the testing it needs for commercial release, but the startup is already looking ahead to its next goal: powering at-home cancer care. A new $15 million funding round should help it make a start on it. The startup is one of the most unusual, but promising, ones we covered in 2021. The pitch sounds a bit sci-fi: … [Read more...]

It’s time to upgrade your iPhone to iOS 18. We know – updating your phone is annoying, and sometimes those software downloads can take a weirdly long time. But if you like customization and fun perks like iMessage text effects, it’s worth the upgrade. And if you’re often texting friends and family who use Androids, you’re not going to want to wait to upgrade. At last, text conversations with … [Read more...]

At its Made on YouTube event on Wednesday, the company announced a new dedicated space for creators to interact with their fans and viewers. The space, called “Communities,” is kind of like a Discord server built into a creator’s channel. With Communities, YouTube is hoping creators won’t need to use other platforms like Discord or Reddit in order to interact with viewers.  Communities are a … [Read more...]

Amazon’s Buy with Prime program, which lets shoppers with a Prime membership purchase items from third-party stores and check out using their Amazon account, is getting a new payment option: PayPal. Today, Amazon announced that Prime customers can use PayPal to check out on websites that’ve integrated the Buy with Prime API. The company also said that, starting next year, Prime members will be … [Read more...]

Edera, a startup looking to simplify and improve how Kubernetes containers and AI workloads are secured by offering a new hypervisor, today announced that it has raised a $5 million seed funding round led by 645 Ventures and Eniac Ventures. Kubernetes is now 10 years old, but Edera founders Ariadne Conill (distinguished engineer), Emily Long (CEO), and Alex Zenla (CTO) argue that securing … [Read more...]

YouTube creators no longer have to rely solely on the recommendation algorithm, search results, or collabs to help them grow their audience. At the company’s Made on YouTube event on Wednesday, YouTube announced a new feature that will allow a creator’s existing viewers to help “hype” a video with a click of a button, allowing it to climb up a leaderboard of top hyped videos, where it can … [Read more...]

Extend the buzz of TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 beyond the main event by hosting an exclusive Side Event. Expose your brand to 10,000 Disrupt attendees and the surrounding Bay Area tech community during “Disrupt Week” — October 26 through November 1. Whether it’s a cocktail party, happy hour, meetup, workshop, silent disco, or comedy show, create the perfect event that aligns with your brand’s … [Read more...]