Alex Wilhelm

Building a startup is hard. Building a company that helps startups is similarly difficult. That’s the takeaway from TechCrunch reporting on Techstars and Newchip. In the case of Newchip, the accelerator appeared to promise a bit more than it could deliver. Mix in a culture that appeared to be turbulent at best, and you have […]

The downturn in venture capital funding has impacted startups, VC firms, and accelerators alike. One company in the final category, Techstars, has been shaking up its operations for some time now, leading to a number of departures. TechCrunch got curious about what happened, so we dove deep into exactly how it all went down. We […]

Spotify’s slow movement to put lyrics behind its paid service wall in its music service are about as popular as you would expect. Precise details of the Spotify is quietly moving lyrics behind a paywall. Will users pay to get access to something they can get online for free?

Four months behind bars and a massive fine, that’s what CZ is getting from the government for his crypto exchange’s misdeeds. Regardless of how you view the verdict — too much, too little, just right — his sentencing is a big deal for web3. Potentially in a positive way. There’s effort by some in crypto […]

Startups are not shying away from big projects. That’s my takeaway from news that The Browser Company’s Arc browser is now generally available for Windows users, just as Island raised a massive grip of capital for its enterprise-focused browser tool. It’s very encouraging to see startups going after core pieces of technology and not just […]

Razer is in trouble with the FTC over masks it made and sold during the COVID pandemic. The matter is going to cost it around $1.1 million, and some bad press. Yeah, masks. Not what comes to mind when you think of the word “Razer,” right? You probably associate the brand with gaming keyboards and […]

OpenAI has landed a new content deal with the FT. But instead of being a merely simple deal in which OpenAI gets words, and FT gets money, the two are teaming up a bit more deeply. Look to see FT.com links in ChaptGPT in the future. But the FT-OpenAI tie-up tells us a bit more […]

We’re off to an AI-heavy start to the week. OpenAI has a new deal with the Financial Times that caught our eye. Sure, it’s another content licensing deal, but there appears to be a bit more in the tie-up than just content flowing one way and money the other. We also dug into the xAI […]

Rubrik’s strong IPO pricing and warm reception by the public markets after its listing add more weight to the perspective that the public markets are not as closed to tech startups as some thought. If Rubrik’s result isn’t enough to break the logjam, well, maybe there’s something else going on. But there was a lot more that […]

Perplexity AI‘s latest, large fundraising event could be quickly superseded by another, even larger chunk of capital, TechCrunch reports. Yes, the $62.7 million that the startup raised at just over a $1 billion valuation could be quickly stomped on by a raise of as much as $250 million at a valuation that is up to […]

Tesla is not having a good start to the week. In its defense, it didn’t have a very good end to last week, either.

Equity discusses the latest market news, upcoming earnings, IPOs, and what impact — if any — the recent bitcoin halving had on its value.

It’s been more than a minute since Tesla went public, but the EV company was inescapable on TechCrunch this week. From layoffs to pricing changes and more, it was a week dyed deeply in Tesla colors so we had to chat through the latest. But that was just one element of what we got into […]

New AI models from Meta are making waves in technology circles. The two new models, part of the Facebook parent company’s Llama line of artificial intelligence tools, are both open source, helping them stand apart from competing offerings from OpenAI and other well-known names. Meta’s new Llama models have differently sized underlying datasets, with the […]

NASA’s decision to scrap its $11 billion, 15-year mission to Mars to bring back samples could create a startup feeding frenzy, TechCrunch reports. Describing its plans as too slow, and too expensive, NASA is going back to the drawing board, with an eye on getting the space industry to help. Sure, you might worry that […]

This week Boston Dynamics retired its well-known Atlas robot that was powered by hydraulics. Then today it unveiled its new Atlas robot, which is powered by electricity. The change might not seem like much, but TechCrunch’s Brian Heater told the TechCrunch Minute that the now-deprecated hydraulics system was out of date. It’s not hard to […]

What is worth $11 billion and wants to go to Mars to collect rocks? NASA’s mission to Mars to collect rocks that was expected to cost $11 billion and take ages. So, the U.S. space agency is throwing the doors open to get more input, and that means that startups are looking at an opportunity that […]

When it comes to news items that we love at TechCrunch, IPOs rank pretty darn high. Another great newsy bit that comes along less frequently than we’d like is a startup buying another startup. These deals are often very interesting as they either bring a gob of talent or technology to an already growing company, […]

The Internet’s mega-platforms are slowly merging into a great blob of sameness, and even the hottest companies in the world are not immune.

Today on Equity we dig into Multiverse’s acquisition of Searchlight, Guesty’s massive Series F, Monad Labs and Cyera’s mega-round.