In Silicon Valley, where the same high-wattage names tend to dominate the headlines, Ali Partovi has long wielded outsized influence despite limited name recognition. The Iranian-born Harvard graduate built an impressive resume early on — joining the founding team of LinkExchange (acquired by Microsoft in 1998 for $265 million), co-founding iLike (sold to MySpace for […]

It’s been a busy year for TechCrunch events — and it’s about to get even bigger. StrictlyVC, our boutique, highly exclusive event series for VCs and startups, is crossing the Atlantic this May with stops in London and Athens! We’re bringing StrictlyVC’s insider conversations to Europe. On May 8, we’ll dive into Athens’ booming tech […]

When Deepankar Rustagi last raised money for OmniRetail in 2022, excitement was high for African startups addressing the supply chain and operational challenges in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector. At one point, these startups received more capital than all sectors, except fintech. Recently, though, the industry’s enthusiasm and venture capital’s interest have faded, as […]

Amazon is raising eyebrows with the timing of its big book sale for 2025, which runs from April 23 to 28 — which means it’s competing directly with Independent Bookstore Day. As writer Maris Kreisman explained in Lit Hub, Independent Bookstore Day is an annual event organized by the American Booksellers Association (ABA), with events, […]

Welcome back to Week in Review! We’ve got tons of news for you this week: Slate EVs spotted in the wild; Airbnb pricing updates; a hack at Blue Shield; and much more. Let’s go! Get a clue: Cluely is an AI-based tool that helps people cheat on exams, sales calls, and even job interviews. Though […]

Google announced this week that beginning on October 25, it will no longer support or release software updates for the first and second generation Nest Learning Thermostats. And it will completely stop launching new Nest products in Europe. That means owners of the Nest thermostats released in 2011 and 2012 (as well as the version […]

Around 300 London-based members of Google’s AI-focused DeepMind team are seeking to unionize with the Communication Workers Union, according to a Financial Times report that cites three people involved with the unionization effort. These DeepMind employees are reportedly unhappy about Google’s decision to remove a pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance from […]

Julie Wainwright has taken two companies public, an incredible feat by any standard. Yet in her new memoir, Time to Get Real, she offers readers something even more valuable than a kind of victory lap: a look at the messy realities of leadership. Wainwright shares tough truths that many high-achieving CEOs can relate to but […]

In the latest development of an increasingly public dispute between HR and payroll services rivals, Deel has filed a countersuit against Rippling. To recap: Rippling publicly announced on March 17 that it was suing Deel over alleged corporate espionage, with accusations ranging from violation of the RICO racketeering act (typically used to prosecute organized crime) […]

In the battle between two “agentic” coding tools — Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex CLI — the latter appears to be fostering more developer goodwill than the former. That’s at least partly because Anthropic has issued takedown notices to a developer trying to reverse-engineer Claude Code, which is under a more restrictive usage license […]