Bilal Abu-Ghazaleh had just moved to London a few days before our call, splitting his time between there and Dubai.
After nearly a decade in the U.S., including a stint at Scale AI, he’s bringing that experience to his next venture: 1001 AI , a company creating AI infrastructure for critical industries across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
The startup recently raised a $9 million…
The man betting everything on AI and Bill Belichick
October 21, 2025
Lee Roberts meets me at the University Club of San Francisco on a Friday morning, hours before his football team will lose to Cal in heartbreaking fashion – a fumble at the goal line, because little about the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s…
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly…
TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 wouldn’t be what it is without the incredible companies that power the innovation behind the scenes. From headline partners to emerging collaborators, our sponsors help make Disrupt the ultimate destination for founders, investors, and visionaries shaping the future of tech. Their insights, technologies, and support bring each stage, session, and startup moment to…
SK Telecom’s AI unit offers staff voluntary retirement program just weeks after launch
October 20, 2025
South Korean telco giant SK Telecom is making big changes at its new AI division, AI CIC, just weeks after it was launched. Staff employed by the unit are being offered a voluntary retirement program as part of a broader effort to bring together the company’s various…
Following backlash over an increase in “AI slop” taking over users’ feeds, Pinterest on Thursday added new tools that let users limit how much AI-generated content they see on the platform.
Users can now personalize their feeds to restrict generative AI…
General Intuition lands $134M seed to teach agents spatial reasoning using video game clips
October 17, 2025
Medal, a platform for uploading and sharing video game clips, has spun out a new frontier AI research lab that’s using its trove of gaming videos to train and build foundation models and AI agents that can understand how objects and entities move through space and time – a concept known as spatial-temporal reasoning.
Called General Intuition, the startup is betting that Medal’s…
Between infinitely scrolling job boards and the puzzling rise of fake applicants using AI to apply en masse, job-searching has quickly become one of the most bewildering experiences the internet has to offer. Listings are posted and reposted across different platforms as…
Eightfold co-founders raise $35M for Viven, an AI digital twin startup for querying unavailable co-workers
October 16, 2025
While employees spend much of their day communicating and coordinating amongst themselves on projects, this effort is often undermined by the availability of specific individuals. When a colleague with vital information is away – whether on vacation or in a different…
Liberate bags $50M at $300M valuation to bring AI deeper into insurance back offices
October 16, 2025
Liberate, an AI startup automating insurance operations, has raised $50 million in a round led by Battery Ventures as it looks to scale its agentic deployments across carriers and agencies globally.
The all-equity round values the three-year-old startup at $300 million post-money, with participation from new investor Canapi Ventures and returning backers Redpoint Ventures, Eclipse, and Commerce…
