In a world that’s rapidly filling up with AI-generated content, a startup called First Voyage wants to help people avoid all the AI slop blasted their way and instead build the habits they want. And it’s doing that by way of an AI companion app: Called Momo Self Care, the app offers a digital pet called Momo that you can take care of, and in return, it’ll remind you to complete…
AI lets anyone create videos, but many AI video creation tools lack support for audio. Mirelo is building AI that adds soundtracks to match the video’s action.
Earlier this year, the Berlin-based startup released Mirelo SFX v1.5, an AI model that interprets videos to add…
Trump’s AI executive order promises ‘one rulebook’ — startups may get legal limbo instead
December 15, 2025
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday evening that directs federal agencies to challenge state AI laws, arguing that startups need relief from a “patchwork” of rules. Legal experts and startups meanwhile say the order could prolong uncertainty…
Google is rolling out a beta experience that lets you hear real-time translations in your headphones, the company announced on Friday. The tech giant is also bringing advanced Gemini capabilities to Google Translate and expanding its language-learning tools in the Translate app.
The new real-time headphone translations experience keeps each speaker’s tone, emphasis, and cadence intact, so it’s…
ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot
December 15, 2025
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…
Interest in Spoor’s bird-monitoring AI software is soaring
December 12, 2025
Spoor launched in 2021 with the goal of using computer vision to help reduce the impact of wind turbines on local bird populations. Now the startup has proven its technology works and is seeing demand from wind farms and beyond.
Oslo, Norway-based Spoor has built software…
Port raises $100M at $800M valuation to take on Spotify’s Backstage
December 12, 2025
Spotify may be synonymous with music streaming, but it’s also got a wildly popular developer-tool side hustle called Backstage.
Backstage is an open source project that helps companies build their own internal developer portals: a catalog of their developer tools along with quick visualizations of the work the tools have done, and other metrics. But like many open source projects, Backstage is…
AI DevOps tool Harness, founded in 2017 by serial entrepreneur Jyoti Bansal, is on track to exceed $250 million in annual recurring revenue in 2025, Bansal tells TechCrunch.
The startup just raised a fresh $240 million Series E funding round that values the company at $5.5…
Google is testing AI-powered article overviews on select publications’ Google News pages
December 11, 2025
Google is testing AI-powered article overviews on participating publications’ Google News pages as part of a new pilot program, the search giant announced on Wednesday.
News publishers participating in the pilot program include Der Spiegel, El País, Folha, Infobae…
ChatGPT is Apple’s most downloaded app of 2025 in the US
December 11, 2025
Apple on Wednesday released its annual list of the most downloaded apps and games for the year. For the U.S. market, OpenAI’s ChatGPT topped the ranks of free iPhone apps (not including games) with the most installs in 2025.
The AI app was followed by Threads, Google, TikTok, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, Google Maps, Gmail, and Google’s Gemini.
ChatGPT made it to No. 4 last year, but the top…
