Zach Yadegari, the teen co-founder of calorie tracking app Cal AI, has launched Persona, a new AI agent startup, and already raised $10 million. Vine Ventures led the round, with Z Fellows founder Cory Levy and Collective Global participating.
In March, MyFitnessPal acquired Cal AI for an undisclosed sum after it zoomed ahead of the older calorie app in the app store rankings. The deal was big…
Meta rolls out new AI tools to detect ads that secretly lead to child sexual abuse material
October 8, 2026
Meta announced Wednesday that it took action against 33.2 million pieces of child sexual exploitation content on Facebook and Instagram in the first half of 2026. At the same time, the company is rolling out new AI tools to find ads and accounts that may be used to secretly…
Healthleap raises $38M for its AI that flags hospital patients who may need a closer look
October 8, 2026
Healthleap, a startup building an AI platform that reads patient records to identify patients at risk of undiagnosed illnesses, has raised $38 million in seed and Series A funding, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
The financing includes an $8 million seed round co-led by…
When Tony Fadell takes the stage at the inaugural MIT Future Fest, he projects a slide with three images of once-hyped AI devices that have already been discontinued: the Rabbit R1, the Humane Ai pin, and the Limitless pendant.
“These were kind of the ‘Gen 1’ AI products, and because of my background, these companies called me and asked me to help them,” Fadell said.
LibreOffice says ‘no AI’ is now a software feature
October 7, 2026
If you’re looking for a document editor that doesn’t use artificial intelligence, LibreOffice may be just the software for you.
The Document Foundation, the nonprofit software maker behind the open source document editor LibreOffice, said in a blog post this week…
Smart feeders have become one of the most crowded categories in pet tech, with companies racing to add AI cameras and health tracking to devices that used to just dispense food on a schedule. I enjoyed testing Petlibro’s wet food dispenser a couple of years ago, so…
With back-to-school season approaching (or already here in some places), keeping track of everyone’s schedules can get pretty chaotic. Between work, school, appointments, sports, chores, and everything else going on, a regular paper calendar just doesn’t cut it. That’s where Linkdaze’s smart digital calendar comes in – a touchscreen tablet built specifically to…
Hot Girl Hotline is like ‘Dear Abby’ for the AI era
October 6, 2026
Women throughout history have always sought out relationship advice, whether from newspaper columnists like “Dear Abby,” letters to Cosmo, or just chatting with girlfriends. In the social media era, you can instead post anonymously on Reddit relationship forums…
What happens when AI moves from helping job candidates to evaluating them? HackerRank, a platform used by companies to assess and hire developers, is offering a glimpse at what that future of job interviews could look like with Chakra, an AI agent that conducts interviews…
The big trend in robots is handing the keys over to a generative AI model, but that brings with it a problem: that architecture isn’t predictable the way traditional algorithms are. How can you be sure your brand new humanoid will be safe?
Dr. Ding Zhao, who directs the Safe AI lab at Carnegie Mellon University, has been working on this problem for almost his entire career. Now, along with…
