AI & RoboticsNews

42AI comes out of stealth with $62.5M and a world model that can ‘predict human behavior’

November 3, 2026
Here’s a question straight out of sci-fi: What if AI could predict what you were going to do before you decided to, even in a completely new situation? Israeli startup 42AI says it is developing a “behavioral world model” that can do just that, and it has just come out of stealth with $62.5 million in seed funding. The company is initially running its predictive system at a…
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AI & RoboticsNews

Data centers are now a midterm issue, even in Brooklyn

November 3, 2026
On Thursday evening, I slipped on my neon yellow heels and a floral mini dress. It’s New York, so I can wear whatever I want to a midterm election event full of media types, techies, policy advocates, and, well, does anyone else even exist at these things? I walked…
AI & RoboticsNews

AI can make tech CEOs’ lives easier. What about everyone else?

November 2, 2026
Dazzle AI CEO Marissa Mayer recently became the latest tech CEO to face criticism over seemingly out-of-touch comments extolling the usefulness of AI. In Mayer’s case, that involved asking an AI tool for help with a school-assigned description of her daughter. For OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, that’s included suggesting that parents create personalized podcasts for their kids’ drive to…
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AI & RoboticsNews

Last-minute Halloween costumes for tech nerds

November 1, 2026
It happens to the best of us – you’ve completely dropped the ball on figuring out a Halloween costume. Naturally, you’ve decided to solve this problem by turning to… TechCrunch? Yeah, sure, why not. I’ve got some ideas. Here are some last-minute…
AI & RoboticsNews

Cracks are emerging in the AI spending boom

November 1, 2026
Investors are getting nervous about AI infrastructure spending just as the Big Tech companies double down. Over the past two weeks, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft have outlined plans to spend more than $740 billion on capital expenditures this year, which Wall Street…
AI & RoboticsNews

Zest’s new AI agent finds restaurants and books reservations over text

November 1, 2026
Zest, the restaurant discovery app that launched earlier this year, is already thinking about a future where mobile apps are no longer the primary interface. On Thursday, the startup introduced a new feature: a personal AI-powered “restaurant concierge” that lives in your text messages, similar to other popular AI agents like Instinct or Poke. The launch reflects a broader shift in how…
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AI & RoboticsNews

Can AI data centers be mass-produced like cars? This startup aims to find out

October 31, 2026
AI infrastructure company Runware is making news again, just months after unveiling the Sonic Inference Pod, a modular data center built in a factory and shipped to customers ready to install. Now the company has bigger plans. It told TechCrunch it wants to build a factory that assembles these pods on a production line, as if they were cars. The idea isn’t entirely new. Companies like Crusoe…
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