Executive search firm Christian & Timbers estimates that there are only about 2,000 engineers in the U.S. with the special cocktail of sector know-how, gravitas, and hands-on applied AI experience needed to consistently help enterprises see a return on their AI expenditures.
“Not 2,000 available,” reads the study, shared exclusively with TechCrunch, “2,000 total.”
As enterprises move from…
Earlier this month, AI dataset platform Hugging Face shocked the world when it revealed that it had fallen victim to a fully autonomous AI-powered cyberattack. Days later, the story took another dramatic twist when OpenAI admitted that the hacker behind the breach was one of…
We already know that making AI work will mean bringing a lot of new data centers and power infrastructure online. But all those infrastructure projects may also need a bit of help from AI.
On Thursday, a new AI compliance company called Dili that squarely targets the new…
Hint, a new AI startup co-founded by Martha Stewart, offers an AI assistant for homeowners
July 30, 2026
Martha Stewart is entering the AI software era in the most Martha Stewart way possible: She has joined the co-founding team at Hint, an app that leverages AI technology to manage the tasks surrounding home maintenance and management. With the Hint app, which launches today, homeowners can tackle challenges around maintenance schedules/tasks and energy management, learn about their soil and air…
Encore AI, a startup that studies companies’ customer interactions to train and deploy AI voice agents that can work alongside customer support and sales teams, or operate autonomously, has raised $30 million in a Series A round led by Team8.
Founded in 2022 as Insait IO…
New York-based AI detection startup Pangram is on a mission to combat the AI slop infestation spreading across the internet, and it just raised $9 million on a bet that demand for tools that distinguish human-generated content from AI-generated text will only grow.
Sam Altman is ready to decelerate
July 29, 2026
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says that it may be time to “pace” AI development so the world will be ready for it.
“We may have to pace the rate of AI development to give ourselves enough time for society to harden around some of these new capability levels,” he told Patrick O’Shaughnessy, the host of the Invest Like the Best podcast, while also “trying to figure out how we do that in a way…
The market for AI-generated voice models is massive. Creative use cases require AI voice models to be more expressive, while enterprises looking to automate customer support and sales ops need them to be more steerable.
Palo Alto-based Fish Audio wants to cater to all of…
Cursor makes its biggest India push yet ahead of SpaceX acquisition with localized pricing
July 29, 2026
Weeks before its expected acquisition by SpaceX closes, AI coding startup Cursor is making its biggest push into India yet, launching its first country-specific subscription as the company bets on one of the world’s largest developer markets to drive its next stage of…
Screen-time apps aren’t effective for many people because, in the end, they depend on your willpower. They remind you to stop scrolling or let you set timers, but such notifications can be easy to ignore.
Autonomous Key takes a different approach to this issue simply by being a physical device. It’s an NFC key that pairs with a companion app to let you lock away distracting apps. So instead…
