Five architects of the AI economy explain where the wheels are coming off

May 7, 2026

Earlier this week, five people who touch every layer of the AI supply chain sat down at the Milken Global Conference in Beverly Hills, where they talked with TechCrunch about everything from chip shortages to orbital data centers to the possibility that the whole architecture that undergirds the tech is wrong.

The Search Engine Is Becoming a Decision Engine. Here’s How to Survive the AI ‘Zero-Click’ Era.

May 7, 2026

How businesses can adapt to the zero-click economy and stay visible in an AI-driven search landscape.

How to Escape the Shiny Object Trap Before It Derails Your Business

May 7, 2026

Stop chasing new ideas, and start focusing on what already works.

Why Your Brain Shuts Down at the Worst Possible Moment — and the 20-Second Protocol That Overrides It

May 7, 2026

Here’s what’s actually happening when you can’t pull the trigger — and why logic alone will never fix it.

How to Build Loyalty in a Job-Hopping Economy

May 7, 2026

Most employees don’t leave bad companies, they leave unclear one — here’s how to build real growth paths that drive retention, not just promises made in an interview.

Why We Invest in Therapy Every 7 to 10 Days as a Business

May 7, 2026

What scared me most about building Mid-Day Squares with family wasn’t the risk or uncertainty, but the possibility of damaging the relationships behind the business.

A 20-minute pitch wins Indian startup Pronto backing from Lachy Groom

May 6, 2026

The investment comes as Pronto scales to 26,000 daily bookings and the market heads toward a potential $18 billion size.

Barry Diller trusts Sam Altman. But ‘trust is irrelevant’ as AGI nears, he says.

May 6, 2026

Barry Diller defended OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, while warning that AGI remains an unpredictable force needing guardrails.

Snap says its $400M deal with Perplexity ‘amicably ended’

May 6, 2026

The deal, announced last November, would have seen Perplexity’s AI search engine integrated directly into Snapchat.

Is xAI a neocloud now?

May 6, 2026

xAI’s real business may be more about building data centers than training AI models.

The Download: seafloor science and military chatbots