April 23, 2025

The Download: introducing the Creativity issue

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Introducing: the Creativity issue The university computer lab may seem like an unlikely center for creativity. We tend to think of creativity as happening more in the artist’s studio or writers’ workshop. But…

April 2025

OpenAI’s Stargate project sets its sights on international expansion

April 17, 2025
Stargate, a $500 billion project headed up by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank to build AI data centers and other AI infrastructure in the U.S., is considering investments in the U.K. and elsewhere overseas, according to a Financial Times report.  While Stargate was initially launched as a way to boost U.S. AI infrastructure, the project is […]

The latest viral ChatGPT trend is doing ‘reverse location search’ from photos

April 17, 2025
There’s a somewhat concerning new trend going viral: people are using ChatGPT to figure out the location shown in pictures. This week, OpenAI released its newest AI models, o3 and o4-mini, both of which can uniquely “reason” through uploaded images. In practice, the models can crop, rotate and zoom in on photos — even blurry […]

Judge rules Google illegally monopolized ad tech, opening door to potential breakup 

April 17, 2025
A federal judge has found that Google has violated antitrust laws by “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power” in the advertising technology market, rounding out a two-year saga after the U.S. and eight states filed its initial complaints against the Alphabet-owned company. The court will set a briefing schedule and hearing date to determine appropriate […]

Make a brand impact by hosting a Side Event during TechCrunch All Stage Week in Boston

April 17, 2025
Want to tap into the energy of 1,000+ startup founders, investors, and tech leaders descending on Boston for TechCrunch All Stage on July 15? Host your own Side Event during “TC All Stage Week,” happening July 13–19! Whether it’s a networking mixer, workshop, morning run, fireside chat, or cocktail hour — you call the shots. […]

Mark Zuckerberg says TikTok slowed Meta’s growth

April 17, 2025
In Meta’s antitrust trial on Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified that TikTok’s success was a risk to Meta’s business, saying the short-form video app was a “top priority” and a “highly urgent” competitive threat when it arrived in 2018, according to Bloomberg and other outlets. The reports come from a packed first week of […]

Shein and Temu to raise prices for US shoppers in response to tariffs

April 17, 2025
Temu and Shein plan to raise prices for U.S. customers starting next week on April 25th, due to President Donald Trump’s tariffs on goods shipped from China, the Associated Press reports. The 145% tariff on products made in China, along with Trump’s decision to end a customs exemption that had allowed goods under $800 to […]

Wasp’s platform is the glue that holds web dev apps together

April 17, 2025
When Matija Šošić started working in web development, he was surprised by how hard it was to build a full-stack production-ready web application. One of the biggest hurdles Šošić faced was navigating the fragmented dev tooling landscape. Coding a web application required utilizing different tools for developing the front-end versus the back-end, and so on. […]