April 2025

Los Angeles-based Rain raised a $75M Series B in another good sign for fintech

April 8, 2025
Rain, a startup offering employer-integrated earned wage access (EWA) app coupled with financial-wellness features like overdraft alerts and spending trends, has raised $75 million in an all-equity Series B round. The round was led by Prosus at a post-money valuation of $340 million. Rain plans to use the new funds to help it add credit […]

Founders, TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200 is calling! Apply to enter!

April 8, 2025
Founders, the battlefield is calling! Startup Battlefield 200 applications are now live — and the race has begun. If you’ve got a groundbreaking idea and the guts to pitch it to the world, TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 is your arena. You’ll face elite VC judges. You’ll compete against 199 of the world’s most promising startups. And […]

Volunteer your time for a free ticket to TechCrunch Sessions: AI

April 8, 2025
Join us for an unforgettable opportunity at TechCrunch Sessions: AI, happening at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall on June 5! We’re on the lookout for enthusiastic volunteers to be part of this exciting event. If you’ve ever wondered what goes into the making of tech gatherings, now’s your chance to find out firsthand. Apply here by […]

Mira Murati’s AI startup gains prominent ex-OpenAI advisors

April 8, 2025
Ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s new AI venture, Thinking Machines Lab, has gained two new prominent advisors: Bob McGrew, previously OpenAI’s chief research officer, and Alec Radford, a former OpenAI researcher behind many of the company’s more transformative innovations. Thinking Machines Lab’s website was quietly updated with McGrew and Radford’s names sometime in March. A spokesperson […]

Snapchat rolls out Sponsored AI Lenses for brands

April 8, 2025
Snapchat is introducing Sponsored AI Lenses, a new ad format that lets brands engage with consumers in an immersive way. While Snapchat has offered brands the opportunity to pay for sponsored lenses on the platform for years, now they can leverage AI-generated experiences powered by Snap’s proprietary generative AI technology. With these interactive lenses, brands […]

Amazon unveils a new AI voice model, Nova Sonic

April 8, 2025
On Tuesday, Amazon debuted a new generative AI model, Nova Sonic, capable of natively processing voice and generating natural-sounding speech. Amazon claims that Sonic’s performance is competitive with frontier voice models from OpenAI and Google on benchmarks measuring speed, speech recognition, and conversational quality. Nova Sonic is Amazon’s answer to newer AI voice models such […]