Firestorm Labs raises $82M to take drone factories into the field
A defense startup just raised $82 million to put drone factories inside shipping containers and bring manufacturing to the front lines.
Europe is pushing back on Washington’s chip war
As ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet told TechCrunch in May, what China can currently buy are older-generation deep ultraviolet tools — gear first shipped about a decade ago — the same machines the MATCH Act would now put off limits.
Others
BMW i Ventures has a new $300M fund and AI is riding shotgun
BMW i Ventures is interested in startups working on agentic AI and physical AI, as well as industrial software, advanced materials, and manufacturing and supply chain technologies.
Meet Shapes, the app bringing humans and AI into the same group chats
Think Discord chats, but with AI characters in addition to humans.
Google Translate now lets you practice pronunciation
The feature is rolling out in the U.S. and India with support for English, Spanish, and Hindi.
Jack Dorsey-backed Vine reboot Divine launches to the public
Divine, a Vine reboot backed by Jack Dorsey’s nonprofit, revives six-second looping videos.
Coby Adcock’s Scout AI raises $100 million to train its models for war. We visited its bootcamp.
We visited Scout AI’s training ground where it’s working on AI agents that give individual soldiers control of fleets of autonomous vehicles.
How one venture firm is investing in an increasingly fragmented world
Geopolitical turmoil has made venture investing challenging, leading Kompas VC to carve out a niche in startups focused on the physical world.
At his OpenAI trial, Musk relitigates an old friendship
It’s a story Musk has told before — in interviews and to author Walter Isaacson for his bestselling biography of Musk — but Tuesday was the first time he said it under oath.
Stop Treating Water as a Utility Bill. It’s Your Hidden Energy Trade
Watch out for the hidden energy costs of water inefficiency and the case for integrated system design.
34% of Hourly Workers Rely on More Than 1 Job to Get By. Here’s How Employers Should Respond.
Millions of Americans are juggling multiple jobs. Here’s what they really need from their employers.