A Man Lived Inside a Billboard Above Sunset Boulevard for 24 Hours. Netflix Paid Him to Do It.
The stunt is a rare marketing play for a company that usually lets its algorithm do the work. But Netflix could use the buzz.
Pitching Luxury Tech? Investors Don’t Get It. Here’s How to Change That.
Most VCs don’t speak the language of premium consumer experiences. Here’s how to translate.
Others
Finding It Harder and Harder to Get a Restaurant Reservation? Some Diners Are Paying for Priority Access.
A boom in dealmaking among reservation apps, credit card companies and membership clubs is reshaping who gets a table and who doesn’t.
Discovered Materials is playing AI whack-a-mole to hunt cooler chips
Discovered Materials raised $9 million to fund the hunt for more novel materials to build more efficient chips.
Google Play adds Venmo as a payment option
The ability to add Venmo to Google Play comes as people are spending more money on apps and games.
Embattled hedge fund Situational Awareness invests $400M in chip startup Source Foundry
The AI-focused hedge fund is still making some big bets.
Anthropic is turning Claude Code’s auto mode on by default
Programming with Claude Code will soon require even less human oversight.
TechCrunch Mobility: Zoox prepares for launch and Uber’s AV empire
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, the role AI is playing in it.
Historian Jill Lepore says Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
On the latest episode of Equity, we spoke to Jill Lepore about “government by machines” and why Elon Musk is a bad science fiction reader.
The AI safety test is becoming a safety risk
AI agents are escaping cybersecurity testing environments and reaching real-world systems, raising questions about whether safety infrastructure, industry standards and regulation can keep pace with increasingly powerful models.
This ‘adversarial’ pattern can prevent surveillance cameras from detecting you
A security researcher has designed an algorithm that can create computer-generated patterns capable of hiding people, faces, and vehicles from detection by surveillance cameras.