February 17, 2026

The Download: the rise of luxury car theft, and fighting antimicrobial resistance

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. The curious case of the disappearing Lamborghinis Across the world, unsuspecting people are unwittingly becoming caught up in a new and growing type of organized criminal enterprise: vehicle transport fraud and theft. Crooks…

Floworks is building an AI assistant to change how workers interact with software

August 31, 2023
About the time that Floworks co-founders Sudipta Biswas and Sarthak Shrivastava were starting at Y Combinator in the Winter 23 cohort, they had a chat with veteran investor Vinod Khosla, who encouraged the pair to think bigger. They said that that conversation had a huge influence on them as they were building Floworks, an AI […]

In a surprise tie-up, Shopify merchants will be able to offer Amazon’s ‘Buy with Prime’ option

August 31, 2023
Amazon and Shopify this morning announced a significant integration that will now allow Shopify merchants to offer “Buy with Prime” on their Shopify stores. The Buy with Prime feature allows online consumers the option to purchase their items using the store payment method in their Amazon wallet when processing payments through Shopify’s checkout. Meanwhile, they’ll […]

A biotech company says it put dopamine-making cells into people’s brains

August 31, 2023
In an important test for stem-cell medicine, a biotech company says implants of lab-made neurons introduced into the brains of 12 people with Parkinson’s disease appear to be safe and may have reduced symptoms for some of them. The added cells should produce the neurotransmitter dopamine, a shortage of which is what produces the devastating…

See the complete Sustainability Stage agenda at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023

August 31, 2023
Keeping apace of the latest trends and innovation in climate tech and sustainability — an area that touches every industry and city — is nearly impossible. It’s why we created the Sustainability Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 and invited the best and brightest minds to share their insights. The dedicated Sustainability Stage will cover the […]

Meta releases a data set to probe computer vision models for biases

August 31, 2023
Continuing on its open source tear, Meta today released a new AI benchmark, FACET, designed to evaluate the “fairness” of AI models that classify and detect things in photos and videos, including people. Made up of 32,000 images containing 50,000 people labeled by human annotators, FACET — a tortured acronym for “FAirness in Computer Vision […]

AI-powered BeFake is a real app, not a BeReal parody…and it has $3M in funding

August 31, 2023
BeFake, a social networking app that combines concepts from popular Gen Z app BeReal along with AI technology has netted itself $3 million in seed funding to create an AI-augmented social network. The app’s name, a clear reference to BeReal’s authentic photo sharing among friends, is meant to suggest it does the opposite. Instead of […]

Threads starts testing search feature in Australia and New Zealand

August 31, 2023
Threads launched one of the most anticipated features, a web version of the platform, last week. Now, Meta is testing another highly demanded feature for the social network — searching for posts. At the moment, users can only search for usernames on Threads. However, the company is working on bringing full-text search. It is already […]