TechCrunch
August 2026
Nvidia’s $3.5B MediaTek bet reveals its plan for tackling Big Tech’s AI chip buildout
AI is transforming every computing platform — from the world’s largest AI factories to the PC and the car,
Basically, every cloud, every model builder is deploying our platform in some shape, form, or fashion,
Nvidia is an AI infrastructure company,
This is really about opening up this ecosystem to the entire MediaTek customer base,
MapQuest’s app surges to No. 1 in Navigation after refusing to rename Lake Ontario
We took the same approach we did with the Gulf of Mexico: be part of the conversation, and give people an app that keeps the names they’re familiar with,
How AI could make it harder for governments to use hacking tools
Green, who has long been a close observer of the debate around the use of hacking tools by governments to fight crime and the need for strong encryption to protect the privacy of innocent people, posited a provocative thought: What if AI makes bugs so scarce that law enforcement and intelligence agencies are unable to lawfully hack criminals anymore?
I think we have at least until after the next presidential election before the intelligence community is materially hampered enough to push for backdoors in a serious way,
There will be some point at which finding bugs will be much harder and that may trigger these pressures to build in backdoors,
I’m concerned that AI is going to make software much too secure,
It’s clear that no state will throw away the possibility of surveillance,
Meet the brands activating at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 this October
Tim Cook’s parting message: Apple is in the hands of a product builder
Sending lots of love to the Apple community on my last day as CEO. My title changes tomorrow, but the love I have for the Apple community never will. Thank you for being a constant source of inspiration. My gratitude is endless, and I’m excited for the next chapter!”
We share a belief that what we build matters and that we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to leave the world better than we found it,
Kalshi bans George Santos for life over State of the Union bets
Kalshi also penalized and suspended several political candidates accused of betting on their own races, including Ben Midgely, who ran and lost in the Republican primary for Maine’s gubernatorial race; Laurie Buckhout, a Republican congressional nominee; and former California gubernatorial candidate Stephen Cloobeck
Hey @Kalshi thanks for the lifetime ban from your gambling platform. Let’s see how much longer you guys are around for,
As a person capable of influencing the outcome of the underlying event, Santos was prohibited from trading in this market,
Microsoft tests fix for latest hours-long Outlook outage
We’ve confirmed that users may experience degraded functionality with various Exchange Online functionalities. We’re reviewing service telemetry and diagnostic data to isolate the source of the issue,
Instagram puts new limits on undisclosed AI profiles
Creators who use the new label, on the other hand, won’t be penalized simply for having an AI-generated person as their profile subject
As generative AI becomes a bigger part of how people create, we’ve heard that people don’t like seeing a profile that seems human, only to find out later that the person featured is AI-generated,
Apple’s top App Store exec, Phil Schiller, follows wave of exits as CEO Tim Cook steps down
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The Pentagon now has its own version of ChatGPT and Grok
Starshield AI’s Grok for Government will provide the warfighter with immediate productivity gains, stronger knowledge continuity and more secure and efficient collaboration,
FTC accuses Amazon of running a ‘secret ad surcharge scheme’ in new lawsuit
The lawsuit centers on Amazon’s Sponsored Products ads, Sponsored Brands ads, and Display ads that run alongside its search results
Musk’s faster path to more gas turbines comes with pollution problem
SpaceX and Tesla are each building 100GW/year of solar production capacity as fast as possible,... but natural gas will still be needed to supplement and bootstrap solar for several years. The limiting factor for nat gas turbine production is casting the blades & vanes. By doing in-house casting at SpaceX, we can accelerate nat gas turbines coming online by up to 18 months, which is a profound game-changer.”
The U.S. is building barriers around drones and robots, but China has scale to get around them
The FCC’s Covered List, established in 2021, initially targeted telecommunications and surveillance equipment from companies including Huawei, ZTE and Hikvision before expanding to foreign-made drones and, most recently, to advanced robotic devices
You cannot sanction your way around a cost curve. You can only out-build it, and America has yet to begin making the decade-long investment that will require,
The alternative to China isn’t a purely domestic U.S. supply chain; it’s a diversified allied one,
The United States leads in frontier AI, software and semiconductor innovation,
The next battleground is over who owns the next-gen energy and payload architecture,
Nvidia’s AI advantage is moving beyond the GPU
We saw upwards of 3x improvement in these operations, where the Vera CPU is allowing for acceleration,
We designed Jalapeño to minimize data movement and communication delays,
Sony Music, Warner sue Anthropic, alleging a “brazen campaign” of intellectual property theft
The lawsuit, which was filed late Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, was first reported by Music Business Worldwide
Why Nvidia is ready to pay $13B for Hugging Face
Earlier this week, Meta agreed to pay $18 billion and make sweeping changes to how minors access its social networks to settle a lawsuit brought by 29 states
Meta executive leaves for OpenAI as the social media giant faces growing scrutiny in India
The executive is leaving Meta after more than a decade at the company, which has been the subject of growing scrutiny over issues such as online safety and content moderation
Anthropic gets its first court win over the Pentagon’s supply-chain risk label
Earlier this year, Hegseth and President Donald Trump labeled Anthropic a supply-chain risk and ordered all federal agencies, even those outside of defense, to stop working with the Claude maker
The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,
We welcome the court's ruling that this supply chain risk designation was unlawful,
Though the Department of War is undisputedly free to select the AI vendor of its choice, the evidence demonstrates that the broad measures imposed on Anthropic were illegal and baseless,
a16z creates a $1.1B ‘Machine Age’ fund to ‘accelerate the physical buildout of AI’
The firm’s aim with the new fund is to “open the throttle and accelerate the physical buildout of AI.”
We need faster, more efficient systems. We need cheaper and higher-bandwidth memory across the memory hierarchy. We need faster and more scalable interconnects between nodes and systems. We need power efficient edge devices for AI to explore and interact with the world. And of course we need all the cooling, materials, electrical, and real estate build out to support them,
Apple TV is raising its subscription prices again
More Americans oppose police license plate cameras than support them: survey
Flock is one of the more visible surveillance companies, operating more than 120,000 license plate readers across the U.S. that can track the whereabouts of vehicles
Open-weight AI companies are the Valley’s hottest acquisition targets
And two weeks ago, Stripe acquired OpenRouter, the top provider of open-weight models to businesses, for more than $7 billion
There are not many companies where that is the case yet…[but] if the prices continue to go up from the frontier labs, more and more companies will be forced to at least consider it,
Tokens are the central currency for companies building with AI, and it’s clear that the real-world economic potential will depend on making good use of scarce compute resources,
Every single app company should consider hiring an in-house researcher,
OpenAI to start showing ads on ChatGPT’s free and Go tiers in India
With ChatGPT Ads, businesses of every size can introduce themselves at relevant, high-context moments when decisions are beginning to take shape,
Plaud’s new earphones come with an eSIM-enabled case for talking to AI agents
One of these companies is Plaud, which has over 2.5 million people using its hardware or software
[For... For AI] we need to have a wearable and an always-ready interface, one that people love to wear, is socially acceptable and private by design,