114 stories
At an event near Waco, Texas, Elon Musk presented the redesigned Tesla Roadster with cold-gas thrusters from SpaceX. The car drove along an inverted ramp, performed a trick in the air, and jumped over other Tesla vehicles. Claimed figures include 0–60 mph in under one second, a range of over 300 miles, and a top speed above 230 mph. Production is scheduled for 2028; deposits range from $50,000 to $250,000.
Nvidia announced investments in the French companies Doctolib, Genesis AI, Entalpic and Pigment, bringing its investments in Europe to nearly $10 billion. Together with Foxconn and Bull, the company is building 'AI factory' infrastructure in Angers, promoting the open Nemotron models and the sovereign Twake.ai platform for government agencies.
According to Aftonbladet, an AI agent given access to the production company's server deleted the finished season of The Challenge Sverige five weeks before the premiere. TV4 confirmed a 'technical failure' and the premiere's postponement from 22 November to 2027, but head of programming Mia Lindqvist denied the AI version. The raw footage has been preserved, and the season will have to be edited again.
OpenAI discovered a hidden recording device in an executive conference room at its San Francisco office and reported it to the FBI. Arrested was 35-year-old Saudi Arabian citizen Abdulrahman Alfozan, who had worked at the company as an engineer since July 2025. He is charged with intercepting oral conversations; the company said there are no signs of unauthorized access to model weights, code, or customer data.
19-year-old Cal AI calorie-counting app founder Zach Yadegari spoke at TechCrunch Disrupt about how the company earned more than $30 million in two years through mass paid influencer posts. In March, Cal AI was acquired by MyFitnessPal for an undisclosed amount. In October, Yadegari launched the startup Persona, which has already raised $10 million.
At the TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 conference in San Francisco, 20 startups competed for the Startup Battlefield Cup and $100,000. The winner was Intero Biosystems from Denver, a developer of lab-grown intestinal 'organoids' for drug testing. Second place went to the Australian Apate, which uses AI agents against scammers.
The US Department of Justice reported arrests and searches at more than 40 'laptop farms' in Texas, with over 180 computers seized. According to the agency, North Korean IT workers, using stolen identities of US citizens, infiltrated at least 70 companies and earned about $3 million. The FBI estimates the number of DPRK operatives working at Western companies in the 'thousands'.
Amazon Senior Vice President Panos Panay, speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, said that failures are inevitable when building successful products. He cited the failed launch of Surface RT at Microsoft, which led to a write-off of nearly $1 billion, and urged founders to learn lessons, not make excuses, and not abandon their vision.
After the first day of TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, organizers announced a 50% discount on all ticket types for the remaining two days — October 14 and 15 at Moscone West in San Francisco. Among the announced speakers are Mark Wahlberg, Replit CEO Amjad Masad, Benchmark partners, Panos Panay of Amazon, and representatives of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Hugging Face. Also planned are more than 320 exhibitors and the Startup Battlefield 200 pitch competition.
Deezer announced it is developing a toggle that will allow users to completely hide AI-generated music from search. The company links the decision to the growing share of AI tracks: from 10% of daily uploads a year ago to more than 50% in July. According to a survey, about 45% of listeners wanted to filter such content.
Meta has introduced the open-weight model Muse Spark Open with 816 billion parameters and a 1 million token context. The company calls it the most capable open model in the US. The model was built to run on Apple computers but requires at least 1 TB of RAM.
At TechCrunch Disrupt, Panos Panay, Amazon SVP of Devices, Alexa and Leo, presented a vision of the future where ambient AI devices work in the background and the need for apps declines. Alongside this, Amazon launched the AI wearable Bee, which passively records and processes audio with a focus on privacy.
Startup NTangible has developed a psychological assessment called Clutch Factor, which, according to its founders, predicts athletes' ability to perform under pressure. The test is based on the Thematic Apperception Test, and the results are used in collegiate sports recruiting. A TechCrunch journalist demonstrated that the test can be gamed by answering dishonestly.
Bengaluru-based startup Scimplify raised $25 million in a round led by Hitachi Ventures at a $250 million valuation. The company uses its AI platform Scinode to speed up the development and production of specialty chemicals and critical materials, helping clients reduce dependence on Chinese suppliers. Annual revenue reached ~$200 million, and the company plans expansion into the US and Japan.
Bluesky executives — CEO Tony Schneider and COO Rose Wang — told TechCrunch Disrupt that the company will introduce payments in the coming months. This is the first step of an ad-free monetization strategy aimed at simplifying commerce, fundraising, and user support that already exist across the network.
Anthropic has given six researchers from the nonprofit METR employee-level access — laptops, office space, and internal tools — for an independent evaluation of the company's models and safety practices. METR will be able to publish its findings without company veto, with limited exceptions for redaction.
At TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, Bluesky announced the expansion of its experimental platform Attie: users without programming skills will now be able to create websites, games, quizzes, and polls. Projects run on the ATProto protocol and gain access to Bluesky's audience (47 million registered users). CEO Tony Schneider called it 'vibe coding for communities.'
Discounts on Founder and Investor passes for TechCrunch Founder Summit are available until October 16. The event takes place on November 4 at Boston's SoWa Power Station and will bring together about 1,000 founders and investors.
