Was Didi’s 2020 autonomous vehicle subsidiary a Chinese equivalent to Uber’s? Since then, China’s tech landscape has changed, with internet firms regulated and foreign investments plummeting due to U.S.-China tensions. Despite Beijing’s data security probe into Didi’s parent company, its AV unit has survived and received new funding. Didi Autonomous …

The generative AI movement relies on large language models (LLMs) to interpret and create human-language texts from simple prompts, such as summarizing a document, writing a poem, or answering a question using data from multiple sources. Bad actors can use “prompt injection” to trick an LLM-powered chatbot into giving unauthorized …

According to Yepic AI, it uses “deepfakes for good” and will “never reenact someone without their consent.” However, the company did what it said it would never do. Yepic AI sent a TechCrunch reporter two “deepfaked” videos of the reporter, who had not consented to their likeness, in an unsolicited …

Earlier this week, European Commissioner Thierry Breton sent a stark open letter to X, formerly Twitter, criticizing its failure to curb disinformation and illegal content on the platform after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. Today, X responded with a lengthy letter that was short on numbers and directly acknowledged …

The “Planet Nine” has been sought many times, but without success. In a new paper, a team proposes that gravity is wrong. Astronomers have been puzzled by a Kuiper Belt clustering for decades. Astrophysicists believe small objects are being “shepherded” by a large unknown planet far beyond Neptune’s orbit. Theoretical …

A few weeks ago, OSIRIS-REx delivered priceless Bennu samples to Earth. NASA’s Johnson Space Center will livestream the opening of the canister today, revealing the precious material. To avoid contamination from Earth’s atmosphere, the asteroid bits will be opened in a glovebox. On Wednesday, October 11, showtime is 11 am …

Yooga, a Brazilian restaurant management system developer, received $2.3 million in seed capital. Gilgamesh, Apex Partners, and Backfuture joined SaaSholic in the round. Vinicius Melo, Victor Sortica, and Cassiano Guerra Fernandes co-founded Yooga in 2017 and bootstrapped it for three years before raising $300,000 in a 2020 friends-and-family round. Melo …

Ten years ago this December, Google acquired Bot & Dolly and about a dozen other robotics companies. San Francisco-based firm known for special effects work on films like “Gravity,” was merged into a new portfolio with ambitious industry-changing plans. Things didn’t go as planned for many reasons we won’t discuss. …

WM Motor, another promising Chinese EV startup, has filed for bankruptcy as bigger players gain market share and Chinese spending on big ticket items declines. WM Motor, Nio, Li Auto, and XPeng were China’s best-funded EV startups, backed by Baidu and Tencent. Investors gave the company over $5.3 billion, including …

In June, Vodafone and Hutchison-owned Three announced their plan to merge in a non-cash deal to create a $19B mega mobile operator. We predicted a significant regulatory hurdle. The country’s main antitrust regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority, announced an investigation into the deal today. Today’s announcement invites competitors, companies, …