Archive
Discover and discuss technology tools
Explore the Tiscuss archive by category or keyword, then jump into conversations around what matters most.
Veterinarian Launches AI Lawn Diagnosis Tool
Veterinarian Pioneers AI Plant Health Diagnosis Tool A groundbreaking advancement in plant care has been developed by a forward thinking veterinarian who has le…
AI Startups Encouraging Off-Screen Experiences
While the AI fundraising machine keeps breaking its own records, some founders are building in the other direction.  Mirror founder Brynn Putnam just raised money for Board, a startup focused on bringing people together through in-person games and social experiences. Cyberdeck creators are going viral crafting whimsical DIY computers that literally encourage users to touch grass. Unlike the AI-free browser crowd, this doesn’t just feel like backlash, […]
Founders Share VC Horror Stories on X
A massive viral conversation sharing VC horror stories has taken place this week on X. Some are weird. Some are infuriating.
Reid Hoffman Steps Down from Microsoft Board for AI Startup Manus
After a very profitable decade on Microsoft's board, Reid Hoffman is stepping down to focus on his AI drug discovery startup Manus.
AI and Defense Tech Trends at StrictlyVC LA on June 18
On Thursday, June 18, at The Aerospace Corporation Campus, investors, founders, and tech leaders will gather for an evening of conversation exploring some of the most consequential shifts taking place across venture capital, defense technology, artificial intelligence, and advanced industry. Secure your spot today.
Founders Fund Hosts Game Show with Tech Elites
The debut episode, moderated by Founders Fund chief marketing officer Mike Solana, included a star-studded cast of current tech luminaries.
Two Ex-Goldman, Meta Founders Build Voice AI for Africa, Middle East
The startup's own stack for Africa and Middle East is now handling more than 17,000 calls per day.
Ex-Meta CTO Launches $250M Climate Fund with Gigascale Capital
Mike Schroepfer's Gigascale Capital has raised a large fund to back founders building climate-friendly solutions for the world's energy and material shortages.
Where Are Startup Battlefield Alumni Now? TechCrunch Check-In
We wanted to show you what happens after the confetti falls. We checked in with some of our recent alumni, many of whom have sat down with us on Build Mode: The Founder Survival Guide, TechCrunch's podcast for founders at every stage.
Mach Industries Valuation Soars to $1.8B with $300M Raise
In a wild ride for 22-year-old founder and CEO Ethan Thornton, Mach Industries has raised another $300 million. It already has five autonomous vehicles in development and completed a major acquisition.
How to Make the Startup Battlefield Top 20
Every founder who applies to Startup Battlefield wants the same thing: the Disrupt Main Stage. Here’s how to get there and why the opportunity starts well before the main stage.
AI Job Replacement: The Risks of Over-Reliance on AI
The people deciding that AI can replace your job are also the ones least likely to understand what your job truly involves, according to Box founder Aaron Levie, who pointed to this as an example of “AI psychosis.” Indeed, ClickUp recently cut 22% of its workforce for AI agents, tech layoffs in 2026 are already nearly matching all of 2025, […]
Founders Revive Criticism of Google's Ad Business Post Indian Court Ru
The ruling drew support from founders, while lawyers said it could force platforms to revisit how they handle trademarked keywords.
TechCrunch Extends Startup Battlefield 200 Deadline to June 8
After overwhelming demand from founders around the world, TechCrunch has extended the Startup Battlefield 200 application deadline to June 8. Nominate a standout startup or apply yours today.
Databricks Co-Founder on Enterprise AI Safety at TechCrunch Disrupt 20
Enterprise AI is entering a different phase now, one where enterprises are no longer evaluating whether AI is exciting. They are evaluating whether it is safe to deploy broadly.
Xreal CEO: Smart Glasses Industry Reaches Turning Point
Chi Xu, the founder and CEO of XREAL, thinks the smart glasses business has finally reached a turning point.
How Lucra Sports Raised $20M in Esports Despite VC AI Focus
Earlier this year, Lucra Sports founder and CEO Dylan Robbins did something that no one else has ever done. And he shared several secrets on how he did it.
How AI Startups and VCs Inflate ARR Metrics
Some AI startups are stretching traditional revenue metrics when talking about progress publicly. And their investors are fully aware.
Elon Musk's Dominance in SpaceX IPO: AI Insights
Musk, who will have more than 50% of the voting power, will have a monarchical grip over the publicly-traded version of SpaceX — control that goes far beyond what other tech founders enjoy.
IrisGo: AI Desktop Assistant from Andrew Ng-Backed Startup
Initially billed as an "AI butler," Iris watches what happens on a user's desktop and automatically learns how to do tasks for them, its co-founder says.
Lucra Raises $20M for eSports Loyalty Platform Without AI Hype
Slapping “AI” on your startup’s pitch deck is basically table stakes right now. When a founder raised $20 million from Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest for an eSports gamification loyalty startup without those two letters in the spotlight, it got us wondering how the conversation even started — especially when ARK had already been burned by a company operating in the same space.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Julie […]
Elon Musk Loses OpenAI Lawsuit: Jury Rejects Claims
The jury's speedy decision to reject Elon Musk's lawsuit against the other founders of OpenAI and Microsoft confirmed what we saw in the courtroom: Musk's case was a weak one, in part because he waited so long to file it.
Ocean's AI Email Security Raises $28M to Combat Phishing
Ocean, an agentic email security platform, claims its AI can thoroughly analyze the context of every incoming email to detect fraud and impersonation attempts.
Light Phone Partners with Noble Mobile for Productivity Boost
"The Light Phone is designed to be used as little as possible," founder Joe Hollier told TechCrunch.
Andrej Karpathy Joins Anthropic's Pre-training Team
Pre-training is responsible for the large-scale training runs that give Claude its core knowledge and capabilities, according to the company. It's also one of the most expensive, compute-intensive phases of building a frontier model.
OpenAI's Greg Brockman Leads Product Strategy Amid Integration Plans
OpenAI's latest shakeup comes as the company reportedly plans to combine ChatGPT and its programming product Codex.
Meridian Ventures Launches $35M Fund for MBA-Deferred Founders
This new fund will back founders building enterprise technology in the United States. Meridian is agnostic, co-founder Devon Gethers said, noting that the firm has already invested in companies in fintech, logistics, healthcare, and of course, AI.
Anthropic Targets Small Businesses with New AI Offering
For founders and investors, Anthropic's new offering signals that the AI platform wars are expanding downmarket and that the next major battleground for user acquisition isn't the Fortune 500; it's the 36 million small businesses that make up the backbone of the U.S. economy.
Musk Considered Giving OpenAI to His Children, Altman Testifies
Altman said that Musk's focus on controlling the initial for-profit gave him pause because OpenAI was dedicated to keeping advanced AI out of the hands of a single person, and Altman, with his experience running the prominent startup accelerator Y Combinator, knew "founders who had control usually did not give it up."
F1 Paddock: New Hub for Startup Deals and Investments
F1 Grands Prix have emerged as a new place to see and be seen if you are a founder or investor.
Faraday Future Pays $7.5M Amid SEC Probe
The perpetually struggling EV company made the payments while being investigated by the SEC. That four-year probe was ultimately closed in March.
Skio's $105M Exit: AI Fintech Success Story
Subscription billing fintech Skio sold to its competitor Recharge in what was a healthy exit, according to its founder and former CEO.
BioticsAI Founder on FDA Approval and Healthcare Challenges
BioticsAI CEO Robhy Bustami joined Isabelle Johannessen on Build Mode to discuss how the company has navigated a highly regulated space and kept the team motivated while cutting through all the red tape.
Pursuit Secures $22M for AI-Driven Government Sales
On Wednesday, Pursuit announced a $22 million Series A round led by Mike Rosengarten, the co-founder of OpenGov, with big-name VCs participating.
The Dominion List: Open-Source Database of Canadian Founders in the US
The Dominion List: Revolutionizing Access to Canadian Entrepreneurs in the US The Dominion List stands as an innovative, open source database dedicated to catal…
AI Blunder: Company Loses Premium Domain in Interview Fiasco
Been in this space a long time and just watched one of the dumbest self-inflicted losses I’ve seen in years. Was interviewing with a company (\~$300M+ revenue and 1 single owner..............). During research, noticed they didn’t own their exact-match domain-just a pile of second-tier alternatives. Found owner (no comment) Rare case: real info. Called the owner (older guy, not a flipper). Good conversation. He initially said it wasn’t for sale, but after talking, he opened up and said, “make me an offer.” Price? Completely reasonable for the asset. What do they do? They send a junior HR person asking me to hand over the contact info. No strategy. No discretion. No understanding of how these deals actually work. I declined and set up an anonymous contact to test them. They haven't yet, but I'm fully expecting a lawyer to. During an interview, it was the first question they asked. Not letting someone inexperienced spook the seller or turn it into a legal posturing situation over what is, frankly, a cheap acquisition for them. Interesting outcome. They'll never get the name now (no comment). They lost a premium domain because they treated it like a routine admin task (or worse.....c&d?) instead of what it is-a negotiation. Big takeaway (again, for the hundredth time): Most companies-even big ones-have zero idea how to acquire domains properly. And yeah, lesson on my end too: don’t offer to “help for free,” and don’t assume competence or ethics just because there’s revenue or a "good guy" founder. Curious how many of you have seen deals die like this for completely avoidable reasons.
AI Tool Locus: Autonomous Business Operations
This sub has seen enough "AI can now do X" posts to have a finely tuned radar for what's real and what's a demo that falls apart the moment someone actually uses it. So I'll skip the hype and just tell you what we built and where the edges are. The core problem we were solving wasn't any individual capability. Generating copy is solved. Building websites is solved. Running ads is mostly solved. The unsolved problem was coherent autonomous decision making across all of those systems simultaneously without a human acting as the integration layer between them. That's what we spent most of our time on. Locus Founder takes someone from idea to fully operational business without them touching a single tool. The system scopes the business, builds the infrastructure, sources products, writes conversion optimized copy, and then runs paid acquisition across Google, Facebook and Instagram autonomously. Continuously. Not as a one time setup but as an ongoing operation that monitors performance and adjusts without being told to. The honest version of where AI actually performs well in this system and where it doesn't: It's genuinely good at the build layer. Storefront generation, copy, pricing structure, initial ad creative, coherent and fast in a way that would have been impossible two years ago. The operations layer is more complicated. Autonomous ad optimization works well within normal parameters. The judgment calls that fall outside those parameters, unusual market conditions, supplier issues, platform policy edge cases, are still the places where the system makes decisions a human would immediately recognize as wrong. That gap between capability and judgment is the most interesting unsolved problem in what we're building and probably in the agent space generally right now. We got into YCombinator this year. Opening 100 free beta spots this week before public launch. Free to use, you keep everything you make. For people in this sub specifically, less interested in the "wow AI can do that" reaction and more interested in people who want to actually stress test where the judgment breaks down. Beta form: [https://forms.gle/nW7CGN1PNBHgqrBb8](https://forms.gle/nW7CGN1PNBHgqrBb8) Where do you think autonomous business judgment actually gets solved and what does that look like?
Scholly Founder Sues Sallie Mae Over Termination, Data Claims
Chris Gray is suing his startup’s acquirer, Sallie Mae, for wrongful termination and alleging it's selling student data through a subsidiary. Sallie Mae denies the allegations and vows to fight.
Exploring AI Empathy: Teaching AI with Brain Signals
Podcast episode with Thorsten Zander, professor at Brandenburg University of Technology and co-founder of Zander Labs. He coined the concept of *passive brain-computer interfaces*: devices that read brain signals to decode a user's mental state, non-invasively and without any effort on their part. Covers: * What non-invasive brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) can actually pick up from brain signals, and why that's very different from reading your thoughts or internal monologue * The hardware and software breakthroughs that are finally making passive BCIs wearable and affordable * How continuous neural feedback could dramatically improve AI training compared to current methods based on human ratings * Why Thorsten believes passive BCIs may offer the most concrete path to solving the AI alignment problem * The risk of social networks exploiting unconscious brain reactions to manipulate people, and why regulation alone is unlikely to be enough
ZeroHuman AI: Your New Co-Founder for Productivity
Your AI Co-Founder: OpenClaw x Paperclip x Spud
Steve Ballmer's Scathing Letter to Fraudulent Founder
Steve Ballmer wrote a fiery letter in the sentencing of disgraced founder Joseph Sanberg documenting all the harm that's befalling him as an investor.