Duolingo’s mascot, Duo the owl, is dead. Okay, Duo isn’t really dead (we think), but the language learning app committed so hard to this bit that its CEO, Luis von Ahn, read a eulogy for this beloved green bird on TikTok. As any fiction author could probably tell you, killing everyone’s favorite character is not … Read more
Google has gained permission to sell its e-books and audiobooks directly to customers through its iOS app, Google Play Books. While iOS apps today can offer access to content previously purchased elsewhere, like e-books bought via a website, developers have to request a specific exception to link their iOS app’s users to the company’s own … Read more
Amazon, Exxon, and Microsoft have joined a new task force to burnish the image of scandal-plagued voluntary carbon markets. The task force, organized by the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank, is hoping to improve credibility of voluntary carbon markets, studying the status quo and drafting “policy recommendations for how the federal government can promote fair, … Read more
Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati has announced her new startup. Unsurprisingly, it’s focused on AI. Called Thinking Machines Lab, the startup, which came out of stealth today, intends to build tooling to “make AI work for [people’s] unique needs and goals,” and to create AI systems that are “more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable” … Read more
Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week we’re looking at some big valuation jumps, how Stripe is eyeing another shareholder sale, a colorful conversation with an early-stage VC, and more! To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Tuesday at 8:00 a.m. PT, subscribe here. The big … Read more
Elon Musk has spent decades building a universe of companies that has served as an incubator for up-and-coming engineers and a proving ground for his inner circle. That universe — an ecosystem of Silicon Valley tech titans, veterans of his companies like Tesla and SpaceX, and a crop of fresh-faced hackers and software engineers — … Read more
Social networking startup Bluesky, a rival to X, on Monday rolled out a new update to its app that now includes the recently promised addition of a “followers only” option for restricting replies to your posts, as well as a “search posts” feature for user profiles. While the former helps differentiate the app from competitors … Read more
Last decade, companies like Segment rewrote the book on how organizations used APIs to merge data from disparate apps to improve marketing strategies. Today, a startup called Hightouch — co-founded by a former engineering manager at Segment — is announcing $80 million in funding for the next chapter: a platform that lets sales, marketing, and … Read more
Monolinguists wanting to communicate with the global masses have never had it so easy. Trusty old Google Translate can convert the content of images, audio, and entire websites across hundreds of languages, while newer tools such as ChatGPT also serve as handy pocket translators. On the back end, DeepL and ElevenLabs have have reached lofty … Read more
Newspaper publishing giant Lee Enterprises said an ongoing cyberattack is causing disruptions across its business, and is now in its third week of outages. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Lee said it was conducting a forensic analysis to determine if sensitive or personal data was stolen in the cyberattack. “Preliminary … Read more