The Press

Earlier this week, five people who touch every layer of the AI supply chain sat down at the Milken Global Conference in Beverly Hills, where they talked with TechCrunch about everything from chip shortages to orbital data centers to the possibility that the whole architecture that undergirds the tech is wrong.

I sat down in the Musk v. Altman trial courtroom today, painfully aware that no one was going to ask Shivon Zilis the question on everyone's minds: Girl, what the fuck are you doing? Zilis, who testified under oath that she is the mother of four of Musk's children, was… what's the best way to characterize this? A Musk advisor? She denies she was a "chief of staff" but says she worked for Musk's "entire AI portfolio: Tesla, Neuralink, and OpenAI" starting in 2017. The two met through OpenAI, and they had what she referred to as a "one off" before becoming "friends and colleagues." The "one off...

Deal follows others with Microsoft, Amazon, and more.

Barry Diller defended OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, while warning that AGI remains an unpredictable force needing guardrails.

TSMC backs renewables during record demand for energy-hungry chip manufacturing.

The deal, announced last November, would have seen Perplexity's AI search engine integrated directly into Snapchat.

xAI's real business may be more about building data centers than training AI models.

Google has pulled the plug on Project Mariner, an experimental feature designed to perform tasks for you across the web, as reported earlier by Wired's Maxwell Zeff. The Project Mariner landing page now contains a message that says: "Thank you for using Project Mariner. It was shut down on May 4th, 2026 and its technology voyaged to other Google products." Google first revealed Project Mariner in December 2024 and later announced an update allowing it to perform up to 10 tasks at a time. Over the past year, Google has integrated features powered by Project Mariner into its other AI tools, inc...

Trump forced to admit Biden was right on AI safety testing.

AI and Crypto Czar David O. Sacks speaks during a meeting of the White House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence Education at the White House. | Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images Hello and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter exclusively for Verge subscribers about tech, politics, and Washington intrigue. (It's basically House of Cards, but for nerds.) Not a subscriber yet? You really should become one, and to save you a Google search, here is the direct link to do so! And do you think I should know something? Send it to tina.nguyen+tips@theverge.com. On Monday, The New York T...

Cutthroat negotiations between startup founders are rarely shared so publicly, especially when a company becomes as world-changing as OpenAI.

Mira Murati, OpenAI's former CTO, has testified under oath that CEO Sam Altman lied to her about the safety standards for a new AI model. In a video deposition shown during the ongoing Musk v. Altman trial on Wednesday, Murati said Altman falsely stated that OpenAI's legal department determined a new AI model did not need to go through the company's deployment safety board. "As you understand it, was Mr. Altman telling the truth when he made that statement to you?" Murati was asked in the deposition. "No," Murati said. Murat said that during her tenure at OpenAI, Altman made her work more dif...

SpaceX, Elon Musk's space company that also houses his AI company, xAI, is considering spending $55 billion, at least initially, to build a semiconductor factory in Texas, according to a filing with Grimes County.

In just a few weeks of talks, DeepSeek's potential valuation has reportedly soared from $20 billion to $45 billion.

Move comes as CCP Games spends $120M to go independent, rebrands as Fenris Creations.

Also, rate limits will double for Pro and Max users of tools like Claude Code.

While citing web forums and discussion boards can help users find answers to more niche queries, this design choice could also prove chaotic.

Genesis AI, a startup that raised a $105 million seed round to build foundational AI for robotics, has unveiled its first model, GENE-26.5, but also a demo showcasing a set of robotic hands performing complex tasks.

Up to 3x the speed with no loss of quality—is it too good to be true?

Match Group said that it's slowing its hiring plans for the rest of the year because AI tools "cost a lot of money."

Apple has agreed to pay $250 million to settle a class action lawsuit for overpromising the arrival of Siri's AI features.

Ethos says it is onboarding 35,000 experts per week

Leaders from Coinbase, M13, and Mignano Law Group talk about how M&A is an early-stage strategy at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. Register to hear this live.

Three days left to lock in 50% off a second ticket to Disrupt 2026. Buy one TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 ticket, and get a second ticket at 50% off. Gain more visibility in the tech industry. Offer ends May 8 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

Samsung crossed the $1 trillion valuation mark after shares surged on AI-driven chip demand, making it only the second Asian company after TSMC to hit the milestone.

Want real human feedback related to your search results? Google’s AI now fetches it for you. | Image by Google / The Verge Google is updating its AI Search features to make it easier for users to find information from sources they know and trust. One of the more notable changes introduces "a preview of perspectives" from firsthand sources like social media, Reddit, and other web forums, effectively linking your search queries with online conversations around similar topics. Google says this update aims to address that "people are increasingly seeking out advice from others" when searching for...

Microsoft's LinkedIn CEO, Ryan Roslansky, took on an expanded role at the company as head of Office last year, and he's now getting more responsibilities as part of the latest leadership reshuffle inside Microsoft. Sources tell me that the Microsoft Teams organization is moving to report to Roslansky, who will now lead a new Work Experiences Group at Microsoft. The changes are part of a broader reshuffle triggered by Rajesh Jha, executive vice president of Microsoft's experiences and devices group, retiring from Microsoft after more than 35 years. Jha was responsible for the teams behind Wind...

Google Chrome may be taking up more of your storage than expected thanks to a large on-device AI model file that, in some cases, is being automatically downloaded to the browser's system folders. Users who have noticed unexplained drops in their available desktop device storage are now discovering that Chrome is installing a 4GB weights.bin file inside their browser directory when certain AI features are enabled. The weights.bin file in question is connected to Google's Gemini Nano AI model, which powers Chrome AI tools like scam detection, writing assistance, autofill, and suggestion feature...

QyTw0, the Finnish AI lab founded by former AMD Silo AI CEO Peter Sarlin, is now valued at €325 million (approximately $380 million) after raising a €25 million angel round ($29 million). It's a sign of enduring tailwinds for AI, quantum computing, and sovereign tech, especially for Europe-made companies.

Wonder wants to turn its robotic kitchens into AI-powered “restaurant factories,” letting anyone spin up a virtual food brand with a prompt.

SAP plans to buy German AI startup Prior Labs and invest heavily in it. It is also prohibiting customers' agents use to a select few like Nvidia's NemoClaw.

Altara’s AI aims to diagnose failures and help speed up R&D by unifying data siloed across spreadsheets and legacy systems.

Elon Musk argued the journals show the moment when OpenAI abandoned its mission.

Google Home users can now ask Gemini to complete more complex, multi-step tasks and combine multiple tasks in a single command. Google has updated Gemini for Home to Gemini 3.1, which it says will improve the smart home assistant's ability to interpret and act on requests. The upgrade will also make Gemini for Home better at handling recurring and all-day events and allow users to "move around" upcoming events. Last month, Google also updated Gemini for Home with improvements for understanding natural language and identifying devices correctly. The upgrades follow reports of bugs in Google's ...

Panthalassa aims to test floating AI computing nodes in the Pacific in 2026.

Apple has agreed to pay $250 million to settle a class action lawsuit that accused it of misleading customers about the availability of its Apple Intelligence features. The proposed settlement would apply to people in the US who purchased all models of the iPhone 16 and the iPhone 15 Pro between June 10th, 2024 and March 29th, 2025. The settlement will resolve a 2025 lawsuit, alleging Apple's advertisements created a "clear and reasonable consumer expectation" that Apple Intelligence features would be available with the launch of the iPhone 16. The lawsuit claimed Apple's products "offered a ...

Christophe Fouquet, who became ASML's CEO in 2024 after more than a decade at the company, sat down with this editor on the rooftop deck of his Beverly Hills hotel Tuesday morning ahead of his appearance at the Milken Institute Global Conference. Dressed in a blue suit and white shirt, he was relaxed — even when the conversation turned to the rivals.

Xbox is "winding down Copilot on mobile" and "will stop development of Copilot on console," new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced on Tuesday. The move follows Sharma's reorganization of the Xbox platform team earlier on Tuesday, which added executives from Microsoft's CoreAI team - where Sharma worked before taking over Xbox - to the Xbox side of the company. Sharma, on X: Xbox needs to move faster, deepen our connection with the community, and address friction for both players and developers. Today, we promoted leaders who helped build Xbox, while also bringing in new voices to help push us for...

The next update to Apple's operating systems could allow users to choose their preferred AI model for running Apple Intelligence. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is planning to allow third-party chatbots to power its AI features system-wide in iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27, all expected for this fall. In addition to running Siri, compatible third-party AI models, called "Extensions," will also now be able to run other Apple Intelligence features like Writing Tools and Image Playground. According to Gurman, Apple will also allow users to choose different Siri voices for different...

According to Pennsylvania's filing, a Character AI chatbot presented itself as a licensed psychiatrist during a state investigation, and also fabricated a serial number for its state medical license.

Google's smart home ecosystem is getting its biggest update since the AI-fueled 2025 revamp.

The new GPT-5.5 Instant model will replace GPT-3.5 Instant as the default model for ChatGPT

OpenAI's newest default model for ChatGPT might not make stuff up as much. Hallucinations have been an ongoing problem for AI models, but OpenAI says its new GPT-5.5 Instant model has "significant improvements in factuality across the board." The company claims that, based on "internal evaluations," GPT-5.5 Instant produced "52.5% fewer hallucinated claims" than its Instant model for GPT-5.3 "on high-stakes prompts covering areas like medicine, law, and finance." GPT-5.5 Instant also "reduced inaccurate claims by 37.3% on especially challenging conversations users had flagged for factual erro...

Meta is facing a class action lawsuit filed by five major book publishers and one author over claims the company "engaged in one of the most massive infringements of copyrighted materials in history" when training its Llama AI models, as reported earlier by The New York Times. In their suit, Macmillan, McGraw-Hill, Elsevier, Hachette, Cengage, and author Scott Turow allege that Meta "repeatedly copied" their books and journal articles without permission. The lawsuit accuses Meta of knowingly ripping copyrighted work from "notorious pirate sites," such as LibGen, Anna's Archive, Sci-Hub, Sci-M...

PayPal is pitching an AI-led turnaround, tying automation and restructuring to $1.5B in savings as it cuts jobs and works to modernize its tech stack.

Etsy's new native app within ChatGPT aims to be a conversational shopping experience for users.

OpenAI's first hardware product might be a phone instead of a mysterious Jony Ive gadget. As reported by MacRumors, supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo shared details about the rumored phone, claiming OpenAI is "fast-tracking" it and aiming to start mass production in early 2027. According to Kuo, the phone will run on a "customized version of the [MediaTek] Dimensity 9600," which is expected to launch this fall and follow up the Dimensity 9500 currently powering phones like the Vivo X300 Pro and the Oppo Find X9 Pro. The custom chip's "headline spec" will be its image signal processor (ISP), w...

The visual analysis system is now operating in select countries, but Meta says it's working toward a broader rollout.

Google DeepMind, Microsoft, and Elon Musk's xAI have agreed to allow the US government to review new AI models before they're released to the public. In an announcement on Tuesday, the Commerce Department's Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) says it will work with the AI companies to perform "pre-deployment evaluations and targeted research to better assess frontier AI capabilities." CAISI, which started evaluating models from OpenAI and Anthropic in 2024, says it has performed 40 reviews so far. Both companies "have renegotiated their existing partnerships with the center to bett...

4. ElevenLabs reveals new investors, hits $500M ARR, and expands enterprise footprint as voice AI becomes a critical interface.