Sam Altman is in the process of co-founding a new brain-to-computer interface startup called Merge Labs, and raising funds for it with the capital possibly coming largely from OpenAI’s ventures team, unnamed sources told the Financial Times. The startup is expected to be valued at $850 million. A source familiar with the deal tells TechCrunch that talks are still early and OpenAI has not yet committed to participation, so terms could change. Merge Labs is also reportedly working with Alex Blania, who runs Tools for Humanity (formerly World) — Altman’s eye-scanning digital ID project that “allows anyone to verify their humanness,”…
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Key Takeaways Pantera’s DAT portfolio spans Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, BNB, TON, Hyperliquid, Sui, and Ethena across the US, UK, and Israel. BitMine leads with $4.9B in ETH holdings and a goal to acquire 5% of Ethereum’s supply. Share this article Pantera Capital has invested more than $300 million in Digital Asset Treasury companies (DATs), according to a new Blockchain Letter published Tuesday afternoon.According to the letter, its DAT portfolio spans Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, BNB, TON, Hyperliquid, Sui, and Ethena, with investments across the United States, United Kingdom, and Israel.DAT Portfolio CoverageAmong these holdings, Pantera highlighted BitMine Immersion (BMNR) as a…
Miners are increasing relocating to Crypto Exchange as Bitcoin (BTC) continues hovering just below the $120,000 level. According to analysts, the rise in BTC transfers could indicate future price adjustments for the best cryptocurrency. Will Bitcoin price adjustments be made in the future? According to a cryptographic quick take post by the Arab chain of contributors, there was a huge surge in BTC transfers from miners to binan script exchanges in late July – shown in the form of double-top on the following chart. Bitcoin Miner to Exchange Flow Shows Multiple Spikes Over the Last Several Weeks | Source: Cryptoquant…
Self-driving truck maker Waabi has hired autonomous vehicle industry veteran and Uber Freight CEO Lior Ron to step in as chief operating officer, as the startup looks to scale its commercial operations ahead of its planned launch of driverless trucks on public highways later this year. Rebecca Tinucci, who previously spent six years building Tesla’s charging network before the automaker gutted its charging staff last year, will take over as head of Uber Freight. Ron will stay on as Uber Freight’s chairman. “[Ron] will lead the go-to-market strategy, expanding key partnerships, and really bringing Waabi from the phase that we’ve been…
Key Takeaways Loky AI now powers more than $100M in AUM across 100+ DeFi and trading agents, with 60% month-over-month ARR growth. The rebrand introduces machine-first APIs, personalized trading studios, and cluster-level analytics for the agent economy. Share this article Loky, the AI-driven intelligence platform, has rebranded to Loky AI, marking its evolution from an analytics provider to a core infrastructure layer for autonomous agents in the DeFi and trading ecosystem.Initially known for its agent-tracking and alpha-hunting tools, Loky AI now powers over 100 top DeFi and trading agents, supports three ACP clusters, and serves 950 stakers and more than…
In a moonshot move, AI search engine Perplexity has offered to buy Chrome from Google for $34.5 billion cash in an unsolicited offer, Reuters reported, and Perplexity has confirmed to TechCrunch. Perplexity tells TC the terms of the offer include a commitment to keep Chrome’s underlying engine, Chromium, open source and continue to invest in it. Perplexity’s offer includes a promise to invest $3 billion into the open source project. Perplexity is also promising not to change the user defaults of Chrome users, including the default search engine. That is, Perplexity is promising to leave Google as the search engine…
In early 2023, David Petrou, a distinguished engineer and founding member of both Google Goggles and Google Glass, made a surprising move. After more than 17 years at the company, he departed to launch his own startup. “I was seeing how fast technology was changing, and I felt there are certain ideas that are best explored in the context of a startup,” Petrou told TechCrunch. His ultimate idea was to build Continua, a consumer-facing company that uses AI agents to enhance collaboration and interaction in group chats on SMS, iMessage, and Discord. “The simple way to think about it is…
Demand for AI “companion” applications outside of bigger names, like ChatGPT and Grok, is growing. Of the 337 active and revenue-generating AI companion apps available worldwide, 128 were released in 2025 so far, according to new data provided to TechCrunch by app intelligence firm Appfigures. This subsection of the AI market on mobile has now generated $82 million during the first half of the year and is on track to pull in over $120 million by year-end, the firm’s analysis indicates. Unlike general-purpose chatbots, AI companion apps anthropomorphize AI interactions by allowing users to converse with custom characters, including friends,…
Key Takeaways AI startup Perplexity has made a $34.5 billion offer to acquire Google’s Chrome browser amid antitrust pressures. Perplexity plans to invest $3 billion into Chrome and Chromium over two years and extend offers to Chrome talent if the deal goes through. Share this article Perplexity, which focuses on developing advanced AI-powered search technology, has made a $34.5 billion proposal to acquire Google’s Chrome browser, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing a Perplexity spokesperson. The AI startup sent the bid to Alphabet’s Google this morning.The offer comes amid ongoing antitrust legal proceedings against Google. A federal judge ruled last year that…
Anthropic is increasing the amount of information that enterprise customers can send to Claude in a single prompt, part of an effort to attract more developers to the company’s popular AI coding models. For Anthropic’s API customers, the company’s Claude Sonnet 4 AI model now has a one million token context window — meaning the AI can handle requests as long as 750,000 words, more than the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, or 75,000 lines of code. That’s roughly five times Claude’s previous limit (200,000 tokens), and more than double the 400,000 token context window offered by OpenAI’s GPT-5.…