Andy Dunn’s new app Pie uses AI to help you make friends new

“We’re a long way from pants,” Andy Dunn, founder of online fashion retailer Bonobos, told TechCrunch. Now, the former CEO is taking on a completely different challenge: He wants to help people make friends. Dunn’s newest venture, Pie, is a social app focused on bringing people together in real life. With an $11.5 million Series […]
T-Mobile and Perplexity announce new ‘AI phone’ priced at under $1K

It was inevitable that this year at MWC in Barcelona, at least one carrier would announce a major effort at building a smartphone with a top AI company. And here it is: T-Mobile, the mobile telco owned by Deutsche Telekom (DT), said that it is building an “AI Phone,” a low-cost handset created in close […]
Meta AI arrives in the Middle East and Africa with support for Arabic

Meta has formally expanded Meta AI to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), opening the AI-enabled chatbot to millions more people. Back in October, Meta announced it was launching Meta AI in six additional markets, including Brazil and the U.K. At the same time, the company teased gradual rollout plans for additional markets around […]
Slip Robotics snags $28M for its bots that can load a truck in five minutes

Drop by any given loading dock and a buzz of forklifts — loaded up with goods — can be spotted maneuvering in and out of truck trailers. This logistical dance can take up to an hour to fill a trailer, leaving truck drivers in idle limbo. The founders of Atlanta-based Slip Robotics say they’ve developed […]
X is now licensed for payment processing in a dozen US states

Elon Musk is moving forward with his plans to turn the company formerly known as Twitter, now called X, into an “everything app” that includes its own payments system. The company in late November was granted three additional money transmitter licenses in the U.S. states of South Dakota (on November 27), Kansas (on November 28) […]
X now lets users broadcast community posts to all followers

X, formerly Twitter, is rolling out a new option to let users share their community posts with all followers. This is much like posting a message in a thread to the whole Slack channel. An X engineer announced the feature through a post saying that it is available to users on iOS first and will […]
European AI infra company Nebius nabs $700M from Nvidia, Accel, others

Nebius, the publicly-traded European AI infrastructure company formerly known as Yandex N.V., has raised $700 million to fuel its U.S. expansion. The financing came from “dozens of very well known investors,” Nebius CEO Arkady Volozh (pictured above) told TechCrunch during a press briefing today. While all the investors’ names will be revealed when the paperwork […]
Apple and Google avoid naming ChatGPT as their ‘app of the year

Both Apple and Google today announced their best apps and games of the year, with the hiking and biking companion AllTrails winning as Apple’s iPhone App of the Year in 2023, while the educational app Imprint: Learn Visually won as Google Play’s best app. Meanwhile, Apple and Google agreed on their Game of the Year, […]
Intenty nudges you to provide a reason every time you unlock your phone

Intentional phone usage is a tricky habit to develop. Operating systems like iOS and Android, along with social media networks like Instagram and TikTok, have built timers, nudges, and controls around the usage of the apps or the platform. But at times, you mindlessly unlock your phone as a force of habit to eventually do […]
Tesla appears to be building a teleoperations team for its robotaxi service

As Tesla gears up to launch a robotaxi service in the coming years, the automaker looks like it’s building out a teleoperations team. According to a recent job listing, Tesla is hiring a software engineer to help develop a teleoperations system that will allow human operators to remotely access and control the company’s upcoming robotaxis […]