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His house burned down. He used the insurance money to build PopSockets.
Does a consumer hardware company need to get on the VC treadmill to succeed? Eleven years and 290 million products sold across 115 countries later, PopSockets has proven that the bootstrapped, low-dilution path more viable than the industry gives it credit for. The global consumer hardware brand was built on less than $500k, no institutional capital, and a philosophy professor’s determination.  Watch as founder and former CEO
US and EU police shut down LeakBase, a site accused of sharing stolen passwords and hacking tools
Authorities say LeakBase was "one of the world’s largest online forums for cybercriminals," and maintained an archive of hacked databases containing hundreds of millions of passwords.
MacBook Neo, iPhone 17e, and everything else Apple announced this week
From a new iPhone to a budget-friendly MacBook, Apple announced a series of new products this week.
Google’s Gemini rolls out Canvas in AI Mode to all US users
Canvas in AI Mode is available to U.S. users in English for creating plans, projects, apps, and more.
Decagon completes first tender offer at $4.5B valuation
The AI-powered customer support startup is the latest example of a fast-growing, young company that's providing employee liquidity.
The US military is still using Claude — but defense-tech clients are fleeing
As the U.S. continues its aerial attack on Iran, Anthropic models are being used for many targeting decisions.
X taps William Shatner to give out invites to its payments service, X Money
42 X users donated to William Shatner's charity in exchange for an early invite to X Money beta.
Host a Side Event during TechCrunch Founder Summit Week in Boston
Want to tap into the energy of 1,100+ startup founders, investors, and tech leaders descending on Boston for the Founder Summit 2026 on June 9? Host your own Side Event during “Founder Summit Week,” happening June 4-10!
TikTok won’t add end-to-end encryption to direct messages, report says
The social media giant says that end-to-end encryption would make users less safe.
Father sues Google, claiming Gemini chatbot drove son into fatal delusion
A father is suing Google and Alphabet, alleging its Gemini chatbot reinforced his son’s delusional belief it was his AI wife and coached him toward suicide and a planned airport attack.
Pentagon vendor cutoff exposes the AI dependency map most enterprises never built
The federal directive ordering all U.S. government agencies to cease using Anthropic technology comes with a six-month phaseout window. That timeline assumes agencies already know where Anthropic’s models sit inside their workflows. Most don’t today.Most enterprises wouldn’t, either. The gap between what enterprises think they’ve approved and what’s actually running in production is wider than most security leaders realize.AI vendor dependencies don't stop at the contract you signed; they c
Controversial Elon Musk-funded mural of slain Ukrainian refugee vandalized in North Center
Splatters of paint now dot the face of Iryna Zarutska, the slain Ukrainian refugee, after an unknown vandal defaced the Elon Musk-funded mural.
Elon Musk to take stand in Twitter shareholder trial accusing him of deflating stock before purchase
The lawsuit claims Musk violated federal securities laws by making false, public statements that “were carefully calculated to drive down the price of Twitter stock.”
Elon Musk Praised Alibaba's LLM. Then Its Leader Quit: 'Bye My Beloved Qwen'
Lin Junyang stepped down from Alibaba's Qwen AI division amid explosive app growth and the launch of new Qwen 3.5 models.
Why AI startups are selling the same equity at two different prices
Some AI founders are using a novel valuation mechanism to manufacture unicorn status.
Did Alibaba just kneecap its powerful Qwen AI team? Key figures depart in wake of latest open source release
Alibaba's Qwen team of AI researchers have been among the most prolific and well-regarded by international machine learning community — shipping dozens of powerful generalized and specialized generative models starting last summer, most of them entirely open source and free.But now, just 24 hours after shipping the open source Qwen3.5 small model series—a release that drew public praise from Elon Musk for its "impressive intelligence density"—the project’s technical architect and
A suite of government hacking tools targeting iPhones is now being used by cybercriminals
Security researchers say exploits used by governments to hack into iPhones have been found to be used by cybercriminals. They warned of an emerging market for "secondhand" exploits.
Alibaba’s Qwen tech lead steps down after major AI push
Reactions rippled through Alibaba's Qwen team after tech lead Junyang Lin stepped down following a major model launch.
Just three companies dominated the $189B in VC investments last month
Crunchbase data shows a record $189 billion of global venture capital flowed to startups last month, with AI startups nabbing 90% of the capital.
TikTok down for some in US, thanks to second Oracle outage since sale
TikTok experienced a similar outage just days after ByteDance divested the app's U.S. operations.