With the change in TikTok ownership, TikTok users in the U.S. are collectively freaking out over the company’s updated privacy policy after being alerted to the changes through an in-app message. The revised document details the U.S. joint venture’s conditions for using its service, including the specific location information it may collect. Many users are also posting to social media about language found in the policy, which says that TikTok could collect sensitive information about its users, including their “sexual life or sexual orientation, status as transgender or nonbinary, citizenship or immigration status.” But despite the panic, this disclosure isn’t…

TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has been at the center of controversy in the U.S. for years now due to concerns about user data potentially being accessed by the Chinese government. On Thursday, January 22, 2026, TikTok announced that the TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC had officially been established to comply with President Trump’s executive order that approved the sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations to an American investor group. Now, ByteDance will own less than 20% of the new entity, with the rest of it falling into non-Chinese ownership. Over the years, U.S. users have often found themselves…

The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos felt different this year, and not just because Meta and Salesforce took over storefronts on the main promenade. AI dominated the conversation in a way that overshadowed traditional topics like climate change and global poverty, and the CEOs weren’t holding back. There was public criticism of trade policy, warnings about AI bubbles popping, and a lot of talk about what comes next for the industry.  Watch as TechCrunch’s Equity podcast discusses which conversations took over Davos this week, the latest startup raises that caught our eye, and more. Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow…

A failed December effort to bring down parts of Poland’s energy grid was the work of Russian government hackers known for causing past energy disruptions, according to a security research firm that investigated the incident.  Last week, Polish Energy Minister Milosz Motyka told reporters that the attempted cyberattack on December 29 and 30 saw hackers targeting two heat and power plants, as well as trying to disrupt the communication links between renewable installations, such as wind turbines and power distribution operators. Motyka called the incident the “strongest attack” on Poland’s energy infrastructure in years, with the Polish government blaming Moscow…

Yann LeCun’s new venture, AMI Labs, has drawn intense attention since the AI scientist left Meta to found it. This week, the startup finally confirmed what it’s building — and several key details have been hiding in plain sight. On its newly launched website, the startup disclosed its plans to develop ‘world models’ in order to “build intelligent systems that understand the real world.” The focus on world models was already hinted at by AMI’s name, which stands for Advanced Machine Intelligence, but it has now officially joined the ranks of the hottest AI research startups. Building foundational models that…