Help desk automation is a billion-dollar industry, and one of the most likely to be disrupted by tech built upon AI. Major players like Zendesk, ServiceNow and Freshworks currently dominate the space, but lots of smaller startups are betting that reshuffling workflows will give them a chance to cut in. Risotto is one of those startups, and after today, it will have plenty of runway to test its theory. The company on Tuesday said it has raised a $10 million seed round led by Bonfire Ventures, with participation from 645 Ventures, Y Combinator, Ritual Capital, and Surgepoint Capital. Designed to…

Pinterest said on Tuesday that it plans to lay off less than 15% of its workforce to cut back on office space and reallocate resources for its AI initiatives. In a regulatory filing, the company noted it expects to complete the layoffs by late September. The filing stated that Pinterest would be “reallocating resources to AI-focused roles and teams that drive AI adoption and execution” and “prioritizing AI‑powered products and capabilities.” The company had 4,666 full-time employees at the end of 2024, which means roughly 700 workers will be affected by cuts. The move comes as Pinterest, and every other…

Uber has more than 20 autonomous vehicle partners, and they all want one thing: data. So the company says it’s going to make that available through a new division called Uber AV Labs. Despite the name, Uber is not returning to developing its own robotaxis, which it stopped doing after one of its test vehicles killed a pedestrian in 2018. (Uber ultimately sold off the division in 2020 in a complex deal with Aurora.) But it will send its own cars out into cities adorned with sensors to collect data for partners like Waymo, Waabi, Lucid Motors, and others —…

Obvious Ventures, the firm co-founded by Twitter’s Evan Williams, has raised a fifth fund, and this one, just like its predecessors, comes with a “fun” number: $360,360,360. “We invest in the frontiers of math and science and physics, and we like to celebrate math in our fund numbers as well,” James Joaquin (pictured far right), the firm’s co-founder and managing director, told TechCrunch. The firm’s first fund was $123,456,789, and the second was $191,919,191 (a palindromic number that reads the same forward and backwards). The third was $271,828,182 (which mathematicians and engineers instantly recognize as e, or Euler’s number), while…

Space is an increasingly crowded place thanks to the constant influx of new satellites and it’s only to get more cramped as the cost to get to orbit falls. Those dynamics have brought attention to startup Northwood Space, which has spent the last few years developing more modern and efficient ground-based communications infrastructure. The startup capitalized on that interest in two ways this week. The El Segundo, California-based company announced on Tuesday it has closed a $100 million Series B funding round, led by Washington D.C.-based firm Washington Harbour Partners (which has been on a run of space investments) and…

A new risk assessment has found that xAI’s chatbot Grok has inadequate identification of users under 18, weak safety guardrails, and frequently generates sexual, violent, and inappropriate material. In other words, Grok is not safe for kids or teens.  The damning report from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that provides age-based ratings and reviews of media and tech for families, comes as xAI faces criticism and an investigation into how Grok was used to create and spread nonconsensual explicit AI-generated images of women and children on the X platform.  “We assess a lot of AI chatbots at Common Sense Media,…

Electric bike company Rad Power Bikes has reached a deal to sell itself to a company called Life Electric Vehicles Holdings (or Life EV) for around $13.2 million, a little more than a month after entering the bankruptcy process. Florida-based Life EV bills itself as a “developer, manufacturer, and distributor in the light electric vehicle industry.” It offers a number of electric bikes for sale on its website, although most of them were labeled as “sold out” at the time this article was published. A filing to the bankruptcy docket over the weekend shows that five entities participated in an…

President Donald Trump said he would make countering immigration one of his flagship policies during his second term in the White House, promising an unprecedented number of deportations.  A year in, data shows that deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection have surpassed at least 350,000 people.  ICE has taken center stage in Trump’s mass removal campaign, raiding homes, workplaces, and public parks in search of undocumented people, prompting widespread protests and resistance from communities across the United States.  ICE uses several technologies to identify and surveil individuals. Homeland Security has also leveraged the shadow…

A group of YouTubers who are suing tech giants for scraping their videos without permission to train AI models has now added Snap to their list of defendants. The plaintiffs — internet content creators behind a trio of YouTube channels with roughly 6.2 million collective subscribers — allege that Snap has trained its AI systems on their video content for use in AI features like the app’s “Imagine Lens,” which allows users to edit images using text prompts. The plaintiffs earlier filed similar lawsuits against Nvidia, Meta, and ByteDance over similar matters. In the newly filed proposed class action suit,…

The 2026 Game Developers Conference is shaping up to be a little less international this year if commentary on social media platforms like LinkedIn is an indicator. Many members of the international games industry have announced they will skip the event, mainly over concerns about safety, tougher U.S. immigration rules, and a stronger immigration and Customs Enforcement presence. Developers, past GDC attendees, and other industry professionals have taken to platforms like LinkedIn to publicly voice their concerns. ICE activity in numerous U.S. cities as well as the recent fatal shootings in Minneapolis involving ICE agents have compounded concerns. Renee Nicole Good…