The Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped its lawsuit against Gemini, the crypto exchange founded by twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. The Winklevoss twins were donors to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and also backed his family’s business ventures. In a joint filing on Friday, the SEC and Gemini asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, which centered on the collapse of an investment product called Gemini Earn, with some investors losing access to their money for 18 months. New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Gemini in 2023 and accused the company of defrauding investors. To justify dismissing the SEC’s…

Big Tech companies and upcoming startups want to use generative AI to build software and hardware for kids. A lot of those experiences are limited to text or voice, and kids might not find that captivating. Three former Google employees want to get over that hurdle with their generative AI-powered interactive app, Sparkli. Sparkli was founded last year by Lax Poojary, Lucie Marchand, and Myn Kang. As parents, Poojary and Kang were not able to satisfy their children’s curiosity or give engaging answers to their questions. “Kids, by definition, are very curious, and my son would ask me questions about…

We’re in a unique moment for AI companies building their own foundation model. First, there is a whole generation of industry veterans who made their name at major tech companies and are now going solo. You also have legendary researchers with immense experience but ambiguous commercial aspirations. There’s a clear chance that at least some of these new labs will become OpenAI-sized behemoths, but there’s also room for them to putter around doing interesting research without worrying too much about commercialization. The end result? It’s getting hard to tell who is actually trying to make money.  To make things simpler, I’m proposing a kind of sliding scale for any company making…

Food carts are a staple of New York City dining, dispensing everything from dosa and doner kebabs to dogs and dim sum in short order. But no matter how enticing the aroma of a cart’s food, the smelly gas generators that keep the lights on threaten to put customers off their meals. Cart owners and customers may not have to suck on fumes much longer. A Brooklyn-based startup is testing the use of its e-bike batteries to power food carts, starting with La Chona Mexican on the corner of 30th and Broadway in Manhattan. “This really started out as a…

Time flies — and so will these savings. The lowest ticket prices for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, along with the exclusive 50% off plus-one pass for the first 500 registrations, are almost gone. If you’ve been eyeing which tech conferences to lock into your calendar this year, this is your moment. Register now to save up to $680 on your pass and get a second ticket at 50% off. This offer ends next week on January 30, or once the first 500 tickets are claimed — whichever comes first. Why Disrupt?  From October 13–15, San Francisco’s Moscone West will become the global epicenter of tech. Disrupt unites 10,000 founders, VCs, operators, and tech leaders for…

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is planning to visit India in mid-February, his first visit to the country in nearly a year, TechCrunch has learned. The visit comes as New Delhi prepares to host a major AI summit expected to draw top executives from Meta, Google, and Anthropic. India is hosting its first major AI event — the India AI Impact Summit 2026 — in New Delhi between February 16 and 20, bringing together global technology leaders, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei alongside key Indian business figures like Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh…

TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has signed a deal with a group of non-Chinese investors to form a majority American-owned joint venture to keep the social app operating in the U.S. The deal ends a six-year political saga that started in 2020 when President Donald Trump tried to ban the app over national security concerns during his first term. Adam Presser, who was TikTok’s head of operations and trust and safety, will be the CEO of TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC. TikTok CEO Shou Chew will serve as a director. The venture’s three managing investors, Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based…

Emily is a college student by day, but she works the night shift at the strip club to pay her tuition — she doesn’t think anyone will find out her secret, until one day, her mysterious English teacher shows up! Did he recognize her? Will her secret get out? Pay 60 “tokens” to see what happens next, or you can watch an ad, or… just buy a VIP pass for $20 per week and skip the ads altogether. These stories are pulpy and exaggerated, bursting with cringeworthy acting and writing. Yet these “microdramas” — TikTok-like shows with episodes about a…

Ryan Mitchell, the founder of a startup called Space Beyond, remembers looking at the night sky while camping at a state park and wondering what he should do next. A manufacturing engineer who worked on NASA’s space shuttle program before spending nearly a decade at Jeff Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, Mitchell was considering his options. In those jobs, he had seen the cost to access space come down dramatically, thanks in large part to Blue Origin’s rival SpaceX. Those stars in the sky, he thought, seemed closer than ever. Mitchell told TechCrunch that an idea finally clicked when he…

Apple’s iPhone is gaining ground fast in India, shipping about 14 million units in 2025, based on market data shared exclusively with TechCrunch. Yet the country’s overall smartphone market stayed largely flat at around 152–153 million devices. That means that across the full-year of 2025, Apple’s market share of shipments rose to a record 9%. This is up from 7% in 2024, Counterpoint Research data shows, making it the iPhone’s strongest year yet in the world’s second-largest smartphone market by volume. The gains were driven by the iPhone’s product portfolio, growing aspirational demand and wider availability across sales channels, Counterpoint…