Apple had a great Q1, though iPhone sales were the real standout. The company reports that its signature device had its best quarter ever, thanks partially to a surge of sales in regions like China and India. “iPhone had its best-ever quarter driven by unprecedented demand, with all-time records across every geographic segment,” said CEO Tim Cook during the company’s earnings call Thursday. Apple’s earnings report shows the company sold $85 billion worth of iPhones during its first quarter, up from $69 billion in the same period last year. During the call’s Q&A portion, Cook revealed that China had seen…

Three of Elon Musk’s companies — SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla — are in play for a potential merger. While the talks appear to be in the early stage, according to reports from Bloomberg and Reuters, it could eventually lead to at least one company folding into SpaceX. Two scenarios are being hashed out. In one, SpaceX and Tesla would merge, per Bloomberg, citing unnamed insiders. In another, SpaceX and aXI (which already owns Musk’s social media platform X) would combine. According to reporting by Reuters, a merger between SpaceX and xAI could take place ahead of a planned SpaceX IPO…

OpenAI, a company already valued at $500 billion, has made it known that it’s on the hunt for another $100 billion in investment. Such a funding round could lead the company’s valuation to shoot up to a titanic $830 billion. The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Amazon may contribute at least $50 billion of that record-breaking investment. Not much is known about the potential deal, although the Journal notes that Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, is currently leading the negotiations with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. TechCrunch reached out to Amazon and OpenAI for comment. In its pursuit of additional…

Fintech firm Marquis told customers that it plans to seek compensation from its firewall provider after blaming the company for a breach that allowed hackers to steal its customers’ personal and financial data. In a memo shared with customers this week and seen by TechCrunch, Marquis said it believes that its August 2025 ransomware attack happened because the company’s firewall service provider SonicWall had its own data breach that exposed critical security information about its customers’ firewalls. That earlier breach of SonicWall allowed hackers to obtain credentials needed to launch a ransomware attack against Marquis, the memo said. Marquis said…

Microsoft delivered a solid earnings report on Wednesday with $81.3 billion in revenue for the quarter (up 17%), net income profits of $38.3 billion (up 21%) and a record breaking Microsoft cloud revenue of over $50 billion.  But the stock was getting pounded on Thursday as investors worried about how much the tech giant was spending to build out its cloud and questioned whether that investment would pay off. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says, yes  — and spent considerable time on the earnings call trying to make that point Microsoft has spent almost as much on capital expenditures in the…

After years of negotiations and false starts, Waymo is now allowed to operate a robotaxi service to and from the San Francisco International Airport (SFO). The Alphabet-owned company said in a blog post Thursday it will begin offering access to SFO to a select number of riders before offering it to all customers in the coming months. Pickups and drop-offs will occur at the SFO Rental Car Center, which is accessible via AirTrain. Waymo said it plans to serve additional airport locations in the future. Waymo’s SFO win comes as the company faces criticism and concerns about safety in some…

Google DeepMind is opening up access to Project Genie, its AI tool for creating interactive game worlds from text prompts or images.  Starting Thursday, Google AI Ultra subscribers in the U.S. can play around with the experimental research prototype, which is powered by a combination of Google’s latest world model Genie 3, its image generation model Nano Banana Pro, and Gemini.  Coming five months after Genie 3’s research preview, the move is part of a broader push to gather user feedback and training data as DeepMind races to develop more capable world models.  World models are AI systems that generate…

A cohort of music publishers led by Concord Music Group and Universal Music Group are suing Anthropic, saying the company illegally downloaded more than 20,000 copyrighted songs, including sheet music, song lyrics, and musical compositions. The publishers said in a statement on Wednesday that the damages could amount to more than $3 billion, which would be one of the largest non-class action copyright cases filed in U.S. history. This lawsuit was filed by the same legal team from the Bartz v. Anthropic case, in which a group of fiction and nonfiction authors similarly accused the AI company of using their…

As AI races into classrooms worldwide, Google is finding that the toughest lessons on how the tech can actually scale are emerging not from Silicon Valley, but from India’s schools. India has become a proving ground for Google’s education AI amid intensifying competition from rivals, including OpenAI and Microsoft. With more than a billion internet users, the country now accounts for the highest global usage of Gemini for learning, according to Chris Phillips, Google’s vice president and general manager for education, within an education system shaped by state-level curricula, strong government involvement, and uneven access to devices and connectivity. Phillips…

Google announced on Thursday that Google Maps users can now access Gemini hands-free while walking and cycling. The update comes a few months after Google Maps rolled out its Gemini-powered hands-free, conversational driving experience. The announcement marks Google’s ongoing efforts to plug Gemini into more parts of people’s everyday lives, while shifting Google Maps from static directions to real-time, conversational navigation. When you’re walking around and navigating with Maps, you can now ask Gemini questions like “Tell me more about the neighborhood I’m in,” “What are some must-see attractions?” or “Are there cafes with a bathroom along my route?” Google…