Concerns about how AI will affect workers continue to rise in lockstep with the pace of advancements and new products promising automation and efficiency. Evidence suggests that fear is warranted. A November MIT study found an estimated 11.7% of jobs could already be automated using AI. Surveys have shown employers are already eliminating entry-level jobs because of the technology. Companies are also already pointing to AI as the reason for layoffs. As enterprises more meaningfully adopt AI, some may take a closer look at how many employees they really need. In a recent TechCrunch survey, multiple enterprise VCs said AI…

Over the last several years, fusion power has gone from the butt of jokes — always a decade away! — to an increasingly tangible and tantalizing technology that has drawn investors off the sidelines. The technology may be challenging to master and expensive to build today, but fusion promises to harness the nuclear reaction that powers the sun to generate nearly limitless energy here on Earth. If startups are able to complete commercially viable fusion power plants, then they have the potential to upend trillion-dollar markets. The bullish wave buoying the fusion industry has been driven by three advances: more…

True Ventures co-founder Jon Callaghan doesn’t think we’ll be using smartphones the way we do now in five years — and maybe not at all in 10. For a venture capitalist whose firm has had some big winners over its two decades – from consumer brands like Fitbit, Ring, and Peloton, to enterprise software makers HashiCorp and Duo Security – that’s more than armchair theorizing; it’s a thesis on which True Ventures is actively betting. True hasn’t gotten this far by following the crowd. The Bay Area firm has largely operated under the radar despite managing roughly $6 billion across…

Enterprises have been piloting and testing different AI tools for the past few years to figure out what their adoption strategy will look like. Investors think that period of experimentation is coming to an end. TechCrunch recently surveyed 24 enterprise-focused VCs and an overwhelming majority predicted enterprises will increase their budgets for AI in 2026 — but not for everything. Most investors said this budget increase will be concentrated and that many enterprises will spend more funds on fewer contracts. Andrew Ferguson, a vice president at Databricks Ventures, predicted 2026 will be the year that enterprises start consolidating their investments…