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DeepSeek has gone viral. Chinese AI lab DeepSeek broke into the mainstream consciousness this week after its chatbot app rose to the top of the Apple App Store charts (and Google Play, as well). DeepSeek’s AI models, which were trained using compute-efficient techniques, have led Wall Street analysts — and technologists — to question whether the U.S. can maintain its lead in the AI race and whether the demand for AI chips will sustain. But where did DeepSeek come from, and how did it rise to international fame so quickly? DeepSeek’s trader origins DeepSeek is backed by High-Flyer Capital Management, a Chinese quantitative hedge fund that uses AI to inform its trading decisions. AI enthusiast Liang Wenfeng co-founded High-Flyer in 2015. Wenfeng, who reportedly began dabbling in trading while a student at Zhejiang University, launched High-Flyer Capital Management as a hedge fund in 2019 focused on developing and deploying AI algorithms. In 2023, High-Flyer started DeepSeek as a lab dedicated to researching AI tools separate from its financial business. With High-Flyer as one of its investors, the lab spun off into its own company, also called DeepSeek. From day one, DeepSeek built its own data center clusters for model training. But like other AI companies in China, DeepSeek has been affected by U.S. export bans on hardware. To train one of its more recent models, the company was forced to use Nvidia H800 chips, a less-powerful version of a chip, the H100, available to U.S. companies. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW DeepSeek’s technical team is said to skew young. The company reportedly aggressively recruits doctorate AI researchers from top Chinese universities. DeepSeek also hires people without any computer science background to help its tech better understand a wide range of subjects, per The New York Times. DeepSeek’s strong models DeepSeek unveiled its first set of models — DeepSeek Coder, DeepSeek LLM, and DeepSeek Chat — in November 2023. But it wasn’t until last spring, when the startup released its next-gen DeepSeek-V2 family of models, that the AI industry started to take notice. DeepSeek-V2, a general-purpose text- and image-analyzing system, performed well in various AI benchmarks — and was far cheaper to run than comparable models at the time. It forced DeepSeek’s domestic competition, including ByteDance and Alibaba, to cut the usage prices for some of their models, and make others completely free. DeepSeek-V3, launched in December 2024, only added to DeepSeek’s notoriety. According to DeepSeek’s internal benchmark testing, DeepSeek V3 outperforms both downloadable, openly available models like Meta’s Llama and “closed” models that can only be accessed through an API, like OpenAI’s GPT-4o. Equally impressive is DeepSeek’s R1 “reasoning” model. Released in January, DeepSeek claims R1 performs as well as OpenAI’s o1 model on key benchmarks. Being a reasoning model, R1 effectively fact-checks itself, which helps it to avoid some of the pitfalls that normally trip up models. Reasoning models take a little longer — usually seconds to minutes longer — to arrive at solutions compared to a typical non-reasoning model. The upside is that they tend to be more reliable in domains such as physics, science, and math. There is a downside to R1, DeepSeek V3, and DeepSeek’s other models, however. Being Chinese-developed AI, they’re subject to benchmarking by China’s internet regulator to ensure that its responses “embody core socialist values.” In DeepSeek’s chatbot app, for example, R1 won’t answer questions about Tiananmen Square or Taiwan’s autonomy. In March, DeepSeek surpassed 16.5 million visits. “[F]or March, DeepSeek is in second place, despite seeing traffic drop 25% from where it was in February, based on daily visits,” David Carr, editor at Similarweb, told TechCrunch. It still pales in comparison to ChatGPT, which surged past 500 million weekly active users in March. A disruptive approach If DeepSeek has a business model, it’s not clear what that model is, exactly. The company prices its products and services well below market value — and gives others away for free. It’s also not taking investor money, despite a ton of VC interest. The way DeepSeek tells it, efficiency breakthroughs have enabled it to maintain extreme cost competitiveness. Some experts dispute the figures the company has supplied, however. Whatever the case may be, developers have taken to DeepSeek’s models, which aren’t open source as the phrase is commonly understood but are available under permissive licenses that allow for commercial use. According to Clem Delangue, the CEO of Hugging Face, one of the platforms hosting DeepSeek’s models, developers on Hugging Face have created over 500 “derivative” models of R1 that have racked up 2.5 million downloads combined. DeepSeek’s success against larger and more established rivals has been described as “upending AI” and “over-hyped.” The company’s success was at least in part responsible for causing Nvidia’s stock price to drop by 18% in January, and for eliciting a public response from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. In March, U.S. Commerce department bureaus told staffers that DeepSeek will be banned on their government devices, according to Reuters. Microsoft announced that DeepSeek is available on its Azure AI Foundry service, Microsoft’s platform that brings together AI services for enterprises under a single banner. When asked about DeepSeek’s impact on Meta’s AI spending during its first-quarter earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said spending on AI infrastructure will continue to be a “strategic advantage” for Meta. In March, OpenAI called DeepSeek “state-subsidized” and “state-controlled,” and recommends that the U.S. government consider banning models from DeepSeek. During Nvidia’s fourth-quarter earnings call, CEO Jensen Huang emphasized DeepSeek’s “excellent innovation,” saying that it and other “reasoning” models are great for Nvidia because they need so much more compute. At the same time, some companies are banning DeepSeek, and so are entire countries and governments, including South Korea. New York state also banned DeepSeek from being used on government devices. In May, Microsoft Vice Chairman and President Brad Smith said in a Senate hearing that Microsoft employees aren’t allowed to use DeepSeek due to data security and propaganda concerns. As for what DeepSeek’s future might hold, it’s not clear. Improved models are a given. But the U.S. government appears to be growing wary of what it perceives as harmful foreign influence. In March, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. will likely ban DeepSeek on government devices. This story was originally published January 28, 2025, and will be updated regularly.

SoundCloud appears to have quietly changed its terms of use to allow the company to train AI on audio that users upload to its platform. As spotted by tech ethicist Ed-Newton Rex, the latest version of SoundCloud’s terms include a provision giving the platform permission to use uploaded content to “inform, train, [or] develop” AI. “You explicitly agree that your Content may be used to inform, train, develop or serve as input to artificial intelligence or machine intelligence technologies or services as part of and for providing the services,” read the terms, which were last updated February 7. SoundCloud seems to claim the right to train on people's uploaded music in their terms. I think they have major questions to answer over this. I checked the wayback machine – it seems to have been added to their terms on 12th Feb 2024. I'm a SoundCloud user and I can't see any… pic.twitter.com/NIk7TP7K3C — Ed Newton-Rex (@ednewtonrex) May 9, 2025 The terms have a carve out for content under “separate agreements” with third-party rightsholders, such as record labels. SoundCloud has a number of licensing agreements with indie labels as well as major music publishers, including Universal Music and Warner Music Group. TechCrunch wasn’t able to find an explicit opt-out option in the platform’s settings menu on the web. SoundCloud didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. SoundCloud, like many large creator platforms, is increasingly embracing AI. Last year, SoundCloud partnered with nearly a dozen vendors to bring AI-powered tools for remixing, generating vocals, and creating custom samples to its platform. In a blog post last fall, SoundCloud said that these partners would receive access to content ID solutions to “ensure rights holders [sic] receive proper credit and compensation,” and it pledged to “uphold ethical and transparent AI practices that respect creators’ rights.” Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW A number of content hosting and social media platforms have changed their policies in recent months to allow for first- and third-party AI training. In October, Elon Musk’s X updated its privacy policy to let outside companies train AI on user posts. Last September, LinkedIn amended its terms to allow it to scrape user data for training. And in December, YouTube began letting third parties train AI on user clips. Many of these moves have prompted backlash from users who argue that AI training policies should be opt-in as opposed to opt-out, and who argue that they should be credited and paid for their contributions to AI training data sets.

A joint international law enforcement action shut down two services accused of providing a botnet of hacked internet-connected devices, including routers, to cybercriminals. U.S. prosecutors also indicted four people accused of hacking into the devices and running the botnet. On Wednesday, the websites of Anyproxy and 5Socks were replaced with notices stating they had been seized by the FBI as part of a law enforcement operation called “Operation Moonlander.” The notice said the law enforcement action was carried out by the FBI, the Dutch National Police (Politie), the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Oklahoma, and the U.S. Department of Justice. Then on Friday, U.S. prosecutors announced the dismantling of the botnet and the indictment of three Russians: Alexey Viktorovich Chertkov, Kirill Vladimirovich Morozov, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Shishkin; and Dmitriy Rubtsov, a Kazakhstan national. The four are accused of profiting from running Anyproxy and 5Socks under the pretense of offering legitimate proxy services, but which prosecutors say were built on hacked routers. Chertkov, Morozov, Rubtsoyv, and Shishkin, who all reside outside of the United States, targeted older-models of wireless internet routers that had known vulnerabilities, compromising “thousands” of such devices, according to the now-unsealed indictment. When in control of those routers, the four individuals then sold access to the botnet on Anyproxy and 5Socks, services that have been active since 2004, according to their websites and the charging authorities. Residential proxy networks are not illegal on their own; these offerings are often used to provide customers with IP addresses for accessing geoblocked content or bypassing government censorship. Anyproxy and 5Socks, however, allegedly built their network of proxies — some of them made of residential IP addresses — by infecting thousands of vulnerable internet-connected devices and effectively turning them into a botnet used by cybercriminals, according to the Department of Justice. “In this way, the botnet subscribers’ internet traffic appeared to come from the IP addresses assigned to the compromised devices rather than the IP addresses assigned to the devices that the subscribers were actually using to conduct their online activity,” read the indictment. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW “Conspirators acting through 5Socks publicly marketed the Anyproxy botnet as a residential proxy service on social media and online discussion forums, including cybercriminal forums,” the indictment added. “Such residential proxy services are particularly useful to criminal hackers to provide anonymity when committing cybercrimes; residential‐as opposed to commercial‐IP addresses are generally assumed by internet security services as much more likely to be legitimate traffic.” According to the DOJ’s press release, the four are believed to have made more than $46 million from selling access to the botnet. The FBI, DOJ, and the Dutch National Police did not respond to requests for comment. Ryan English, a researcher at Black Lotus Labs, told TechCrunch ahead of the domain seizures that the two services were used for several types of abuse, including password spraying, launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and ad fraud. On Friday, Black Lotus Labs, a team of researchers housed within cybersecurity firm Lumen, published a report saying they helped the authorities track the proxy networks. As Black Lotus explained in its report, the botnet was “designed to offer anonymity for malicious actors online.” English told TechCrunch that he and his colleagues are confident that Anyproxy and 5Socks are “the same pool of proxies run by the same operators, just under a different name,” and that “the bulk of the botnet were routers, all kinds of end-of-life make and models.” According to the report and based on Lumen’s global network visibility, the botnet had “an average of about 1,000 weekly active proxies in over 80 countries.” Spur, a company that tracks proxy services on the internet, also worked on the operation. Spur’s co-founder Riley Kilmer told TechCrunch that while 5Socks is one of the smaller criminal networks the company tracks, the network had “gained in popularity for financial fraud.”

HR tech startup Rippling has raised a $450 million Series G round at a $16.8 billion valuation, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. It is also conducting a $200 million tender offer to give current and former employees some liquidity. The equity raise marks a big jump in valuation from a year ago. In April 2024, Rippling was valued at $13.4 billion when it raised a $200 million Series F round led by Coatue and a $590 million tender offer, with $200 million available for employees. (The other $390 million was available for seed and other investors.) The latest financing, which Bloomberg reported was in the works last month, includes participation from a group of new and existing investors. New backers include Sands Capital, GIC, Goldman Sachs Growth, and Baillie Gifford. Existing investors such as Elad Gil, Y Combinator, and others also participated. Rippling is one of Y Combinator’s many breakout success stories. It graduated from the winter 2017 cohort and YC apparently became a client of Rippling’s earlier this year. In a new case study, YC also touted Rippling’s offering as the HR “tool of choice” for “all of the accelerator’s founders. (Rippling even now has a special “Founder Mode” offer of discounted services for YC-funded companies.) Interestingly, Rippling CEO and co-founder Parker Conrad earlier this week shared more information about his company’s new Startup Stack, which appears to be a push to work with earlier-stage companies. In a LinkedIn post, the company said it already works with over 15,000 startups, including Cursor (Anysphere), Clay, and Sierra. The company appears to aggressively market the new stack, offering startups “six months of Rippling free.” The increase in marketing and capital raise come amidst a lawsuit Rippling has filed against rival Deel for allegedly hiring an employee to spy on its internal trade secrets. Deel is also a Y Combinator grad (winter 2019) and filed a countersuit against Rippling in April, denying those allegations and making a few of its own. With this latest capital injection, Rippling has now raised $1.85 billion. It has over 20,000 customers and more than 4,000 employees. Other investors include Kleiner Perkins, Greenoaks Capital, and Founders Fund. The company recently reached $570 million in annualized revenue, according to sources who spoke to The Information. Founded in 2016, Rippling has evolved its offering over time and now has two dozen products, including payroll and benefits, SSO and identity management, bill pay, and corporate cards. The new capital will help it accelerate its expansion into new markets, “enhance” existing products, and support the development of new products. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week was busy for startups: While there were no IPOs of note, there were other exits and even unusual liquidity events, as well as a significant number of funding rounds of various sizes and stages. Most interesting startup stories from the week Image Credits:Tim Robberts / Getty ImagesThis week brought us M&As from serial buyers, an exit option that may be reassuring for founders still struggling with customer retention and funding headwinds. Scooped up: San Jose, California-based startup Mainstreet.com became the latest fintech to get acquired by workforce management company Employer.com, which is now valued at just north of $700 million. Short on cash: Despite recently hitting a key development milestone, General Fusion laid off at least 25% of its employees, with CEO Greg Twinney explaining that the Canadian fusion power company was running out of money. By Datadog: Datadog bought Eppo, a feature-flagging and experimentation platform that will now operate under the brand “Eppo by Datadog.” This comes shortly after it acquired AI-powered observability startup Metaplane. Retention issues: 11x co-founder Hasan Sukkar stepped down as CEO and was replaced by CTO Prabhav Jain. The AI startup came under scrutiny earlier this year for showing logos of companies that were not active customers, amid claims it was struggling with customer retention. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW Build or invest: Carta acquired SimpleClosure, a startup branding itself as “the TurboTax of shutting down.” The equity management startup previously discontinued a similar offering, called Carta Conclusions. Small world: Two months after buying Moveworks, ServiceNow acquired Data.World, which had raised more than $130 million in venture financing for its cloud-native data catalog and data governance platform. With conditions: A group of investors is considering injecting another $30 million into ailing Indian ride-hailing startup BluSmart — as long as co-founder Anmol Singh Jaggi agrees to resign. Liquidity: Sales automation startup Clay took the unusual step of allowing employees with at least one year of tenure to sell shares to existing backer Sequoia. The operation values the company at $1.5 billion. Most interesting VC and funding news this week Image Credits:Steve Jennings / Getty ImagesRounds this week confirmed that AI isn’t the only thing that can attract VCs: The promise of a longer, healthier life — both for people and for batteries — can, too. No limit: NewLimit, the longevity startup founded by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, raised a $130 million Series B led by Kleiner Perkins to develop age-reversing therapies. Qonto rival: Finom, a neobank serving SMBs in several European countries, raised approximately $105 million from General Catalyst to boost its growth. Boosted by defense: Orca AI, whose autonomous navigation platform for shipping has defense applications, raised a $72.5 million Series A, bringing its total funding to over $111 million. Scanning: Ox Security, which scans for vulnerabilities in code, secured a $60 million Series B led by DTCP that it will use for growth and expansion. Crafty: Recraft, whose stealth image model beat OpenAI’s DALL-E and Midjourney on a popular benchmark last year, raised a $30 million Series B led by Accel. Bye, business cards: Australian startup Blinq raised a $25 million Series A to make business cards obsolete and replace them with digital alternatives with CRM integrations. Wisdom truth: WisdomAI, an AI startup hoping to help avoid hallucinations when delivering business insights, raised $23 million in an unusually large seed round. More power: Breathe Battery Technologies, whose software helps optimize and predict battery performance, raised a $21 million Series B led by Kinnevik Online AB. Coding context: Unblocked, a company behind an AI-powered assistant that answers contextual questions about lines of code, raised a $20 million Series A from B Capital and Radical Ventures. Positive energy: Bosch Ventures, the venture arm of Bosch, will keep on investing in deep tech through its new $270 million fund, but with increased focus on North American startups. Last but not least Image Credits:Costas Baltas/Anadolu / Getty ImagesAs Athens-based VC firm Marathon Venture Capital closed its newest fund with approximately $84 million in capital commitments, TechCrunch caught up with partner Panos Papadopoulos to discuss how Greek startups are serving global markets, and more.

Microsoft Build, Microsoft’s biggest event of the year, is on the horizon. It’s scheduled to start May 19 at the Seattle Convention Center, and it’ll run through May 22. The keynote address featuring Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and CTO Kevin Scott will take place May 19 at 9:05 a.m. PT. That’ll be followed by a deep dive with executives Charles Lamanna (CVP of business and industry Copilot) and Scott Guthrie (EVP of cloud and AI) on May 20 at 9 a.m. PT. Both presentations will be streamed live online for free. As for what to expect from Build, in particular the keynote, Microsoft will surely talk about its Copilot family of AI-powered products. The company is aggressively integrating AI into its software and services, aiming to make it a major revenue driver. Suggesting that it’s eager to boost its AI profits sooner rather than later, Microsoft recently bundled Copilot into its Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans and increased the price by 30%. In recent weeks, Microsoft has added “deep research” tools to Copilot and enabled Copilot to browse the web and perform actions on a user’s behalf. It has also reportedly ramped up internal R&D efforts to compete with OpenAI, its increasingly tenuous partner, by developing its own powerful AI models to power Copilot. Copilot is currently dependent on OpenAI models.

The tech layoff wave is still kicking in 2025. Last year saw more than 150,000 job cuts across 549 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. So far this year, more than 22,000 workers have been the victim of reductions across the tech industry, with a staggering 16,084 cuts taking place in February alone. We’re tracking layoffs in the tech industry in 2025 so you can see the trajectory of the cutbacks and understand the impact on innovation across all types of companies. As businesses continue to embrace AI and automation, this tracker serves as a reminder of the human impact of layoffs — and what could be at stake with increased innovation. Below you’ll find a comprehensive list of all the known tech layoffs that have occurred in 2025, which will be updated regularly. If you have a tip on a layoff, contact us here. If you prefer to remain anonymous, you can contact us here. May 2025 April 2025: More than 23,400 employees laid off — see all April 2025 tech layoffs March 2025: 8,834 employees laid off — see all March 2025 tech layoffs February 2025: 16,234 employees laid off — see all February 2025 tech layoffs January 2025: 2,403 employees laid off — see all January 2025 tech layoffs May Match Is reducing its workforce by 13% as part of a reorganization that aims to reduce costs, shore up margins, and streamline its organizational structure. CrowdStrike Is laying off 5% of its global workforce, or around 500 people. The company said the layoffs were part of “a strategic plan (the ‘Plan’) to evolve its operations to yield greater efficiencies as the Company continues to scale its business with focus and discipline to meet its goal of $10 billion in ending [Annual Recurring Revenue]” in its 8-K filing. General Fusion Has cut roughly 25% of its current workforce. The Vancouver-based company, which is developing a technology to generate fusion energy, has raised $440 million from investors, including Jeff Bezos, Temasek, and BDC Capital. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW Deep Instinct Reduced its headcount by 20 employees, accounting for 10% of its total workforce. In April 2023, the Israeli cybersecurity startup had previously laid off a similar number of employees during a round of layoffs. Beam Has shut down its operations months after announcing major expansion plans, per Sifted. The British climate startup has let go of approximately 200 employees, according to a LinkedIn post by James Reynolds, the head of talent. April NetApp Is reportedly eliminating 700 jobs, affecting 6% of its total workforce, as it reorganizes for its operational efficiency. The company, based in San Francisco, provides data storage, cloud services, and CloudOps solutions for businesses. Electronic Arts Is reportedly letting go of approximately 300 to 400 employees, including around 100 at Respawn Entertainment, to focus on its “long-term strategic priorities,” according to Bloomberg. Expedia Is laying off around 3% of its employees as part of its restructuring. The job cuts will mainly affect midlevel positions in the product and technology teams. The latest round of layoffs comes after the company let go of hundreds of employees from its marketing team globally in early March. Cars24 Has reduced its workforce by about 200 employees in its product and technology divisions as part of a restructuring measure. The India-based e-commerce platform for pre-owned vehicles provides a range of services like buying and selling pre-owned cars, financing, insurance, driver-on-demand, and more. In 2023, the SoftBank-backed startup raised $450 million at a valuation of $3.3 billion. Meta Is letting go of over 100 employees in its Reality Labs division, which manages virtual reality and wearable technology, according to The Verge. The job cuts affect employees developing VR experiences for Meta’s Quest headsets and staff working on hardware operations to streamline similar work between the two teams. Intel Announced its plan to lay off more than 21,000 employees, or roughly 20% of its workforce, in April. The move comes ahead of Intel’s Q1 earnings call helmed by recently appointed CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who took over from longtime chief Pat Gelsinger last year. GM Is laying off 200 people at its Factory Zero in Detroit and Hamtramck facility in Michigan, which produces GM’s electric vehicles. The cuts come amid the EV slowdown and is not caused by tariffs, according to a report. Zopper Has reportedly let go of around 100 employees since the start of 2025. Earlier this week, about 50 employees from the tech and product teams were let go in the latest round of job cuts. The India-based insurtech startup has raised a total of $125 million to date. Turo Will reduce its workforce by 150 positions following its decision not to proceed with its IPO, per Bloomberg. The San Francisco-based car rental startup, which had about 1,000 staff in 2024, said the layoffs will bolster its long-term growth plans during economic uncertainty. GupShup Laid off roughly 200 employees to improve efficiency and profitability. It’s the startup’s second round of layoffs in five months, following the job cuts of around 300 employees in December. The conversational AI company, backed by Tiger Global and Fidelity, was last valued at $1.4 billion in 2021. The startup is based in San Francisco and operates in India. Forto Has reportedly eliminated 200 jobs, affecting around one-third of its employees. The German logistics startup reduced a significant number of sales staff. Wicresoft Will stop its operations in China, affecting around 2,000 employees. The move came after Microsoft decided to end outsourcing after-sales support to Wicresoft amid increasing trade tensions. Wicresoft, Microsoft’s first joint venture in China, was founded in 2022 and operates in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. It has over 10,000 employees. Five9 Plans to cut 123 jobs, affecting about 4% of its workforce, according to a report by MarketWatch. The software company prioritizes key strategic areas like artificial intelligence for profitable growth. Google Has laid off hundreds of employees in its platforms and devices division, which covers Android, Pixel phones, the Chrome browser, and more, according to The Information. Microsoft Is contemplating additional layoffs that could happen by May, Business Insider reported, citing anonymous sources. The company is said to be discussing reducing the number of middle managers and non-coders in a bid to increase the ratio of programmers to product managers. Automattic The WordPress.com developer is laying off 16% of its workforce across departments. Before the layoffs, the company’s website showed it had 1,744 employees, so more than 270 staff may have been laid off. Canva Has let go of 10 to 12 technical writers approximately nine months after telling its employees to use generative AI tools wherever possible. The company, which had around 5,500 staff in 2024, was valued at $26 billion after a secondary stock sale in 2024. March Northvolt Has laid off 2,800 employees, affecting 62% of its total staff. The layoffs come weeks after the embattled Swedish battery maker filed for bankruptcy. Block Let go of 931 employees, around 8% of its workforce, as part of a reorganization, according to an internal email seen by TechCrunch. Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and CEO of the fintech company, wrote in the email that the layoffs were not for financial reasons or to replace workers with AI. Brightcove Has laid off 198 employees, who make up about two-thirds of its U.S. workforce, per a media report. The layoff comes a month after the company was acquired by Bending Spoons, an Italian app developer, for $233 million. Brightcove had 600 employees worldwide, with 300 in the U.S., as of December 2023. Acxiom Has reportedly laid off 130 employees, or 3.5% of its total workforce of 3,700 people. Acxiom is owned by IPG, and the news comes just a day after IPG and Omnicom Group shareholders approved the companies’ potential merger. Sequoia Capital Plans to close its office in Washington, D.C., and let go of its policy team there by the end of March, TechCrunch has confirmed. Sequoia opened its Washington office five years ago to deepen its relationship with policymakers. Three full-time employees are expected to be affected, per Forbes. Siemens Announced plans to let go of approximately 5,600 jobs globally in its automation and electric-vehicle charging businesses as part of efforts to improve competitiveness. HelloFresh Is reportedly laying off 273 employees, closing its distribution center in Grand Prairie, Texas, and consolidating to another site in Irving to manage the volume in the region. Otorio Has cut 45 employees, more than half of its workforce, after being acquired by cybersecurity company Armis for $120 million in March. ActiveFence Will reportedly reduce 22 employees, representing 7% of its workforce. Most of those affected are based in Israel as the company undergoes a streamlining process. The New York- and Tel Aviv-headquartered cybersecurity firm has raised $100 million at a valuation of about $500 million in 2021. D-ID Will cut 22 jobs, affecting nearly a quarter of its total workforce, following the announcement of the AI startup’s strategic partnership with Microsoft. NASA Announced it will be shutting down several of its offices in accordance with Elon Musk’s DOGE, including its Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy and the DEI branch in the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity. Zonar Systems Has reportedly laid off some staff, according to LinkedIn posts from ex-employees. The company has not confirmed the layoffs, and it is currently unknown how many workers were affected. Wayfair Announced plans to let go of 340 employees in its technology division as part of a new restructuring effort. HPE Will cut 2,500 employees, or 5% of its total staff, in response to its shares sliding 19% in the first fiscal quarter. TikTok Will cut up to 300 workers in Dublin, accounting for roughly 10% of the company’s workforce in Ireland. LiveRamp Announced it will lay off 65 employees, affecting 5% of its total workforce. Ola Electric Is reportedly set to lay off over 1,000 employees and contractors in a cost-cutting effort. It’s the second round of cuts for the company in just five months. Rec Room Reduced its total headcount by 16% as the gaming startup shifts its focus to be “scrappier” and “more efficient.” ANS Commerce Was shut down just three years after it was acquired by Flipkart. It is currently unknown how many employees were affected. February HP Will cut up to 2,000 jobs as part of its “Future Now” restructuring plan that hopes to save the company $300 million before the end of its fiscal year. GrubHub Announced 500 job cuts after it was sold to Wonder Group for $650 million. The number of cuts affected more than 20% of its previous workforce. Autodesk Announced plans to lay off 1,350 employees, affecting 9% of its total workforce, in an attempt to reshape its GTM model. The company is also making reductions in its facilities, though it does not plan to close any offices. Google Is planning to cut employees in its People Operations and cloud organizations teams in a new reorganization effort. The company is offering a voluntary exit program to U.S.-based People Operations employees. Nautilus Reduced its headcount by 25 employees, accounting for 16% of its total workforce. The company is planning to release a commercial version of its proteome analysis platform in 2026. eBay Will reportedly cut a few dozen employees in Israel, potentially affecting 10% of its 250-person workforce in the country. Starbucks Cut 1,100 jobs in a reorganizing effort that affected its tech workers. The coffee chain will now outsource some tech work to third-party employees. Commercetools Laid off dozens of employees over the last few weeks, including around 10% of staff in one day, after failing to meet its sales growth targets. The “headless commerce” platform raised money at a $1.9 billion valuation just a few years ago. Dayforce Will cut roughly 5% of its current workforce in a new efficiency drive to increase profitability and growth. Expedia Laid off more employees in a new effort to cut costs, though the total number is unknown. Last year, the travel giant cut about 1,500 roles in its Product & Technology division. Skybox Security Has ceased operations and has laid off its employees after selling its business and technology to Israeli cybersecurity company Tufin. The cuts affect roughly 300 people. HerMD Is shutting down its operations amid “ongoing challenges in healthcare.” It’s unclear the number of employees affected. In 2023, the women’s healthcare startup raised $18 million to fund its expansion. Zendesk Cut 51 jobs in its San Francisco headquarters, according to state filings with the Employment Development Department. The SaaS startup previously reduced its headcount by 8% in 2023. Vendease Has cut 120 employees, affecting 44% of its total staff. It’s the Y Combinator-backed Nigerian startup’s second layoff round in just five months. Logically Reportedly laid off dozens of employees as part of a new cost-cutting effort that aims to ensure “long-term success” in the startup’s mission to curb misinformation online. Blue Origin Will lay off about 10% of its workforce, affecting more than 1,000 employees. According to an email to staff obtained by CNN, the cuts will largely have an impact on positions in engineering and program management. Redfin Announced in an SEC filing that it will cut around 450 positions between February and July 2025, with a complete restructuring set to be completed in the fall, following its new partnership with Zillow. Sophos Is laying off 6% of its total workforce, the cybersecurity firm confirmed to TechCrunch. The cuts come less than two weeks after Sophos acquired Secureworks for $859 million. Zepz Will cut nearly 200 employees as it introduces redundancy measures and closes down its operations in Poland and Kenya. Unity Reportedly conducted another round of layoffs. It’s unknown how many employees were affected. JustWorks Cut nearly 200 employees, CEO Mike Seckler announced in a note to employees, citing “potential adverse events” like a recession or rising interest rates. Bird Cut 120 jobs, affecting roughly one-third of its total workforce, TechCrunch exclusively learned. The move comes just a year after the Dutch startup cut 90 employees following its rebrand. Sprinklr Laid off about 500 employees, affecting 15% of its workforce, citing poor business performance. The new cuts follow two earlier layoff rounds for the company that affected roughly 200 employees. Sonos Reportedly let go of approximately 200 employees, according to The Verge. The company previously cut 100 employees as part of a layoff round in August 2024. Workday Laid off 1,750 employees, as originally reported by Bloomberg and confirmed independently by TechCrunch. The cuts affect roughly 8.5% of the enterprise HR platform’s total headcount. Okta Laid off 180 employees, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. The cuts come just over one year after the access and identity management giant let go of 400 workers. Cruise Is laying off 50% of its workforce, including CEO Marc Whitten and several other top executives, as it prepares to shut down operations. What remains of the autonomous vehicle company will move under General Motors. Salesforce Is reportedly eliminating more than 1,000 jobs. The cuts come as the giant is actively recruiting and hiring workers to sell new AI products. January Cushion Has shut down operations, CEO Paul Kesserwani announced on LinkedIn. The fintech startup’s post-money valuation in 2022 was $82.4 million, according to PitchBook. Placer.ai Laid off 150 employees based in the U.S., affecting roughly 18% of its total workforce, in an effort to reach profitability. Amazon Laid off dozens of workers in its communications department in order to help the company “move faster, increase ownership, strengthen our culture, and bring teams closer to customers.” Stripe Is laying off 300 people, according to a leaked memo reported by Business Insider. However, according to the memo, the fintech giant is planning to grow its total headcount by 17%. Textio Laid off 15 employees as the augmented writing startup undergoes a restructuring effort. Pocket FM Is cutting 75 employees in an effort to “ensure the long-term sustainability and success” of the company. The audio company last cut 200 writers in July 2024 months after partnering with ElevenLabs. Aurora Solar Is planning to cut 58 employees in response to an “ongoing macroeconomic challenges and continued uncertainty in the solar industry.” Meta Announced in an internal memo that it will cut 5% of its staff targeting “low performers” as the company prepares for “an intense year.” As of its latest quarterly report, Meta currently has more than 72,000 employees. Wayfair Will cut up to 730 jobs, affecting 3% of its total workforce, as it plans to exit operations in Germany and focus on physical retailers. Pandion Is shutting down its operations, affecting 63 employees. The delivery startup said employees will be paid through January 15 without severance. Icon Is laying off 114 employees as part of a team realignment, per a new WARN notice filing, focusing its efforts on a robotic printing system. Altruist Eliminated 37 jobs, affecting roughly 10% of its total workforce, even as the company pursues “aggressive” hiring. Aqua Security Is cutting dozens of employees across its global markets as part of a strategic reorganization to increase profitability. SolarEdge Technologies Plans to lay off 400 employees globally. It’s the company’s fourth layoff round since January 2024 as the solar industry as a whole faces a downturn. Level The fintech startup, founded in 2018, abruptly shut down earlier this year. Per an email from CEO Paul Aaron, the closure follows an unsuccessful attempt to find a buyer, though Employer.com has a new offer under consideration to acquire the company post-shutdown. This list updates regularly. On April 24, 2025, we corrected the number of layoffs that happened in March.

Google and nuclear site developer Elementl Power announced this week that they will work together on three sites for advanced nuclear reactors. The tech company has been rushing to lock up energy sources as its AI ambitions drive growing power demands at its data centers. This year alone, Google plans to spend $75 billion building data center capacity. With the new deal, Google is promising to add at least 600 megawatts of generating capacity at each of the three sites. Elementl said the reactors will be connected to the grid “with the option for commercial off-take,” meaning that Google can buy power directly. Elementl has been operating stealthily until this announcement. The team has experience in the nuclear industry, though it hasn’t developed any power plants yet. The company was started by Breakwater North and is backed by Energy Impact Partners. Elementl is taking a “technology agnostic” approach, meaning that it hasn’t decided on which small modular reactor (SMR) company it will work with to develop the projects. There are a number of possibilities, though Kairos Power is a likely frontrunner given its existing deal with Google. Kairos says its demo plant will generate 50 megawatts of electricity, with an eventual commercial plant producing 150 megawatts split between two reactors. There’s no universally accepted definition, but SMRs tend to top out at 300 megawatts or so. By comparison, the most recently completed nuclear power plant in the U.S., Vogtle Unit 4 in Georgia, generates over 1.1 gigawatts of electricity, nearly four times the size of a large SMR. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW Silicon Valley has been smitten by SMRs. Startups have been rushing into the space, promising to slash reactor costs through mass manufacturing enabled by SMRs’ smaller size. That, coupled with the promise of 24/7 power that could be sited close to data centers, has pushed them to sign a number of deals with SMR startups, including Oklo, X-Energy, and the aforementioned Kairos. Yet no SMR has been built outside of China. One startup, NuScale, has gotten close to building one, but it suffered a setback in 2023 when its utility partner canceled its contract after the estimated cost of the project more than doubled — even as the plans were downsized in an effort to contain costs.

Data center operator CoreWeave is reportedly seeking a $1.5 billion debt deal after a disappointing IPO. According to the Financial Times, CoreWeave is holding a roadshow this week with bankers at JPMorgan for debt options. The company’s executives intend to use the meetings to gauge investor interest. New Jersey-based CoreWeave listed its shares in March, initially targeting a $2.7 billion fundraise. The company was forced to slash that total to $1.5 billion following investor concern about its large debt burden and a weakening market for AI infrastructure. CoreWeave, which has customers including Microsoft, raised $12.9 billion of debt in the past two years to build data centers. The company had about $8 billion of total debt on its balance sheet as of December 2024, and is facing debt and interest payments of $7.5 billion by the end of 2026, the Financial Times previously reported. TechCrunch has contacted CoreWeave for comment.

Sometime Thursday night, timelines stopped updating for a number of users on X, the social network owned by billionaire Elon Musk. Many users report that their notifications stopped working yesterday, meaning they aren’t being alerted to new posts by the people they follow on X. This reporter is experiencing the issue, as well. My X timeline hasn’t updated in 15 hours, since around 6 p.m. Eastern on May 8. It appears to be a server-side bug. Users affected say that their timelines aren’t updating in the X mobile apps or on the web. That’s what this reporter is seeing, as well. Switching devices and browsers appears to make no difference, nor does signing up for X’s subscription service, X Premium. My X timeline hasn’t updated in nearly a day.Image Credits:XDowndetector, a website that provides real-time information about the status of various applications and services, shows a spike in reports of X outages over the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, on Reddit, several threads about the X notifications issue popped up overnight. “No notifications since about 10 p.m. last night here in Germany!” wrote one user in a thread on X’s unofficial subreddit. Another user in the same thread wrote, “I thought that uninstalling and reinstalling the app would work (it didn’t).” X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The last major outage X suffered was in March, when users worldwide were abruptly disconnected from the social network and subsequently had trouble accessing their feeds, sending messages, and engaging with content. Musk, without evidence, blamed the disruption on a cyberattack. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW Prior to that outage, X experienced large-scale connectivity issues in December 2022 and July 2023. After Musk acquired X, formerly known as Twitter, for $44 billion in 2022, he promptly slashed the company’s workforce by about 80% from 7,500 employees to 1,300 workers. X had just 550 full-time engineers as of January 2023, according to CNBC. A new wave of layoffs hit the company in November 2024, primarily affecting X’s engineering department.

A Florida bill, which would have required social media companies to provide an encryption backdoor for allowing police to access user accounts and private messages, has failed to pass into law. The Social Media Use by Minors bill was “indefinitely postponed” and “withdrawn from consideration” in the Florida House of Representatives earlier this week. Lawmakers in the Florida Senate had already voted to advance the legislation, but a bill requires both legislative chambers to pass before it can become law. The bill would have required social media firms to “provide a mechanism to decrypt end-to-end encryption when law enforcement obtains a subpoena,” which are typically issued by law enforcement agencies and without judicial oversight. Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation called the bill “dangerous and dumb.” Security professionals have long argued that it is impossible to create a secure backdoor that cannot also be maliciously abused, and encryption backdoors put user data at risk of data breaches.

Apple is reportedly developing new chips to drive smart glasses similar to Meta’s Ray-Ban Meta as well as more powerful Macs and AI servers. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman notes that one of the chips is inspired by the Apple Watch’s low-power processors. Apple aims to put these chips into mass production with TSMC by the end of next year or 2027, according to the report. Glasses are a big focus. Bloomberg has previously reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook is determined to beat Meta in the glasses market, where the latter has seen success in recent years. Since 2023, Meta has sold around 2 million pairs of Ray-Ban Metas. According to Bloomberg, Apple is currently exploring non-AR glasses that use cameras to scan the surrounding environment and rely on AI to assist users. One of the processors under development will be able to control these cameras and other components without draining too much battery, per the report.

Applications are almost closed, and you have until 11:59 p.m. PT tonight to reserve your exhibitor table at TechCrunch Sessions: AI, our premiere industry event that’s happening at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall on June 5. Imagine walking into a room filled with 1,200+ investors, founders, enterprise leaders, and journalists — all hunting for the next big thing. Will they discover you, or your competitor? Exhibiting is more than a table — it’s a high-leverage move. Consider the perks: Getting discovered by the exact people you want to meet. Positioning your brand as a serious player in AI. Sparking conversations that lead to investment, partnerships, and press. What comes with your exhibit: Prime 6′ x 3′ table with signage and full setup. Branded profile in the official event app. 5 full-access tickets for your team. Lead capture tools to collect contacts. Wi-Fi, power access, and marketing visibility. This is the only AI-focused TechCrunch event of the year — and it’s your best bet to get right in front of the industry’s movers and shakers in a more intimate setting than the numerous other crammed AI events. Remember, that final deadline is tonight, May 9 at 11:59 p.m. PT. You’ve come too far to go unnoticed. Make your move now and let your innovation lead the future. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW Book your table now and take your place in the spotlight.

Josh Raffaelli, who has long roots as a Silicon Valley investor and has backed a number of Elon Musk companies, is suing his former employer, the massive trillion-dollar AUM Brookfield Asset Management, reports the New York Times. Much of Raffaelli’s complaint concerns how Brookfield covered pandemic-related real estate losses and alleges the company fired him after he filed a whistleblower complaint at the SEC. His suit makes allegations like fraud and bribery, while Brookfield vehemently denies any wrongdoing, it told the Times. In February, Brookfield quietly shuttered the venture capital unit run by Raffaelli and rolled some assets into another unit, Bloomberg reported at the time. One of Raffaelli’s complaints in the suit is that Brookfield didn’t buy as much stock in Musk-owned companies as he had secured the ability to buy. Raffaelli had deals to buy into Musk companies like SpaceX, xAI and the Boring Company, the suit alleges. Raffaelli’s Brookfield fund was, however, a big backer of Musk’s takeover of Twitter, Bloomberg reported. The lawsuit is a very public battle for Raffaelli, who previously worked as a partner at the VC firm then known as Draper Fisher Jurvetson. (Today, it’s a collection of funds.) While at DFJ, Brookfield helped that firm’s make investments into Musk companies like SolarCity (acquired by Tesla), SpaceX, and Tesla.

Microsoft employees aren’t allowed to use DeepSeek due to data security and propaganda concerns, Microsoft vice chairman and president Brad Smith said in a Senate hearing today. “At Microsoft we don’t allow our employees to use the DeepSeek app,” Smith said, referring to DeepSeek’s application service (which is available on both desktop and mobile.) Smith said Microsoft hasn’t put DeepSeek in its app store over those concerns, either. Although lots of organizations and even countries have imposed restrictions on DeepSeek, this is the first time Microsoft has gone public about such a ban. Smith said the restriction stems from the risk that data will be stored in China and that DeepSeek’s answers could be influenced by “Chinese propaganda.” DeepSeek’s privacy policy states it stores user data on Chinese servers. Such data is subject to Chinese law, which mandates cooperation with the country’s intelligence agencies. DeepSeek also heavily censors topics considered sensitive by the Chinese government. Despite Smith’s critical comments about DeepSeek, Microsoft offered up DeepSeek’s R1 model on its Azure cloud service shortly after it went viral earlier this year. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW But that’s a bit different from offering DeepSeek’s chatbot app itself. Since DeepSeek is open source, anybody can download the model, store it on their own servers and offer it to their clients without sending the data back to China. That, however, doesn’t remove other risks like the model spreading propaganda or generating insecure code. During the Senate hearing, Smith said that Microsoft had managed to go inside DeepSeek’s AI model and “change” it to remove “harmful side effects.” Microsoft did not elaborate on exactly what it did to DeepSeek’s model, referring TechCrunch to Smith’s remarks. In its initial launch of DeepSeek on Azure, Microsoft wrote that DeepSeek underwent “rigorous red teaming and safety evaluations” before it was put on Azure. While we can’t help pointing out that DeepSeek’s app is also a direct competitor to Microsoft’s own Copilot internet search chat app, Microsoft doesn’t ban all such chat competitors from its Windows app store. Perplexity is available in the Windows app store, for instance. Although any apps by Microsoft’s archrival Google (including the Chrome browser and Google’s chatbot Gemini) did not surface in our webstore search.

Autonomous vehicle technology company Aurora Innovation plans to expand on the success of its first driverless commercial launch and add night driving to its operations. Aurora said Thursday in the second half of 2025 it will start sending its self-driving trucks out at night and during adverse weather conditions like rain or heavy wind. The company, which provided the update in its first-quarter shareholder letter, also plans to expand its driverless trucking route beyond Dallas to Houston, and into El Paso and Phoenix. Aurora already runs freight with self-driving trucks in those conditions, but with a human safety operator behind the wheel. The company said it has completed more than 4,000 miles in a single self-driving truck without a driver ruuning freight for its launch customers Hirschbach Motor Lines and Uber Freight. In the week since Aurora’s commercial launch, the company has already expanded to two driverless trucks operating on a daily basis, and says it expects to operate “tens of trucks” by the end of 2025. The milestone, and future plans come alongside another major shift at the company: the resignation of co-founder and chief product officer Sterling Anderson. Aurora shared new details Thursday in its first-quarter shareholder letter about plans to grow its autonomous freight service, signaling it will offer more specific timelines for key milestones as it expands. Aurora reported $211 million in operating expenses, including $153 million for R&D. It used $142 million in operating cash and $8 million in capex in the first quarter, ending with nearly $1.2 billion in cash and short-term investments. Aurora expects to spend $175 to $185 million per quarter for the rest of this year. The company didn’t provide revenue figures in its Q1 report. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW In the short-term, Aurora plans to own, operate, maintain and insure its own trucks – made available on the Uber Freight network – for customers. The company is working with partners Paccar and Volvo Trucks to build self-driving trucks at scale. Starting in 2027 or earlier, Aurora expects customers to buy those trucks directly from manufacturers so it can shift to a driver-as-a-service model.

In April, South Korea’s telco giant SK Telecom (SKT) was hit by a cyberattack that led to the theft of personal data on approximately 23 million customers, equivalent to almost half of the country’s 52 million residents. At a National Assembly hearing in Seoul on Thursday, SKT chief executive Young-sang Ryu said about 250,000 users have switched to a different telecom provider following the data breach. He said that expects this number to reach 2.5 million, more than tenfold the current amount, if the company waives cancellation fees. The company could lose up to $5 billion (around ₩7 trillion) over the next three years if it decides not to charge cancellation fees for users who want to cancel their contract early, Ryu said at the hearing. “SK Telecom considers this incident the most severe security breach in the company’s history and is putting forth our utmost effort to minimize any damage to our customers,” a spokesperson at SKT told TechCrunch in an emailed statement. “The number of customers affected and the entity responsible for the hacking is under investigation,” the spokesperson added. A joint investigation involving both public and private entities is currently underway to identify the specific cause of the incident. The Personal Information Protection Committee (PIPC) of South Korea announced on Thursday that 25 different types of personal information, including mobile phone numbers and unique identifiers (IMSI numbers), as well as USIM authentication keys and other USIM data, had been exfiltrated from its central database, known as its home subscriber server. The compromised data can put customers at greater risk of SIM swapping attacks and government surveillance. After its official announcement of the incident on April 22, SKT has been offering SIM card protection and free SIM card replacements to prevent further damage to its customers. “We detected possible information leakage regarding SIM on April 19,” the spokesperson at SKT told TechCrunch. “Following the identification of the breach, we immediately isolated the affected device while thoroughly investigating the entire system.” “To further safeguard our customers, we are currently developing a system that can protect users’ information through the SIM protection service while allowing them to use roaming services seamlessly outside of Korea by May 14,” the spokesperson said. To date, SKT has not received any reports of secondary damage and no verified instances of customer information being distributed or misused on the dark web or other platforms, the company told TechCrunch. A timeline of SKT’s data breach April 18, 2025 SKT detected abnormal activities on April 18 at 11:20 pm local time. SKT found unusual logs and signs of files having been deleted on equipment that the company uses for monitoring and managing billing information for its customers, including data usage and call durations. April 19, 2025 The company identified a data breach on April 19 in its home subscriber server in Seoul, which typically houses subscriber information, including authentication, authorization, location, and mobility details. April 20, 2025 SKT reported the cyberattack incident to Korea’s cybersecurity agency on April 20. April 22, 2025 SKT confirmed on its website that it detected suspicious activity, indicating a “potential” data breach involving some information related to users’ USIMs data. April 28, 2025 SKT began replacing mobile SIM cards of 23 million users, but the company has faced shortages in obtaining sufficient USIM cards to fulfill its promise to provide free SIM card replacements. April 30, 2025 South Korean police began investigating SKT’s suspected cyberattack on April 18. April 30, 2025 South Korean police began investigating SKT’s cyberattack on April 30. According to local media reports, many South Korean companies, including SKT, use Ivanti VPN equipment, and that the recent data breach may be connected to China-backed hackers. Per a local media report, SKT said it received a cybersecurity notice from KISA instructing the company to turn off and replace the Ivanti VPN. TeamT5, a cybersecurity company based in Taiwan, alerted the public to the worldwide threats posed by a government-backed group linked to China, which allegedly took advantage of vulnerabilities in Ivanti’s Connect Secure VPN systems to gain access to multiple organizations globally. Some 20 industries have been affected, including automotive, chemical, financial institutions, law firms, media, research institutes, and telecommunications, across 12 countries, including Australia, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States. May 6, 2025 A team of public and private investigators discovered an additional eight types of malware in SKT’s hacking case. The team is currently investigating whether the new malware was installed on the same home subscriber server as the original four strains or if they are located on separate server equipment. May 7, 2025 Tae-won Chey, the chairman of SK Group, which operates SKT, publicly apologized for the first time for the data breach, some three weeks after the breach occurred. As of May 7, all eligible users have been signed up for the SIM protection service, except those living abroad using roaming services and temporarily suspended, the spokesperson told TechCrunch, adding that its fraud detection system has already been set up for all customers to prevent unauthorized login attempts using cloned SIM cards. May 8, 2028 SKT is currently assessing how to handle the cancellation fees for users affected by the data breach incident. About 250,000 users have switched to another telecom provider following the breach, according to the company’s chief executive at a National Assembly hearing. South Korean authorities, meanwhile, announced that 25 types of personal information were leaked from the company’s databases during the cyberattack.

Sterling Anderson, a veteran of the nascent autonomous vehicle sector and co-founder of Aurora, is resigning just a week after the company launched its commercial self-driving truck service in Texas. Anderson held the chief product officer position at Aurora. The resignation was posted in a regulatory filing along with the company’s first-quarter earnings report. His resignation will go into effect June 1. He will leave the board August 31. The company said in the filing that his resignation from the board “did not result from any disagreement with the Company concerning any matter relating to its operations, policies, or practices. The Company and the entire Board are deeply grateful for Mr. Anderson’s service and his immense contributions to the Company over the years in his role as founder, Chief Product Officer and a member of the Board.” Anderson could not be reached for comment. Anderson was director of Tesla’s Autopilot program when he left co-found Aurora in 2017 alongside CEO Chris Urmson, the former head of the Google self-driving project, and Drew Bagnell, who was leading Uber’s autonomy and perception team. The trio, considered pioneers of the autonomous vehicle industry, gave Aurora immediate buzz, helping it attract high-profile investors like Sequoia Capital, Amazon, and T. Rowe Price Associates as well as a slew of partnerships. It gained more cache in December 2020 when it reached an agreement with Uber to buy the ride-hailing firm’s self-driving unit in a complex deal that valued the combined company at $10 billion. Under the terms of that acquisition, Aurora did not pay cash for Uber ATG, a company that was valued at $7.25 billion following a $1 billion investment in 2019 from Toyota, DENSO and SoftBank’s Vision Fund. Instead, Uber handed over its equity in ATG and invested $400 million into Aurora. Uber received a 26% stake in the combined company, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Within four years the company went from buzzy startup to publicly traded company via a merger with special purpose acquisition company Reinvent Technology Partners Y. The SPAC was launched by LinkedIn co-founder and investor Reid Hoffman, Zynga founder Mark Pincus and managing partner Michael Thompson. This story is developing… Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW

Over $10 billion — that’s how much revenue Apple’s U.S. App Store raked in last year, according to a new analysis by app intelligence provider Appfigures. The firm’s estimates indicate that U.S. App Store revenue from commissions more than doubled between 2020 and 2024. In 2020, Apple’s share of App Store commissions was approximately $4.76 billion, growing to over $10.1 billion by 2024. Based on Appfigures’ data, U.S. App Store developers generated $33.68 billion in gross revenue from their apps and games using Apple’s payments system in 2024, and took home $23.57 billion after Apple’s cut. Image Credits:AppfiguresThough Apple doesn’t typically break out its App Store revenue during earnings, it did publish a report in May 2023 where it said the App Store globally generated $104 billion in estimated billings for digital goods and services in 2022. However, Appfigures’ analysis found the App Store made $61.5 billion globally in 2022, which grew to $91.3 billion in 2024. From this, Apple made more than $27.39 billion in commissions globally last year, Appfigures also said. That leads to a discrepancy between Appfigures’ analysis and Apple’s own. This can be explained by an important caveat found in Apple’s report. Under Apple’s chart, it states that its “billings and sales” figures are “not the same as App Store billings.” That’s important here. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW When Apple wrote its report, the company was trying to show how big the App Store is and how key it is to the overall economy, so it merged App Store revenue with revenue generated outside the App Store to generate its total for the “Billings and Sales” category. In the report, Apple calculated the portion of an app’s total revenue that is facilitated by the App Store, even if the purchase was made elsewhere. For instance, if a user buys a subscription to Hulu on the web, but then spends 60% of their time streaming Hulu on Apple devices, Apple credits itself with facilitating 60% of that user’s spend. (To determine usage, the report relied on third-party sources, like market research firms, to estimate how much usage occurred on smartphones versus tablets, desktops, or TVs.) Apple also allows enterprises to distribute apps with in-app purchases, but these aren’t visible in the App Store. “Grave Irreparable Harm?” Examining the numbers around U.S. Apple App Store revenue is more relevant than ever in the wake of the recent court ruling that now prevents Apple from charging a 27% commission on transactions that take place outside the App Store. Apple initially attempted to comply with the court’s injunction resulting from its antitrust battle with Fortnite maker Epic Games by making changes that wouldn’t harm App Store profits. To do so, Apple last year gave developers a way to apply for an exception to its App Store rules so they could add web links inside their apps that directed customers to external purchases. However, Apple continued to charge a 27% commission on those purchases and dictated how the website links should appear. (This even included the use of “scare screens” to warn consumers of the dangers of making purchases outside the App Store.) Last week, a judge ruled that Apple was in “willful violation” of the 2021 injunction by continuing to collect fees on purchases made outside apps and by creating new anticompetitive barriers. This decision forced Apple to update its U.S. App Store rules, which now allow developers to link out to other ways for consumers to make purchases, without obstacles or commissions. Since then, several apps have taken advantage of the ability to introduce web payments, including Spotify, Amazon Kindle, and Patreon. One small game emulator called Delta is now supporting itself via Patreon memberships, too. Apple is appealing the decision, arguing in its most recent filing that the ruling causes Apple “grave irreparable harm.” “These restrictions, which will cost Apple substantial sums annually, are based on conduct that has never been adjudicated to be (and is not) unlawful,” Apple’s filing stated. “Rather, they were imposed to punish Apple for purported non-compliance with an earlier state-law injunction that is itself invalid.” This argument won’t likely go over well with developers, as many believe Apple should have lowered commissions for everyone years ago, not just for small business developers. Appfigures’ analysis also broke down U.S. App Store revenue by apps and games, which generated Apple approximately $6.28 billion and $3.83 billion, respectively, in 2024. Together, these figures highlight how critical App Store revenue remains to Apple’s bottom line, and why it’s fighting so hard to retain control. Apple tries to delay ruling that bars it from taking a cut on external app payments Apple wins antitrust court battle with Epic Games, appeals court rules

OpenAI is enhancing its AI-powered “deep research” feature with the ability to analyze codebases on GitHub. On Thursday, OpenAI announced what it’s calling the first “connector” for ChatGPT deep research, the company’s tool that searches across the web and other sources to compile thorough research reports on a topic. Now, ChatGPT deep research can link to GitHub (in beta), allowing developers to ask questions about a codebase and engineering documents. The connector will be available for ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Team users over the next few days, with Enterprise and Edu support coming soon, according to an OpenAI spokesperson. OpenAI’s ChatGPT Deep Research feature can now connect to GitHub.Image Credits:OpenAIThe GitHub connector for ChatGPT deep research arrives as AI companies look to make their AI-powered chatbots more useful by building ways to link them to outside platforms and services. Anthropic, for example, recently debuted Integrations, which gives apps a pipeline into its AI chatbot Claude. OpenAI years ago offered a plugin capability for ChatGPT, but deprecated it in favor of custom chatbots called GPTs. “I often hear that users find ChatGPT’s deep research agent so valuable that they want it to connect to their internal sources, in addition to the web,” OpenAI Head of Business Products Nate Gonzalez wrote in a blog post on LinkedIn. “[That’s why] today we’re introducing our first connector.” In addition to answering questions about codebases, the new ChatGPT deep research GitHub connector lets ChatGPT users break down product specs into technical tasks and dependencies, summarize code structure and patterns, and understand how to implement new APIs using real code examples. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW There’s a risk that ChatGPT deep research hallucinates, of course — no AI model in existence doesn’t confidently make things up sometimes. But OpenAI is pitching the new capability as a potential time saver, not a replacement for experts. An OpenAI spokesperson said ChatGPT will respect an organization’s settings so users only see GitHub content they’re already allowed to view and codebases that’ve been explicitly shared with ChatGPT. OpenAI has been investing in its tooling for assistive coding, recently unveiling an open source coding tool for terminals called Codex CLI and upgrading the ChatGPT desktop app to read code in a handful of developer-focused coding apps. The company sees programming as a top use case for its models. Case in point, OpenAI has reportedly reached an agreement to buy AI-powered coding assistant Windsurf for $3 billion. In other OpenAI news on Thursday, the company launched fine-tuning options for developers looking to customize its newer models for particular applications. Devs can now fine-tune OpenAI’s o4-mini “reasoning” model via a technique OpenAI calls reinforcement fine-tuning, which uses task-specific grading to improve the model’s performance. Fine-tuning has also rolled out for the company’s GPT-4.1 nano model. Only verified organizations can fine-tune o4-mini, according to OpenAI. GPT-4.1 nano fine-tuning, meanwhile, is available for all paying developers. OpenAI began gating certain models and developer features behind verification, which requires organizations to submit an ID and other identity documents, in April. The company claims that it’s necessary to prevent abuse.

Social media startup Fizz is suing grocery delivery giant Instacart and party planning app Partiful for trademark infringement, the company announced on Thursday. Earlier this week, Instacart launched a new drinks and snack delivery app for parties called Fizz and announced that Partiful had integrated Fizz directly into its platform. Founded in 2020, Fizz is a Gen Z-focused social networking app available on more than 400 college campuses. The suit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeks a jury trial, injunctive relief, damages, and a court order barring Instacart and Partiful from using the “FIZZ” name in connection with social or event planning services. Instacart and Partiful did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. In the lawsuit, Fizz states that it has been using the “FIZZ” trademark since January 2022 and filed for trademark registration in December 2021. The startup is accusing Instacart and Partiful of common law trademark infringement, federal trademark infringement, cybersquatting, and violating California’s unfair competition laws. Image Credits:Instacart“This new Fizz App by Instacart and Partiful is a blatant attempt to misappropriate the goodwill that Plaintiff has painstakingly developed through its continuous use of the FIZZ Marks among the Gen-Z demographic,” the lawsuit reads. “Together, Instacart and Partiful are competing head-on with Plaintiff in its core market of event planning for the Gen-Z demographic. Instacart and Partiful could have chosen any name for their new venture, but rather than compete on an even playing field, they are using FIZZ.” Fizz alleges that Instacart and Partiful knowingly launched the new app with the identical name for the same Gen Z demographic, creating a likelihood of confusion among customers who may believe that the new ordering service is affiliated with or endorsed by Fizz. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW The startup also alleges that Instacart and Partiful are exploiting its brand recognition as a known social platform for Gen Z. “Plaintiff is informed and believes and thereupon alleges that Defendant Instacart had a bad faith intent to profit from the FIZZ Marks when it registered the domain name ,” the lawsuit states. “Specifically, Defendant Instacart knew or should have known of the FIZZ Marks and incorporated Plaintiff’s trademark and trade name in its domain name. In doing so, Defendant Instacart intended to divert consumers from the Fizz Platform’s online location to the Fizz App online location for Defendant’s own commercial gain.” Additionally, the lawsuit alleges that Partiful competes with Fizz directly in the events planning space, and that the company is now using Fizz’s name to confuse the Gen Z demographic after failing “to win the Gen Z market through fair competition.” The lawsuit announced today isn’t Fizz’s first brush with legal action, as the startup sued rival Sidechat in 2023 over unfair competition practices.

Sankaet Pathak’s last startup, fintech Synapse, filed for bankruptcy in 2024 amid issues with partner Evolve Bank & Trust. Tens of millions of dollars in deposits made by consumers, mostly customers of fintechs that worked with Synapse, remain unaccounted for. Yet according to The Information, Pathak is reportedly moving full steam ahead on attempts to fundraise for his new venture, humanoid robotics startup Foundation. Pathak is said to be in the midst of raising $100 million for Foundation at a whopping $1 billion valuation. The numbers seem particularly ambitious considering the startup only debuted its humanoid robot, Phantom, earlier this year. Foundation only last August raised $11 million in a pre-seed funding round from Tribe Capital and “other angels.” Foundation’s self-proclaimed mission is to “create advanced humanoid robots that can operate in complex environments” to address the labor shortage. TechCrunch has reached out to Pathak for comment.

Meta has chosen Robert Fergus to lead its Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) lab, according to Bloomberg. Fergus had been working at Google DeepMind as a research director for nearly five years, per his LinkedIn. Prior to Google, he worked as a researcher scientist at Meta. Meta’s FAIR, which has been around since 2013, has faced challenges in recent years, according to a report from Fortune. FAIR led research on the company’s early AI models, including Llama 1 and Llama 2. However, researchers have reportedly departed the unit en masse for other startups, companies, and even Meta’s newer GenAI group, which led the development of Llama 4. Meta’s previous VP of AI Research, Joelle Pineau, announced in April she’d be leaving the company for a new opportunity.

Instagram Threads will begin testing video ads, Meta announced on Thursday. The test, which will make Threads look more like its competitor X, is an expansion of Threads’ advertising initiatives, which began last month with the opening up of ads to global advertisers. The news was announced at Meta’s presentation at the IAB NewFronts, where a number of social media companies pitch themselves to advertisers. On Threads, Meta says a “small number” of advertisers will test 19:9 or 1:1 video ad creatives that will appear in between pieces of organic content in the Threads feed. The company didn’t share other details around pricing or frequency of those ads, however. Image Credits:Meta's Instagram ThreadsThe update follows Meta’s recent announcement that Threads now reaches over 350 million monthly active users. The app has also seen a 35% increase in the time spent on Threads as a result of improvements to the app’s recommendation systems, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also told investors on Meta’s earnings call in April. Meta announced the news around Threads, among other updates to its ad products, at the NewFronts. The company says it’s also testing a new short-form video solution, Reels trending ads, that will be shown next to the most trending Reels from creators. Rival TikTok this week had also introduced an expansion of its similar offering, called Pulse Suite, which will now let advertisers market themselves next to trending content by category, holiday, tentpole moments, cultural events, and evergreen, always-on content from sports, entertainment, and lifestyle publishers. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 BOOK NOW Meta will also begin to test Trends in Instagram’s Creator Marketplace, to help advertisers find popular trneds, and will test the Creator Marketplace API to help businesses find and connect with quality creators at scale. The company is also rolling out Video Expansion on Facebook Reels, which adjusts video assets by generating unseen pixels in each video frame to expand the aspect ratio for a more native experience.