Startup Battlefield 200: Only 3 days left to apply
Time is running out. The gates to Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 are about to close. In just 3 days, your window to enter the most iconic live startup competition will slam shut. Over 10,000 tech titans, top-tier VCs, and media powerhouses will be watching. This is your chance to rise, roar, and rewrite your startup’s future.
This isn’t a demo day. It’s a battlefield — where ambition meets execution, and only the boldest break through. If your startup has momentum, vision, and fire in its core, June 9 is your deadline to throw your hat into the ring. Apply now.
Apply now to secure your shot at the battlefield
Thousands will try. Only 200 will be accepted. Twenty will pitch it out live on the Disrupt stage. One will raise the Disrupt Cup and claim $100,000 in equity-free winnings.
This is the launchpad of legends: Trello, Mint, Dropbox, Getaround, Discord. Now it’s your turn.
Apply here or learn more about Startup Battlefield.
Startup Battlefield perks
- Free 3-day exhibit space at Disrupt 2025
- 4 complimentary, all-access tickets
- Listing in the official Disrupt app
- Access to press lists and VIP media
- Warm leads from top-tier investors and customers
- Exclusive investor-led masterclasses
- Main stage exposure
- And more — learn more here
Who’s eligible?
Pre-Series A with a product and a mission? You’re ready. Whether you’re bootstrapped or backed, we want ambition. Select Series A teams can also qualify.
Final countdown: 3 days left
Applications close June 9. This is your moment. Don’t miss it. Apply now.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Peloton explores placing its equipment in gyms, launching marketplace for used gear
Fitness equipment maker Peloton‘s CEO Peter Stern has said the company is exploring ways to expand its customer base by making its products available for use in gyms and launching a peer-to-peer marketplace for used equipment.
Speaking at Bloomberg Tech Summit on Thursday, Stern said Peloton plans to distribute its machines to commercial gyms via its subsidiary Precor, a gym equipment supplier, and is working to add Peloton workouts to compatible Precor equipment.
The company this week also set out to grab a share of the market for used Peloton equipment, launching a peer-to-peer marketplace called Repowered. “Historically, [secondhand sales have] taken place, for example, on Facebook marketplace, and that’s absolutely fine for people who want to do that, but it means that you need to transact with a stranger on both ends, and potentially have that stranger come into your home. What we’re trying to do is streamline that and deliver a more premium experience for those secondhand customers,” he said.
Stern said the company aims to use AI to improve personalization for its members. “I want to find ways to scale coaching by creating individualized programs for each of our members so that they can get the right class from the right instructor that’s personalized for them,” he said.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Peloton explores placing its equipment in gyms, launches marketplace for used gear
Fitness equipment maker Peloton‘s CEO Peter Stern has said the company is exploring ways to expand its customer base by making its products available for use in gyms, and launching a peer-to-peer marketplace for used equipment.
Speaking at Bloomberg Tech Summit on Thursday, Stern said Peloton plans to distribute its machines to commercial gyms via its subsidiary Precor, a gym equipment supplier, and is working to add Peloton workouts to compatible Precor equipment.
The company this week also set out to grab a share of the market for used Peloton equipment, launching a peer-to-peer marketplace called Repowered. “Historically, [second-hand sales have] taken place, for example, on Facebook marketplace, and that’s absolutely fine for people who want to do that, but it means that you need to transact with a stranger on both ends, and potentially have that stranger come into your home. What we’re trying to do is streamline that and deliver a more premium experience for those second-hand customers,” he said.
Stern said the company aims to use AI to improve personalization for its members. “I want to find ways to scale coaching by creating individualized programs for each of our members so that they can get the right class from the right instructor that’s personalized for them,” he said.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Final call: Only 2 exhibitor tables left — book before the clock strikes zero
This is it. Only two tables remain to exhibit at TechCrunch All Stage, happening July 15 in Boston — and the booking window officially closes today at 11:59 p.m. PT. If you’ve been waiting to make your move, now’s the time to book your table.
Why your startup should be in the room
This founder-focused conference is where startups — from early-stage to IPO — get discovered, funded, and fast-tracked. The show floor at TC All Stage draws the people who matter: investors, founders, media, and ecosystem leaders all searching for what’s next.
What’s included with your table
Explore a snapshot of what’s included when your startup secures a spot on the show floor. For full details, head over to the TC All Stage exhibitor page.
- A full-day 6’ x 3’ exhibit table in a high-traffic area
- Premium brand placement — on-site, online, and in the event app
- A bundle of event passes to explore sessions, network, and connect
- Access to investors, media, and prospective clients on the show floor
- Exposure through TechCrunch’s curated exhibitor listing
- A chance to generate leads, demo live, and get real-time feedback
Last chance to make your mark
Thousands will walk the floor at TC All Stage in Boston. Will they see your brand? With only two tables left and the deadline hitting tonight, this is your final shot. Secure your exhibitor table before it’s too late.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Court denies Apple’s request to pause ruling on App Store payment fees
A U.S. court denied Apple a stay on a ruling that requires the company to stop charging developers for payments made outside the App Store through links in apps.
This means in the U.S., Apple will no longer be able to charge developers a fee when customers click on a link within their app that takes them outside the App Store for payment, resulting in a potential loss of revenue to the company.
“Apple ‘bears the burden of showing that the circumstances justify an exercise of [our] discretion,’” the court said in a filing. “After reviewing the relevant factors, we are not persuaded that a stay is appropriate,” it added.
Epic Games’ head Tim Sweeney applauded the court’s ruling and said, “The long national nightmare of Apple tax is ended,” in a post on X.
In April, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled in favor of Epic Games, saying that Apple was in “willful violation” of a 2021 injunction that barred the company from forcing anticompetitive pricing. This essentially means that Apple must change the App Store rules and allow developers to freely link to their website for purchasing digital goods.
In response, Apple filed an emergency motion last month seeking a stay on the court’s ruling. The company also filed an appeal against the ruling around the same time.
Last year, Apple began allowing other apps to link out and use non-Apple payment mechanisms, but it still took a 27% fee and added what critics called “scare screens.” With the new ruling, both practices will be eliminated.
Large companies are already making changes to their apps, with Spotify and Amazon publishing new updates that let users pay for their subscriptions and purchases outside the App Store.
With the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) slotted for next week, this is a big blow to Apple. Earlier this week, the company published a report saying that it generated $1.3 trillion in billings and sales in 2024. It added 90% of those sales didn’t generate commission revenue for Apple.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Cursor’s Anysphere nabs $9.9B valuation, soars past $500M ARR
Anysphere, the maker of AI coding assistant Cursor, has raised $900 million at a $9.9 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported. The round was led by a returning investor Thrive Capital, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Accel and DST Global.
The massive round is Anysphere’s third fundraise in less than a year. The three-year-old startup secured its previous capital haul of $100 million at a pre-money valuation of $2.5 billion late last year, as TechCrunch was first to report.
AI coding assistants, often referred to as ‘vibe coders,’ have emerged as one of AI’s most popular applications, with Cursor leading the category. Anysphere’s annualized revenue (ARR) has been doubling approximately every two months, a person familiar with the company told TechCrunch. The company has surpassed $500 million in ARR, sources told Bloomberg, a 60% increase from the $300 million we reported in mid-April.
Cursor offers developers tiered pricing. After a two-week free trial, the company converts users into paying customers, who can opt for either a $20 pro-offering or a $40 monthly business subscription.
Until recently, the majority of the company’s revenue came from individual user subscriptions, Bloomberg reported. However, Anysphere is now offering enterprise licenses, allowing companies to purchase the application for their teams at a higher price point.
Earlier this year, the company was approached by OpenAI and other potential buyers, but Anysphere turned down those offers. The ChatGPT maker bought Windsurf, another fast-growing AI assistant reportedly for $3 billion.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Circle IPO soars giving hope to more startups waiting to go public
Circle, one of the world’s largest issuers of USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, ended its first trading day as a public company at $83.23 per share, 168% above its IPO price of $31 set the previous day.
The IPO pop demonstrates public market investors’ interest in cryptocurrencies and stablecoins in particular amid the Trump administration’s supportive stance on crypto assets.
The significant surge in Circle’s first-day trading could prompt institutional investors to set higher IPO prices for upcoming listings. Imminent IPOs include Omada Health, which is pricing on Thursday, and Klarna, a fintech that’s set to list next week.
The company’s IPO price, at which shares it sold shares, set its initial market value at $6.1 billion, a figure that fell short of Circle’s last private market valuation of $7.7 billion, set it April 2021 when the company raised a $400 million Series F in April 2021, according to PitchBook data.
But the big pop cleaned that up and then some. Circle’s market capitalization (excluding employee options) stood at $16.7 billion by the close of trading. And the company raised about $1.1 billion in the offering.
Circle joins a growing list of companies whose IPOs are priced below their private market highs, including recent ‘down-round’ offerings from healthtech Hinge, contractor platform ServiceTitan, and social network Reddit. So that’s not likely to dissuade startups looking for signs that now is the right time to go public.
Circle’s successful IPO comes three years after Circle’s previous attempt at going public. The stablecoin issuer had plans to combine with a SPAC in 2022 at a $9 billion valuation.
The company’s largest outside shareholders are General Catalyst, which held approximately 8.9% of all stock before the offering, and IDG Capital, which owned 8.8% of all shares. Other significant venture investors include Accel, Breyer Capital and Oak Investment Partners, according to the S1.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Why are Elon Musk and Donald Trump fighting?
President Donald Trump and his biggest political supporter Elon Musk are breaking up in the most public and 21st century way — via their own social networks. And while many predicted the Trump-Musk pair up would eventually sour, it’s still worth asking and trying to answer, “How did we get here?”
Until recently, Musk has been a key figure in Trump’s inner circle. The connection has affected broad swaths of the government, notably through the “Department of Government Efficiency,” an organization created by an executive order and advised by Musk.
Musk, once a fixture at Trump’s Mar-a-lago Resort in Palm Beach, Florida and the White House, has now turned against the president. The source of his discontent: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a 1,038-page piece of legislation that was passed May 22 by the House of Representatives. It now heads to Senate, the next step in the bill’s path toward becoming a law.
Days later, Trump withdrew his nomination of Jared Isaacman , Musk’s pick to head NASA — a move widely viewed as evidence of their faltering relationship. But even through the end of the month, Trump and Musk publicly played nice.
The mood shifted — in a public, scorched earth kind of way — this week.
“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk wrote on X on Tuesday. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
The bill is presented as an effort to cut taxes and invest in American businesses. However, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that while the bill will cut taxes by $3.7 trillion, it will increase the national debt by $2.4 trillion over 10 years and raise the country’s debt ceiling by $4 trillion. This impact on the country’s existing debt crisis has two Republican Senators, Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) breaking from their party’s stance to oppose the bill in its current state.
The bill’s impacts are vast; among numerous other effects, it removes taxes from social security income, tips, and overtime pay. The bill also makes massive cuts to federal healthcare programs like Medicaid and SNAP. The CBO estimates that, by making massive cuts to federal healthcare programs, almost 11 million more people will lack health insurance by 2034.
The bill would also make the effects of Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act from his first term permanent, though economists have found that these cuts had more benefit for the richest Americans than the poorest. Additional tax cuts in Trump’s new bill are also expected to benefit wealthy families more than those in need.
Musk isn’t wrong when he says some representatives who voted for the bill are already regretting it. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) admitted that she had not read the thousand-page bill in its entirety and regrets endorsing it because it would prevent individual states regulating AI for the next decade.
The dispute between Trump and Musk escalated further Thursday, when the president was asked about the Tesla and SpaceX leader’s rejection of the bill.
Trump claims that Musk was deeply familiar with his plans for the bill, but recoiled when he learned it would negatively impact his business.
“He only developed a problem when he found out that we’re going to have to cut the EV mandate,” Trump said, referring to policies that incentivize the production and sale of electric vehicles, like the ones Tesla makes. “That’s billions and billions of dollars.”
Musk went on to claim that Trump only won the election because of his help.
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk said on X.
The two entrepreneurs have continued to make jabs at each other on their respective social media platforms — and it’s escalating.
“Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
In another post, Trump added, “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
Musk posted a screenshot of Trump’s post and added that he would decommission SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft as a result of the president’s statement.
Musk has continued on with a tirade of posts on X against the president who he spent $288 million to help elect. Musk then accused Trump of being part of the Epstein Files, referring to the financier Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual exploitation of children. Trump has not responded to the allegation.
Musk also declared that the Trump tariffs will cause a recession in the latter half of this year, and he posted in agreement with another user’s post saying that Trump should be impeached.
While the public fight has launched frantic levels of posting on X, popcorn emojis, and memes declaring that “the girls are fighting,” the fallout between the world’s richest person and a sitting U.S. president promises to have broader implications for the tech industry.
Following Trump’s lead, other tech billionaires like Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Apple CEO Tim Cook donated to Trump’s inauguration fund. Trump’s policies have already had negative repercussions for some of these companies’ businesses through enforcing heavy tariffs on international imports.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Europe will have to be more Tenacious to land its first rover on the Moon
Europe likely just suffered a setback in its attempt to reach another milestone in the commercial race to use lunar resources. Tenacious, which was set to become the first European-made rover to land on the Moon, was aboard a lander that lost contact during its landing attempt — a strong sign that something went wrong.
If confirmed, this would be the second failed mission of the HAKUTO-R commercial lunar exploration program, two years after a previous crash that had already shattered hopes.
This loss will be particularly felt in Japan; ispace, the company behind HAKUTO-R and the currently missing Resilience lander that carried Tenacious, is a publicly listed Japanese company. But it is also a blow to Europe: The European Space Agency (ESA) supported the mission; and the rover was designed, assembled, tested, and manufactured by ispace-EUROPE out of Luxembourg.
Luxembourg isn’t just ispace-EUROPE’s base — it’s the reason the entity was created in 2017. As part of its SpaceResources.lu initiative, the tiny country became the second in the world after the U.S. to adopt a law giving companies the right to own resources extracted from space.
Had Tenacious’ Luxembourg-based operators managed to drive it around on the Moon, the rover would have captured video and gathered data. One of its missions would have been to collect lunar soil, called regolith, as part of a contract with NASA, to which it was supposed to transfer ownership of the samples.
“I think this will be very helpful to nail down what it means to commercialize space resources and how to do this on a larger scale, both in terms of volume and of global participation and coordination,” ispace-EUROPE CEO Julien Lamamy told TechCrunch on the eve of the landing attempt.
Winning such a contract from NASA was also a first for a European company. But it took some coaxing to get Lammy to brag about the agile team of 50 people from 30 nationalities that made this unique little rover.
Despite a resume that includes time at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and MIT, Lamamy is not one to boast. In our conversation, he admitted he had to “channel his inner American” to explain his team’s achievements. But that’s also because ispace is willfully collaborative.
For instance, the lightweight scoop that was meant to collect regolith for NASA was made by Epiroc, a mining equipment provider out of Sweden. “We could have done this ourselves. Instead, we saw the opportunity to engage a terrestrial industry to think about space,” Lamamy said. “The more people participate, the better.”
More people are participating in Luxembourg’s space ecosystem, too. The Luxembourg Space Agency (LSA) was established in 2018, and the country actively supports the sector, which has gone from niche to mainstream since the Space Resources Law was adopted.
“Even better than that, there are many companies now established downstream of ispace in the value chain,” Lamamy said. He cited the example of Magna Petra, a startup partnering with ispace on mining Helium-3, a rarefied resource, from the lunar surface.
“Our ambition is to develop a space sector that is highly integrated with our industries on earth and opens up new market opportunities, both in space and on Earth,” Luxembourg’s Minister of the Economy, SMEs, Energy and Tourism, Lex Delles, said in a comment when ispace-EUROPE announced the completion of its rover.
That ambition is being fueled by money. Tenacious was developed with co-funding from the LSA through an ESA contract with the Luxembourg National Space Program, LuxIMPULSE. Tax incentives or direct aids are available both for startups and for multinational companies, according to research from Deloitte on Luxembourg’s space industry.
An unusual payload
Tenacious was designed to be both small and light, weighing about five kilograms — half the weight of NASA’s Sojourner Mars rover. By selecting mass-efficient and power-efficient components, Lamamy explained, his team was able to build a very small system that is cheaper to manufacture and to send to the Moon. This made its payload inherently limited, but designed to reach up to one kilogram.
As part of the Resilience mission, Tenacious’ payload included the scoop required for the NASA mission, and perhaps unexpectedly, a miniature red house. Known as The Moonhouse, this small sculpture of a Swedish cottage was supposed to symbolically become the first house on the Moon, a project that artist Mikael Genberg has been pursuing since 1999.
“It’s not about science or politics, it’s about reminding us of what we all share — our humanity, our imagination, and our longing for home. A red house gazing back at “The Pale Blue Dot”, as Carl Sagan once described our fragile planet,” The Moonhouse’s site stated.
Lamamy’s team had prepared to be in charge of successfully dropping and photographing The Moonhouse in a good spot, and took the role seriously. As part of the rover testing it conducted on Earth, both on its testing site in Luxembourg and in several European locations including Spain’s Canary Islands, the operators had rehearsed the procedure several times.
Although poetic, this may have seemed less of a priority than NASA, but not to Lamamy. “That’s an interesting paradigm shift; yes, we’re going to the Moon to improve our knowledge of the Moon from a scientific and commercial perspective, but we are also there to open access to artists, entrepreneurs, educators, and that’s also a very exciting element to the mission.”
Unfortunately, this will now likely have to wait.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Elon Musk and Donald Trump are smack talking each other into their own digital echo chambers
Well, it finally happened. This town wasn’t big enough for the two towering egos of billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, and now they’re duking it out publicly, albeit from their own separate corners of the web.
Musk is taking to his own social media platform, X, to take jabs at Trump, and Trump is firing back on Truth Social and Fox News.
The squabble comes a few days after Musk stepped down from leading DOGE, and after Musk repeatedly disparaged Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” a spending package that House Republicans passed in May. Musk has called the bill “a disgusting abomination,” saying it would significantly increase the federal budget deficit by up to $3.8 trillion in additional debt over the next decade through increased defense spending, immigration enforcement measures, and tax cuts.
In a way, the siloed nature of this shouting match feels poetic. It exposes the cracks in the Musk-Trump political alliance and underscores how powerful social media and loyal fan bases have become in shaping policy narratives and swaying voter perception.
Trump is doing what he often does, trying to discredit a potential rival. For Musk, it’s more of a gamble. Tesla has already taken a hit from his political grandstanding and flirtations with the Trump administration. More of the same could further damage his business. Or it could cement his status as an anti-establishment voice — a tech mogul who doesn’t need traditional power structures to influence the American political landscape.
Musk has suggested in X posts that he would unseat politicians who backed Trump’s budget bill in the 2026 midterms. Pinned to the top of his X account is a poll asking if it’s “time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?” Two hours after the post, 82.3% of nearly 1 million voters said “yes.”
Musk said just a couple weeks ago that he would be taking a step away from politics to focus on his businesses. And it’s those businesses that Trump seems keen to punish. On Truth Social, Trump accused Musk of going “CRAZY” because the administration “took away his EV mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!)”
Trump, here, is referring to the EV tax credit under former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. There never was a mandate that forced anyone to buy EVs. Trump’s spending bill would end the tax credit by the end of this year.
On X, Musk countered that claim, and said he never had eyes on the bill before it passed the House.
Trump also said that Musk blew up after the president refused to put someone Musk “knew very well to run NASA” because he didn’t think it would be “appropriate.” He suggested that the easiest way to save money in the federal budget, “billions and billions of dollars,” would be to “terminate Elon’s governmental subsidies and contracts.”
Musk’s businesses have been awarded at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits over the next two decades, with nearly two-thirds pledged in the last five years, per a February Washington Post report.
Axios reported Wednesday part of Musk’s frustration with Trump’s spending bill and the administration at large was failing to win favorable treatment for his ventures. Not coincidentally, Musk spent more than $260 million to get Trump elected.
As the fight between Musk and Trump develops, it’s starting to get personal.
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk posted in response to a video of Trump throwing shade at Musk on Fox News. “Such ingratitude.”
A few hours later, Musk decided to drop “the really big bomb.”
“[Donald Trump] is in the Epstein files,” Musk wrote on X. “That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”
A number of politicians, including Republican senators, have called for Trump to release government files on financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was implicated in a child sex abuse ring and later committed suicide.
Musk said that his aerospace company, SpaceX, would begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft “immediately” in response to Trump’s threat to cancel contracts awarded to the billionaire’s companies. (NASA uses Dragon for some missions.) And in a reply to a post on X about whether Trump should be impeached, Musk responded, “Yes.”
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Perplexity received 780 million queries last month, CEO says
Perplexity received 780 million queries in May, CEO Aravind Srinivas shared onstage at Bloomberg’s Tech Summit on Thursday. Srinivas said that the AI search engine is seeing more than 20% growth month-over-month.
“Give it a year, we’ll be doing, like, a billion queries a week if we can sustain this growth rate,” Srinivas said. “And that’s pretty impressive because the first day in 2022, we did 3,000 queries, just one single day. So from there to doing 30 million queries a day now, it’s been phenomenal growth.”
Srinivas went on to note that the same growth trajectory is possible, especially with the new Comet browser that it’s working on.
“If people are in the browser, it’s infinite retention,” he said. “Everything in the search bar, everything on the new tab page, everything you’re doing on the sidecar, any of the pages you’re in, these are all going to be extra queries per active user, as well as seeking new users who just are tired of legacy browsers, like Chrome. I think that’s going to be the way to grow over the coming year.”
Srinivas said the reason Perplexity is developing Comet is to shift the role of AI from simply providing answers to actually completing actions on your behalf. He explained that when you get an AI-powered answer, it’s essentially four or five searches in one. On the other hand, AI performing an action would be getting an entire browsing session done with one prompt.
“You really need to actually have a browser and hybridize the compute on the client and the server side in the most seamless way possible,” he said. “And that calls for rethinking the whole browser.”
He went on to explain that Perplexity isn’t thinking of Comet as “yet another browser,” but as a “cognitive operating system.”
“It’ll be there for you every time, anytime, for work or life, as a system on the side, or like, just going and doing browsing sessions for you,” Srinivas said. “And I think that’ll fundamentally make us rethink how we even think about the internet. Like, earlier we would browse the internet, but now people are increasingly living on the internet. Like a lot of our life actually exists there. And if you want to build a proactive, personalized AI, it needs to live together with you, and that’s why we need to rethink the browser entirely.”
While the company hasn’t revealed too much about the browser, Srinivas said in April that one reason Perplexity is developing its own browser is to track user activity beyond its own app so that it can sell premium ads, which would essentially mirror what Google quietly did to become the giant it is today.
It’s currently unknown when exactly Comet will launch, but Srinivas previously said on X that it will launch in the coming weeks.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Walmart and Wing expand drone delivery to five more U.S. cities
Wing, the on-demand drone delivery company owned by Alphabet, is spreading its commercial wings with help from Walmart.
The two companies announced Thursday plans to roll out out drone delivery to more than 100 Walmart stores in five new cities: Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Orlando, and Tampa. Walmart is also adding Wing drone deliveries to its existing — and first market — in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
The expansion signals Walmart’s growing confidence in drone delivery. Greg Cathey, who is senior vice president of Walmart’s U.S. Transformation and Innovation department, said drone delivery would remain a key part of its “commitment to redefining retail.”
“We’re pushing the boundaries of convenience to better serve our customers, making shopping faster and easier than ever before,” Cathey said in a blog posted Thursday.
The expansion also marks a turning point for Wing, from Alphabet X graduate to commercial enterprise. Wing partnered with Walmart in 2023 and launched a pilot program to test on-demand drone delivery at two stores in the Dallas metro area that reached about 60,000 homes. It has since grown to 18 Walmart Supercenters in Dallas-Fort Worth.
The expansion announced Thursday is nearly a five-fold increase of Wing’s operations with Walmart.
“We’re decidedly out of the pilot and trial phase and into scaling up this business,” Wing CEO Adam Woodworth told TechCrunch in a recent interview. “We’ve always been the type of company that wants to do something well and stay focused. And so this is the next big bite at the apple. It’s a much bigger bite than than we’ve taken before.”
Woodworth said the pilot program in Dallas-Fort Worth, and specifically how it scaled, helped form Wing’s drone delivery strategy in the retail sector.
“We figured out how the expansion worked out and looked in DFW, and now we’re sort of copy-pasting that across more markets,” he added.
Woodworth wouldn’t say whether Wing was profitable yet or when it would be. But he did say the company is focused on how to scale its deliveries while keeping its expenses in check. Wing’s hypothesis is to build a business centered on small, lightweight, automated, low cost airplanes — aka drones. There are fixed operational costs tied to those physical assets such as flight operations and training. The crux, and what Wing is trying to navigate, is how to scale the number of drones and flights without adding even more personnel.
“The more places you can be operating, the more you can be flying, the more you can you can defray those costs. This is a meaningful step in that direction,” he said, adding that Wing is trying to keep its resources flat as the scale continues to go up.
Wing is also pushing into the restaurant food delivery sector through its partnership with DoorDash. The two companies paired up in 2022 to launch drone deliveries in Australia and have since worked together in Dallas-Forth Worth and more recently in Charlotte.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Amazon launches new R&D group focused on agentic AI and robotics
Tech giant Amazon plans to launch a new group within its consumer product division that will focus on agentic AI.
Amazon announced this new research and development group at an event on Wednesday, according to reporting from CNBC. This group will be based out of Lab126, Amazon’s hardware R&D division that is behind tech including the Amazon Echo and the Kindle.
The reason this agentic AI group is likely based at a hardware R&D center is that Amazon hopes this group will develop an agentic AI framework to use in the company’s robotics efforts and to give the company’s warehouse robots more skills.
TechCrunch reached out to Amazon for more information.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Rippling calls Deel ‘a criminal syndicate’ and claims 4 other competitors were spied on, too
The fight between HR tech startups has heated up another notch this week as Rippling on Thursday filed an 84-page amended complaint in its lawsuit against Deel.
The complaint accuses Deel of targeting, infiltrating, and compromising four other competitors, in addition to Rippling.
The revised complaint doesn’t name all of the four other alleged victims, except cryptocurrency-based tax and payroll compliance company, Toku. Toku is suing its competitor LiquiFi also alleging corporate espionage, and that Deel was involved.
The complaint alleges that “Victim-3 is a startup accelerator that previously partnered with Deel.” The complaint doesn’t name, or even imply, who that is. (Y Combinator backed both Rippling and Deel but there’s no indication this refers to the VC firm. YC has not yet responded to our request for comment.)
The complaint also says that there are one or more additional victims who are “one or more major competitors of Deel” in the employer of record market. A source familiar with the investigation believes that more witnesses will soon come forward at these other companies to offer details.
Deel did not immediately comment. We will update this story with its response once it does.
Rippling’s amended suit also alleges that Deel’s CEO Alex Bouaziz was the direct mastermind of it all, sharing screenshots of messages as its evidence. And, although this is a civil suit, Rippling is now implying that this could be a criminal matter.
“This case is about a criminal syndicate that operated from the shadows of a multibillion-dollar technology company — Deel,” the complaint reads.
Rippling’s amended lawsuit is now suing Deel under the federal racketeering (RICO) statute, as well as the Defend Trade Secrets Act, and California state law. The lawsuit directly names Alex Bouaziz; his father Philippe Bouaziz — who is chairman and chief financial officer; and Deel’s chief operating officer Daniel Westgarth.
It’s important to note that the lead attorney for Rippling is Alex Spiro of white-shoe law firm Quinn Emanuel. Spiro is a former prosecutor for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. (He’s well known in the legal world, and has his own Wikipedia page.) Using words like “criminal syndicate” in a civil case would be a deliberate choice.
According to the source familiar with the case, federal prosecutors are now actively looking into the allegations against Deel as well.
An investigation, however, is not a conviction. But should charges be filed, Rippling is doing its best to set up Bouaziz himself as one of the people responsible. The complaint even goes so far as to repeatedly use the colorful language “the Bouaziz Racketeering Enterprise.”
Other than that, much of the amended complaint reiterates what Rippling has already alleged.
To recap: a Rippling employee confessed to being a paid spy for Deel in an affidavit that reads like a Hollywood movie. The employee admitted in court to taking sales leads, product roadmaps, customer accounts, names of superstar employees, and whatever other information was asked for.
The employee was caught in a Rippling-set honeypot, both he and Rippling say. Rippling is suing Deel, alleging misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition, and more, largely based on the spying allegations.
Deel has counter-sued in a case that is less about denying Rippling’s charges and making several of its own claims about Rippling. For instance, earlier this week, Deel filed an amended lawsuit that claimed that Rippling was spying on Deel by having an employee “impersonate” a customer to obtain non-public product information.
Grab some fresh popcorn. This battle between arch rivals shows no sign of slowing.
Keep reading the article on Tech Crunch
Like Us, the Director of ‘John Wick’ Didn’t Love ‘The Continental’
This weekend, a new film from the world of John Wick is coming to theaters. It’s called Ballerina and we’re guessing you’ve heard about it. But two years ago, did you hear about a full-fledged John Wick streaming series that was on Peacock? Maybe not. The Continental: From the World of John Wick debuted on the streamer in 2023 to average reviews and tepid audience response. It has yet to return.
Part of that is probably because two of the most crucial people involved in the John Wick franchise, star Keanu Reeves and co-creator/director/current overseer Chad Stahelski, were not actively involved. And, in a new interview talking about both Ballerina and a new documentary called Wick is Pain, Stahelski sounds more than a little bummed about it.
“Keanu and I were—I wouldn’t say sidelined, but our opinion was heard and not really noted,” Stahelski told the Hollywood Reporter. “[The studio] tried to convince me they knew what they were doing. A group of individuals thought they had the magic sauce. But if you take out Basil Iwanyk’s producing intuitiveness, if you take out Keanu’s way of delivering quirky dialogue and if you take out all the visuals I have in my head from Wong Kar-wai, anime, Leone, Bernardo Bertucci or Andrei Tchaikovsky … then it’s not the same thing. They thought this was as easy as using anamorphic lenses, do a kooky hotel, put in weird dialogue, and insert crime drama.”
Chad Stahelski on the set of John Wick 2 with Keanu Reeves – Lionsgate
Stahelski continued, admitting his way of doing things doesn’t always line up with the status quo. “If you saw our process, you’d be like, ‘You’re telling me this billion-dollar franchise does it this way?’” he said. “I’m scouting my next film in London and we saw a cool location yesterday which totally changed the second act. We rewrote the whole thing. I find great cast members and rewrite their parts constantly. That’s what makes [the movies] so good and organic—we’re constantly upgrading. But the studio likes to know what they’re getting for their buck and want to lock a script for budget reasons. While we’re saying, ‘Just write the check, we’ll see you at the finish line.’”
Which, it sounds like, was the case with The Continental. It was not the case, however, with Ballerina, in which both Stahelski and Reeves were involved. And it will not be the case with a potential John Wick 5, which Stahelski knows everyone wants, but he’s still not completely sold on.
“I’m not going to lie to you, it’s a bit of a conundrum,” he said about bringing Wick, who died in the last film, back. “Me and Mike Finch— the writer on 4 who’s also writing 5—we’ve got a pretty good story that I think is cool. Once we have a 50-page book, and if we’re feeling it, we’ll sit with Keanu and shape this thing. Look, everybody seems to want it. It’s a matter of whether we crack it. We’re actively working on it. It’s just … is it going to be satisfying?”
As for John Wick 5, we’ll have to wait and see. But if you head over to the Hollywood Reporter we promise the rest of Stahelski’s interview is incredibly satisfying.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
Anker 3-Port Charger Comes With Cable Is Cheaper Than Its Black Friday Price, No MacBook Adapter Needed
How many devices do you need to charge every day? Your phone, your tablet, your smartwatch, and plenty of other things? You only have a limited amount of wall outlets and places to put chargers, so make things easier on yourself and use a charger that can help you juice everything up at once. You can do just that by buying one from Anker, which is a reliable brand that’s often on sale. In fact, there’s one you can get right now if you want to go ahead and treat yourself, or stop worrying about how many outlets you need on a regular basis.
Head over to Amazon to get the Anker Nano 100W USB-C Charger for just $36, down from its usual price of $55. That’s $19 off and a discount of 35%.
Your new favorite multitasking charger
Anker is one of the most trusted names in charging tech, and this GaN (gallium nitride) charger is one of their best-reviewed for good reason. It’s small (smaller than most laptop bricks) but can still pump out 100W of total power across two USB-C ports and one USB-A. That means you can charge a MacBook Pro, an iPad, and your phone all at once without seeing any slowdown.
That’s all made possible by Anker’s power distribution tech. It can adjust output based on how many devices you plug in and what they need, so you’re not losing efficiency even when you’re multitasking. And unlike so many of those generic multi-port chargers that get suspiciously warm after 10 minutes, this one has a ton of safety features like temperature control and short-circuit protection.
Anker also throws in a 5-foot USB-C to USB-C cable in the box, so you’re not scrambling for extras right out of the gate. Whether you’re someone who travels for work, a college student dealing with limited dorm outlets, or just someone tired of the “one charger per device” lifestyle, this is the kind of purchase that can instantly simplify your setup.
For just $36, you can’t argue that you aren’t getting some excellent value here. You get a charger with multiple ports that can get your phone back to 100% in a short amount of time from a familiar brand, and it’s small enough to toss in a bag and take anywhere. It’s also safe enough to leave alone even with all of its ports full, too. So if you’re on the fence about it, go ahead and get one. You’ll be glad that you did.
BLUETTI Portable Power Station With a 17-Year Lifespan Drops 45%, That’s Only $55 a Year Over Time
No matter what your plans are, it’s always good to prepared for an outage. The summer heat is here in full force, and that means storms aren’t too far behind. And you can never predict an emergency. So why go without electricity unless you absolutely have to? Here’s the thing: You don’t. Not when we live in a world where generators and power stations can keep us juiced up even in the nastiest of accidents and scary storms. And if you head to Amazon right now, you can score one for a great price.
Check out Amazon to get the Bluetti Solar Generator Elite 200 for just $949, down from its usual price of $1,699. That’s $750 off and a discount of 44%.
A portable generator that works hard for you
This model has an impressive 2073.6Wh capacity, with 2600W of continuous AC power, with surges up to 5200W. That’s more than enough to run multiple high-demand devices at once. That means things like portable refrigerators, power tools, laptops, and even small appliances can be charged. In fact, you can power up to nine devices at the same time if you’d like.
And you’ll be able to use this Bluetti Solar Generator for a long time. Inside you’ll find automotive-grade LFP (lithium iron phosphate) batteries that are rated for over 6,000 cycles. They should be good for about 17 years of regular use. There are tons of other portable power stations that don’t even come close, and while you’re definitely paying for it even with this one on sale, you’re still getting plenty in return. And if you’ve got to take it out on the road, you can do that. It’s equipped to handle tough environments, thanks to multi-layer safety protections that help it perform even in extreme temperatures.
Plus, TurboBoost tech and integrated MPPT modules, you can charge the unit up to 80% in just 50 minutes with both AC and DC input. That means less downtime and more energy independence, especially if you’re using it as part of a solar setup.
The updated companion app lets you monitor and control power usage in real time, adding convenience and helping extend your battery life. The bundle includes everything you need to get started: the Elite 200 V2 unit, AC and solar charging cables, a grounding screw, and a user manual. Just don’t lose all of those things.
If you’ve been waiting for the right portable generator to add to your setup, this is a deal worth jumping on. This power station is awesome, packs plenty of power and longevity, and is perfect for everything from backwoods adventures to backup plans. And, of course, when the lights go out.
Alert Issued for Ground Beef Sold at Whole Foods Over E. Coli
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has issued a health alert for 1-pound packages of Organic Rancher brand organic ground beef sold at Whole Foods in stores across the U.S., according to a press release from the government agency. The beef may be contaminated with E. coli.
The 85% lean-15% fat ground beef was produced on May 22 and May 23, according to the FSIS, and has “use or freeze by” dates of June 19, 2025 and June 20, 2025. The product is also marked with the establishment number EST. 4027.
The FSIS has only issued a public health alert and not a recall because it says the products are “no longer available for purchase,” though it’s not clear when they were last on store shelves. The concern, according to the agency, is that the beef may currently be sitting in refrigerators and freezers across the country. But the lack of a recall means it also doesn’t show up on the Whole Foods product recall page. The company didn’t immediate respond to questions emailed on Wednesday.
USDA hasn’t received any reports of illness from consuming the Organic Rancher beef, though most food borne illness goes unreported. Organic Rancher notified FSIS that a test of its beef had shown up positive for E. coli, which can cause cause dehydration, bloody diarrhea, and severe stomach cramps for up to a week. Most people recover, but severe cases can cause kidney failure. Children under five and the elderly are the most at risk for severe symptoms.
Image: USDA / FSIS
In an unrelated health alert, pork lard and beef tallow products from Sulu Organics have been recalled over a lack of inspection by USDA. The fat products were created between December 2024 and March 2025 and include everything from 1.5-pound glass jars to 7-pound plastic buckets to 50-pound boxes. The items were shipped nationwide and don’t have a notice of inspection, according to the agency.
America’s food and drug safety standards have put the nation on edge after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy is the leader of the so-called “Make America Healthy Again” movement and was largely considered a fringe thinker before he was given one of the most important jobs in the federal government. Kennedy has campaigned against vaccines and is so fringe that he doesn’t even believe in germ theory.
Americans have focused less on the head of the USDA, Brooke Rollins, but she’s also an ally of Trump and the fringe right. Rollins nixed $1 billion in federal money for programs that connected local farmers with food banks and schools, providing fresh food to hungry Americans. But Rollins, like every goon in Trump’s army, has been dismantling vital programs and taking food out of the mouths of hungry people in the name of cutting “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
The Final ‘Life of Chuck’ Trailer Is Heavy on Critical Acclaim, and Rightfully So
Fifteen out of 16 is pretty good odds, right? Let me just do the math here… yes. That’s like 94%. So if something happened 15 out of 16 times, including the 12 prior times, you’d have to say there’s a very good chance something is going to happen again. What the hell am I talking about? Well, The Life of Chuck, the new Mike Flanagan film based on a novella by Stephen King, won the prestigious “People’s Choice Award” last year at the Toronto Film Festival. Fifteen of the last 16 films to win that award were nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards and it’s happened the previous 12 times. Oh, and five of them have won.
So yeah, Neon has every right to be confident about the film, which opens in limited release Friday and goes wide June 13. We’ll have a full review later this week but, spoiler alert, we agree that it’s fantastic—and in this final trailer for the movie, which is very, very spoiler free, you’ll see the chorus of praise being heaped on it.
What great about that trailer (If you can really even call it a “trailer” at a whopping 75 seconds) is that it doesn’t tell you anything about the movie except “it’s really freaking good.” What The Life of Chuck is actually about is right there in the title. It’s the story of a man, played by Tom Hiddleston and others, who we watch live a life that seems relatively normal on the surface, but goes beyond in other places. It’s so close to release, it would be a sin to spoil much more than that but it’s told in reverse order as three separate, but related, stories, and as those critics say, it’s wonderful.
It also has an incredible cast, which is led by Hiddleston, but also has Mark Hamill, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Mia Sara, Matthew Lillard, Carl Lumbly, Harvey Guillén, Kate Siegel, Nick Offerman, David Dastmalchian, Rahul Kohli, Heather Langenkamp, and others. Everyone wanted to be a part of this one, and it’s better off for it.
Again, written and directed by Mike Flanagan based on a story by Stephen King, The Life of Chuck opens in limited release June 6 and everywhere on June 13. And, odds are, it’s one that you’ll have to see for those Oscar polls later this year.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
This AI Company Saw Google’s Veo 3-Powered YouTube Slop and Said, ‘Hell Yeah’
Video generation is all the rage right now. While last month was all about Google’s Veo 3, which has already threatened to deepfake all of YouTube, make incoherent action movies, and automate game development, the fun (or horror) hasn’t stopped there. Just this week, OpenAI announced that it’s making its Sora video generation model available for free via Bing, which is big news for anyone that’s interested in testing out a video generator but doesn’t actually feel the need to pay for one yet. And it’s not all about the big two, either—there are apparently other AI companies that saw what Veo 3 was putting down in the world of AI slop and said, “Hold my beer.”
One of those companies is called Captions, which just launched its own video generation model called Mirage Studio that it says can “generate expressive videos at scale” and create “actors that look and feel alive.” To translate: it looks like Mirage Studio is designed to be the perfect model for AI-generating social media slop, and semi-convincing AI social media slop at that.
Introducing Mirage Studio.
Powered by our proprietary omni-modal foundation model.
Generate expressive videos at scale, with actors that actually look and feel alive. Our actors laugh, flinch, sing, rap — all of course, per your direction.
Just upload an audio, describe the… pic.twitter.com/x6naqtlmLh
— Captions (@getcaptionsapp) June 2, 2025
Mirage Studio seems, unlike Veo 3, to be almost singularly geared toward “content creation,” which is to say videos that might appear on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube. As Captions puts it, Mirage Studio is “built for marketers, creative teams, and anyone serious about crafting great narrative videos.” It works by uploading an audio clip and then either describing a scene to generate or dropping in a “reference image.” Once all of that is in there, you just select a few parameters, and boom, you generate the video.
If this sounds like an easy AI-ified way to steal the likeness of content creators or actors, I’m here to report that that’s exactly what it is. As proof, I took some of Gizmodo’s content from my colleague Kyle Barr (sorry, Kyle), who got to check out the Switch 2 recently, and turned his work into a Twitch-like abomination delivered by this guy with a blue mohawk. It’s hard to say who Mirage Studio is stealing from (aside from us), but I’d hazard a guess and say it’s clearly trained on videos from YouTube, Twitch, and other streaming platforms.
To make the video, I did exactly what Captions said: I took a video from Gizmodo’s Instagram page, threw it into the AI slopifier, selected my “actor,” and waited for Mirage Studio to melt it down inside its generative belly and spit it back out. After an excruciating 10 minutes of waiting for a three-second preview, I finally got a little clip of what Kyle’s video would look like if delivered by a blue-haired Twitch streamer, and then I got to generating the video in full. The results are about exactly what I might expect from an AI video generator of this caliber.
I turned @KyleBarr5‘s Switch 2 video on Gizmodo into AI slop with @getcaptionsapp. Sorry, Kyle, and everyone with eyeballs. pic.twitter.com/fXpbcAI6Lv
— James Pero (@jamestpero) June 4, 2025
At a very cursory glance, it did an okay job, but the more you watch, the more it unravels. The narration is mostly fine since it basically stole Kyle’s delivery and regurgitated it, but there are hazy edges around the perimeter of the video and other small visual distortions. Also—my personal favorite—a spontaneous appearance of purple ectoplasm toward the end, which I assume is some kind of hallucination of an object from another video that Mirage Studio stol—er—borrowed from. It’s a little sloppy and more than a little lazy, but it’s also (unfortunately) more than a little discouraging.
It’s pretty clear from this small demo that the AI slop train is coming, and there’s little we can do to prevent it. Outside of implications on content and the deluge of mindless social media chum we may encounter as a result of video generators, there are also big questions we need to unpack about intellectual property—questions with answers that don’t seem to be forthcoming anytime soon. Hollywood actors have already urged regulators en masse to set a framework for this sort of thing, but as is the case with most tech policy, it seems they’re content with being reactive as opposed to preemptive.
In any case, Mirage Studio is just further proof that video generators are coming (or they’ve already arrived), and that’s probably great news if you want to churn out some BS video for clicks, but for anyone that puts time and effort into making content, it may be time to buckle up because things are about to get, well… sloppy.