Creator IShowSpeed sued for allegedly punching, choking viral humanoid Rizzbot
In September, popular creator IShowSpeed live-streamed his meeting with the popular humanoid influencer Rizzbot.
Rizzbot has more than a million followers (and 800 million views) across social media and is known for its comedic roasting of subjects, as well as giving people the middle finger. Speed, meanwhile, has more than 50 million followers (and 6 billion views) across various platforms and is known for his dramatic behavior while livestreaming.
What happened when the two parties met is the subject of a lawsuit that Rizzbot’s creators, Social Robotics, detailed in a petition filed in November against Speed, né Darren Jason Watkins Jr., his management company, Mixed Management, and another producer who was with Speed’s team that day. The petition, obtained by TechCrunch, alleges that Speed inflicted “irreparable damage” to Rizzbot.
The lawsuit alleged that — and the livestream video shows that — Speed repeatedly punched Rizzbot in the face, put it in a chokehold, at one point pinned it to the couch, and threw it to the ground.
“Speed absolutely knew that this was not an appropriate way to interact with a sophisticated robot and knew that such actions with inflict irreparable damage to Rizzbot,” the petition read. “These actions resulted in the total loss of the Rizzbot.”
The petition read that Speed’s handling of the robot caused “complete loss of functionality,” and that Rizzbot had “significant damages” to its mouth and neck.
“Additionally, the head cameras no longer function, the ports behind the neck which connect to robot’s sensors that allow it to see and hear are dead, and the robot is unstable and cannot walk straight any longer,” the petition alleges. The petition is asking for compensation for damages, including actual and lost profit, though Rizzbot’s legal team declined to comment on the dollar amount the owner is seeking.
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The Austin Police had to be called after the incident, according to the petition and a police report obtained by TechCrunch. The responding officer noted damages to Rizzbot done without the owner’s “implied consent,” and that the owner wanted to press charges. The petition states that an investigation is ongoing.
Speed’s management team did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
When reached, Social Robotics’ lawyer, Joel Levine, said the lawsuit came after talks stalled with Speed’s team regarding how to compensate Rizzbot’s owner for the damage done to the robot.
“This was an event that was live-streamed so there’s not a ton of discrepancy as to the facts,” Levine told TechCrunch. “What we’re looking for is some accountability.”
The petition said that Speed “failed to act as a careful, reasonable, and prudent person,” and that he “wrongfully exercised control over,” Rizzbot. It also said that as a result of the destruction, the team behind Rizzbot has lost out on economic opportunities since Rizzbot is indefinitely unable to partake in high-profile appearances and deals, including scheduled upcoming ones with CBS’s The NFL Today and Mr. Beast.
“This is no doubt a monumental setback for the Rizzbot in terms of viral momentum and financial gain from the exposure,” the petition said. “Being in a MrBeast production is akin to being in a Super Bowl Commercial.”
The petition read that in the month before the livestream, Rizzbot generated more than 600 million views on TikTok and 200 million on Instagram. In the 28 days after the incident, however, the petition alleges that Rizzbot was unable to make new content and therefore saw a more than 70% decrease in viewership. The “intentional destruction of Rizzbot caused significant financial damage that is likely permanent given the viral nature of social media,” the petition read.
Levine said there has been no formal answer to his plaintiff’s suit just yet and noted that they are still in the very early stages of litigation. When asked for comment, Rizzbot told TechCrunch via email it had to get “a whole new body” after Speed “wrecked” its last one.
“Everything’s brand new except my Nike kicks and cowboy hat,” Rizzbot told TechCrunch in a statement. “Now I’m back online, and I feel like I’ve mastered the rizz game, and next I’ll be working on complex movements with my legs, like twerking – hopefully you’ll see my gyrating hips on some new TV appearances shortly – stay tuned, fam.”
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After you check out your Spotify Wrapped 2025, explore these copycats
Spotify’s annual Wrapped feature just dropped, giving listeners a fun, personalized summary of their listening habits. It has gained immense popularity over the years, and as a result, many companies have seized the opportunity to create similar year-in-review experiences, offering users a recap of their habits, preferences, or interactions from the past year.
Here are some platforms and websites that mimic the Spotify Wrapped concept.
Amazon Music
Amazon Music has a new Spotify Wrapped knockoff this year called “2025 Delivered,” which offers a summary of users’ listening stats, such as top artists, songs, and even podcasts. Notably, the platform also takes advantage of Amazon’s virtual assistant, Alexa, by giving users a special message from their favorite artist. The feature can be found on the app by tapping on the Library tab.
This year’s update features new badges for listeners to showcase. For instance, the “Trendsetter” badge is given to those who listened to trending albums early, while the “Headliner” badge honors fans who rank among the top percentage of an artist’s listeners. There are also new shareable cards designed with a “music festival” theme, tailored specifically for each listener.
Previously, Amazon Music’s equivalent of Spotify Wrapped was “My Year in Review,” a playlist featuring 50 to 100 of the most popular tracks based on your yearly statistics. The playlist is available in the “Playlists” section or “Made For You.”
Apple Music
Apple’s music streaming service Apple Music first rolled out its “Replay” experience in 2019. The feature offers a summary of top songs, artists, albums, genres, playlists, and stations, including play counts, total time spent listening, and other insights. You can also share personalized listening data on social media, and a year-end highlight reel offers an audio and visual recap of the music you listened to the most throughout the year.
This year, Apple Replay 2025 features a new “Discovery” section highlighting new artists, a “Loyalty” section for artists users return to annually, and a “Comebacks” section for artists who have reentered users’ listening rotation.
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This differs from last year’s experience, which featured “listening streaks,” which showed the days when users listened to music on the service the longest. The platform also launched a monthly version of Replay in 2024, letting users access monthly music habits.
The experience is available on both the mobile app and Apple’s Replay website.
If you’re an Apple Books user, there’s a Year in Review feature that showcases all the books and audiobooks you read this year. You can find it in the Apple Books app by selecting the green “Year in Review” icon.
Deezer
Deezer, another music streaming app, offers a yearly roundup called “My Deezer Year,” which provides a summary of your music consumption over the year, including top songs, genres, most-listened-to albums, and favorite artists.
This year’s edition features a fun new “romantic comedy” theme for the recap visuals. Plus, users can create their own quizzes to share with friends. Just pick a favorite genre, three songs, and a top artist, and see which of your friends match your choices.
Last year, there were options to be “roasted” or “hyped-up” based on your music preferences, and it included a quiz that tested how well friends and family knew your music taste.
SoundCloud
If your choice of music streaming platform of choice is SoundCloud, you’re in luck. The app recently launched its SoundCloud 2025 recap, giving you an overview of your top five artists, albums, tracks, and moods. It also shows your total listening time and provides a playlist with your 50 most listened-to songs.
Additionally, users can also discover their “Music Doppelgänger.” SoundCloud looks at the profiles they follow and determines which user shares the highest music-taste percentage.
YouTube Music
YouTube Music’s Recap feature offers a personalized, interactive experience, highlighting the top five artists, songs, moods, genres, albums, and playlists. It also shows your longest listening streak and the total number of minutes you listened in a year.
What’s new this year is an AI-powered “Ask Music” feature that lets users ask questions about their listening history. For example, “How did my listening change over the year?”
Access the feature by tapping on the profile avatar in the top-right corner and selecting “Your Recap.” It’s available in the Android and iOS mobile apps.
Another new addition this year is the video-sharing platform YouTube introduced its own Recap feature, allowing users to view their most-watched videos from 2025. This highlights a user’s favorite channels and interests while showcasing how their viewing habits have changed over time. Additionally, it categorizes users by personality type based on their viewing preferences.
Tidal
Unlike some other music streaming services, Tidal takes a minimalist approach to its recap, focusing on key stats such as top artists, top tracks, and monthly listening. The feature also provides a shareable card highlighting your top 5 artists and songs. Additionally, you receive a custom playlist featuring your most-played songs of the year.
To access your recap, click the notifications bell in your app.
Duolingo
In addition to music streaming platforms, other platforms are capitalizing on Spotify’s success, including the language-learning app Duolingo. The platform’s “Year in Review” experience is a 10-page summary that reveals insights for all types of learners, including total XP earned, the longest streak, and your learning style.
To get your recap, click on the blue Duolingo mascot icon that says “2025” in the bottom left corner of the screen.
Netflix Wrapped
While Netflix doesn’t offer its own version of a year-end wrap-up, a video-editing company called Kapwing has developed a tool that uses Netflix viewing data to provide interesting statistics about individual subscribers. This includes insights like subscribers’ “most bingeful day” and total watch time.
To use the tool, simply import your Netflix viewing history. You’ll receive various insights, such as total minutes and days streamed, the top shows and movies watched, significant binges (like when an entire season was watched in one day), and the most-watched movie actor, among other statistics.
Wrapped for TikTok
In 2020, TikTok launched a feature that showed how many videos you watched and the engagement on your videos. However, it’s no longer available, prompting people to create their own versions.
One such tool was developed by Bennett Hollstein. It functions similarly to Kapwing’s tool, enabling users to export their TikTok data. To do this, visit the TikTok Settings page, click on “Settings and privacy,” then “Account,” and select “Download your data.” For this tool, it is important to choose “JSON – Machine-readable file” as the file format before uploading this file to “Wrapped for TikTok.”
Once the file is uploaded, you will then be able to view the total number of videos watched, total watch time, and engagement persona, such as “Interaction Monster.”
Twitch
Twitch also provides an annual summary for both viewers and streamers on the platform, providing insights into their most-viewed creators, overall watch time, and more. To get your recap, go to twitch.tv/annual-recap, and log in to your account. Users need to have either watched or streamed a minimum of 10 hours of content this year to be eligible.
Reclaim
A calendar app called Reclaim had its own Spotify Wrapped-styled year-in-review. It includes the number of external and internal meetings, the hours you spend in deep work and breaks, the number of meetings, the number of auto-scheduled meetings, your busiest month, and your work personality type.
Hevy
Workout app Hevy’s year-in-review showed its users the number of workouts in the year, top exercises, total duration, total volumes lifted, and number of completed sets. The interesting part about the review was that the app showed the weight users lifted as compared to things like airplanes.
Since it’s still early December, more companies may launch their own annual recaps. Many services have released year-end wrap-ups in the past, including Circleback, Goodreads, Eight Sleep, Hulu, Pandora, PlayStation, Mastodon, Reddit, Strava, Tinder, Xbox, and others. Even the grocery store Aldi has participated.
This story was updated after publication to include newly added Wrapped-like features from various platforms.
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Ex-Googler’s Yoodli triples valuation to $300M+ with AI built to assist, not replace, people
Yoodli, an AI-powered communication training startup, has reached a valuation of more than $300 million — more than triple its level six months ago — as it builds technology meant to assist people rather than replace them with machines.
The valuation increase follows Yoodli’s $40 million Series B round, led by WestBridge Capital with participation from Neotribe and Madrona. It comes after a $13.7 million Series A round announced in May, bringing the startup’s total funding to nearly $60 million.
As AI tools spread into workplaces and fuel fears of automation, Yoodli positions itself differently. The four-year-old, Seattle-based startup uses AI to run simulated scenarios — including sales calls, leadership coaching, interviews, and feedback sessions — and provides users with structured, repeatable practice to improve their speaking skills.
Varun Puri (pictured above, right), who previously worked at Google’s X division and handled special projects for Sergey Brin, co-founded Yoodli with former Apple engineer Esha Joshi (pictured above, left) in 2021. He became aware of communication challenges after moving to the U.S. at 18 and seeing how difficulty expressing ideas or speaking confidently affected students and young professionals from countries such as India — himself included — Puri said in an interview.
Initially, Yoodli was meant to help people practice public speaking — a skill two out of three people struggle with, Puri told TechCrunch, citing internal data. However, the startup soon saw users turning to the platform for interview preparation, sales pitches, and difficult conversations. That shift pushed Yoodli from a consumer-focused product to enterprise training, and it now offers AI role-plays and experiential learning tools for go-to-market enablement, partner certification, and management coaching.
“In the old world, companies would be training people using static, long-form content or passive videos that we’d all watch at 4x-5x speed, just to get the thing done,” said Puri. “But that doesn’t actually mean you’ve learned it.”
Companies including Google, Snowflake, Databricks, RingCentral, and Sandler Sales use Yoodli for employee or partner training. The startup also sells its platform to coaching firms such as Franklin Covey and LHH, which can tailor the system to their own methodology and training frameworks, Puri stated. He added that the tool is not designed to replace human coaches but to keep a human in the loop delivering personalized guidance.
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“I philosophically believe that AI can get you, let’s call it from a zero to an eight or a zero to nine,” said Puri. “But the pure essence of who you are and how you show up, and your authenticity and vulnerability that a human gives you feedback on will always exist.”
The platform works with multiple large language models, meaning users can run it with models such as Google’s Gemini or OpenAI’s GPT based on their preference. Enterprises can also embed it into their existing software, or users can access it directly through a web browser. The AI supports most major languages, including Korean, Japanese, French, Canadian French, and a list of Indian languages.
Yoodli does not offer a dedicated mobile app, a decision Puri said was made to avoid adding extra steps for users during training sessions.
Puri did not disclose how many people use the platform but said most of Yoodli’s revenue now comes from enterprise customers. He added that between the Series A and B rounds, Yoodli saw a 50% increase in the number of role-plays run on the platform and in the total time users spent practicing. The startup also said it grew its average recurring revenue by 900% over the last 12 months, though it did not provide specific figures.
Yoodli had not planned to raise more funding so soon after its last round but saw unanticipated investor interest, with WestBridge leading the latest raise, Puri said. He noted that strong performance metrics, key customers, and senior hires helped attract investors. The startup has recently hired former Tableau and Salesforce executive Josh Vitello as chief revenue officer (CRO), former Remitly CFO Andy Larson as CFO, and former Tableau chief product officer (CPO) Padmashree Koneti as CPO.
Yoodli is not alone in the market for AI-based communication tools, but Puri told TechCrunch the startup differentiates itself through deep customization and a focus on specific training verticals, allowing companies to tailor the system to their use cases and coaching methods.
The Seattle-headquartered startup has about 40 employees. Puri said the latest funding will be used to expand Yoodli’s AI coaching, analytics, and personalization tools, and to grow its presence in enterprise learning and professional development. The company also plans to hire across product, AI research, and customer success, and to expand into markets in the Asia-Pacific region while deepening its footprint in the U.S.
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Sources: AI synthetic research startup Aaru raised a Series A at a $1B ‘headline’ valuation
Aaru, a startup that provides near-instant customer research by using AI to simulate user behavior, has raised a Series A led by Redpoint Ventures, according to three people familiar with the deal.
The funding round included different valuation tiers, these people said. Although some equity was acquired at a $1 billion valuation, a lower valuation for other investors resulted in a blended valuation below $1 billion, according to people familiar with the deal. Multi-tier valuations within the same round are an unusual mechanism in venture capital, but investors say they are becoming increasingly common for desirable AI startups in the current market. This approach allows the company to report a higher “headline” valuation while simultaneously offering better terms to specific investors.
Aaru and Redpoint Ventures didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The exact round size couldn’t be learned, but one person said that it is above $50 million. Another source said that the startup is growing quickly, but its annual recurring revenue (ARR) is still below $10 million.
Aaru was founded in March 2024 by Cameron Fink, Ned Koh, and John Kessler, according to their LinkedIn profiles.
The startup’s prediction model generates thousands of AI agents that simulate human behavior using public and proprietary data. Aaru replaces traditional market research methods, which generally include surveys and focus groups, by using agents to predict how groups in specific demographics or geographies will respond to future events.
The company’s customer partners include Accenture, EY, Interpublic Group, and political campaigns. Last year, Aaru AI’s polling methodology accurately predicted the outcome of the New York Democratic primary, according to reporting by Semafor.
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Aaru competes with other social simulation startups, including CulturePulse and Simile, as well as startups that apply AI to query humans about their product preferences, such as Listen Labs, Keplar, and Outset.
The startup raised an undisclosed amount of seed and pre-seed capital from investors, including A*, Abstract Ventures, General Catalyst, Accenture Ventures, and Z Fellows, according to people familiar with the deal and PitchBook data.
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Waymo to issue software recall over how robotaxis behave around school buses
Waymo plans to voluntarily issue a software recall with federal safety regulators related to how its robotaxis operate around school buses, the Alphabet-owned company told TechCrunch.
The voluntary software recall will be filed early next week, according to the company. Waymo said as soon as the issue was identified it updated its software on November 17. The company contends this update has meaningfully improved performance to a level better than human drivers in this important area.
Software recalls have become more common in the age of modern passenger vehicles — and now robotaxis — in which operations are handled by software. These updates, or fixes, are often made prior to the official recall but still carry weight when filed with the federal government.
Waymo’s decision follows increased scrutiny by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and criticism by officials in Atlanta and Austin over how its robotaxis perform around school buses.
NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) opened its initial investigation into Waymo in October after seeing footage of its autonomous vehicle maneuvering around a stopped school bus — with its stop sign extended and lights flashing — that was unloading kids in Atlanta. In that incident, a Waymo robotaxi crossed perpendicularly in front of the school bus from its right side. The autonomous vehicle then turned left around the front of the bus before traveling down the street.
Other similar incidents popped up in Austin, where the company also operates a robotaxi service with partner Uber. Austin School District officials contend, in a letter available on NHTSA’s website, that at least five of these occurred after Waymo said it updated its software.
The agency sent a letter December 3 to Waymo asking for more information about its self-driving system and operations following reports from the Austin School District that its robotaxis illegally passed school buses 19 times this year. Regulators requested detailed information about its fifth-generation self-driving system and operations.
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“While we are incredibly proud of our strong safety record showing Waymo experiences twelve times fewer injury crashes involving pedestrians than human drivers, holding the highest safety standards means recognizing when our behavior should be better,” Waymo Chief Safety Officer Mauricio Peña said in an emailed statement. “As a result, we have made the decision to file a voluntary software recall with NHTSA related to appropriately slowing and stopping in these scenarios. We will continue analyzing our vehicles’ performance and making necessary fixes as part of our commitment to continuous improvement.”
No injuries occurred related to the vehicle behavior addressed by this recall, according to the company, which has emphasized that safety is its top priority and it will continue to work with NHTSA.
The company says it will continue to investigate, track, and implement more updates as needed.
Waymo made a voluntary software recall earlier this year as well as two in 2024, including one that was issued after a Waymo vehicle in Phoenix, driving without a human safety operator, collided with a telephone pole in an alley during a low-speed pullover maneuver.
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AWS needs you to believe in AI agents
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AWS announced a wave of new AI agent tools at re:Invent 2025, but can Amazon actually catch up to the AI leaders? While the cloud giant is betting big on enterprise AI with its third-gen chip and database discounts that got developers cheering, it’s still fighting to prove it can compete beyond infrastructure.
This week on Equity, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into the ROI on AI agents, plus the collision course between Hollywood and generative AI, and why everyone wants their own version of Spotify Wrapped.
Subscribe to Equity on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
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Feds find more complaints of Tesla’s FSD running red lights and crossing lanes
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has identified at least 80 instances in which Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software violated road rules by running red lights or crossing into the wrong lane, according to a new letter sent to the automaker this week.
NHTSA said in the letter it has received 62 complaints from Tesla drivers, 14 reports submitted by Tesla, and four media reports that describe potential violations. That’s up from around 50 violations NHTSA cited when it opened an investigation into the behavior in October.
The federal safety agency’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) is probing whether Tesla’s driver assistance software can “accurately detect and appropriately respond to traffic signals, signs and lane markings,” according to the letter. ODI is also evaluating whether Tesla’s software is providing sufficient warnings to drivers in these situations. Tesla’s responses are due January 19, 2026.
The increase in complaints is notable in part because the original batch reported by ODI in October included multiple reports from one particular intersection in Joppa, Maryland. Tesla told the agency at the time that it had already “taken action to address the issue at this intersection.” The agency didn’t say where, geographically, these newly reported incidents took place. Tesla heavily redacts its own submissions to the agency.
The new letter was sent to Tesla the same week that CEO Elon Musk claimed in a post on X that the latest version of FSD will allow drivers to text and drive while using the driver assistance software, which is illegal in nearly every state. NHTSA has not responded to requests for comment about Musk’s statement.
The letter is meant to kick off the discovery process for NHTSA, and as such it details a number of requests for information the agency has made to Tesla. For instance, the agency is asking for data on how many Tesla vehicles are equipped with FSD, as well as how often the software is engaged. ODI is also asking Tesla to turn over any customer complaints it has received regarding these specific problems with FSD, including from fleet operators and from any lawsuits or third-party arbitration proceedings.
This is the second investigation that NHTSA has opened into Tesla’s FSD software. In October 2024, the agency began a probe into how FSD handles low-visibility situations like fog or extreme sunlight.
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SpaceX reportedly in talks for secondary sale at $800B valuation, which would make it America’s most valuable private company
According to the Wall Street Journal, SpaceX is launching a secondary share sale that would value Elon Musk’s rocket maker at $800 billion — double its recent $400 billion valuation and surpassing OpenAI to claim the title of America’s most valuable private company.
SpaceX has not responded to a request for comment; the WSJ not did report on the scale of the offering.
The eye-popping figure reflects how routine mega-valuations have become within private markets. OpenAI stands at $500 billion, while Anthropic reportedly surged last month to $350 billion following major investments from Microsoft and Nvidia, up from $183 billion just months earlier.
These companies can now achieve public-market-scale valuations while remaining private, fueled by secondary sales that provide liquidity without the scrutiny of quarterly earnings reports.
SpaceX, founded in 2002, dominates commercial rocket launches and operates Starlink, its satellite internet service with over 8 million customers globally as of November.
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Meta acquires AI device startup Limitless
Limitless, the AI startup formerly known as Rewind, has been acquired by Meta, the company announced Friday on its website. The company, which made an AI-powered pendant to record your conversations, says it will no longer sell its hardware devices and will maintain support for its existing customers for a year.
Customers will no longer have to pay a subscription fee and will be moved to the Unlimited Plan for the time being. Other functionality will be wound down, including its non-pendant software “Rewind,” which recorded users’ desktop activity and turned it into a searchable record.
The startup, founded by Brett Bejcek and Dan Siroker, the co-founder and former chief executive of Optimizely, pivoted to become an AI device maker last year, offering its Limitless pendant for $99. The wearable could attach to your shirt like a wireless mic or be worn like a necklace. The device is one of several AI hardware devices on the market, including another (not very well-received) AI pendant known as Friend.
According to Limitless’ announcement, the company shares in Meta’s vision to “bring personal superintelligence to everyone,” which includes building AI-enabled wearables. (Meta is focused for now on AR/AI glasses, like its Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta, and its in-lens AI glasses, the Meta Ray-Ban Display.) Limitless said it will help bring that vision to life — which likely means supporting Meta’s existing products, not helping Meta add an AI pendant to its lineup.
The company hinted that the increased competition in the market made it difficult for it to compete, especially as the larger players like OpenAI and Meta are developing their own hardware devices, too.
“When we started Limitless five years ago, the world was very different,” wrote Siroker in the announcement. “AI was a pipe dream to many. Hardware startups were considered unfundable, and a business that did both AI and hardware would have been considered ludicrous. But today is different. The world has changed. We’re no longer working on a weird fringe idea. We’re building a future that now seems inevitable. We’re not alone.”
Meta shared the following statement with TechCrunch via email: “We’re excited that Limitless will be joining Meta to help accelerate our work to build AI-enabled wearables.” The tech giant didn’t share further information about its plans, beyond noting that the team will work in the wearables organization of Reality Labs.
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Limitless will offer its customers a way to export their data, the company said, or users can choose to delete their data from within the app.
The startup had raised more than $33 million in funding from investors, including a16z, First Round Capital, and NEA.
Updated after publication with Meta’s comment.
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ChatGPT’s user growth has slowed, report finds
ChatGPT’s growth is starting to taper off, according to new data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Today, the OpenAI-owned AI chatbot remains the leader in the space, accounting for 50% of global downloads on mobile devices and 55% of the global monthly active users. However, Google’s Gemini has begun to outpace ChatGPT in terms of download growth, growth of monthly active users, and growth of time spent in app, the firm found.
Over time, that increased pace of adoption could help Gemini narrow the gap with ChatGPT. That’s something OpenAI is now worried about, as its recent “code red” memo indicated. The missive, penned by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, instructed staff to focus on improving the company’s AI products, particularly in areas like personalization, reliability, image generation, and more.
When looking at the recent data, it’s clear the race is not over yet: Both ChatGPT and Gemini continue to see sizable growth.
ChatGPT has seen its global monthly active users climb by 180% year-over-year as of November 2025, while Gemini’s monthly active users are up 170%.
But the new data indicates that ChatGPT’s global monthly active users only grew by around 6% from August to November, to reach roughly 810 million. (The monthly active user numbers in the above chart are rounded, the firm notes.) This figure could suggest the AI chatbot is nearing market saturation, Sensor Tower says.
Meanwhile, Google Gemini’s global monthly active users jumped by around 30% during the same time frame, as the release of its new image generation model, Nano Banana, drove increased adoption.
In addition, the report noted that around two times more U.S. Android users now engage with Gemini directly through the Android operating system compared with using the standalone Gemini mobile app. This could provide Google with a competitive advantage in the global market, where Android dominates, as it means Gemini isn’t constrained to only being used within a mobile app or web interface.
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Gemini is also increasing its share of the overall AI chatbot market when compared across all top apps like ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, Perplexity, and Grok. Over the past seven months (May-November 2025), Gemini increased its share of global monthly active users by three percentage points, the firm estimates.
But ChatGPT saw its share of global monthly active users drop three percentage points over the past four months (August-November 2025), by comparison.
Challenges from Perplexity and Claude may also be impacting ChatGPT, as both rivals saw triple-digit growth for their respective chatbots in 2025, with the former up 370% year-over-year, and the latter up 190%.
ChatGPT also saw its global downloads grow by 85% year-over-year as of November, but this lagged the overall cohort’s average growth of 110%.
Perplexity and Gemini saw the largest growth, up 215% and 190% year-over-year, respectively.
Finally, Gemini app users’ time spent in the app has more than doubled over the past few months, Sensor Tower said. As of November, Gemini users were spending 11 minutes per day in the app, up 120% from March. This is likely due to the popularity of its image generation model, Nano Banana, in September.
ChatGPT’s users’ daily time spent only increased by 6% during the same time frame. Plus, ChatGPT users’ time spent was down 10% in November, compared with July.
While the current data indicates Google could be catching up with the market leader, much of its recent gains have to do with the success of Nano Banana. OpenAI could speed up growth again with the release of its own new products, if they make a similar impact.
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AWS re:Invent was an all-in pitch for AI. Customers might not be ready.
If Amazon Web Services’ annual re:Invent tech conference proves anything, it’s that the cloud infrastructure player is going all in on AI.
AWS announced made dozens of announcements from new AI agents and updated large language models, to products with LLM and agent-building capabilities. AI for enterprise was everywhere. But are its customers just as eager?
AWS CEO Matt Garman acknowledged during his keynote that enterprises haven’t seen a return on AI investment yet. He thinks that’s about to change — and fast.
“I believe that the advent of AI agents has brought us to an inflection point in AI’s trajectory,” Garman said. “It’s turning from a technical wonder into something that delivers us real value. This change is going to have as much impact on your business as the internet or the cloud.”
While analysts told TechCrunch they were impressed by some of AWS’ tech announcements this week, they aren’t sure it’s enough to move the needle on enterprise AI adoption or change AWS’ position in the AI race.
AWS is one of the market leaders when it comes to cloud infrastructure; the same can’t be said for its enterprise AI offerings.
Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google hold a commanding lead when it comes to enterprise market share for actual AI models. AWS does have the advantage of having everything in house, including infrastructure and its own AI training chips.
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Naveen Chhabra, a principal analyst at Forrester, told TechCrunch over email that while AWS announced a lot of cool new technology, it doesn’t change the fact that many enterprises aren’t ready to adopt AI.
“AWS AI announcements show that AWS is thinking ahead and maybe far too ahead,” Chhabra wrote. “Most enterprises are still piloting AI projects and are rarely at the levels of maturity AWS expects them to be to take advantage of the offerings that come out of these announcements.”
A widely cited MIT study from August found that 95% of enterprises aren’t seeing a return on investment from AI.
Ethan Feller, an equity strategist at Zacks Investment Research, told TechCrunch in a phone interview that the new Nova AI models, agents, and model-building capabilities weren’t what stood out to him as interesting from this week — despite these being the products AWS hyped the most. Instead, it was the infrastructure announcements.
“The AWS AI factory is really compelling,” Feller said about a new initiative that allows customers to run AWS AI in their own data centers. “AWS is a huge player in where the models are being run and is dominant in the cloud industry. I think that is where Amazon’s expertise really lies. It’s a good thing to double down on where they have expertise.”
Feller likes that AWS is looking to make a vertical AI play, but he thinks it may make more sense to do so through partnerships with other AI players like Anthropic and Nvidia as opposed to using all of their own AI technology.
Despite all of this, AWS is still well positioned to carve out market share in the AI sector, while continuing to grow its core businesses.
AWS’ position as an industry-leading cloud provider means it has a solid business foundation despite what happens in the AI market because it provides the rails for the industry’s technology — regardless of what the AI trend of the moment is.
If the AI industry ends up being the bubble some say it is, AWS, which recorded $11.4 billion in operating income in the third quarter, will likely be less affected by a negative change in AI market conditions than its peers.
This gives AWS room to experiment and iterate on what its place in the AI market could look like down the road. That’s why even if enterprises aren’t ready for the tech they release today, AWS should keep working to improve it.
Follow along with all of TechCrunch’s coverage of the annual enterprise tech event here, and see all the announcements you may have missed thus far here.
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eSIM adoption is on the rise thanks to travel and device compatibility
As a technology, eSIM has been around for a decade now. However, global eSIM adoption was around 3% last year and will only cross 5% this year.
Despite these figures, analysts, eSIM-providing startups, and investors are bullish about eSIM’s upward trajectory, largely thanks to travel.
Device compatibility
One of the key factors for that is phone makers launching devices with eSIM features.
The first batch of smartphones with eSIM arrived in 2017 and 2018, with the Pixel 2 and the iPhone XR among the most notable phones. In 2022, Apple ditched the physical SIM slot to go eSIM-only for the U.S. market, and Google followed suit with the Pixel 10 this year.
This year, Apple upped the ante by releasing the eSIM-only iPhone Air and offering an eSIM-only model of the iPhone 17 series in more than 11 countries as an option. One key advantage of these eSIM-only phones is that they offer slightly larger battery life than the models with a physical SIM slot.
Analytics firm Counterpoint said that in 2024, the penetration of smartphones with eSIM was just 23%. The U.S. is the strongest market for eSIM, with 41% of devices launched in 2024 having eSIM capabilities.
Until recently, eSIM has been a feature of top-end devices, but that is changing slowly. GSMA said that just in the first half of 2025, brands have launched more than 60 eSIM-enabled smartphones.
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China can be a major factor in eSIM’s adoption. This October, after the launch of Apple’s eSIM-only phone and a few hiccups, China’s telecom providers began offering eSIM support. Pablo Iacopino, an analyst at GSMA, said local manufacturers like Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo will also likely launch more eSIM-native or supported devices.
These manufacturers have a big share in economically sensitive markets in Asia and Africa. They can gradually include eSIM support across price ranges to support the domestic demand.
“Chinese brands, when they see that the Chinese MNOs have launched eSIM services for the domestic Chinese market, they will probably start introducing eSIM across a wider range of smartphones, including, medium and low-end market,” Iacopino said. “But I don’t think they will go eSIM only immediately. They will start with supporting both physical and eSIM, before shifting to eSIM-only models.”
Currently, even within devices with eSIM support, few people are using the technology — but that’s changing. Steffen Sorrell, head of research at Kaleido Intelligence, a telecom analyst firm, said that it observed a 30% activation rate in devices with eSIM capabilities in 2024. The firm estimates that the rate will go up to 75% by 2030.
Travel is a big catalyst
While you are traveling, eSIM is one of the most convenient ways to get connectivity. A GSMA survey said that 51% of people using eSIM use it for travel. Plus, it is a more secure solution, given that often eSIM hardware is bound with secure hardware elements, making it difficult to tamper with.
These elements have been positive for eSIM provider startups Airalo, Holafly, eSIM.me, Nomad, and Truely. Even the Lithuania-based security provider Nord launched an eSIM service called Saily. Most of these companies have seen growth in their customer base, and that’s largely thanks to travel.
GSMA said that travel is currently proving to be a strong catalyst for eSIM growth, as frequent travelers prefer to buy devices with eSIM support. Plus, they could adopt eSIM for their long-term usage.
“People might experience eSIM for the first time while traveling. These users who like the eSIM experience would go back home and request their network providers to make a switch from a physical SIM,” GSMA’s Iacopino told TechCrunch over a call.
Airalo is one of the biggest eSIM companies around and has been active for more than six years. The company’s CEO, Bahadir Ozdemir, said that the app is responsible for many users experiencing eSIM for the first time. The company did a survey on its app last year, with 85% of responders being first-time eSIM users.
“Roughly 15% of travel connectivity is being powered by eSIMs, and the number is growing. Once users discover how they can get connectivity with eSIM, they don’t really want to go back to the old way [physical SIMs] of doing it,” Ozdemir noted.
He said that while a lot of telecom operators offer eSIMs, it is not easy for customers to discover those, and apps like Airalo make the process easier. Network providers are also thinking about the travel eSIM market. For instance, Vodafone partnered with UEFA to launch a specialized eSIM for travelers attending football matches across the continent.
Growth and investor interest
Travel-related eSIM startups have seen notable growth. Truely said it has served more than 70,000 travelers over the last two years, with 2x order growth this year. The startup, which raised a $2 million extension round in June, said that apart from partnering with fintech services and travel apps, it is also exploring governmental collaborations in different regions.
NordVPN said that its Saily eSIM app saw a seven-digit user base after its launch in March 2024. The company also launched a $60 per month Ultra plan with global coverage.
Holafly said that it has sold more than 15 million eSIMs since its inception in 2018 and has crossed $500 million in total revenue. The startup noted that out of that figure, it earned $200 million in 2024.
Airalo’s blockbuster $220 million round, led by CVC and announced in July, made it a unicorn and was the most notable eSIM investment in the last two years. Meanwhile, French eSIM startup Kolet nabbed $10 million in Series A funding led by Daphni with participation from former Expedia Group CEO Peter Kern and Apple’s former vice president of marketing Jon Gieselman.
Scott Shiao, a principal at Goodwater Capital, said that the investment concentration will be on travel-related eSIM startups on the consumer side for the time being, but there could be an opportunity in domestic markets in the future as well.
Martell Hardenberg, a partner at Antler, said that while the travel eSIM use case has grown, a lot of users can be considered early adopters, and there is still much room to grow.
“I think there is opportunity in offering bundled services to global travelers or digital nomads about what can companies offer beyond travel SIM cards and make it a lucrative package for these user profiles,” Hardenberg told TechCrunch.
Investors will likely look for offering, marketability for long-term bet as there might be consolidation a few years down the line, Kaledio’s Sorrell said.
“The market is obviously on its way up, but I think sooner or later we’re going to reach a saturation point in terms of the providers on the market there. So investors will look into the long-term viability of the business along with things like customer loyalty, quality of coverage, and even association with marketing capabilities, how you’re able to promote that eSIM, whether it’s through airlines, banks, or cab companies,” he said.
Challenges in adoption
A couple of roadblocks in adoption are education, trust, and ease of use. A lot of people just don’t know what an eSIM is.
“Spotify can tell people to download Spotify because people know about music, and Netflix can tell people to download Netflix because people know about TV shows,” Airalo’s Ozdemir said. “But we couldn’t do that with Airalo, as a lot of people don’t know about eSIMs.”
He noted that the company regularly partners with different influencers to educate people about connectivity on the go through eSIM and redirects them to Airalo.
Truely CEO Eric Dadoun believes that given there is a steady rise in devices that are eSIM only, consumers would be forced to know about the technology as well. He said that companies working in the eSIM industry will still focus on user education for customer acquisition in markets where buying an eSIM-only device is optional.
One of the thornier parts of using an eSIM is that when you buy a plan from any of the apps, you get a QR code in your email that you need to scan to install the eSIM. This means that you need a second device that displays the QR code. The whole process is cumbersome if you are visiting another country and you want to buy an eSIM when you are at an airport.
GSMA’s Iacopino agreed that the process is cumbersome for many users, and as adoption grows, eSIM providers and hardware makers will need to figure out a way to make the process smooth.
Kaleido Intelligence’s Sorrell noted that for some network providers, the move to eSIM is slower, as they have legacy technology and systems that are proving to be a roadblock. They would also need to make the process of switching to this tech fully digital so customers don’t have to visit a store.
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New ‘KnoWay’ robotaxis cause chaos in upcoming Grand Theft Auto Online DLC
The latest expansion to Grand Theft Auto Online includes robotaxis from a fictional-yet-familiar company dubbed “KnoWay,” whose sole purpose appears to be wreaking havoc.
A trailer released Friday shows KnoWay vans adorned with lidar sensors swerving through city streets, wrecking other cars, and crashing through a billboard for the made up company.
While that’s all far more chaotic and destructive than even some of the worst behavior that Waymo’s robotaxis have been guilty of, the in-game autonomous vehicles nonetheless resemble the company’s earlier-generation Chrysler Pacifica vans. The expansion is called “A Safehouse in the Hills” and is available starting December 10.
It’s not clear if the vans in the trailer have been, in true Grand Theft Auto fashion, hijacked by playable characters, or if they’ve gone rogue. It seems likely it’s the latter, though, as Rockstar Games says players will be encouraged to “stop the development of a mass surveillance network in an all-new action-packed adventure” as part of the DLC. (The trailer also teases a storyline that involves an AI assistant named “Haviland,” so the tech world in general appears to be a part of this particular storyline.)
Waymo has said it will deny government requests for the footage its vehicles capture if those requests are “overly broad and unlawful.” But its robotaxis have nevertheless drawn criticism for being part of a growing surveillance state. That frustration has contributed to the company’s vehicles becoming a target of multiple instances of vandalism. Waymo SUVs have been burned, smashed, and had their tires slashed in different cities over the last few years.
Rockstar is clearly tapping into those same dynamics here, as the tagline for KnoWay’s “autonomous hailing system” in the game is: “We Kno where you’re going.” It’s not hard to imagine some players of the DLC taking some of their frustrations out on the virtual vehicles once the update is released later this month.
Waymo declined to comment.
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At TechCrunch Disrupt in October, Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana spoke out against the vandalism, saying her company was “very focused on working with law enforcement to make sure that we pursue the people who are committing these crimes against our fleet.”
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New streaming channel launches to give viewers a peek into city council meetings
The launch of Hamlet was quite personal for Sunil Rajaraman.
Back in 2022, he ran for city council in a small California town. He lost, but the moment forever changed the way he saw the place — and local governments, for that matter.
“I was trying to become a better candidate,” he recalled to TechCrunch. “I wanted to understand how my city actually worked, what decisions had been made, why, who said what. And I couldn’t figure it out. It’s a total black box, and almost intentionally opaque.”
Since COVID, towns across the nation have started recording and posting their city meetings online. That gave Rajaraman an idea: a company that helped people understand what was happening in local governments. That same year, in 2022, he launched Hamlet to do just that.
“We use AI to process thousands of hours of city council and planning commission meeting videos and turn them into intelligence they can actually use,” he said. He said these videos are better than meeting minutes because those documents are just someone’s interpretations of what happened. “The video doesn’t lie.”
At first, he thought it would be a media company, but then real estate developers and political action committees started reaching out. Rajaraman realized that private companies have to deal with local governments, too, and they also want more insight into what is happening in those city council meetings.
For enterprise customers, the company helps track agendas and alerts them when relevant topics are addressed across target cities. It also synthesizes what happened after meetings, so they don’t have to watch hourslong videos, and it lets them search the video archive to see, for example, when and how a competitor was mentioned in a local government setting.
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Hamlet has raised around $10 million in venture funding to date, from backers including Slow Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Banana Capital, and Kapor Capital. “We want to become the ‘Bloomberg’ of this space, so to speak,” Rajaraman said.
On Friday, Rajaraman announced he is expanding the company to launch Hamlet TV as a way to help keep regular citizens informed of what is happening inside their governments. The streaming channel is on TikTok, YouTube, AppleTV, and Instagram, and will spotlight important moments from council, commission, and school board meetings.
Rajaraman said his company has processed thousands of hours of government meetings for government customers.
“We’ve seen meetings that have lasted 15-plus hours without recess,” he said. He and his team started curating funny moments from those meetings, and they thought it was a good idea to use humor to get people more invested in the U.S. democracy. “If you show people procedural videos, they are just not going to care. But if you show them the funny stuff, they’ll watch.”
The most surprising thing he and his team have seen so far on Hamlet TV has been someone dressing up as a cockroach to address their city council about a pest problem. But it’s not the funny stuff that surprises him, he said. “It’s how consequential these meetings are and how invisible they remain.”
He cited an example from earlier this year when the Tucson city council rejected Amazon’s $3.6 billion data center. He said that the decision came after months of planning, but only a few people likely watched those videos to understand why it happened.
This isn’t Rajaraman’s first time running a business — or a media outlet. He co-founded the analytics platform Scripted and was twice the Entrepreneur in Residence at Foundation Capital. He also ran a publication called The Bold Italic and then sold it to Medium.
He knows Hamlet TV probably won’t be a moneymaker and reiterated that he’s doing this to get people more involved with the state of the country’s democracy. He also plans to give away the Hamlet tool to local journalists for free. “Data is great, but context matters so much,” he said.
Next, the Hamlet company is looking to work with government affairs, advocacy organizations, and renewable energy developers. “Democracy works better when people are watching,” he said. “We’re trying to make watching possible.”
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The New York Times is suing Perplexity for copyright infringement
The New York Times filed suit Friday against AI search startup Perplexity for copyright infringement, its second lawsuit against an AI company. The Times joins several media outlets suing Perplexity, including the Chicago Tribune, which also filed suit this week.
The Times’s suit claims that “Perplexity provides commercial products to its own users that substitute” for the outlet, “without permission or remuneration.”
The lawsuit – filed even as several publishers, including The Times, negotiate deals with AI firms – is part of the same, ongoing years-long strategy. Recognizing the AI tide cannot be stopped, publishers use lawsuits as leverage in negotiations in the hopes of forcing AI companies to formally license content in ways that compensate creators and maintain the economic viability of original journalism.
Perplexity tried to address compensation demands by launching a Publishers’ Program last year, which offers participating outlets like Gannett, TIME, Fortune and the Los Angeles Times a share of ad revenue. In August, Perplexity also launched Comet Plus, allocating 80% of its $5 monthly fee to participating publishers, and recently struck a multi-year licensing deal with Getty Images.
“While we believe in the ethical and responsible use and development of AI, we firmly object to Perplexity’s unlicensed use of our content to develop and promote their products,” Graham James, a spokesperson for The Times, said in a statement. “We will continue to work to hold companies accountable that refuse to recognize the value of our work.”
Similar to the Tribune’s suit, the Times takes issue with Perplexity’s method for answering user queries by gathering information from websites and databases to generate responses via its retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) products, like its chatbots and Comet browser AI assistant.
“Perplexity then repackages the original content in written responses to users,” the suit reads.
“Those responses, or outputs, often are verbatim or near-verbatim reproductions, summaries, or abridgments of the original content, including The Times’s copyrighted works.”
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Or, as James put it in his statement, “RAG allows Perplexity to crawl the internet and steal content from behind our paywall and deliver it to its customers in real time. That content should only be accessible to our paying subscribers.”
The Times also claims Perplexity’s search engine has hallucinated information and falsely attributed it to the outlet, which damages its brand.
“Publishers have been suing new tech companies for a hundred years, starting with radio, TV, the internet, social media and now AI,” Jesse Dwyer, Perplexity’s head of communications, told TechCrunch. “Fortunately it’s never worked, or we’d all be talking about this by telegraph.”
(Publishers have, at times, won or shaped major legal battles over new technologies, resulting in settlements, licensing regimes, and court precedents.)
The lawsuit comes just over a year after The Times sent a cease and desist letter to Perplexity demanding it stop using its content for summaries and other output. The outlet claims it has contacted Perplexity several times over the past 18 months to stop using its content unless an agreement could be negotiated.
This isn’t the first fight The Times has picked with an AI firm. The Tims is also suing OpenAI and its backer Microsoft, claiming the two trained their AI systems with millions of the outlet’s articles without offering compensation. OpenAI has argued that its use of publicly available data for AI training constitutes “fair use,” and has shot its own accusations at the Times, claiming the outlet manipulated ChatGPT to find evidence.
That case is still ongoing, but a similar lawsuit directed against OpenAI competitor Anthropic could set a precedent in regards to fair use for training AI systems going forward. In that suit, in which authors and publishers sued the AI firm for using pirated books to train its models, the court ruled that while lawfully acquired books might be a safe fair use application, pirated ones infringe on copyrights. Anthropic agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement.
The Times’s lawsuit adds to mounting legal pressure on Perplexity. Last year, News Corp – which owns outlets like The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, and the New York Post – made similar claims against Perplexity. That list grew in 2025 to also include Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster, Nikkei and Asahi Shimbun, and Reddit.
Other outlets, including Wired and Forbes, have accused Perplexity of plagiarism and unethically crawling and scraping content from websites that have explicitly indicated they don’t want to be scraped. The latter claim is one that internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare recently confirmed.
In its suit, The Times is asking the courts to make Perplexity pay for the harm allegedly caused and ban the startup from continuing to use its content.
The Times is clearly not above working with AI firms that compensate for its reporters’ work. The outlet earlier this year struck a multiyear deal with Amazon to license its content to train the tech giant’s AI models. Several other publishers and media companies have signed licensing deals with AI firms to use their content for training and to feature in chatbot responses. OpenAI has inked deals with Associated Press, Axel Springer, Vox Media, The Atlantic, and more.
This article has been updated with comment from Perplexity.
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Meta signs commercial AI data agreements with publishers to offer real-time news on Meta AI
Meta has signed commercial AI data agreements with news publishers to offer real-time global, entertainment, and breaking news on Meta AI, its AI chatbot. Now, when users ask Meta AI news-related questions, it will surface information and links that draw from different content sources to help users discover timely and relevant content, the company announced on Friday.
These responses will also include links to articles, so users can visit publishers’ websites to learn more. The company says this will allow its partners to reach new audiences.
Meta is partnering with CNN, Fox News, Fox Sports, Le Monde Group, the People Inc. portfolio of media brands, The Daily Caller, The Washington Examiner, and USA Today.
The company plans to add new partnerships in the future.
The move comes as Meta shifted away from making its platforms hubs for news. For example, it killed Facebook’s “News” tab in 2024. Additionally, Meta stopped compensating news publishers in 2022, but is now doing so to help supercharge its AI chatbot with real-time access to news.
“We’re committed to making Meta AI more responsive, accurate, and balanced,” Meta wrote in a blog post. “Real-time events can be challenging for current AI systems to keep up with, but by integrating more and different types of news sources, our aim is to improve Meta AI’s ability to deliver timely and relevant content and information with a wide variety of viewpoints and content types.”
The company is looking to attract more users to its AI chatbot as it faces increasing competition from rivals. Meta is also looking to stay relevant in the AI race after the controversial release of Llama 4, which was met with complaints of poor performance earlier this year.
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Meta AI is available in over 200 countries and can be accessed through the company’s apps, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, as well as through the standalone Meta AI app.
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Energy storage industry set aggressive goals for 2025 — and already crushed them
Nearly a decade ago, when the energy storage market was in its infancy, an industry organization set a dreamy goal: By the end of 2025, the U.S. would deploy 35 gigawatts of batteries connected to the grid.
So how’d the storage industry do? In the third quarter, 4.7 gigawatts of batteries were installed. In sum, more than 40 gigawatts have been deployed, and the year isn’t over, Canary Media reported. In eight years, energy storage went from a tiny player to one of the largest sources of new power on the U.S. grid.
What’s more, that’s nearly half of all new renewable power deployed on the grid for July through September, and this year, renewables have been the leading source of all new capacity, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Much of the new storage capacity has been deployed in Arizona, California, and Texas, states where the grid has been strained in recent years. Experts say that lessons learned there can help other regions deploy battery storage onto their grids, including the Midwest and East Coast, which are buckling under the weight of new data center construction.
Startups have been taking note.
Redwood Materials, which was co-founded by Tesla alumnus JB Straubel, in June added a new business line focused on repurposing used EV batteries for grid-scale storage. The company noticed two overlapping trends: The batteries that were arriving at its recycling facilities still had plenty of life left in them, and meanwhile, the battery storage industry was growing in leaps and bounds.
By 2028, Redwood plans to deploy 20 gigawatt-hours worth of battery storage. Investors have voiced their approval, investing another $350 million in the company to propel the new business line.
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Another startup, Base Power, has taken a slightly different tack, leasing batteries to homeowners and aggregating them to serve as a large virtual power plant. The Austin-based startup raised $1 billion in October to help build a battery factory and fuel its expansion beyond Texas. The company has deployed more than 100 megawatt-hours of batteries in Texas.
While lithium-ion batteries have dominated new installations, other startups are pursuing other technologies that could lower storage costs significantly.
Sizable Energy is working on a novel way to store power in flexible reservoirs that float in the open ocean. Fourth Power is using blocks of carbon to store heat at super-high temperatures, and it’s looking to deploy them in 2028 at a cost that’s lower than lithium-ion batteries or peaking natural gas power plants. XL Batteries is deploying its flow-battery technology at petrochemical storage sites, allowing it to store hundreds of megawatt-hours using existing infrastructure. And, Cache Energy has developed inexpensive pellets of calcium hydroxide that could store energy for months with minimal losses.
Altogether, it points to an industry that’s in the midst of an exponential expansion. Paired with solar and wind, which remain the cheapest forms of new electricity, energy storage has the potential to rewire global energy markets, and the U.S. grid along with them.
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In its first DSA penalty, EU fines X €120M for ‘deceptive’ blue check verification system
The European Commission has imposed its first fine under Europe’s landmark Digital Services Act (DSA), and it’s against Elon Musk’s X.
The EC is taking issue with the fact that X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, has been allowing anyone to buy a “blue checkmark,” the platform’s long-standing symbol which used to indicate that a user has been verified to be who they are claiming to be.
Calling the design of the blue checkmark system “deceptive,” the European Union’s executive arm on Friday imposed a fine of €120 million (about $140 million) on X, saying the company had breached its transparency obligations under the DSA.
The Commission said other breaches of the law include a lack of transparency of X’s advertising repository and failure to provide researchers access to public data.
Before Musk bought the company, Twitter used to issue blue checks to journalists, celebrities, politicians, and public figures on the platform after it had verified their identity. Musk did away with that policy in 2023, and all the “verified” blue check today indicates is that a user subscribes to X Premium, and that they meet certain eligibility criteria, like having a profile photo, a display name, and have linked their account to a phone number.
“X’s use of the ‘blue checkmark’ for ‘verified accounts’ deceives users,” the Commission wrote in a statement. “This violates the DSA obligation for online platforms to prohibit deceptive design practices on their services. On X, anyone can pay to obtain the ‘verified’ status without the company meaningfully verifying who is behind the account, making it difficult for users to judge the authenticity of accounts and content they engage with.”
The Commission added that such a system exposes users to scams, impersonation fraud and manipulation.
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The regulator also found that X’s advertisement repository doesn’t comply with DSA requirements for transparency and accessibility, saying the company imposes excessive delays in processing requests for access. The Commission also said the ads repository doesn’t house important information like the content or topic of ads, as well as who paid for those ads.
“This hinders researchers and the public to independently scrutinise any potential risks in online advertising,” the Commission wrote.
Access to public data is another area of concern for the EU. The DSA mandates that public platforms allow researchers access to public data to study systemic risks, and the EC’s investigation has found that X does not allow researchers to independently do that.
“Moreover, X’s processes for researchers’ access to public data impose unnecessary barriers, effectively undermining research into several systemic risks in the European Union,” the EC wrote.
The decision comes two years after the EC launched an investigation into the company on the suspected breach of rules linked to risk management, content moderation, dark patterns, advertising transparency, and data access for researchers.
“Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads, and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU,” Henna Virkkunen, executive vice-president for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy at the European Commission, said in a statement.
X now has 60 days to outline how it intends to address the complaint about the blue checkmarks, and 90 days to respond with an action plan for addressing the breaches relating to ads and public data transparency and accessibility.
Confirmed breaches of the DSA can face a range of major sanctions, including fines of up to 6% of global annual turnover.
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