I cannot say with 100% certainty that nineteen-year-old Justin Jin is not pulling an elaborate prank on me. In my defense, Jin’s company Giggles — which he describes as “putting a trading app and TikTok together” — started as a joke. “This was around 2023, when TikTok was rumored to …

AI-powered design platform Picsart is launching a creator monetization program, the company told TechCrunch exclusively. The program is open to all creators, with no invite lists and no minimum audience size required. The program invites creators to create original content with Picsart tools for a specific campaign, share it on …

When Fizz quietly debuted in Saudi Arabia in the middle of March, founder and CEO Teddy Solomon wasn’t expecting the app to catch on like it did. Within 48 hours, the app hit No. 1 overall on the App Store charts, and users in the country have since sent more …

Voice AI company ElevenLabs has quietly released an iOS app called ElevenMusic that can be used to create music with AI and discover AI-generated music in order to compete with platforms like Suno and Udio. The new app, which was listed on the App Store for a few weeks and …

AI’s insatiable demand for power has tech companies hunting for new energy sources — a search that has fueled competition and investment into fusion and fission startups. For many, natural gas is the easy answer for 24/7, baseload power. It’s tested, inexpensive, and widely available. But the war in the …

Last August, a fire ripped through 10 acres of grass on either side of California’s I-280 near Redwood City. Traffic backed up as firefighters extinguished the blaze, and California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers directed drivers to turn around and travel the wrong way to exit the freeway. Some of those …

As the world electrifies, the oil and gas industry is counting on plastics to drive profits in the future. But not if Jacob Nathan has anything to say about it. Nathan started searching for a way to break down plastics when he was still in high school. Now, as founder …

For decades, humans have sought to harness the power of the stars to generate electricity here on Earth. And for nearly as long, achieving that goal always seemed just a decade away. Now, a slew of startups are closer than ever before and rushing to build fusion reactors capable of …

The AI-powered design platform Picsart is launching an AI agent marketplace, allowing creators to “hire” AI assistants to help them with specific tasks, like resizing and remixing social content, or editing product photos on Shopify. With over 130 million worldwide users that skew Gen Z, Picsart is like a more …

India’s neobank Fi is discontinuing banking services on its platform more than four years after launching them in partnership with Federal Bank, directing customers to access their savings accounts through the bank’s mobile app as it winds down the Fi interface. Founded in 2019 by former Google Pay India executives …