Latest AI News
Indore or Orbital Space, Cash is King for NeevCloud's Data Centre Push
NeevCloud recently partnered with Agnikul Cosmos to deploy a space-based AI data centre.
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Engineer Teaches His Dog to Vibe Code Games Using Claude Code
The project, now trending on Hacker News, combines Claude Code, a Raspberry Pi 5, a Bluetooth keyboard, and a smart pet feeder to produce Godot 4.6 games.
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Inside Osome’s Playbook that Led to 100% YoY Growth
Instead of adding another feature or two, Osome rebuilt the experience based on customer feedback.
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LAT Aerospace Acquires Sharang Shakti to Build Indigenous Defence
The deal signals LAT’s intent to strengthen core aerospace systems through in-house development.
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Uber engineers built an AI version of their boss
Consumers probably think of Uber as a ride-hailing and food delivery company. But in the eyes of CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber is really just a giant code base with engineers that are “literally the builders of the company.” In fact, Uber’s engineers have gone so far as to replace Khosrowshahi with a chatbot that they’ll ask questions in preparation of meetings with the top brass. That’s according to an interview Khosrowshahi gave this week on Steven Bartlett’s podcast,The Diary of a CEO. “One of my team members told me that some teams have built a Dara AI, you know, so that they basically make the presentation to the Dara AI as a prep for making a presentation to me,” Khosrowshahisaid on the podcast. “Because you can imagine, like, you know, by the time something comes to me, there’s been a prep and a meeting of the slide deck has been beautifully honed. So they have Dara AI to tune their prep.” Business Insiderearlier reportedthis detail. About 90% of Uber’s software engineers are using AI in their work, Khosrowshahi said, while about 30% are “power users” of AI tools, completely rethinking the architecture of the company. “They are manufacturing the bricks that go into the system, and they’re architects who are kind of thinking about what the system should look like,” he said. Khosrowshahi added: “It really is changing their productivity in a way that I’ve never, ever seen before.”
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Spanish ‘soonicorn’ Multiverse Computing releases free compressed AI model
Large language models have a problem: they are large.Multiverse Computing, a Spanish startup, is addressing this issue with compressed models that aim to close the gap between what frontier models can do and what companies can actually afford to deploy. The secret sauce is CompactifAI, a compression technology inspired by quantum computing that the Basque company hasapplied to modelsreleased by OpenAI. As of today, developers can access a newer version of Multiverse’s HyperNova 60B model for free onHugging Face. The company also plans to open source more compressed models in 2026 to support a wider range of use cases. According to Multiverse, its models are smaller, but nearly as potent and accurate. At 32GB, HyperNova 60B is roughly half the size of the model it derives from — OpenAI’s gpt-oss-120b — while boasting lower memory usage and lower latency. The updated version, calledHyperNova 60B 2602, now also better supports tool calling and agentic coding, where inference costs can be high. One of the competitors Multiverse claims to have beaten with HyperNova 60B isMistral Large 3, one of the models released byFrench decacorn Mistral AI. But beyond the technological rivalry, the two European AI companies also have a lot in common. Like Mistral, Multiverse has expanded beyond its home country, with offices in the United States, Canada, and across Europe. Both companies also have enterprise customers. In Multiverse’s case, it names Iberdrola, Bosch, and the Bank of Canada. And while Multiverse is not officially a unicorn yet, it is nowrumored to be raising a fresh €500 million funding roundat a valuation of more than €1.5 billion. In a statement shared with TechCrunch, the company confirmed that active discussions with potential investors toward a new funding round are ongoing, but added it would be premature to comment on valuation or funding size at this stage. Multiverse also declined to comment on reports that its annual recurring revenue (ARR) reached €100 million in January. If confirmed, this would still only be a fraction ofOpenAI’s $20 billion ARR; but not that far from Mistral’s, whose ARRsoared to over $400 million, owing in part to growing demand for alternatives to U.S. tech. Similarly, Multiverse positions itselfin its latest press releaseas a company that can “deliver sovereign solutions across the AI stack.” These geopolitical undertones recently helped Multiverse securea collaboration with the regional government of Aragón, in northeastern Spain. The Spanish Agency for Technological Transformation (SETT) also participated in the AI startup’s$215 million Series Blast year.Since its inception, Multiverse has also benefited from support from the Basque region — which could very soon count its first unicorn.
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Nvidia challenger AI chip startup MatX raised $500M
MatX, a chip startup founded by two former Google hardware engineers, has raised a $500 million Series B led by Jane Street and Situational Awareness, an investment fund formed by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner. The company’s goal is to make its processors 10 times better at training LLMs and delivering results than Nvidia’s GPUs. Other investors in the round include Marvell Technology, NFDG, Spark Capital, and Stripe co-founders Patrick Collison and John Collison, the startup’s founder and CEO Reiner Pope announced Tuesday in apost on LinkedIn. Although the company didn’t release its latest valuation, Etched, MatX’s closest competitor, raised a $500 million round at a$5 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported last month. Etched didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. MatX’s latest round comes more than a year after its Series A of about $100 million, which was led by Spark Capital. TechCrunch earlier reported that the 2024 round valued the startup at more than$300 million. Before co-foundingMatXin 2023, Pope led AI software development for Google’s TPUs, the tech giant’s proprietary AI chips. His co-founder, Mike Gunter, was a lead designer of the TPU hardware before leaving to launch the startup. The new funding will help MatX produce its chips with TSMC, with plans to start shipping them in 2027.
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India’s AI boom pushes firms to trade near-term revenue for users
Tech giants’ efforts to ramp up AI adoption in India may be about to hit a turning point, as companies end free promotions with hopes to convert the world’s fourth-largest economy into a windfall of paid subscribers. India became the world’s largest market for generative AI app downloads in 2025, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, widening its lead over the U.S. as installs jumped 207% year-over-year. Companies includingOpenAI,Google, andPerplexityrolled out extended free premium offers to accelerate user growth in the price sensitive market. Leading AI firms have also backed India in its push to become a global artificial intelligence hub. Amajor AI summit in New Delhilast week wasattended by leadersincluding OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai — a sign of the country’s growing weight in the global AI race. Now, some of those early promotional pushes are winding down. Perplexityendedits bundled Pro offer with Indian telco Airtel in January, while OpenAI’s free ChatGPT Go access in India isno longer available, potentially setting the stage for a clearer test of how many newly acquired users convert to paying subscribers. Despite strong download growth, India still generates a disproportionately small share of AI app revenue, accounting for about 1% of in-app purchases even as it drives roughly 20% of global GenAI app downloads, according to the Sensor Tower data shared with TechCrunch, highlighting the monetization challenge in one of the industry’s fastest-growing markets. GenAI app adoption in India accelerated sharply through 2025, with downloads peaking in September and October at year-over-year growth rates of about 320% and 260%, respectively, according to the data. Yet the surge in usage did not fully translate into revenue gains. In November and December 2025, AI app in-app purchase revenue in India fell 22% and 18% month over month, respectively. ChatGPT’s revenue dropped even more sharply — down 33% and 32% over the same period following the November launch of free sub-$5 ChatGPT Go access — reflecting the near-term impact of aggressive promotional pushes. ChatGPT still commands more than 60% of GenAI in-app revenue in India, meaning shifts in its pricing strategy can significantly influence overall market performance. Alongside promotional pushes, Sensor Tower attributed the surge in GenAI app adoption in India last year to a mix of new product launches, including the debut of platforms such as DeepSeek, Grok, and Meta AI, as well asupgrades to major chatbotslike ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity. Viral interest in AI-generated content also helped fuel adoption, with content creation and editing tools accounting for seven of the 20 most downloaded GenAI apps in India in 2025. The user surge has been equally pronounced. India accounted for about 19% of the global user base of leading AI assistant apps in 2025, ahead of the U.S. at 10%, Sensor Tower said. ChatGPT continues to dominate the Indian market by monthly active users, though rivals including Google’s Gemini and Perplexity have also seen rapid growth following promotional offers. ChatGPT was themost downloaded GenAI appin India and globally in 2025, according to earlier Sensor Tower data. Earlier this month, OpenAI’s CEO said that the chatbot now hasmore than 100 million weekly active usersin India. The promotional push in India reflects a broader strategy by AI firms to reduce pricing friction in a highly value-conscious market, betting that early user adoption and engagement will translate into stronger long-term retention once free access periods expire, said Sneha Pandey, insights analyst at Sensor Tower. India’s appeal lies in its massive digital base. The country has more than a billion internet users and around 700 million smartphone owners, making it one of the largest potential markets for AI services globally and a critical battleground for user growth. Nonetheless, user engagement in India still trails more mature markets. In 2025, users of leading AI chatbot apps in the U.S. spent about 21% more time per week on the apps than their counterparts in India and logged 17% more sessions on average, per Sensor Tower. “AI in-app revenues will likely see meaningful but gradual improvement as users become more deeply integrated into these platforms, making sustained engagement paramount,” Pandey told TechCrunch. She added that pricing pressure in India is likely to remain elevated given the country’s young and value-conscious user base, making lower-cost tiers, telecom bundles, and micro-transaction models important for long-term retention. ChatGPT remained the clear market leader in India entering 2026, with 180 million monthly active users in January, per Sensor Tower, followed by Google’s Gemini with 118 million, Perplexity with 19 million, and Meta AI with 12 million. The figures underline both the scale of India’s AI opportunity and the growing challenge for firms to convert rapid user adoption into sustained revenue. Google, OpenAI, and Perplexity did not respond to requests for comments.
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The Robotic Arm that Would Even Crawl into Oil Tanks so Humans Don’t Have To
Armatrix raised $2.1 million in a pre-seed funding round led by pi Ventures.
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Google adds a way to create automated workflows to Opal
Google on Tuesday announced it’s adding a new way to create automated workflows toits vibe-coding app Opal. The company said that a new agent being introduced in Opal will allow users to create mini-apps that can let them plan and execute tasks using text prompts. The feature uses the Gemini 3 Flash model and automatically chooses tools to execute tasks. For instance, it can use Google Sheets to maintain memory across sessions, such as a shopping list for an e-commerce-related app. The new agent creates and plans the next step for the tasks on its own. Google said these agents are natively interactive, which means that if they need more information, they would ask users to enter it or offer them choices to determine next steps, if needed. With this addition, users without technical knowledge could build complex workflows within their apps, the company claims. Opal was first introducedfor U.S. users in July 2025. The tool lets anyone create mini web apps or remix existing apps. In October 2025, the company rolled out Opal to users in 15 more countries, including Canada, India, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Brazil, and Singapore. And in December, Googleadded the tool to the Gemini web app, allowing users to create custom apps through a visual editor without writing any code. Beyond Google, many other startups are also building tools that let users build apps via natural language prompts.LovableandReplitare among the more popular ones, but other startups likeformer Replika founder’s Wabi,SoftBank and Lightspeed-backed Emergent, andAccel-backed Rocket.neware also gaining prominence.
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Anthropic won’t budge as Pentagon escalates AI dispute
Anthropic has until Friday evening to either give the U.S. military unrestricted access to its AI model or face the consequences, reportsAxios. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in ameeting Tuesday morningthat the Pentagon will either declare Anthropic a “supply chain risk” — a designation usually reserved for foreign adversaries — or invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) to force the company to tailor a version of the model to the military’s needs. The DPA gives the president the authority to force companies to prioritize or expand production for national defense. It was recently invoked during the COVID-19 pandemic to compel companies like General Motors and 3M to produce ventilators and masks, respectively. Anthropic has long stated that it doesn’t want its technology used for mass surveillance of Americans or for fully autonomous weapons — and is refusing to compromise on these points. Pentagon officials have argued the military’s use of technology should be governed by U.S. law and constitutional limits, not by the usage policies of private contractors. Using the DPA in a dispute over AI guardrails would mark a significant expansion of the law’s modern use. It would also reflect an expansion of a broader pattern of executive branch instability that has intensified in recent years, according to Dean Ball, senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and former senior policy advisor on AI in Trump’s White House. “It would basically be the government saying, ‘If you disagree with us politically, we’re going to try to put you out of business,’” Ball said. The dispute unfolds against a backdrop of ideological friction, with some in the administration — including AI czar David Sacks — publicly criticizingAnthropic’s safety policies as “woke.” “Any reasonable, responsible investor or corporate manager is going to look at this and think the U.S. is no longer a stable place to do business,” Ball said. “This is attacking the very core of what makes America such an important hub of global commerce. We’ve always had a stable and predictable legal system.” It’s a serious game of chicken, and Anthropic may not be the one to blink first. According toReuters, Anthropic doesn’t plan on easing its usage restrictions. Anthropic is the only frontier AI lab with classified DOD access, according to several reports. The Department of Defense doesn’t have a backup option currently in play — though the Pentagon hasreportedlyreached a deal to use xAI’s Grok in classified systems. That lack of redundancy may help explain the Pentagon’s aggressive posture, Ball argued. “If Anthropic canceled the contract tomorrow, it would be a serious problem for the DOD,” he told TechCrunch, noting the agency appears to be falling short of aNational Security Memorandumfrom the late Biden administration that directs federal agencies to avoid dependence on a single classified-ready frontier AI system. “The DOD has no backups. This is a single-vendor situation here,” he continued. “They can’t fix that overnight.” TechCrunch has reached out to Anthropic and the DOD for comment.
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Final 4 days to save up to $680 on your TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 pass
You don’t attendTechCrunch Disruptto sit in the audience. You go to gain leverage. If 2026 is a build year, a fundraise year, a hiring year, or a scale year, this is where momentum compounds. With just 4 days left before Super Early Bird pricing ends on February 27 at 11:59 p.m. PT, this is your opportunity to save up to $680 on your pass and secure your spot at the center of the tech ecosystem.Register here to save. From October 13 to 15 at Moscone West, 10,000+ founders, operators, and VCs will converge for three days of high-signal conversations and deal-making. Disrupt is not just content. It is access. You get: Last year alone, more than 20,000 curated meetings took place. In 2026, upgraded networking tools will make those connections even more targeted and efficient. One conversation can change your trajectory. AtDisrupt, that is the point. Disrupt has long been a stage for founders and investors who define eras. These are the kinds of voices that are candid, tactical, and often unfiltered. Previous speakers have included leaders of category-defining startups and top-tier venture firms, including: In 2025, Disrupt featured 200+ onstage conversations with 250+ leaders shaping AI, venture capital, hardware, growth strategy, and more. Expect that same caliber of insight in 2026. Keep an eye on theevent pageas the agenda rolls out. Startup Battlefieldreturns with 200 pre-Series A companies competing for $100,000 in equity-free funding, global visibility, and direct investor access. Alumni include Discord, Cloudflare, and Trello. If you want to see what and who is next, and hear directly from top VCs on what it takes to scale a viable startup, the Disrupt stage is where it happens. More than 300 startup exhibitorswill showcase new products across the venue, especially in the Expo Hall, where deal flow and discovery collide. You are not just observing trends. You are seeing them before they scale. From October 11 to 17, TechCrunch Disrupt Side Events take place across the Bay Area, including breakfasts, cocktail hours, panels, and founder meetups that extend the connections beyond the main stage. The main event is powerful. The surrounding ecosystem makes it even stronger. Super Early Bird pricing ends February 27 at 11:59 p.m. PT. If you plan to be in the rooms where capital moves, companies scale, and ideas turn into industries, now is the time to lock it in. Register now:
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