Latest AI News
AI and Robotics are No Longer Optional Subjects in Schools
With new CBSE guidelines and growing industry support, robotics and AI are moving from optional learning to core subjects in schools.
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OpenAI Breaks Free From Microsoft Azure Exclusivity
Microsoft will no longer pay a revenue share to OpenAI.
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OpenAI could be making a phone with AI agents replacing apps
There have been plenty of rumors aboutOpenAI’s hardware plans, which involvelaunching a pair of earbuds. A new note from industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuosuggeststhat the AI company might be working on a phone in collaboration with MediaTek, Qualcomm, and Luxshare. Kuo, who has reported on several Apple hardware plans in the past, said that OpenAI would develop a smartphone chip with MediaTek and Qualcomm, with Luxshare acting as a co-design and manufacturing partner. The analyst’s note also suggests that instead of apps, the smartphone could rely on AI agents to complete different tasks. Currently, Apple and Google control the app pipeline and the type of system access they get, restricting some of their functions. Kuo suggests that by creating its own smartphone and hardware stack, OpenAI would be able to use AI in all kinds of features without restrictions. With ChatGPT nearing a billion weekly users, a hardware product for daily use could also bode well for OpenAI’s ambition to reach more consumers. This thinking is not restricted to OpenAI. Vibe coding app makersare predicting a futurethat doesn’t involve apps. Nothing CEO Carl Pei said at SXSW thatapps will eventually go away. Kuo believes that OpenAI’s smartphone would be designed to continuously understand users’ context. By offering the phone itself, the company could gain access to more data about users’ habits than an app on the phone could. He also said that the company will work on a mixture of small on-device models and cloud models to handle different types of requests and tasks. The analyst said the smartphone’s specifications and its component suppliers are expected to be finalized by the year-end or by the first quarter of 2027, with mass production of the device expected to start in 2028. Earlier this year, OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane said that the company is on track to announce itsfirst hardware product in the second half of 2026.Severalreportsat that time indicated that the device could be uniquely designed earbuds. OpenAI didn’t comment on the story at the time of writing.
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China blocks Meta’s $2B Manus deal after months-long probe
China’s top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said on Monday it has blocked Meta’s $2 billion acquisition of Manus, an agentic AI startup founded by Chinese engineers that relocated to Singapore before MarkZuckerberg scooped it up late last year. The move marks one of China’s most significant interventions in a cross-border deal, one that extends well beyond U.S.-China tensions and into the broader AI industry. For Meta, it could deal a serious blow to its ambitions in the fast-moving AI agents space. With no explanation offered, China’s NDRC ordered both parties to unwind the deal entirely. “The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has made a decision to prohibit foreign investment in the Manus project in accordance with laws and regulations, and has required the parties involved to withdraw the acquisition transaction,”it said. But the situation is far from straightforward. Around100 Manus employees have already moved intoMeta’s Singapore offices as of March, with founders taking on executive roles. CEO Xiao Hong now reportsdirectly to Meta COO Javier Olivan. Manus CEO Hong and Chief Scientist Yichao Ji arereportedlyunder exit bans, preventing them from leaving mainland China. “The transaction complied fully with applicable law. We anticipate an appropriate resolution to the inquiry,” a spokesperson at Meta told TechCrunch. Founded in 2022 by Hong, Ji, and Tao Zhang, Manus relocated its headquarters from China to Singapore around mid-2025. Just months later, Meta came knocking. The company announced its acquisition of Manus in December 2025 for roughly $2 billion to $3 billion, with plans to fold its agent technology directly into Meta AI. Meta has agreed to acquire Singapore-based AI startup Manus, with the deal requiring a full exit from Chinese ownership and operations, perNikkei Asia. But the company’s origins trace back to China. Manus’ founders previously established its parent company, Butterfly Effect, in Beijing in 2022 before relocating to Singapore. That background has drawn scrutiny in Washington, where Senator John Cornyn has already raised concerns about Benchmark’s investment in the company, questioning whether American capital should be flowing to a Chinese-linked firm, TechCrunch pointed out,citing Cornyn’s post on X. Manus did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
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Investors back Skye’s AI home screen app for iPhone ahead of launch
Skye, an iPhone app still in private testing, wants to change how people interact with AI on their smartphones. And even before it’s launched, it’s already attracted interest online and from investors and “tens of thousands” of users, according to its creator — a sign that consumers might want a more AI-aware iPhone. Instead of launching an app or speaking to an AI chatbot, the startup is working to design an “agentic homescreen” for the iPhone, using iOS widgets as its interface. Through those widgets, Skye would bring a sort of ambient intelligence to your device, offering personalized insights about your local weather, your current context, your health, and more, according to apostfrom its creator, who goes bysignüllon X. The app can also draft email replies, help you with your meeting prep, send reminders, and flag suspicious charges in your bank accounts. Its creator also claims it can provide location-specific recommendations and additional information about local businesses, neighborhoods, and attractions while you’re out and about. Much of this data would be pulled in through authorized connections granted by the user. The app, which is beingbuiltby a small team from the startupSignull Labs, has already attracted investor attention, despite not yet having a public product. Accordingto an SEC filing, the startup has raised north of $3.58 million in pre-seed funding, in a round that closed in September 2025.Pitchbookalso currently lists New York-based Signull Labs’ funding along with a post-money valuation of $19.5 million. Since announcing the startup’s plans on X, signüll, whose name TechCrunch confirmed as Nirav Savjani according to theSEC filingsand other documents, claims the app has added “tens of thousands” of users to the waitlist. This metric, if accurate, would suggest strong consumer interest in a more AI-aware iPhone. (And potentially, the possibility that a new type of AI device, like therumored OpenAI smartphone, could have a chance.) holy fuck the response to yesterday's lunch has been absolutely unreal. ~million views on our video, tens of thousands added to a waitlist that was already 25k+, & hundreds & hundreds of emails & DMs from investors & ppl genuinely excited about what we're building. our discord is…https://t.co/jqtU9zELqH TechCrunch spoke to signüll, who shared more about the product and funding, under the condition of protecting his pseudonymity. TechCrunch declined, as signull’s name is listed publicly in the SEC filings establishing Signull Labs. (TechCrunch said we would still be happy to publish an interview with him when he’s prepared to go on the record.) The founder noted he’s previously worked at Google and Meta, though he has no obvious LinkedIn presence. He also told TechCrunch that Skye’s early backers includeda16z(Andreesen Horowitz), True Ventures, SV Angel, and other individuals.Offline Venturesalso lists Signull Labs in its online portfolio, we found. Since announcing Skye, Savjani hasappeared on the TBPN podcastas his avatar and has beenposting on Xabout his use of the app. He told TechCrunch that the Skye app plans to launch to its waitlist of users soon, though he declined to give specifics.
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The $100,000 Experiment: What Happens When an AI Agent Manages a Store with Its Own Credit Card?
The world's first artificial intelligence (AI) store, which is entirely designed, managed, and run by an AI agent, is here. Even five years ago, the previous sentence would have sounded like it was taken from science fiction; however, today it is reality. A San Francisco-based startup, Andon Labs, designed an AI agent with all the necessary tools required to run a physical store, and gave it the keys to a retail store and a corporate credit card with $100,000 (roughly Rs. 94.25 lakh) in the bank.
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Meta AI Business Assistant Expanded to Global Markets, to Let Advertisers Optimise Marketing Campaigns
Meta is now expanding its artificial intelligence (AI) tool for marketing campaigns to major global markets. Dubbed the Meta AI Business Assistant, it is a conversational AI platform designed to help advertisers optimise marketing campaigns, resolve account issues, and manage customer interactions across Meta's platforms. It was first introduced last year and was limited to select advertisers in the US. The Menlo Park-based tech giant is now widely rolling out the AI tool globally across its key markets.
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Meta inks deal for solar power at night, beamed from space
The race to secure electricity for AI models has reached new heights: Meta has signed an agreement with the startup Overview Energy that could see a thousand satellites beam infrared light to solar farms that power data centers at night. In 2024, Meta’s data centers used more than 18,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity—roughly enough to power more than1.7 million American homesfor a year—and its need for compute power is only increasing. The company has committed to building 30 gigawatts of renewable power sources, with a focus on industrial-scale solar power plants. Typically, data centers turning to solar power must either invest in battery storage or rely on other generation sources to operate at night. Overview, a four-year-old, Ashburn, Virginia, outfit thatemerged from stealthin December, has a different solution: The company is developing spacecraft that collect plentiful solar power in space. It then plans to convert that energy to near-infrared light and beam it at sufficiently large solar farms—on the order of hundreds of megawatts—which can convert that light to electricity. By using a wide, infrared beam to power existing terrestrial solar infrastructure, Overview thinks it can sidestep the technological challenges and safety and regulatory issues that bedevil plans to transmit power to Earth through high-power lasers or microwave beams. CEO Marc Berte says you’ll be able to stare right into his satellite’s beam with no ill effects. The technology would increase the return on investment from building solar farms and reduce reliance on fossil fuels — if it can be deployed at scale. Overview says it has already demonstrated power transmission to the ground from an aircraft, and is planning to launch a satellite to low Earth orbit in January 2028 to perform its first power transmission from space. In today’s announcement, Meta said it signed the first capacity reservation agreement with Overview to receive up to 1 gigawatt of power from the company’s spacecraft, although it’s not clear if any money changed hands. Overview developed a new metric for this contract, megawatt photons, which is the amount of light required to generate a megawatt of electricity. Berte expects to begin launching the satellites that would fulfill that commitment in 2030, with a goal of flying 1,000 spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit, a high orbit in which each satellite remains fixed above the same point on Earth. He expects each of the company’s spacecraft to provide power from space for more than 10 years. Once in space, Berte says the fleet of spacecraft will be able to cover about a third of the planet, with an initial deployment that will reach from the West Coast of the United States across to Western Europe. As the Earth rotates below and customer solar farms enter evening and night, Overview’s spacecraft should boost their electrical generation with additional light from space. Berte sees opportunity in combining both generation and transmission, with the flexibility to deliver power to solar farms wherever and whenever it is most valuable. “There’s a big difference between being in any one energy market, and being in all of the energy markets,” Berte told TechCrunch.
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TSMC Unveils A13 Node for AI Computing, But Production Begins in 2029. Why?
This new process technology targets AI and high-performance computing workloads, with production planned for 2029.
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Meta-Manus Deal Blocked by China: Report
Last month, Chinese regulators barred Manus co-founders Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao from leaving the country.
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What’s Behind HGS’s 90-Day AI ROI Push? CEO Explains
Global CEO Venkatesh Korla outlines HGS’s 90-day AI ROI push, move to outcome-based pricing, and evolving workforce model.
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OpenAI Developing Custom Chips With MediaTek, Qualcomm for ‘AI Agent’ Smartphones: Ming-Chi Kuo
OpenAI is said to be moving towards building new custom processors for smartphones. According to an analyst, the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) company has partnered with MediaTek and Qualcomm, and both chipmakers are expected to benefit from long-term demand if smartphones with agentic AI capabilities gain traction. The project, however, is still believed to be in the infancy stage, with mass production currently targeted for 2028. The analyst said that the supply chain is expected to involve Luxshare as the exclusive system co-design and manufacturing partner.
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