At TechCrunch Disrupt, three investors took the stage to dissect what makes — and breaks — a pitch deck. Jyoti Bansal, a founder-turned-investor; Medha Agarwal of Defy; and Jennifer Neundorfer of January Ventures shared with the crowd their candid views on what works in a pitch deck — and what doesn’t. Their biggest pet peeve? … Read more
As social media becomes increasingly reliant on algorithmic feeds, creators are navigating a new normal: Just because you post something doesn’t mean your followers will see it. “I think that 2025 was the year where the algorithm completely took over, so followings stopped mattering entirely,” LTK CEO Amber Venz Box told TechCrunch. This isn’t news … Read more
Yakisugi is a Japanese architectural technique for charring the surface of wood. It has become quite popular in bioarchitecture because the carbonized layer protects the wood from water, fire, insects, and fungi, thereby prolonging the lifespan of the wood. Yakisugi techniques were first codified in written form in the 17th and 18th centuries. But it … Read more
The nervous system does an astonishing job of tracking sensory information, and does so using signals that would drive many computer scientists insane: a noisy stream of activity spikes that may be transmitted to hundreds of additional neurons, where they are integrated with similar spike trains coming from still other neurons. Now, researchers have used … Read more
Money was no object for the AI industry in early 2025. A vibe check crept in the second half of the year. OpenAI raised $40 billion at a $300 billion valuation. Safe Superintelligence and Thinking Machine Labs raised individual $2 billion seed rounds before shipping a single product. Even first-time founders were raising at a … Read more
GOG has always been built on strong values and clear principles. When Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński first came up with the idea for GOG in 2007, the vision was simple: bring classic games back to players, and make sure that once you buy a game, it truly belongs to you, forever. In a market … Read more
There has been a flurry of AI voice recording gadgets like Omi, Bee, and Friend that want to capture your voice and let you converse with an AI chatbot. While Bee was acquired by Amazon, and devices like the Stream ring by Sandbar and a new AI ring from former Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky are … Read more
After announcing and teasing its design well over a year ago, Epilogue’s new SN Operator will finally be available for preorder starting tomorrow. Like the company’s GB Operator that debuted in early 2021, the SN Operator is a standalone USB cartridge slot that lets you play and archive old Nintendo console games on PCs, Macs, … Read more
One of the nicest comments people have made about the electrical grid was … nothing. The grid works best when it fades into the background. That low-profile status has changed in recent years as fires in California and freezes in Texas raised awareness of the electrical grid. But it was in 2025, when the electrical … Read more
China drafted landmark rules to stop AI chatbots from emotionally manipulating users, including what could become the strictest policy worldwide intended to prevent AI-supported suicides, self-harm, and violence. China’s Cyberspace Administration proposed the rules on Saturday. If finalized, they would apply to any AI products or services publicly available in China that use text, images, … Read more