Browsing: Startups

After chatbot startup Character.AI filed for bankruptcy earlier this week, many of its employees will have the opportunity to take jobs at Disney.

Aisata Diallo, 24, calls herself a lifelong braider. “I’ve always braided my hair growing up and, at some point in my college career, started braiding other people’s hair,” she said. At Northeastern University in Boston, she found limited access to braiders and textured-hair specialists, so she decided to fill that gap by starting a small…

Elorian, the Palo Alto AI startup that raised a $55 million seed round at a $300 million valuation before it launched a product, released its first model on Friday, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.

For three days this week in San Francisco, 20 eager startups participated in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. The top 20 were chosen to represent the best of the Startup Battlefield 200, and they competed for a chance to take home the Startup Battlefield Cup and $100,000. With that intense pitching now complete,…

Your next funding round. Your next hire. Your next big product decision. Building a startup means making choices that can shape the business for years. Taking time to question your approach could be one of the most valuable investments you make.

Over the past two days, 20 startups have been pitching on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, presenting live demos and answering tough questions from our expert judges. Now it’s time to unveil the five companies that will be competing in the Startup Battlefield finals.

Drug development has long relied on animal models, but differences between species mean what works in animals doesn’t always translate to humans, and most drugs still fail during development. Intero Biosystems, a Denver-based startup, is developing human intestinal organoids, lab-grown tissue that mimics the gut, as another way to study how drugs and other compounds…

Databases have traditionally been built for one of two jobs. Analytical databases help businesses spot trends and answer questions, while operational databases store the day-to-day records of transactions, like orders and payments. But the Munich-based database engine CedarDB supports both, and its approach has gained relevance with the rise of agentic AI, its cofounder and…

Colossal Biosciences announced Wednesdaya new AI platform to help accelerate its efforts to bring back extinct species, TechCrunch can exclusively report. 

At-home health testing has been mired in overblown claims and outright fraud. But German startup TimeTeller, which has developed a saliva test kit to help anyone understand their circadian rhythm, is led by CEO Angela Relógio, who is the polar opposite of Theranos’ disgraced founder Elizabeth Holmes.