Anthro Energy breaks ground on factory that could pave the road to solid-state batteries |

Anthro Energy broke ground on Tuesday on a factory in Louisville, Kentucky, that can make enough battery materials for more than 300,000 electric vehicles. But…

Perplexity’s free AI offer left it with millions more users in India |

Perplexity spent the past year running one of the biggest AI growth experiments, giving its premium service away to customers of Indian telecom giant Airtel.…

Detroit startup Grounded raises $5M to customize electric and gas-powered vans |

Detroit-based Grounded has had to be flexible since it was founded in 2022. The startup was initially built around the idea of customizing electric vans…

Save up to $300 on your Disrupt 2026 pass until August 21  |

12:33 PM PDT · August 17, 2026 The lowest prices for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 end this Friday, August 21 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Once that…

Sound-powered fire protection startup gets $15M to snuff out fires before they turn catastrophic |

For over a century, fire protection has been limited to water and chemicals. And while they can prevent catastrophic fires, the cleanup bills can be…

Higgsfield raises $400M Series B, quadrupling its valuation in 8 months to $5.4B |

Higgsfield announced Monday that it has raised a $400 million Series B at a $5.4 billion valuation. This new round is just eight months after…

Terra Industries closes $52M seed round to build defense infrastructure for the Global South |

In Brief Posted: 8:06 AM PDT · August 17, 2026 African defense tech company Terra Industries on Monday announced an additional $18 million in funding,…

Stripe will reportedly acquire AI gateway startup OpenRouter for $7B+ |

Stripe has finalized a deal to acquire OpenRouter, according to a new report in Bloomberg. OpenRouter helps customers to select different AI models to perform…

SpaceX officially closes its Cursor acquisition |

AI coding startup Cursor is now officially a part of SpaceX, according to an announcement on the Cursor blog. Elon Musk’s SpaceX — which also…

Meta’s ‘open’ AI, and a $250M deal gone very wrong 

Meta released Glimmer this week, an open-weight AImodelanyone can download and run on their own hardware— a contrast toMuseSpark, the company’s more powerful model that…