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Thatch raises $40M to give employees more control of their health care choices

Thatch raises $40M to give employees more control of their health care choices

​Thatch, a startup that aims to transform the health insurance experience for employers and employees alike, has raised $40 million in a Series B round of funding, it tells TechCrunch exclusively. Index Ventures led the financing, which included participation from existing backers Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), General Catalyst, SemperVirens, PeopleTech Partners, The General Partnership, and new […]  

ChatGPT users have generated over 700M images since last week, OpenAI says

ChatGPT users have generated over 700M images since last week, OpenAI says

​OpenAI’s new image-generation feature is on track to be one of the company’s most popular product launches ever. According to Brad Lightcap, who oversees day-to-day operations and global deployment at OpenAI, over 130 million users have generated more than 700 million images since the upgraded image generator launched in ChatGPT on May 25. “[W]e appreciate […]  

Call for speakers: Showcase your knowledge at TechCrunch All Stage

Call for speakers: Showcase your knowledge at TechCrunch All Stage

​Calling founders, VCs, and startup experts — share your scaling strategies! TechCrunch All Stage 2025 is assembling top minds in startups and venture capital on July 15 in Boston. If you have valuable insights on scaling, now’s your chance to share them with 1,200+ founders, investors, and entrepreneurs. Lead thought-provoking sessions, interactive roundtables, and actionable […]  

Voice AI platform Phonic gets backing from Lux

Voice AI platform Phonic gets backing from Lux

​The quality of AI-generated voices is good enough for things like creating audiobooks and podcasts, having articles read aloud to you, and basic customer support. But many businesses don’t think AI voice tech is quite reliable enough to deploy. That’s why two MIT grads, Moin Nadeem and Nikhil Murthy, founded Phonic, a company offering an […]  

Spotify debuts Gen AI ads, programmatic ad buying

​Spotify announced Gen AI ads, among other changes to its advertising business, at an event in New York City on Thursday. Notably, the company introduced a new programmatic offering, the Spotify Ad Exchange (SAX), which allows advertisers to reach Spotify’s logged-in users via real-time auctions. On the latter, Spotify announced new partnerships with Google’s demand-side […]  

Runway, best known for its video-generating AI models, raises $308M

​Runway, a startup developing a range of generative AI models for media production, including video-generating models, has raised $308 million in a Series D funding round. General Atlantic led the round, which had participation from Fidelity Management & Research Company, Baillie Gifford, Nvidia, SoftBank, and others. The fresh capital will be put toward AI research […]  

The Nintendo Switch 2, hands-on: It’s pretty good!

​At a presentation unveiling the Nintendo Switch 2, longtime Nintendo producer Kouichi Kawamoto revealed that at one point, he considered calling the Switch’s successor the “Super Nintendo Switch.” It would have been a nice nod to Nintendo’s second console, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which followed the original NES about 35 years ago. But Kawamoto, […]