For 19-year-old Arlan Rakhmetzhanov, there is no middle ground. Either build a company as valuable as Google, he says, or fail and end up on the street. He started coding at age 15 in his native Kazakhstan, completed a couple of summer programs in San Francisco, and DMed every Y Combinator founder he could find
Money has evolved to become much more than the cash in your wallet or bank account. And at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, we will dedicate an entire stage to that progression. The new Smart Money Stage will be the place where financial technology, payments and artificial intelligence collide. From October 13-15 at the Moscone Center in
Prentis, a new artificial intelligence research lab focused on computer usage models, co-founded by serial entrepreneur Ritankar Das and tech heavyweights Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus, is in talks to raise $100 million at a $1 billion valuation, according to two people familiar with the discussions. Launched in April, Prentis is training models to learn
Prentis, a new artificial intelligence research lab focused on computer usage models, co-founded by serial entrepreneur Ritankar Das and tech heavyweights Reid Hoffman and Marc Pincus, is in talks to raise $100 million at a $1 billion valuation, according to two people familiar with the discussions. Launched in April, Prentis is training models to learn
Dora Palfi comes from a family of teachers. So naturally, “it was instilled in me that education is something that can completely alter the trajectory of your life,” he told TechCrunch. In 2018, she and Beatrice Ionascu launched Imagi, a company that helps provide K-12 students and teachers with the tools to teach and develop
Runway no longer wants to be an AI model company anymore. It wants to become the infrastructure layer for generative media. On Thursday, the startup launched Runway Media Router through Runway Dev, its development platform, launched earlier this month, which provides API access to a growing list of third-party image, video and audio models alongside