Miles Wang, a researcher who joined OpenAI in 2024 after dropping out of Harvard, is in talks to launch an AI drug discovery startup at a $2 billion valuation, according to sources familiar with the discussions. Wang co-authored research at OpenAI exploring how AI models can automate and accelerate scientific discovery. His new venture, still in formation, may focus on finding new applications for existing drugs and compounds that previously failed in clinical trials, a couple of sources told TechCrunch. The logic behind that focus is commercially compelling. Repurposing drugs that have already cleared safety testing with the Food and…
Author: Funke Adeyemi
Funke Adeyemi
Funke Adeyemi spent a decade in corporate banking and fintech before moving to business journalism. She started in trade finance at a major UK bank, moved to a payments company scaling into African markets, and spent her last role leading partnerships at a cross-border remittance platform. She writes about business strategy, fintech, digital banking, and the corporate news that moves markets. She is interested in how companies actually make money rather than how they describe making money in investor presentations. Funke lives in South London. She reads earnings calls the way other people listen to podcasts, and finds them about as reliable.
A Google Gemini copyright lawsuit filed by some of publishing’s largest names accuses the company of training its artificial intelligence models on books it had no right to use, and of then deliberately scrubbing the evidence. The case, brought in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, names Hachette, Cengage, Elsevier, bestselling thriller writer Scott Turow, and advocacy group S.C.R.I.B.E. as plaintiffs. The Google Gemini Copyright Lawsuit and What It Alleges The complaint describes Google’s conduct as The Guardian characterised it: ‘one of the most prolific infringements of copyrighted materials in history.’ The plaintiffs argue that…
The New York data center moratorium that state legislators had been pushing for months arrived not from the legislature but from the governor’s desk. Gov. Kathy Hochul signed Executive Order No. 62, formally titled ‘Establishing a Temporary Moratorium on Data Centers in New York While State Develops Environmental Review Process,’ making New York the first state in the country to halt permitting for large new data centre facilities. The order bars the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) from issuing discretionary permits for data centres of 50 megawatts or larger, provided those permit applications were not already determined to be…
The Pinwheel Home landline phone is built for children aged 5 to 10, voice calls only, no social feed, no browser, and no screen-time spiral. The kid-focused technology company announced the launch this week, pitching it as a bridge between borrowing a parent’s phone and eventually owning a smartphone. The timing is deliberate. Pinwheel already sells child-friendly smartphones and added a smartwatch last year. Home sits at the younger end of that product arc, designed for households where parents want their children to practise basic communication skills without the risks that come packaged with a connected screen. From a Father’s…
A cohort of people who built fortunes in the last technology cycle are making a quieter, stranger move: tech founders return to AI not as investors or advisers, but as working practitioners, willingly trading executive titles for the deliberately flat label of ‘member of technical staff.’ The pattern is gathering pace. Tom Blomfield, who co-founded Monzo in 2015 and served as its chief executive until 2020 before leaving the company the following year, then spent time as a general partner at Y Combinator from April 2023, announced this week that he is taking a leave of absence to join Anthropic’s…
The Apple trade secrets lawsuit filed against OpenAI last Friday is many things at once: a 41-page catalogue of alleged corporate espionage, a legal salvo aimed at a company building the iPhone’s most credible rival, and, in places, an almost comic record of how carelessly some of the alleged misconduct was conducted.The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, names OpenAI Foundation, OpenAI Group PBC, and io Products as corporate defendants, alongside two individual former Apple employees. Its scope stretches from a text message that reads ‘LOL, I found out I can access the…
SpaceX Starship flight clearance has been granted by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), opening the path for a second V3 launch attempt as soon as Thursday, 16 July, roughly seven weeks after a booster failure derailed the system’s debut outing in May. The timing matters. SpaceX listed on Nasdaq on 12 June, raising nearly $86 billion and entering the ranks of the ten most valuable companies in the world. The next Starship test is therefore the first the company will conduct as a publicly traded entity, putting its much-discussed ‘fly, fail, fix’ development philosophy squarely in front of shareholders for…
The federal pressure on the autonomous vehicle industry hardened last week, and the NHTSA AV first-responder ultimatum issued by the agency’s administrator on 8 July 2026 is the clearest sign yet that Washington is losing patience with the sector’s excuses. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also published a sweeping new regulatory agenda that could reshape the legal framework for driverless vehicles entirely. The NHTSA AV First-Responder Directive NHTSA administrator Jonathan Morrison sent a letter to every autonomous vehicle developer listed in the Department of Transportation’s Standing General Order, telling them flatly that vehicles unable to safely interact with…
The Yosemite oncology fund is moving faster than its founder expected. Reed Jobs, who launched the San Francisco-based venture firm in 2023, sat down with TechCrunch to take stock of a sector that has shifted dramatically beneath his feet: a historic pharmaceutical patent cliff, an acquisitive big-pharma market flush with post-pandemic cash, and AI accelerating drug discovery at a pace that has surprised even insiders. The backdrop matters. Yosemite has grown to a team of 17 and roughly 25 companies across two funds. Its second fund held a $200 million first close, targeting $350 million, according to Venture Capital Journal.…
The Even G2 smart glasses arrive at a peculiar moment: a freshly minted unicorn’s flagship product that is genuinely well-built and frustratingly half-formed at the same time. Priced at $599, they sit in a small and crowded category of display-first wearables that beam text into your line of sight without a camera in sight. Even Realities, the three-year-old Shenzhen-based startup that makes them, raised $150 million in a pre-Series B round led by Meituan and existing backer Tencent, pushing the company’s valuation to $1 billion, according to TechCrunch. Founder and CEO Will Wang has described the company’s philosophy as display-first…
