<p>If you ever call 911 from an area that’s hard to get to, you might hear the buzz of a drone well before a police cruiser pulls up. And there&#8217;s a good chance that it will be one made by Brinc Drones, a Seattle-based startup founded by 25-year-old Blake Resnick, who dropped out of college [&hellip;]</p>

<p>A new company, Deep Cogito, has emerged from stealth with a family of openly available AI models that can be switched between &#8220;reasoning&#8221; and non-reasoning modes. Reasoning models like OpenAI&#8217;s o1 have shown great promise in domains like math and physics, thanks to their ability to effectively fact-check themselves by working through complex problems step [&hellip;]</p>

<p>On Monday, the “de-extinction” startup Colossal Biosciences announced its most ambitious results to date: the dire wolf. These are creatures that have been extinct for more than 12,000 years and made famous by the HBO show &#8220;Game of Thrones.&#8221; These white, fluffy animals live on a 2,000-acre preserve in a location so secretive that journalists, [&hellip;]</p>

<p>If you’re reading this, consider it your signal: The opportunity to influence the future of tech is here. TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 is now accepting speaker applications. Join us onstage this October 27–29 at Moscone West in San Francisco and share your ideas with 10,000+ tech leaders, VCs, and innovators shaping what’s next. Apply to speak [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Zoox, Amazon’s autonomous vehicle unit, is deploying a small fleet of retrofitted test vehicles on the streets of Los Angeles starting Tuesday &#8212; a modest, yet meaningful step as the company inches toward offering public rides in Las Vegas and San Francisco later this year.  The data-collection effort marks Zoox’s entrance into its sixth city [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Rain, a startup offering an employer-integrated earned wage access (EWA) app coupled with financial-wellness features like overdraft alerts and spending trends, has raised $75 million in an all-equity Series B round. The round was led by Prosus at a post-money valuation of $340 million. Rain plans to use the new funds to help it add [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Founders, the battlefield is calling! Startup Battlefield 200 applications are now live — and the race has begun. If you’ve got a groundbreaking idea and the guts to pitch it to the world, TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 is your arena. You’ll face elite VC judges. You’ll compete against 199 of the world’s most promising startups. And [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Join us for an unforgettable opportunity at TechCrunch Sessions: AI, happening at UC Berkeley&#8217;s Zellerbach Hall on June 5! We&#8217;re on the lookout for enthusiastic volunteers to be part of this exciting event. If you&#8217;ve ever wondered what goes into the making of tech gatherings, now&#8217;s your chance to find out firsthand. Apply here by [&hellip;]</p>

<p>You voted. They rose to the top! Meet the two Audience Choice winners who’ll take the breakout stage at TechCrunch Sessions: AI on June 5 in Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley to share their insights with 1,200 AI leaders and enthusiasts.  We sifted through hundreds of Call for Content submissions and narrowed them down to [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati&#8217;s new AI venture, Thinking Machines Lab, has gained two new prominent advisers: Bob McGrew, previously OpenAI&#8217;s chief research officer, and Alec Radford, a former OpenAI researcher behind many of the company&#8217;s more transformative innovations. Thinking Machines Lab&#8217;s website was quietly updated with McGrew and Radford&#8217;s names sometime in March. A spokesperson [&hellip;]</p>

<p>A founder who has carved out a name for himself building products to help restaurants connect better with would-be diners has raised $50 million for his latest startup: a new take on the idea of customer loyalty.&nbsp; Blackbird Labs has built a payments-meets-loyalty-meets-blockchain platform for restaurants to grow repeat business while reducing some of the [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Dark kitchens &#8212; also referred to as ghost kitchens, cloud kitchens, or virtual kitchens &#8212; often receive criticism for their food quality. Sizl, a cook-to-order delivery service based in Chicago, seeks to change this perception by delivering meals made with fresh ingredients in around 30 minutes flat. The company announced its recent $3.5 million seed [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The startup has commissioned a demonstration unit of its organic flow battery.</p>

<p>At 11 a.m. in California last Thursday, the day after President Donald Trump declared sweeping new tariffs under what he dubbed “Liberation Day,” Ryan Petersen was live on camera, fielding questions from a virtual room packed with more than 2,300 anxious customers. The founder and CEO of Flexport, a now 12-year-old global logistics and customs [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Elisabeth Diana, head of communications at human resources platform Deel, is no longer with the company, according to her LinkedIn profile. Bloomberg first reported the news that Diana had resigned from Deel, which was recently accused of planting a spy at rival company Rippling. TechCrunch reached out to Diana but had not heard back at [&hellip;]</p>

<p>San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie wants to bring his city back to its glory days. And he&#8217;s convinced tech leaders — who often pitch utopian ideals of their own — can help him deliver. &#8220;I&#8217;m a mayor that is picking up the phone and calling CEOs,&#8221; said Lurie during TechCrunch&#8217;s StrictlyVC event on Thursday night. [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week reminded us that different startups share a different approach to news: Some choose to remain quiet for a very long time, even about their acquisition [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Since IPOs slowed to trickle a few years ago, limited partners who invest in venture capital funds have had one giant problem: a dearth of liquidity. Lack of cash returns has been especially troublesome for wealthy individuals or their small family offices — who manage the assets of the wealthy — that made substantial investments [&hellip;]</p>

<p>TechCrunch All Stage, our big event for founders of startups at all stages of funding (see what we did there?), is coming up July 15 at Boston’s SoWa Power Station. And it’s our pleasure to announce that Underscore VC’s investing partner Chris Gardner will join a loaded lineup of speakers by leading a breakout session [&hellip;]</p>

<p>StrictlyVC is crossing the Atlantic! On May 13, London will play host to an exclusive StrictlyVC evening, delivering the same high-caliber VC insider content that has made these events a must-attend for investors and startup leaders alike. If you’re a venture capitalist or founder looking to exchange insights with peers and dive into powerful, no-filter [&hellip;]</p>