Mecka AI nears $500M valuation in Sequoia-led deal amid rush for robot training data

The round for the two-year-old startup is coming together months after Mecka announced its Series A.
Khosla Ventures is opening a New York office this fall — its first outpost outside Sand Hill Road

“It’s actually allegedly being built out now,” said Rabois, who has clearly dealt with a missed construction timeline or two.
Y Combinator’s Garry Tan wants US open-weight AI labs to ‘distill’ frontier models, too

Tan wants smaller, American open-weight AI labs to use the same kind of training techniques on American frontier AI labs, giving the U.S. a more robust set of open-weight options that aren’t Chinese.
OpenAI’s feud with mathematicians is only escalating

Twenty-five leading mathematicians signed an open letter arguing that AI labs are threatening their intellectual work.
One week left to book your exhibit table at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026

Only one week left to secure your exhibit table. Tables are limited and can sell out before the September 18 deadline.
Final, final, final call for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Side Events

The absolute last chance to apply to host an official Side Event during TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 is tonight, September 11, at 11:59 p.m. PT.
Kimi-maker Moonshot AI targets $2B in annual revenue

While K3’s usage figures have declined slightly in recent months, OpenRouter data currently shows as many as 300 billion tokens being generated each day by K3 models on the system.
Central Eurasia names its 2026 Road to Battlefield winners: Cerberus, WeGlobal AI, and LOOQ

Cerberus, WeGlobal AI, and LOOQ took the top three spots at the regional final of Road to TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 2026 and will represent Central Eurasia in the Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt in San…
Nscale adds former OpenAI exec Fidji Simo to its board ahead of potential IPO

The No. 2 exec at OpenAI also led Instacart through its IPO in 2023.
Roblox is making it easier to build games with AI — and play them outside Roblox

Roblox will allow creator to deploy their games across PC< consoles, and mobile as standalone apps