Best of TechCrunch — 2025

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    Hugging Face CEO says we’re in an ‘LLM bubble,’ not an ‘AI bubble’

    Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue argues the tech industry is experiencing an LLM bubble rather than a broader AI bubble, predicting it may burst soon. He believes the current focus on large, general-purpose language models is misplaced, and that smaller, specialized models will dominate the future for specific use cases like banking chatbots. While competitors spend billions on LLM infrastructure, Hugging Face maintains a capital-efficient approach with half of its $400 million funding still in reserve, positioning itself for long-term sustainability across the diversified AI landscape.

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    Duolingo ‘killed’ its mascot with a Cybertruck, and it’s going weirdly well

    Duolingo's mascot, Duo the owl, was humorously pronounced dead by being hit by a Cybertruck, as part of a bold marketing stunt. The campaign led to significant increases in user engagement and downloads, with Duolingo users actively trying to 'save' the mascot by completing lessons and maintaining streaks. The stunt serves to engage users in a unique way while indirectly targeting Elon Musk's influence.

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    The 20 hottest open source startups of 2024

    A new report from Runa Capital highlights the 20 top-trending open source startups for 2024, emphasizing the significant influence of AI technology. Key standout companies include Ollama and Zed Industries, with impressive growth in GitHub stars. The ROSS Index methodology prioritizes commercial projects less than 10 years old, showing high demand for AI and developer tools.

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    How to stop doomscrolling

    This post discusses the habit of doomscrolling, the negative effects it has on mental health, and provides practical tips to break free from it. It explains the role of tech companies in encouraging excessive screen time and suggests using screen time limits, third-party apps, and alternative activities to mitigate the problem.

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    Preston Thorpe is a software engineer at a San Fransisco startup. He’s also serving his eleventh year in prison.

    Preston Thorpe works as a senior software engineer at database company Turso while serving his 11th year in prison for drug-related crimes. He's part of an experimental Maine prison program allowing incarcerated people to work remote jobs. After contributing to Turso's open-source project for six months, CEO Glauber Costa hired him despite knowing his situation. The program has shown remarkable success in rehabilitation, with Maine's recidivism rate at 21-23% compared to 60% in many states, and college attendees returning at only 0.05%. About 30 inmates now work remotely from the Earned Living Unit, surrendering 10% of their pay to the state. Thorpe transformed his life through education and programming, earning a degree from University of Maine and finding purpose through his technical career.

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    How to delete Facebook, Instagram, and Threads

    Meta's recent decision to relax its content moderation policies and remove its third-party fact-checking system has led to a surge in users searching for ways to delete their Facebook, Instagram, and Threads accounts. The post provides detailed instructions on how to download personal data from Facebook and Instagram before deletion and outlines the steps for permanently deleting accounts on these platforms.

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    How OpenAI’s bot crushed this seven-person company’s web site ‘like a DDoS attack’

    Triplegangers, a small company specializing in 3D image files, faced disruption when OpenAI's bot significantly overloaded their ecommerce site, akin to a DDoS attack. The bot attempted to download the company's extensive database of images, leading to site crashes and anticipated high server costs. This incident highlights the importance of properly configuring robot.txt files to block unwanted bots and the challenges small businesses face in protecting their data against AI scrapers.

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    Google's vibe-coding tool Opal comes to Gemini

    Google is integrating Opal, its vibe-coding tool for building AI-powered mini apps, directly into the Gemini web interface. Users can now create custom apps (called Gems) using natural language descriptions, with a visual editor that arranges steps without writing code. The tool includes a new view that converts written prompts into step-by-step workflows, and advanced users can access more customization options at opal.google.com. This move positions Google alongside other AI-powered app-building tools like Lovable, Cursor, and offerings from Anthropic and OpenAI.

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    Google launches its AI vibe-coding app Opal in 15 more countries

    Google expanded Opal, an AI-powered no-code app builder, to 15 new countries including Canada, India, Japan, and Brazil. The tool lets users create web apps through text prompts and visual workflows without writing code. Recent improvements include faster app creation (down from 5+ seconds), step-by-step debugging in a visual editor, and parallel execution for complex workflows. Opal competes with similar offerings from Canva, Figma, and Replit in the growing no-code development space.

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    Bluesky quickly sold out of the t-shirt its CEO wore to troll Mark Zuckerberg

    Bluesky CEO Jay Graber made headlines at SXSW by wearing a t-shirt with the Latin phrase 'Mundus sine Caesaribus' (a world without Caesars) aimed at Mark Zuckerberg. The t-shirt quickly sold out as Bluesky users rushed to buy it. This move reflects Bluesky's commitment to decentralized and open-source social media, emphasizing user and developer autonomy over corporate control.

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    Google is testing a vibe-coding app called Opal

    Google is testing Opal, a new AI-powered vibe-coding tool available through Google Labs in the US. The tool allows users to create web apps using text prompts or remix existing apps from a gallery. Opal features a visual workflow editor where users can see and modify the input, output, and generation steps. Users can publish and share their apps with others. This joins Google's existing AI Studio and competes with similar tools from Canva, Figma, and Replit that target non-technical users for app prototyping.

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    Is Duolingo the face of an AI jobs crisis?

    Duolingo is shifting towards an 'AI-first' strategy, replacing contractors with artificial intelligence. This move reflects a broader trend where companies are using AI to reduce labor costs, affecting creative sectors and contributing to higher unemployment among recent graduates. The AI jobs crisis highlights management decisions prioritizing AI over hiring human workers.

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    YouTube announces ‘voluntary exit program’ for US staff

    YouTube is offering a voluntary exit program with severance for US-based employees while reorganizing its product teams into three divisions: Subscription Products (YouTube Music, Premium, OTT), Viewer Products (main app, Kids, Learning, Trust & Safety), and Creator & Community Products. The restructuring involves no forced role eliminations and comes as YouTube reported $10.26 billion in Q3 advertising revenue, a 15% year-over-year increase.

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    Perplexity CEO says its browser will track everything users do online to sell ‘hyper personalized’ ads

    Perplexity's CEO announced plans to launch a browser that will track users' online activities to sell hyper personalized ads. The browser, named Comet, aims to gather data beyond the app to create better user profiles and offer relevant ads. The company is following a similar strategy to Google and has also secured a partnership with Motorola to pre-install its app on the Razr series. Talks with Samsung are ongoing.

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    Meta estimates that it earns 10% of its revenue from scams, report says

    Reuters reports that Meta projected $16 billion (10% of annual revenue) would come from fraudulent ads in the previous year. Internal documents reveal Meta's fraud detection system only deactivates advertisers when 95% certain of fraud, otherwise charging suspected fraudsters higher rates. The company has allegedly failed to adequately protect users from scam ads promoting illegal gambling, investment schemes, and banned medical products for three years. Meta claims to have reduced scam ad reports by 58% over 18 months and removed 134 million fraudulent ads.

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    ‘It was weird, man’: Zuckerberg took Facebook employees to see ‘The Social Network’ when it came out

    Mark Zuckerberg discussed his experience of watching 'The Social Network' with his employees, describing it as 'weird' due to the inaccuracies in his portrayed motivations. He also addressed misconceptions linking Facemash to Facebook and emphasized his focus on style evolution over the years.

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    WhatsApp launches long-awaited Apple Watch app

    WhatsApp has released its first Apple Watch companion app, enabling users to read messages, send voice recordings, react to messages, and receive call notifications directly from their wrist. The app supports Apple Watch Series 4 or later with watchOS 10+, maintains end-to-end encryption, and displays clearer images and stickers. This follows WhatsApp's recent expansion to iPad and comes after Snapchat's similar Apple Watch app launch earlier this year.

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    Hollywood is not taking kindly to the AI-generated actress Tilly Norwood

    Xicoia created Tilly Norwood, an AI-generated actress with 40,000 Instagram followers, sparking backlash from Hollywood. Actress Emily Blunt expressed concern about losing human connection, while SAG-AFTRA condemned the synthetic performer as trained on actors' work without permission or compensation. The union emphasized that using such AI-generated characters violates contractual obligations and threatens performer livelihoods. The controversy highlights growing tensions around AI's role in creative industries, particularly following OpenAI's Sora 2 release.

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    The backlash against Duolingo going ‘AI-first’ didn’t even matter

    Duolingo's shift to an AI-first strategy, which involved phasing out contract workers and using generative AI to create 148 new language courses, faced significant public backlash on social media. Despite the criticism, the company exceeded quarterly revenue estimates, saw stock prices rise 30%, and expects over $1 billion in revenue this year with 40% growth in daily active users. CEO Luis von Ahn acknowledged the backlash affected growth metrics but emphasized that financial performance remained strong, demonstrating that negative public sentiment didn't translate to business impact.

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    Three weeks after acquiring Windsurf, Cognition offers staff the exit door

    Cognition laid off 30 employees and offered buyouts to remaining Windsurf staff just three weeks after acquiring the AI coding startup. The buyout includes nine months of salary, while employees who stay must work 80+ hour weeks and six days in office. This follows a turbulent period for Windsurf, which nearly got acquired by OpenAI before losing key leadership to Google in a $2.4 billion reverse-acquihire deal. The situation suggests Cognition was primarily interested in Windsurf's intellectual property rather than its talent.

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    xAI is hiring an engineer to make anime girls

    Elon Musk's xAI has posted a job listing for a 'Fullstack Engineer - Waifus' position to develop AI-powered anime girl companions. The company recently launched AI companions including characters like the goth waifu Ani and homicidal red panda Bad Rudy. While xAI has many open positions, this specific role focuses on creating virtual romantic companions designed to engage users emotionally and financially.

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    Red Bull Racing’s secret weapon? An engineer who treats workflows like lap times

    Red Bull Racing's new CEO Laurent Mekies applies engineering principles to organizational workflows, treating security and system access as performance optimization opportunities rather than friction points. His partnership with 1Password demonstrates how eliminating workflow bottlenecks—like authentication delays—can create competitive advantages. Mekies' technical background shapes his leadership approach: focusing on process efficiency, understanding root causes before moving forward, and empowering 2,000 team members rather than seeking spotlight. The team faces a major technical challenge in 2026, building their own power unit from scratch while competing against manufacturers with 90+ years of experience.

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    A rough week for hardware companies

    Three hardware companies—iRobot, Luminar, and Rad Power Bikes—filed for bankruptcy within a week, facing similar challenges despite selling different products (robotic vacuums, lidar sensors, and e-bikes). Common issues included tariff pressures from Chinese manufacturing dependencies, failed major acquisition deals (notably iRobot's blocked Amazon acquisition), pandemic-driven revenue peaks followed by steep declines, and inability to diversify beyond their flagship products. The bankruptcies highlight structural challenges in hardware manufacturing, including supply chain concentration in China and difficulty maintaining growth after initial product success.

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    Amazon sends legal threats to Perplexity over agentic browsing

    Amazon sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity demanding its AI shopping assistant Comet identify itself as an agent when browsing Amazon's site. Perplexity argues agents acting on behalf of users should have the same permissions as human users, while Amazon insists third-party agents must identify themselves and respect service provider decisions. The dispute echoes previous controversies around Perplexity's web scraping practices and raises broader questions about how websites will handle autonomous AI agents in e-commerce, travel booking, and other online services.

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    Jack Dorsey pumps $10 million into a nonprofit focused on open-source social media

    Jack Dorsey invested $10 million in 'and Other Stuff,' a nonprofit collective focused on building open-source social media tools and protocols. The group, which includes former Twitter employees and other tech veterans, is experimenting with Nostr protocol and other decentralized technologies to create alternatives to traditional corporate-owned social platforms. Dorsey believes current social media companies face fundamental structural problems due to advertiser dependence and corporate incentives, advocating instead for open protocols similar to Bitcoin that aren't owned by any single entity.

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