Amazon is taking its biggest shot at Nvidia yet with new TorchNeuron dev tool

Amazon wants to break Nvidia’s hold on PyTorch, the free toolkit used to build most AI apps, so that more developers run their apps on alternative chips like its own.

Replika’s founder built the AI assistant she pitched at Disrupt 12 years ago

Eugenia Kuyda’s newest startup Wabi is positioned to take advantage of an idea she had more than a decade ago. Wabi offers a personal AI assistant with a twist, free and downloadable to anyone today.

AI assistant startup Town nabs unicorn valuation four months after launch

AI assistant startup Town nabbed a unicorn valuation on Monday, announcing a $108 million Series B round co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Menlo Ventures.

Khosla Ventures doubles down on Even Healthcare to challenge India’s hospital economics

Even Healthcare reaches a $300 million valuation in a Khosla Ventures-led round as it plans to expand its hospital network in India.

Disney agrees to hire the majority of Character.AI’s workforce

After chatbot startup Character.AI filed for bankruptcy earlier this week, many of its employees will have the opportunity to take jobs at Disney. Character.AI’s former CEO Karandeep Anand recently became the entertainment giant’s first CTO, and the st…

Elorian’s first AI model wants to reason with images, not just about them

According to Elorian’s evaluations, Glimpse outperforms even GPT-6 Astra on scientific chart reasoning and short-form video captioning, with competitive results on other visual reasoning tasks. 

Tressfecta wants to make hair braiding a less arduous task for hairstylists

Tressfecta builds products for textured hair. Its first project is a tool called Plait Pilot that helps braiders with the initial process of separating hair from packs before braiding begins.

And the winner of Startup Battlefield at Disrupt 2026 is: Intero Biosystems

Intero Biosystems beat out 199 other Startup Battlefield companies to take home the $100,000 grand prize at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026.

Last chance to save up to $200 on your TechCrunch Founder Summit pass: Early booking ends October 16

Savings of up to $200 end October 16 for TechCrunch Founder Summit. These savings for Founder and Investor Passes vanish after Friday. Join 1,000 founders and investors on November 4 at Boston’s SoWa Power Station. Bring your toughest questions and mak…

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026: Last day

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