Oratomic quantum computing funding has reached $300 million in a Series A round, as the Pasadena-based startup argues it can build a fully fault-tolerant quantum computer with a fraction of the qubits rivals say they need. The round was co-led by ARCH Venture Partners, Spark Capital, and Khosla Ventures, with a broad slate of additional backers. The 20,000-Qubit Claim at the Heart of Oratomic Quantum Computing The pitch is deceptively simple: most quantum roadmaps assume you need roughly a million qubits to do anything genuinely useful. Caltech’s own newsroom confirms the new research suggests that figure could be as low…
Author: Marcus Hale
Marcus Hale
Marcus Hale has been filing general news for the better part of fifteen years. He started at a regional evening paper, moved to a mid-sized digital outlet covering UK news, and spent three years as a general assignment reporter before going freelance. He has covered inquests, council elections, infrastructure announcements, and the kind of stories that sit on page five but matter on page one. He writes about public services, housing, local government, and the institutional stories that take six months to develop and thirty seconds to read. He prefers facts to angles and considers that unfashionable. Marcus lives in Bristol. He still reads the local paper and thinks that makes him an endangered species.
India has approved the Vivo Dixon joint venture, a 51/49 manufacturing partnership majority-owned by Indian electronics giant Dixon Technologies, potentially opening a new chapter in the country’s push to become a serious smartphone export powerhouse beyond Apple. The government granted approval on 8 July under Press Note 3 of 2020, the framework introduced after the 2020 border clashes that requires extra scrutiny of investment from countries sharing a land border with India, including China. Dixon then filed a stock exchange notice with the NSE confirming it had signed a joint venture agreement and shareholders’ agreement with Vivo Mobile India on…
Gradium voice AI funding has reached $100 million after the Paris-based startup re-opened its seed round to new investors, including Nvidia. The company announced the milestone on Thursday, confirming it will use the capital to plant a flag in the Bay Area and compete for talent there. Gradium launched out of stealth in December with $70 million already secured from FirstMark Capital, Eurazeo, DST Global Partners, Eric Schmidt, and French telecom billionaire Xavier Niel. Nvidia’s arrival in the re-opened round pushes the total to $100 million, which is a tidy number for a seed, even by 2026 standards. The Bay…
The Cash App fraud settlement that Block agreed with 46 US state attorneys general carries a $45 million price tag and a clear message: the era of frictionless fintech sign-ups with minimal accountability is closing, however slowly. State attorneys general alleged that Block misled Cash App users by falsely advertising bank-like protections, including advanced fraud detection, while simultaneously designing the platform’s enrolment process to be, as Arizona Capitol Times reports citing the multistate settlement documents, ‘fast and frictionless’ with minimal identity verification. Block denied wrongdoing. What the States Actually Found The investigation was co-led by Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield…
The Truecaller TRAI dispute has moved from back-channel grumbling to a full public row, with Truecaller’s CEO taking to X to accuse India’s telecom regulator of making consumers less safe, not more. It’s the kind of spat that regulators usually win quietly. This one isn’t going quietly. CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala’s complaint centres on the 1400 and 1600 number series: a dedicated range India’s Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) introduced in 2024 to separate legitimate business calls from spam. Telemarketing uses the 1400 series; service and transactional calls use 1600. The idea was that a dedicated, identifiable range would rebuild…
Google Photos Video Remix is Google’s latest move to make generative AI feel less like a lab experiment and more like something you’ll actually use on your phone. Announced on Wednesday, the feature lets users transform videos in seconds, applying cinematic relighting, background swaps, and artistic styles such as watercolour, raw sketchbook, and oil painting effects, all from the app’s Create tab. The tool is powered by Gemini Omni Flash, Google’s recently released model that promises to ‘create anything from any input.’ Before landing in Google Photos, the model initially rolled out to the Gemini app, Google Flow, and YouTube…
Vermilion Cliffs Ventures Fund II has closed at $25 million, with solo GP Ashley Smith targeting AI infrastructure, security, and developer tools through cheques of $500,000 to $1 million per company. The Delaware-registered vehicle, filed with the SEC, is the follow-on to a $13 million debut fund that punched above its weight before anyone was paying close attention.Smith told TechCrunch she raised the new fund in around four months, with the bulk of capital coming from existing investors. Make of that what you will: re-ups from LPs who already know your portfolio is usually the most honest signal a manager…
The ZML LLMD inference server launched this week as a free product, promising to run open-source large language models across a range of chips, from Nvidia and AMD to Google’s TPU, Apple Metal, and Intel Arc, without forcing enterprises to commit to any single vendor’s hardware stack. ZML, the Paris-based AI startup backed by Turing Award winner Yann LeCun, wants to make chip-agnostic inference a practical reality rather than a conference-circuit talking point. That’s a reasonable ambition. Whether a team of 20 can deliver it at scale is the part worth watching. What the ZML LLMD Inference Server Actually Does…
Startup Battlefield Australia applications close on 20 July, and TechCrunch has confirmed there will be no further extensions beyond this one. The deadline shift follows what the programme describes as overwhelming interest, but the window is genuinely narrow now. Eight selected startups will pitch live at Stripe Tour Sydney on 19 August 2026. The top three walk away with up to $15,000 in Stripe fee credits. The real prize, though, sits above that: automatic entry into Startup Battlefield 200, and potential eligibility to present at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco on 13–15 October. No separate application, no qualifying round.…
Made by Google 2026 is locked in for 12 August in New York City, with Google confirming the date via email invites sent to outlets including The Verge and Bloomberg. That’s a week earlier than last year’s equivalent event, which landed on 20 August. Progress, of a kind. One detail buried in the logistics: the event kicks off at 6:00 p.m. ET, an evening slot that breaks from the morning keynote format Google has typically favoured, according to HotHardware. Whether that signals a more theatrical presentation or just a venue preference is anyone’s guess, though last year’s outing, which featured…