With Apple’s new Creator Studio Pro, AI is a tool to aid creation, not replace it

Apple’s Creator Studio Pro leverages AI to help creators with tedious tasks — like finding clips or building slides — without trying to do the work for them.

Modelence raises $3M to smooth out the vibe-coding stack

How do you build tooling for the AI software stack? A company called Modelence has an interesting answer.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026: Plus-one passes are almost gone and only 3 days remain

The TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 plus-one passes at 50% off are almost sold out, and this deal ends in 3 days. Register here before this deal ends on Friday, January 30 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

Google now lets users jump from AI Overviews into AI Mode conversations

The tech giant also announced that it’s making Gemini 3 the new default model for AI Overviews globally.

Risotto raises $10M seed to use AI to make ticketing systems easier to use

“Our special sauce is the prompt libraries, the eval suites, and the thousands and thousands of real-world examples that the AI gets trained on to ensure it actually does what it’s expected to do,” CEO Aron Solberg told TechCrunch.

Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni’s Phia raises $35M to ‘make shopping fun again’

“We are just at such a prime time of opportunity,” Gates said to explain the new fundraise. “Commerce itself for the consumer hasn’t really been adapted in the last 30 years, and the opportunity to make a truly personalized, end-to-end shopping experience is today.” 

Airtable jumps into the AI agent game with Superagent

SuperAgent is Airtable’s first stand-alone product in its 13-year history, and signals both the company’s ambitions and the reality of the current AI moment: Every serious software player is racing to prove they can deliver on agents.

Anthropic launches interactive Claude apps, including Slack and other workplace tools

Claude users will now be able to call up interactive apps inside the chatbot interface, with Cowork integration coming soon.

Obvious Ventures lands fund five with a 360-degree view of planetary, human, economic health

The 12-year-old firm raised $360,360,360 for its fifth fund. And there’s a reason for that number.

Tech workers call for CEOs to speak up against ICE after the killing of Alex Pretti

More than 450 tech workers from companies like Google, Meta, OpenAI, Amazon, and Salesforce have signed a letter urging their CEOs to call the White House and demand ICE leave our cities.