Whole Foods to install smart food waste bins from Mill starting in 2027

The food waste startup founded by Nest alumnus Matt Rogers also received an investment from Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund.

Canadian peer-to-peer clothing rental company Rax is expanding to the US

Rax is a peer-to-peer clothing rental company that won top consumer pitch at Disrupt this year.

Hacking group says it’s extorting Pornhub after stealing users’ viewing data

The Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters hacking collective stole Pornhub premium users’ data, including email addresses and viewing history.

India’s Digantara raises $50M for space-based missile defense tech

With this funding, Digantara has raised $64.5 million in total as it moves beyond space situational awareness into missile tracking, citing growing demand from governments for space-based defense capabilities.

Databricks raises $4B at $134B valuation as its AI business heats up

The data intelligence company has just raised more than $4 billion in a Series L funding round at a $134 billion valuation — up 34% from the $100 billion valuation that it achieved just three months ago.

Adobe Firefly now supports prompt-based video editing, adds more third-party models

Adobe is updating its AI video-generation app, Firefly, with a new video editor that supports precise prompt-based edits, as well as adding new third-party models for image and video generation, including Black Forest Labs’ FLUX.2 and Topaz Astra.

Google’s ‘dark web report’ feature will no longer be available starting in February

Launched initially about a year and a half ago, this tool aimed to help users monitor their personal information on the dark web.

Gift guide: TechCrunch’s favorite things

As tech journalists we have a lot of opinions. So if we really like something, it’s probably good!

Lightspeed raises record $9B in fresh capital

The massive fund haul will allow the Silicon Valley firm to continue to invest in cash-hungry AI startups.

Merriam-Webster names ‘slop’ the word of the year

AI-generated content has dominated the internet over the past year, and America’s dictionary took note.