Sora’s shutdown could be a reality check moment for AI video

Is this just normal corporate strategy, or are we about to see a broader pullback on AI-generated video?

TechCrunch Mobility: When a robotaxi has to call 911

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation.

The Pixel 10a doesn’t have a camera bump, and it’s great

The Google Pixel 10a can lay flat on a table, but otherwise the company hasn’t brought a ton of upgrades to its newest budget smartphone.

YouTube CEO says the best YouTubers will ‘never leave their home’

CEO Neal Mohan insisted that he isn’t worried about Netflix luring away YouTube’s most popular creators.

‘Project Hail Mary’ becomes Amazon MGM’s biggest box office hit

Amazon’s bet on “Project Hail Mary” has paid off handsomely.

Starcloud raises $170 million Series A to build data centers in space

Starcloud becomes the fastest Y Combinator startup to reach unicorn status, just 17 months after demo day.

Why OpenAI really shut down Sora

OpenAI’s decision last week to shut down Sora, its AI video-generation tool, just six months after releasing it to the public raised immediate suspicions. The app had invited users to upload their own faces — so was this some kind of elaborate data grab?

Qodo raises $70M for code verification as AI coding scales

As AI floods software development with code, Qodo is betting the real challenge is making sure it actually works.

Mistral AI raises $830M in debt to set up a data center near Paris

Mistral aims to start operating the data center by the second quarter of 2026.

AI chip startup Rebellions raises $400 million at $2.3B valuation in pre-IPO round

The startup, which is planning to go public later this year, designs chips specifically for AI inference, another challenger to Nvidia’s dominance.