Techin' Geek

The upcoming flagship smartphone from OnePlus is just days away from being available. This model represents a significant advancement, rather than simply the typical year-over-year enhancements anticipated in a regular update. The design is recognizable, the arrangement of the camera is technically knowledgeable, and enhancements to the battery technology were quite anticipated. I’m not voicing any complaints about […]

One of the most impactful applications that has arisen from contemporary AI models is their enhanced capability to comprehend the human voice, resulting in improved dictation tools. A notable Mac application, Willow, is set to launch an iOS app that allows users to type using their voice in any app.

Like Wispr Flow, Willow’s keyboard converts your speech into text and formats messages based on the context. The app, which accommodates over 100 languages, enables you to establish custom vocabulary or develop various writing styles for different app categories like work, messaging, email, and more.

A significant benefit of Willow’s application is the availability of a complete keyboard for typing, whereas Wispr Flow only features a numeric keyboard. This facilitates quick adjustments to change certain words or sentences instead of having to type them. Additionally, there’s no requirement to switch keyboards when you prefer typing words rather than speaking them.

Willow was established by Allan Guo and Lawrence Liu, who left Stanford to start a company. Guo entered Y Combinator in the summer of 2024 with different co-founders, initially aiming to create software for managing assisted living facilities in healthcare. However, this concept did not materialize, and for a year, the team explored various projects.

“While we were developing healthcare solutions, we observed that doctors utilize voice AI scribes to document patient interactions and generate follow-up documents. After many discussions with medical professionals, they indicated these note-taking tools were quite beneficial. This insight motivated us to create a voice AI solution for knowledge workers and various users,” Guo shared with TechCrunch during a call.

Guo mentioned that he opted against developing another AI notetaker as he believed the market was oversaturated. Conversely, the dictation arena appeared more promising since much communication occurs outside formal meetings. He noted that the firm employs a range of models and focuses significantly on refining its text-to-text pipeline, utilizing Meta’s Llama models for formatting and customization.

The startup then shifted its YC batch to Spring 2025 to unveil the product. The company indicated that since its introduction, it has experienced a 50% month-on-month growth in users. It also counts enterprise clients like Uber, Heidi Health, and Zeg among its users for dictation with capabilities such as custom team vocabulary.

Willow has secured $4.5 million from Box Group, Y Combinator, Burst Capital, and angel investors like HubSpot’s Dharmesh Shah; Gusto’s Tomer London; Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian; former Yelp COO Kipp Bodnar; Opendoor CEO Kaz Nejatian; Adam Guild, co-founder and CEO of restaurant software firm Owner; and Instacart co-founder Max Mullen.

Mullen expressed his belief that the most extraordinary user interfaces in the future will be dominated by voice.

“I was genuinely impressed with Allan’s vision of not only developing an exceptional dictation app but, in the long run, striving for an interface capable of controlling your computer,” he remarked. “When I compose through Willow, I find I have to make fewer modifications compared to using a computer’s built-in dictation system.”

Mullen highlighted that one of his preferred workflows is that on the desktop, you can utilize the “Hey Willow” assistant to command the app to compose emails in your personal voice.

The startup faces competition from others such as Wispr Flow, which has raised over $56 million in funding thus far; Monologue, included in Every’s subscription package; and the YC-supported startups Aqua, Talktastic, Superwhisper, and Betterdication.

Guo stated that in the upcoming months, the plan involves expanding onto Windows and Android platforms, alongside enhancing personalization to decrease the amount of manual edits users must undertake post-dictation.

Mirova, the French investment firm focused on climate initiatives and supported by Kering along with other major corporations, has allocated $30.5 million (€26.4 million) to Indian climate technology startup Varaha. This funding will aid in the enhancement of the startup’s regenerative agriculture program, benefiting hundreds of thousands of smallholders in northern India.

This transaction signifies Mirova’s inaugural carbon investment in India, yet its approach is unconventional. Instead of acquiring equity, the Paris-based company is providing cash and will receive a portion of the carbon credits produced in return over time.

This setup fits into Mirova’s carbon investment framework, which directs corporate funds into verified emissions-reduction projects. The firm operates as an affiliate of Natixis Investment Managers and counts prominent backers like Kering, Orange, L’Occitane Group, Capgemini, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, and MANE among its supporters. These companies are all looking to mitigate emissions from their supply chains through trustworthy carbon projects.

Regenerative agriculture — the method of rejuvenating soil vitality and boosting biodiversity through techniques such as crop rotation and minimized tillage — is increasingly recognized as an effective strategy to enhance agricultural resilience against climate change. In India, where countless small farmers contend with deteriorating soil health and inconsistent rainfall, this approach is as vital to survival as it is to sustainability.

Established in 2022, Varaha designs and implements carbon initiatives within regenerative farming, agroforestry, and biochar. It collaborates with a network of 48 local partners to execute field operations, while its software tracks these projects in real-time, verifying both environmental and social results.

Mirova’s investment is directed towards Varaha’s Kheti project, which assists farmers in the Indian states of Haryana and Punjab in adopting low-emission methods and generating certified carbon credits that can serve as an additional revenue source. Currently, the initiative encompasses over 200,000 hectares and is anticipated to reach about 337,000 farmers across 675,000 hectares as it expands.

Varaha’s methodology is grounded in practices adapted for India’s cropping environments, particularly within the rice-producing regions. The startup emphasizes direct sowing of rice and integrating crop residues back into the soil — a vital alternative to the prevalent practice of burning stubble post-harvest, according to Madhur Jain, co-founder and CEO of Varaha, in a discussion with TechCrunch.

“Instead of incinerating the residue, you utilize farming machinery to chop it on-site and incorporate it back into the ground,” he revealed to TechCrunch.

The startup also advocates for reduced tillage, transitioning from several ploughing phases to only one or two, which aids in preserving soil carbon and enhancing the soil’s ability to sequester more carbon over time.

The startup aims to utilize Mirova’s funding to secure the equipment necessary for executing regenerative methods.

“For the direct sowing of rice instead of transplanting, which consumes significant water, you require thousands of direct seeders,” stated Jain. “Since this isn’t yet a standard practice, the market supply of seeders is much less than needed. Therefore, you must approach the manufacturers and procure them. Likewise, for integrating crop residues, you need machinery like happy seeders and super seeders.”

The credits produced through the initiative will be validated using Verra’s VM0042 methodology, with a revenue-sharing framework aimed at directing earnings directly to the involved farmers. The project is also pursuing Climate, Community & Biodiversity (CCB) certification from Verra, a non-profit organization that acknowledges land management projects providing multiple benefits for the environment, local populations, and biodiversity.

While Verra stands as a pivotal entity in the verification of carbon credits globally, it has encountered criticism following probes suggesting that some endorsed projects may have exaggerated their carbon savings.

Varaha still opts to collaborate with Verra for its regenerative agriculture project, as the non-profit provides the “most advanced scientific methodology in soil carbon,” Jain noted. However, he also indicated that Varaha is not restricted to any singular registry and engages with other prominent standards like Puro and Isometric.

“Regarding soil organic carbon, none of Verra’s credits have been contested so far by anyone,” he remarked.

In addition to reducing emissions, Varaha’s technology is designed to enhance soil health, decrease water consumption, minimize chemical usage, boost crop yields, lessen farming expenses, and foster cleaner air. The startup also intends to create specialized programs for women farmers, focusing on increasing gender inclusivity within rural areas.

Varaha’s global standing was bolstered by an agreement it struck earlier this year with Google, which it labeled as the world’s largest biochar carbon removal agreement. The tech company will acquire 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide removal credits from the startup by 2030.

Varaha’s investors encompass RTP Global, Omnivore, Orios Venture Partners, IMC Pan Asia Alliance Group’s Octave Wellbeing Economy Fund, and Japan’s Norinchukin Bank. To date, the startup has raised $12.7 million in venture capital, including $8.7 million from a Series A funding round last year.

With the rise of generative AI content in social applications, a new initiative aims to revive Vine’s six-second looping videos, backed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Launching on Thursday, a fresh app named diVine will provide access to over 100,000 archived Vine videos that have been retrieved from a prior backup created before Vine’s closure.

The app will not only serve as a nostalgic experience but will also enable users to create profiles and upload their own new Vine videos. However, in contrast to typical social media platforms, where AI-generated content is frequently misrepresented, diVine will identify suspected generative AI content and stop it from being uploaded.

The establishment of diVine was funded by Jack Dorsey’s nonprofit organization “and Other Stuff,” which was created in May 2025. This initiative is dedicated to supporting experimental open-source projects and tools that could reshape the social media environment.

In order to develop diVine, Evan Henshaw-Plath, a former Twitter employee and member of “and Other Stuff,” delved into the Vine archive. After Twitter revealed its decision to close down the short video platform in 2016, a group known as the Archive Team undertook the task of backing up its videos. This community archiving effort is independent of Archive.org and instead represents a collective endeavor to preserve websites that are at risk of disappearing.

Regrettably, the group had preserved Vine’s content in substantial, 40-50 GB binary files, making it inaccessible to anyone hoping to view old Vine videos easily. Upon realizing the existence of the archive, Henshaw-Plath (who prefers the name Rabble) was motivated to explore the possibility of extracting older Vine content to create a mobile app resembling Vine.

“Essentially, I thought, can we create something that’s somewhat nostalgic?” he shared with TechCrunch. “Can we create an experience that takes us back, enabling us to revisit those past moments while also allowing for a version of social media where you can have some control over your algorithms, or choose who to follow, leading to a personalized feed, with the assurance that it’s a real person behind the video?”

Rabble dedicated several months to crafting big data scripts and unraveling how the files functioned, ultimately reconstructing them alongside the details of the previous Vine users and their interactions with the videos, such as view counts and a set of original comments.

“I couldn’t extract all the videos, but I managed to recover a significant number, essentially reconstructing these Vines and their creators, and providing each user with a new profile [on this open network],” he claimed.

Rabble believes the app encompasses a “substantial portion” of the most beloved Vine videos, though it lacks numerous lesser-known ones. He mentioned, for example, that countless K-pop-related videos were never archived.

“We have approximately 150,000 to 200,000 videos from around 60,000 creators,” he mentioned, noting that initially, Vine had several million users and a much larger pool of creators.

Vine creators retain the copyright to their content and can make a DMCA takedown request through diVine if they wish to have their videos removed. They can also verify their account ownership by demonstrating access to the social media accounts originally listed in their Vine bio. (This verification process is not automated, potentially causing delays if many creators attempt to process requests simultaneously.)

Once they reclaim their account, they also have the option to upload new videos or share any old content that the restoration overlooked.

To confirm that new video uploads are made by humans, Rabble is implementing technologies from the Guardian Project, a human rights nonprofit that helps ascertain that content is genuinely recorded on smartphones, along with additional checks.

Moreover, due to its construction on Nostr, a decentralized protocol that Dorsey supports, and its open-source nature, developers are empowered to design and create their own applications and operate independent hosts, relays, and media servers.

“Nostr — the open-source protocol behind diVine — is enabling developers to produce a new wave of applications that do not require venture capital support, harmful business models, or extensive engineering teams,” Jack Dorsey stated in a released comment. “The motivation behind my investment in the non-profit, and Other Stuff, is to enable innovative engineers like Rabble to explore what’s feasible in this new realm, by utilizing permissionless protocols that cannot be shut down arbitrarily by corporate entities.”

Elon Musk, the current owner of Twitter/X, has also committed to reinstating Vine, having shared in August that the company found the previous video archive. So far, however, nothing has been launched to the public. The diVine initiative, supported by Dorsey, maintains that because the content is sourced from an online archive and the creators retain their copyrights, its use is considered fair use.

Rabble is confident there is a market for this type of non-AI-driven social interaction, despite the increasing favor for generative AI content and the widespread use of applications like OpenAI’s Sora and Meta AI.

“Companies observe the engagement with AI and wrongly conclude that people desire it,” Rabble clarified. “They misunderstand the situation — yes, people interact with it; yes, we utilize these technologies — but concurrently, we seek control over our lives and social interactions. Thus, there’s a longing for the initial Web 2.0 period, for the blogging phase, and for the era that birthed podcasting, characterized by community building rather than merely playing the algorithm,” he added.

DiVine is accessible on both iOS and Android at diVine.video.

During his talk at TechCrunch Disrupt, ex-Twitter CEO Dick Costolo was asked by an audience member whether HBO’s popular satire “Silicon Valley” would make a comeback. Costolo, who was a contributor to the show, essentially said no (at timestamp 38:17).

He mentioned that while the writers discuss it often, they choose not to pursue it because the current reality of Silicon Valley is so strange that it can’t be effectively parodied.  

A fresh example is a startup named Clad Labs that emerged from Y Combinator this week. Clad’s offering is so unconventional that it was mistaken for an April Fools’ prank in November. 

But it is a legitimate product, founder Richard Wang informed TechCrunch. The product is named “Chad: The Brainrot IDE.” It is yet another vibe coding integrated development environment — IDE refers to the software developers utilize for coding — but with a unique twist. While the AI coding tool completes its task, the developer is free to engage in their preferred brainrot activities within a section of the IDE. 

Or, as stated on the company’s site: “Gamble while you code. Watch TikToks. Swipe on Tinder. Play minigames. This isn’t a prank — it’s Chad IDE, and it’s tackling the biggest productivity issue in AI-driven development that nobody’s addressing.” 

The founders claim their IDE boosts productivity by facilitating “context switching.” They argue that by engaging in brainrot activities within the IDE itself, once the AI completes its task, users can immediately return to work instead of getting distracted by their phone or browser. 

Response on X was varied. Some users believed it was a fake satire, while others regarded it as a clever — or a poor — concept.

Whether loved or loathed, everyone had an opinion, including Jordi Hays, co-host of the tech-positive podcast TBPN. Hays wrote a post about the product titled, “Rage Baiting is for Losers.” In this post, he commented on Chad IDE: “On one side it’s amusing. On the other side, what’s the purpose of this and why is it associated with the official YC account?” 

He contended that products like Chad IDE and Cluely have shifted rage bait from a mere marketing tactic to a “product strategy” and that “it really shouldn’t be.” He encouraged YC to educate founders that “rage baiting is for losers.” 

This advice is particularly intriguing coming from a founder who successfully harnessed viral marketing without relying on rage. Hays and his spouse Sarah created Party Round, a fundraising startup that became known for their playful marketing tactics like releasing NFT versions of notable “helpful” VCs. (Party Round rebranded to Capital and was acquired by Rho in 2024.) 

Wang explained to TechCrunch that what critics misunderstand about his brainrot IDE is that it wasn’t designed as rage bait. The founders aspire for it to become a genuinely beloved AI vibe coder for developers of consumer apps. Their goal is to provide these users with a consumer app-like atmosphere within an IDE.

Although the product is genuine, it has yet to be made public.

”We’re currently in a closed beta,” Wang stated. At the moment, Chad is working to build a “community” of users who appreciate the concept. Clad Labs aims to make the product accessible to the public soon, but for now, participants need an invitation from someone currently in the beta.

There’s no doubt that a certain kind of developer would enjoy Chad. Yet, regardless of what the future holds for this product, one thing remains certain: It is almost impossible to parody Silicon Valley these days. 

Deepwatch, a cybersecurity company that creates an AI-driven detection and response platform, dismissed numerous employees on Wednesday, pointing to AI as a contributing factor.

John DiLullo, CEO of Deepwatch, informed TechCrunch in an email that the organization “is restructuring to boost our major investments in AI and automation.”

A current employee at Deepwatch, who requested anonymity due to not being authorized to communicate with the media, disclosed to TechCrunch that the layoffs impacted between 60 and 80 employees, from a total workforce of approximately 250. A Linkedin post by an individual claiming to be among those laid off also mentioned 80 individuals. 

“They’re pursuing something with AI and agentic AI, but it sounds like nonsense,” the current staff member remarked to TechCrunch.

Eight former employees from Deepwatch confirmed their layoffs, according to LinkedIn posts reviewed by TechCrunch. 

Deepwatch is not the sole cybersecurity firm to implement layoffs this year. In May, the cybersecurity leader CrowdStrike laid off around 500 employees, or 5% of its staff. The reductions occurred notwithstanding a record year featuring “operating cash flow of $1.38 billion and record full year free cash flow of $1.07 billion,” as stated in a press release at the time.

Additional cybersecurity companies that have reduced their workforce this year include Deep Instinct, Otorio, ActiveFence, SkyBox Security, and Sophos.

This week, ElevenLabs revealed that they have reached an agreement with actors Michael Caine and Matthew McConaughey to use AI to replicate their voices.

The connection between Hollywood and AI has been tumultuous, with the boundaries — or the absence of them — being significant worries that contributed to the Hollywood strikes a few years back. However, some artists have begun to embrace the potential of AI.

In the previous year, Meta disclosed that its Meta AI would provide voice assistants mimicking actresses Kristen Bell and Judi Dench. With McConaughey, who is an investor in ElevenLabs, the firm will convert his newsletter into Spanish audio using his AI-generated voice.

This week, ElevenLabs also announced the launch of a marketplace allowing brands to utilize authorized AI-generated voices of celebrities, which will feature Caine and other notable figures like Liza Minnelli and Dr. Maya Angelou. ElevenLabs stands out as one of the prominent AI unicorn companies, backed by investors such as a16z and ICONIQ.  

Reports are surfacing on social media indicating that users of Elon Musk’s X are encountering persistent loops and, in some instances, being locked out of their X accounts, following a compulsory two-factor security update that appears to have malfunctioned.

On October 24, X announced in a post that it was requesting users who depend on passkeys or hardware security keys (like YubiKeys) for their two-factor authentication to re-enroll via the x.com domain. (Those utilizing an authenticator app are not impacted.)

X indicated that this was part of a strategy to phase out the obsolete twitter.com domain, which currently redirects to x.com. This modification became effective in May 2024. The issue arises from the fact that passkeys and security keys are digitally associated with the previous twitter.com domain and cannot be shifted to x.com. Consequently, users must manually un-enroll and re-enroll using the new x.com domain.

In conjunction with the transition, X cautioned that after November 10, users would have their accounts locked until they either re-enroll or opt for a different two-factor authentication method. 

With the deadline now passed, numerous users are reporting lockouts from their accounts and are unable to re-enroll their passkeys or security keys, citing error messages or becoming trapped in an endless loop.

This latest dilemma is the most recent challenge faced by X, which is now under Elon Musk’s ownership after he acquired Twitter, as it was formerly named, for $44 billion. Since Musk took over the social networking platform, the company has undergone substantial layoffs and faced various controversies.

X did not provide a response to a request for comment, but Musk, now the owner of X, has been posting as usual, seemingly unaffected by the change.