Author: Arabian Media staff

TechCrunch’s Equity crew is bringing 2025 to a close and getting ahead on the year to come with our annual predictions episode! Hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Rebecca Bellan were joined by Build Mode host Isabelle Johannessen to dissect the year’s biggest tech developments, from mega AI funding rounds that defied expectations to the rise of “physical AI,” and make their calls for 2026.  The group tackled everything from why AI agents didn’t live up to the hype in 2025 (but probably will in 2026), to how Hollywood will push back against AI-generated content, to why VCs are facing a serious liquidity crisis.   Listen to the full episode to hear: …

Naware founder Mark Boysen first tried killing weeds with drones and a 200-watt laser. He’d been noodling on ideas for a startup with some friends, and thinking about how his family in North Dakota had lost three members to cancer, something they suspected may be related to chemicals in the groundwater. Finding a chemical-free way to kill weeds seemed like a solid option. But the laser was a dead end. There’s too much risk of starting a fire, he told TechCrunch in an interview. After a lot of trial-and-error prototyping with ideas like cryogenics. The solution he settled on —…

Every year, TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield pitch contest draws thousands of applicants. We whittle those applications down to the top 200 contenders, and of them, the top 20 compete on the big stage to become the winner, taking home the Startup Battlefield Cup and a cash prize of $100,000. But the remaining 180 startups all blew us away as well in their respective categories and compete in their own pitch competition.  Here is the full list of the cybersecurity Startup Battlefield 200 selectees, along with a note on why they landed in the competition. AIM Intelligence  What it does: AIM offers…

After 33 years, Bernardo Quintero decided it was time to find the person who changed his life — the anonymous programmer who created a computer virus that had infected his university decades earlier. The virus, called Virus Málaga, was mostly harmless. But the challenge of defeating it sparked Quintero’s passion for cybersecurity, eventually leading him to found VirusTotal, a startup that Google acquired in 2012. That acquisition brought Google’s flagship European cybersecurity center to Málaga, transforming the Spanish city into a tech hub. All because of a small malware program created by someone whose identity Quintero had never known.Moved by…

The excitement for the European startup market was hard to ignore at the annual Slush conference in Helsinki last month. But the actual data on the state of the region’s venture market shows a different reality. The upshot: the European market has not recovered from the global venture capital reset that occurred in 2022 and 2023. But there is evidence it is on the cusp of a turnaround, including Klarna’s recent exit and the region’s homegrown AI startups garnering attention from local investors and beyond. Investors poured €43.7 billion ($52.3 billion) into European startups in 2025 across 7,743 deals through…

There’s plenty of hype around AI and robots in healthcare, but the problem that’s actually costing hospitals money right now is operating room coordination. Two to four hours of OR time is lost every single day, not because of the surgeries themselves, but because of everything in between from manual scheduling and coordination chaos to guesswork about room turnover.   Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, we’re bringing you a conversation that TechCrunch AI Editor Russell Brandom had with Conor McGinn, co-founder and CEO of Akara, the startup that recently landed a spot on Time’s Best Inventions of 2025 and is building what’s essentially air traffic control for hospitals using thermal sensors and…

There’s plenty of hype around AI and robots in healthcare, but the problem that’s actually costing hospitals money right now is operating room coordination. Two to four hours of OR time is lost every single day, not because of the surgeries themselves, but because of everything in between from manual scheduling and coordination chaos to guesswork about room turnover.   Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, we’re bringing you a conversation that TechCrunch AI Editor Russell Brandom had with Conor McGinn, co-founder and CEO of Akara, the startup that recently landed a spot on Time’s Best Inventions of 2025 and is building what’s essentially air traffic control for hospitals using thermal sensors and…

Every year, TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield pitch contest draws thousands of applicants. We whittle those applications down to the top 200 contenders, and of them, the top 20 compete on the big stage to become the winner, taking home the Startup Battlefield Cup and a cash prize of $100,000. But the remaining 180 startups all blew us away as well in their respective categories and compete in their own pitch competition. Here is the full list of the biotech and pharma Startup Battlefield 200 selectees, along with a note on why they landed in the competition.  CasNx What it does: CasNx has…

Mill may have started with households, but co-founder and CEO Matt Rogers says the food waste startup has long aspired to expand to commercial customers. “This has been part of our plan since our Series A deck,” Rogers told TechCrunch. Now, with an official deal locked in with Amazon and Whole Foods the company’s plan to profit from handling other people’s food waste is a bit more public. Whole Foods will deploy a commercial-scale version of Mill’s food waste bin in each of its grocery stores beginning in 2027. The bins will grind and dehydrate waste from the produce department,…

Every year, TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield pitch contest draws thousands of applicants. We whittle those applications down to the top 200 contenders, and from them, the top 20 compete on the big stage for the Startup Battlefield Cup and a cash prize of $100,000. But the remaining 180 startups blew us away, too, in their respective categories and in their own pitch competition. Here is the full list of the agtech and food tech Startup Battlefield 200 selectees, along with a note on why they landed in the competition. ÄIO What it does: Äio has developed a method to produce edible…