Latest AI News
Google brings agentic AI and vibe-coded widgets to Android
Google announced a number of new Gemini Intelligence-branded AI features at its “Android Show: I/O Edition” event on Tuesday. These include the ability for AI to complete tasks across apps, browse the web, fill out forms, dictate speech, and even allow you to vibe-code your own Android widgets. The company had already introduced some agentic capabilities, such as ordering food or booking a ride, toGemini at the Samsung Galaxy S26 launch earlier this year. There, Google announced that Gemini would soon be able to perform more complex tasks, like booking a front-row bike for a spin class, finding a class syllabus in Gmail, and then searching for books related to that topic. Now, Google’s AI assistant will be able to handle a multistep process, like copying a grocery list from your notes app, then adding items to the cart in your shopping app. To use this feature, you’ll press the phone’s power button and describe the task. Meanwhile, the content on the phone’s screen acts as the context for the assistant. Google noted that Gemini will wait for your final confirmation to complete the checkout. Loading the player… In addition, a feature first introduced in January had allowedGemini to browse the web for you and complete tasks like booking an appointment, as part of an experimental rollout. Today, Google said this auto browse feature is making its way to Android, too. In late June, Android devices will also get Gemini in Chrome, an AI feature that will help users summarize content or ask questions about what is on the webpage, similar to how Gemini in Chrome works on the desktop. Another small but useful addition is that Gemini will be able to fill out forms on your behalf after learning details about you throughPersonal Intelligence. (Google said this feature is opt-in, and you can turn it off via settings anytime.) Plus, Gemini will come to Android's Gboard keyboard. Google is using Gemini's multimodal capabilities by introducinga feature called Rambler in Gboard, which is similar to those found in other AI-powered dictation apps. The feature will let you speak in your own tone, transcribe the speech, and format it by removing filler words. Vibe coding apps are picking up pace, and Google wants to give Android users a taste of this, too. The company is introducing a way for users tobuild Android widgets by describing them in natural language. For example, users can build a meal planning widget using query text like, "Suggest three high-protein meal prep recipes every week." The idea of creating a widget is not novel to Gemini. Notably, the hardware startup Nothing also releaseda similar tool last year. Google said that Gemini Intelligence will follow the company's Material 3 expressive design language in its features. The company said that these AI-powered features will first make their way to the latest Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel devices this summer and will be available across other Android devices later this year.
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Everything Google announced at its Android Show, from Googlebooks to vibe-coded widgets
At Google’s virtual “Android Show: I/O Edition” event on Tuesday, the tech giant announced a series of upcoming updates and features, includingimproved Gemini Intelligence features, new hardware calledGooglebooks, and other Android improvements, likevibe-coded widgets, Gemini in Chrome, and new emoji. The features are arriving ahead of Google’s annual developer conference this month, which will largely focus on AI, as it did last year. Below, we’ve compiled all of Google’s announcements for you right here. Google unveiled Googlebooks, its new line of laptops built with Gemini at their core. The tech giant is working with partners like Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo to make the first Googlebooks in a variety of shapes and sizes. The company says Googlebooks, which are launching this fall, are the first laptops designed from the ground up for Gemini Intelligence to offer personal and proactive help. The laptops will ship with “Magic Pointer,” a new kind of cursor with Gemini built in, compatibility with Android phones that will allow people to use apps from their phone right from their Googlebook, the ability to create custom widgets, and more. Googleunveiled a new “Create My Widget” featurethat lets users vibe-code their own custom widgets. The new feature will first launch on the latest Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones this summer. Users will be able to create widgets by describing what they want using natural language. For example, you could ask the feature to “suggest three high-protein meal prep recipes every week” in order to get a custom dashboard that you can add and resize on your home screen. Android Auto is getting a refresh that brings more personalization, widgets, and an edge-to-edge experience to your dash to fit any screen, whether it’s an ultrawide angle, a circle, or a unique shape. Users can add widgets that let them see the things that matter most at a glance, even while using navigation. Media apps like YouTube Music and Spotify are also getting redesigned interfaces aimed at making them easier to use in the car. Additionally, for the first time in Android Auto, you’ll be able to watch videos on apps like YouTube in 60fps full HD in supported cars later this year, starting with BMW, Ford, Genesis, Hyundai, Kia, Mahindra, Mercedes-Benz, Renault, Škoda, Tata, and Volvo. Google said Gemini is now rolling out broadly on Android Auto, letting drivers ask questions, brainstorm ideas, or learn about topics hands-free while on the road. The company also said users will be able to place food orders from the car, beginning with DoorDash. Google announced that all 4,000 Android emojis have been refined to make them more true to how they actually are. Launching later this year, the new emojis are designed to feel less flat and more expressive and real. Android is launching a “Screen Reactions” feature that records you and your screen at the same time, a format often seen on TikTok and Instagram Reels. The feature is first rolling out on Pixel devices this summer. Google also partnered with Meta to bring the best of Instagram to its Android devices, including Ultra HDR, native stabilization, and night mode. Additionally, the company optimized the capture-to-upload pipeline to ensure your photos and videos remain sharp when you post them. The tech giant is bringing new tools to Meta’s Edit app, exclusively on Android, including “smart enhance” to upscale photos and “sound separation” to boost and remove sounds. Under Gemini Intelligence, the assistant will be able to take data from one app and perform multistep functions across apps. For instance, you can take a photo of an event flyer and ask the assistant to find that event on sites like Expedia. With this feature, users could also invoke the assistant with their grocery list on screen and ask it to build a cart based on those items in the shopping app of their choice. The company is nowintroducing Gemini in Chrome to Android,after earlier launches on iOS and desktop, allowing users to summarize content or ask questions about what they see on the webpage. Android users will also get the experimental auto-browse feature that can navigate websites and complete tasks like booking a ticket on a user’s behalf. Gemini will be able to use data from Personal Intelligence tohelp users fill out complex formson mobile through an opt-in feature. Googlelaunched a new feature in Gboard called Ramblerthat turns your speech into cleaned-up text — similar to apps like Wispr Flow and Monologue. The feature removes filler words like “ums” and “ahs” and also understands when you say “Let’s meet at 3 PM… um, 2 PM” and posts “Let’s meet at 2 PM” as a final result. Last year, Google added a way for Pixel phones to share photos and files with iPhones by making Quick Share work with AirDrop. The company said that this year, the feature will be available to users of other smartphone companies, including Samsung, Oppo,OnePlus, Vivo, Xiaomi, and Honor. What’s more, if you don’t have a compatible device, you can use Quick Share on any device to generate a QR code, which will let you share files to the iPhone through the cloud. Plus, Google said that soon users will be able to access Quick Share available within apps like WhatsApp. Google is planning to introduce a new iOS-to-Android transfer that lets you import your passwords, photos, messages, favorite apps, contacts, eSIM, and your homescreen layout from your iPhone to your new Android phone. This feature will launch on Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel devices this year. A new Android featurewill allow you to pause when launching an appyou’ve labeled as one of your distractions. Before being able to scroll, game, or do whatever else it is that wastes your time, you’ll have to take a 10-second break and be confronted with other choices you could make instead — like launching your Google Play Books app to read, for instance. You can also optionally set a timer that cuts you off from using the app before you dive in. Google is also expanding its default-on theft protections to all Android users globally after earlier tests in Brazil. The features will be enabled by default on all new Android 17 devices, as well as freshly reset devices or those that have upgraded to the latest OS. When enabled, features like Remote Lock and Theft Detection Lock will be automatically enabled, and Google is reducing the number of times a thief can try to guess your PIN or password. There will also be longer wait times between failed attempts. Law enforcement will now be able to access the device’s IMEI from the lock screen on Android 12 and higher, too, allowing them to quickly verify a device’s ownership if stolen. In addition, the theft protections will be extended to devices running Android 10 and up in select markets, including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and the U.K. Pixel users with up-to-date software and Advanced Protection Mode switched on now get Intrusion Logging, a security feature that helps toinvestigate suspected spyware attacks and device compromises.
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OpenAI Enters Consulting Arena, and India's IT Stocks are Paying the Price
OpenAI's $4 billion Deployment Company has sent shockwaves through India's technology sector, plunging the Nifty IT index by 3.7%.
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AI voice startup Vapi hits $500M valuation after winning Amazon Ring over 40 rivals
Amazon Ring, facing a surge in customer-support calls during last year’s holiday season, evaluated more than 40 AI voice vendors before choosing startupVapito handle its inbound phone traffic. Today, Ring routes 100% of its inbound calls through Vapi’s platform. That deployment helped Vapi raise a $50 million Series B led by Peak XV Partners at a valuation of around $500 million after investment, according to a person familiar with the matter. Ring turned to Vapi in mid-Q4 last year, when it was weighing whether to expand call-center capacity, rely more heavily on traditional automated phone systems, or deploy AI agents that could respond more naturally to customers, Vapi Chief Executive Jordan Dearsley (pictured above, left) told TechCrunch. Dearsley believes Ring chose Vapi because if offered Ring engineers granular control over how the AI agents behaved in live customer interactions. Jason Mitura, vice president of software development at Amazon Ring, said Ring’s customer satisfaction scores improved after deploying Vapi’s platform and that the company’s teams were able to tune the AI agent experience without depending on engineering. “A lot of AI tools promise great outcomes — Vapi has delivered on them,” he said. Founded by Dearsley and his University of Waterloo classmate Nikhil Gupta (pictured above, right), Vapi grew out of an AI therapist Dearsley built in 2023 for conversations during his daily walks. The pair, who had gone through Y Combinator with productivity startup Superpowered, found that while few people wanted the therapy product itself, startups were increasingly interested in the low-latency voice infrastructure underneath it. Thisled them to pivotto Vapi and launch the platform publicly in 2024. Vapi provides tools for companies to build, deploy, and manage voice agents across customer support, lead qualification, appointment scheduling, and outbound sales. The startup says it has now handled more than 1 billion calls through its platform, with usage accelerating as enterprises move more customer interactions onto AI systems. Vapi, Dearsley said, currently processes between 1 million and 5 million calls a day, with enterprise customers accounting for the bulk of that volume. In addition to Amazon Ring, Vapi's enterprise customers include Kavak, Instawork, New York Life, UnityAI, Cherry, and Intuit. The startup also operates a self-serve developer platform that has been used by more than 1 million developers. "Because we started from self-serve and had such a wide developer footprint, we were already battle-tested at significant scale before we signed our first major enterprise customer," Dearsley said. Other investors participating in the Series B round included Microsoft's M12, Kleiner Perkins, and Bessemer Venture Partners, bringing Vapi's total funding to $72 million. The startup is currently at an annual recurring revenue run rate in the "healthy" eight figures, an investor source told TechCrunch. Vapi is part of a growing wave of AI voice startups that includes Sierra, Decagon, PolyAI, Bland, Retell, and ElevenLabs, as companies race to build systems capable of handling customer conversations with minimal human involvement. Dearsley said Vapi differentiates itself by focusing less on pre-packaged applications and more on the infrastructure and orchestration layer behind voice agents, particularly for enterprises that want greater control over reliability, compliance, and model behavior. The startup currently has around 100 employees and plans to use the new funding to expand its engineering, infrastructure, and go-to-market teams. "The golden problem is taking this indeterminate beast that is a model and taming it," Dearsley said. "If you can do that, then you can provide value to the world."
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Dessn raises $6M for its production focused design tool
New types of design tools, such asPerpexity-owned Visual Electric,Figma-owned Weavy,Flora, and Krea, have risen in popularity in the last few years, thanks to AI. These tools bank on the promise that, with AI, a product team with designers can iterate through variations quickly. A new design startup,Dessn, now backed by $6 million in funding, believes that design tools that don’t let you work directly on your codebase can limit you from being able to imagine new workflows and features. That’s why Dessn developed technology that allows startups to run their codebases in the cloud without any setup cost. To do so, it abstracts away the dependencies that make it necessary for a codebase to run locally. Because Dessn works in a production environment, it’s easier for designers to hand off their work to developers, the startup says. Current customers include teams at health company Color, voice AI company Wispr, and fintech Mercury. Founded by Gabriella Hachem and Nim Cheema, the company today announced its $6 million funding round was led by Connect Ventures, with participation from Betaworks and N49P. “When we started the company two years ago, our whole thesis was [that] the code is going to get commoditized — and in a world where code is insanely cheap, you just get a lot more software, and then design becomes a way that’s a differentiator,” Cheema told TechCrunch over a call. The design tool is not built for ground-up ideation, such as a Lovable or v0 by Vercel, where you can play around with new ideas. Instead, Dessn says it’s useful only for the teams that have an existing codebase and want to iterate on it. Cheema noted that the tough part for Dessn was to build an infrastructure that is capable of running codebases with different backend architectures, without needing a developer to get started. Because of the low setup cost, companies that adopt Dessn don’t have to move over from their design tool right away. “The one thing that’s great about Dessn is that we don’t create switching costs. It’s not like you have to drop all of Figma now, and you have to come to Dessn for everything. You can come in and use it for one project and then another one. That’s kind of what we’re seeing happen. And it’s so easy to share a Dessn link, which isn’t possible with Cursor or Claude Code,” Hachem said. Dessn, like other AI tools, lets you prompt your way into creating new designs. However, some designers might like old-school toolbars to move things around. But the startup doesn’t think that is necessary. Hachem said that she and her co-founder are token maximalists — people who would spend more tokens to get to a result even if it costs more — and would rather spin up a toolbar for a particular context than keep a static one. In the age of AI, tools are often trying to work with each other to move data from one place to another easily as part of task automation. At the moment, Dessn doesn’t have any integrations. But it plans to integrate tools like Slack, where you can call up Dessn and ask the tool to create prototypes based on ongoing discussions. Another tool it thinks could be useful to integrate is a meeting notetaker like Granola, which can feed it discussions from a meeting to create designs. However, the company said that one integration it doesn’t want to do is Figma, because it thinks that would take teams away from production, and it goes against Dessn’s ethos. Dessn lets you compile one repository for free and try out five prompts per week to let clients get a taste of the tools. It plans then start from $39 per user per month, which unlocks more prompt limits, and based on the tier, public links, and the ability to opt out of AI training. Betaworks partner (and former TechCrunch editor) Jordan Crook said that Dessn would be a tool Figma built if the latter started today. “Dessn is the only product that has perfect fidelity within the code base/production, rather than trying to design and turn it into code, or prompt via design system. Plus, Dessn is built to be a truly delightful and almost emotional experience for users, rather than just a utility,” Crook told TechCrunch over email. The company has four people currently, and while it intends to stay small, it plans to add a few more people to the team.
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HrdWyr Raises $13 Million to Build AI Native Chips for Physical AI
The funding round, led by Ideaspring Capital, also saw participation from Singularity AMC, Avatar Growth Capital and existing investor Persistent Systems.
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TSMC Approves Fresh $20 Bn for Arizona Chip Plant, $31.3 Bn for Future Fabs
The chipmaker ramps up spending on advanced capacity amid rising AI demand and fresh speculation about Tesla’s future chip plans.
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In IT Firms, AI is Boosting Revenue Per Employee—at the Cost of Employees
AI is boosting IT firms’ margins and employee productivity faster than revenue growth, signalling a structural shift away from the long-standing headcount-led model.
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Google Relies on AI for 75% of Its Code, Yet Engineers Now Deliver ‘More’
Developers focus on outcomes, experimentation, and architectural design, indicating a shift towards greater creativity and problem-solving.
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OpenAI Deployment Company Business Unit Launched to Build, Deploy AI Systems for Enterprises
OpenAI, on Monday, announced the creation of the OpenAI Deployment Company, a new business unit dedicated to building and deploying artificial intelligence (AI) systems for enterprises. The announcement comes just a week after Anthropic launched a new enterprise AI service company, highlighting the continuing rivalry between the two. OpenAI's project is wider in scope and aims to bridge the gap between "having access to AI" and "actually using AI" to drive measurable business results. The AI giant has partnered with 19 global investment firms, consultancies, and system integrators.
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Google I/O 2026: Gemini Omni Video Model Reportedly in Testing Ahead of Annual Developer Conference
Google may be preparing to expand Gemini's video generation capabilities with a new model called Gemini Omni. A fresh leak suggests the tool will let users create and edit AI-generated videos directly within Gemini. Early demos show the model producing more realistic motion, cleaner text rendering, and improved scene composition. The feature has not been announced officially, but its appearance ahead of Google I/O 2026 suggests Google could soon reveal new plans for AI-powered video creation.
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Indian Armed Forces Bet on Sarvam, CoRover.ai to Prepare for AI Warfare
As militaries worldwide race to integrate AI into warfare, India appears to be moving from experimentation toward building its own sovereign military AI ecosystem.
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