May 17, 2026

TechCrunch Top 3

Marketing operating system Nectar Social raises $30M Series A led by Menlo: AI-powered marketing platform Nectar Social announced Thursday that it raised a $30 million Series A round led by Menlo Ventures and its Anthology Fund, which was created alongside Anthropic. Read More

$60B AI chip darling Cerebras almost died early on, burning $8M a month: Cerebras Systems was 2026's biggest tech IPO so far. But years ago, it burned through hundreds of millions working on a chip many believed impossible. Read More

Users turn to jailbreaking their older Kindles as Amazon ends support: It may be possible to jailbreak an older, end-of-support Kindle and continue adding books to it. But doing so carries risks. Read More

A message from TechCrunch Events

StrictlyVC hits Los Angeles on June 18

Top space tech founders and VCs take the stage in sunny Los Angeles on June 18. Get in the room, make the connections that matter, and hear where the industry is headed. Grab your ticket early before your seat is gone.

Sunday Must-Reads

For Eclipse, the $2.5B Cerebras win is just the start of realizing its physical-world thesis: Investing in the real world was lonely for Lior Susan 10 years ago. Now his firm finds itself at the center of the tech world's action. Read More

RJ Scaringe has raised more than $12B across three startups and investors still want more: Investors can't seem to get enough of RJ Scaringe or his ideas. Storytelling and communication are one of his superpowers, according to Jiten Behl, who joined Rivian when the company had just a handful of employees. Read More

A hotel check-in system left a million passports and driver's licenses open for anyone to see: The tech company that maintains the hotel check-in system set its cloud storage to public, allowing anyone to access customers' data without a password. Read More

Tesla reveals two Robotaxi crashes involving teleoperators: Newly unredacted crash reports reveal some of the troubles Tesla has had as it tries to scale its robotaxis. Read More

General Catalyst posted VC rage bait and it worked, especially on a16z: Compulsive X user Marc Andreessen himself couldn't resist responding, many, many times. Read More

A message from Ai4

America’s Largest AI Conference Returns to Las Vegas

Ai4 2026 unites 12,000+ executives, technologists, and AI leaders to explore the latest in enterprise AI. Meet 400+ carefully selected vendors, learn practical use cases from 1,000+ speakers, and hear from pioneers like Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, Andrew Ng, and more. Register for Ai4 2026, August 4-6 in Las Vegas, and save $1,200+ before May 28.

Learn More

Disrupt 2026: Where deals and ideas ignite

Oct 13–15 at San Francisco's Moscone West, 10,000 founders, investors, and operators gather for high-signal insights, curated connections, and real momentum.