TechCrunch used data from Crunchbase and PitchBook to compile a list of venture‑backed startups that achieved unicorn status in 2026. The companies operate across AI, healthcare, finance, crypto, space and other sectors.

June included MainFunc, which raised $485 million in a Series B led by Lg Technology Ventures, SBI Investment and Emergency Equity Management, bringing total funding to $645 million; Farther, which raised $150 million in a Series D led by General Atlantic, reaching a $1.25 billion valuation; and Socket, which raised $60 million in a Series C led by Thrive Capital.

May featured EXA, which raised $250 million in a Series C led by Andreessen Horowitz, and Radar, which raised $170 million in a Series B led by Nimble Partners.

April included Rogo, which raised $160 million in a Series D led by Kleiner Perkins, and Parallel, which raised $100 million in a Series B led by Sequoia.

March highlighted Tenex.AI, which raised $250 million in a Series B led by Crosspoint Capital, and Also, a Rivian spinout, which raised $200 million in a Series C led by Greenoaks Capital Partners.

February saw Positron announce a $230 million Series B and Skyryse raise $300 million in a Series C.

January included Aalyria, which raised $100 million in a Series B, and Gecko, which raised $125 million in a Series D, achieving a $1.8 billion valuation.

Several companies reached valuations above $2 billion, including Humans& ($4.5 billion), Nextop AI ($4.2 billion), and Recursive Intelligence ($4 billion).

Overall, the list comprises nearly 90 startups that have collectively raised more than $150 billion in venture funding, according to PitchBook.

Bending Spoons began trading on the Nasdaq on July 5 2026, with a market capitalization that topped $25 billion, double its prior private valuation of $11 billion.

The Milan‑based company was created in 2013 from the remnants of Evertale, a Copenhagen‑based startup, and has assembled a portfolio that includes Meetup, Eventbrite, WeTransfer, AOL and other digital brands. Its strategy involves acquiring products, enhancing them with technology and AI, and adjusting pricing or staffing to improve financial performance.

The firm has executed numerous acquisitions between 2014 and 2025, including Filmic (2022), Evernote (2023), Meetup, Mosaic Group and Hopin’s StreamYard (2024), Issuu and WeTransfer (2024), Brightcove (2025), Komoot and Harvest (2025), Vimeo (2025, $1.38 billion), AOL (undisclosed amount) and Eventbrite (2025, $500 million). Following several of these deals, the company reduced staff at affected units, notably eliminating the entire video‑editing team at Vimeo and Filmic. Bending Spoons reported $1.31 billion in revenue for 2025 and said revenue per full‑time equivalent employee increased from $1.12 million in 2023 to $2.57 million in 2025. The four co‑founders — Matteo Danieli, Luca Ferrari, Francesco Patarnello and Luca Querella — remain in senior roles and collectively hold more than 80 % of voting power after the IPO.

Analysts have observed that the IPO reflects strong investor appetite for a diversified portfolio of digital businesses, while the company’s stated intention to retain acquired brands sets it apart from many private‑equity operators.

Bending Spoons said it has identified more than 1,000 potential acquisition targets with an estimated aggregate revenue of nearly $400 billion for 2025 and indicated that AI‑enabled efficiencies could support continued growth and further acquisitions.

The Chemical Safety Board recorded at least one chemical incident requiring evacuation, injury or multiple casualties each week. The Trump administration has proposed revising the Risk Management Program safety rules to reduce regulatory burden. The changes have drawn scrutiny from safety advocates. PEER obtained the data through a 2019 federal court ruling that affirmed communities' right to know about hazardous chemical releases under the Clean Air Act. A lawsuit filed by PEER and other groups compelled the Chemical Safety Board to disclose industrial chemical releases. In 2023, the EPA removed a public data tool that had listed nearby risks. The agency also sought to eliminate funding for the Chemical Safety Board, although Congress continued to fund the board. Earlier this year the administration released a proposal to significantly alter the RMP rules finalized in 2024, opening a public comment period that ended in early May. The 2024 rules required facilities to conduct safer‑alternatives analyses, perform independent root‑cause reviews of accidents, involve workers in prevention plans and prepare for climate change impacts. An EPA spokesperson said the agency is reviewing the comments and intends to issue a final rule in late 2026, noting that incident data from 2014 to 2023 show a decline in reportable releases. The spokesperson added that the decline reflects successful prevention programs at RMP‑regulated facilities. PEER’s Ruch countered that the EPA’s conclusion relies on a supposition not supported by current data and that the administration’s plan would increase risk. He said the aging infrastructure and shrinking federal response heighten the danger. Because the proposal awaits final action and the frequency of chemical incidents remains high, the outcome of the rulemaking will determine the future safety landscape for industrial facilities.

OpenPrinter, a repairable printer with a refillable ink system, began a crowdfunding campaign on Crowdsupply. The device accepts HP 63/63XL cartridges in the United States, HP 302/302XL in Europe, and HP 803/803XL in Asia, and also uses 100 ml bottles of black, cyan, magenta, and yellow ink; users can operate a single black cartridge, a single color cartridge, or both simultaneously.

The printer supports A4, A3, banner and custom paper formats, as well as roll paper up to 37.5 m in length, and can be mounted on a desk or wall using a wall‑mount kit. Hardware includes a Raspberry Pi Zero W main board, an STM32 microcontroller for cartridge control, USB‑C and USB‑A ports, Wi‑Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.1, and AirPrint compatibility, along with a 1.47‑inch TFT display.

Technical specifications list 600 dpi black‑and‑white output and 1200 dpi color output, with defined speed pending, dimensions of 497 × 233 × 111 mm (19.5 × 9.2 × 4.4 in), and power via a 24 V DC connector. The project is released under a Creative Commons BY‑NC‑SA 4.0 license, allowing free use, modification and distribution provided attribution and non‑commercial terms are observed.

The crowdfunding campaign remains open, with pre‑orders expected to be fulfilled after final assembly and testing.

The article explains how a capacitance multiplier circuit can be built using an operational amplifier configured as a voltage follower and two resistors. An ideal op-amp multiplies the voltage difference between its inverting and non‑inverting inputs by a large factor and outputs the result relative to the supply midpoint. In a voltage follower, the output is connected to the inverting input, causing the output voltage to track the input voltage with sub‑millivolt accuracy.

The capacitance multiplier combines this follower with a capacitor charging through a resistor. Current through the first resistor is (Vsignal – Vcap) divided by its resistance, and current through the second resistor is (Vsignal – Vcap) divided by the second resistor’s value. The total input current equals the sum of the two currents. The ratio of total current to the current through the first resistor is 1 plus the ratio of the first resistor value to the second resistor value, indicating that the capacitor charges more slowly than in a simple RC circuit. This ratio can be interpreted as an effective capacitance that is the product of the actual capacitance and the resistor ratio.

By selecting appropriate resistor values, a 1 µF capacitor can be made to behave as a 1 mF capacitor, increasing the effective capacitance without adding energy storage capability. The technique is useful for signal filtering or timing applications and can employ smaller, lower‑cost components with better specifications than traditional capacitors. However, advances in capacitor technology and the availability of digital timing solutions have reduced the practical advantage of the multiplier in many cases.

The author notes that the circuit is less useful today but remains an illustrative example of op‑amp application. A variant that swaps the capacitor and resistor is suggested for further exploration.

Razer announced the Wuthering Waves Collection, an official line of gaming peripherals created with Kuro Games. The set includes a gaming chair, a wireless tenkeyless keyboard, a wireless gaming mouse and an oversized mouse mat. Razer and Kuro Games said they collaborated to design the products with visual elements drawn from the game. The Iskur V2 X Wuthering Waves Edition ergonomic chair is priced at $399.99. Razer said the BlackWidow V4 TKL HyperSpeed Wuthering Waves Edition wireless tenkeyless keyboard is offered at £199.99, $199.99 or €209.99 depending on region. The Razer Viper V3 Pro SE Wuthering Waves Edition wireless gaming mouse costs £119.99, $119.99 or €125.99. The Gigantus V2 XXL Wuthering Waves Edition mouse mat is priced at £49.99, $49.99 or €59.99. Razer said that purchasing any item unlocks a limited‑edition Wuthering Waves sigil for the player’s in‑game profile, and that additional digital rewards such as Astrite, Shell Credits, Advanced Energy Cores and Advanced Resonance Potions are provided in amounts that vary by product. All items are currently available for pre‑order. The pre‑order period is open and no further release schedule has been announced.

Rockstar Games announced that Grand Theft Auto VI will launch on November 19, 2026 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S consoles. The game will be released digitally; physical packages contain only a download code. Preloading starts on November 12. Two purchase options are offered: a Standard edition priced at $79.99 and an Ultimate edition priced at $99.99. Both editions include the Vintage Vice City Pack, which adds vehicles, weapon patterns and hairstyles referencing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Digital preorders also provide a complimentary one-month subscription to GTA Plus, normally $7.99 per month. The Standard edition can be preordered through PlayStation and Xbox digital stores or as a code from Rockstar and retailers such as Amazon, Walmart and Best Buy. The Ultimate edition, available only digitally, adds additional content such as a 1995 Grotti Cheetah vehicle, Hawk and Little Morgan revolvers, personalized weapon variants, a '67 Vapid Dominator buggy, a Safehouse vehicle, a Ganado Retro Build modkit, a Rideout Customs shop, a Sara's Unisex Salon hair salon, a Shitzu Squalo watercraft, a Stock 305 clothing store, a '67 Vapid Dominator buggy, an Electric Fang Tattoo shop, a Goodtime Gear look, a PTT Youngin gang compound, an Illegal Good Store, a Classic Car Collection commission, and other customization options. The game's preorder period begins November 12 and ends on the launch date.

Organic Maps, a privacy‑focused offline maps and GPS application, reached 6 million installs in December 2025, according to the developers. The app provides navigation for hiking, cycling, biking, and driving without requiring an active internet connection, and it supports downloadable maps for extended trips.

The application is built on OpenStreetMap data and is offered free of charge, with no advertisements or tracking. It is developed by a community of volunteers and is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. Organic Maps includes detailed offline maps with contour lines, elevation profiles, and routes for cycling, hiking, and walking, as well as turn‑by‑turn navigation with voice guidance and support for CarPlay and Android Auto.

Users can obtain the app from the App Store, Google Play, Huawei AppGallery, Obtainium, Accrescent, and F-Droid. The software does not request excessive permissions, and privacy reviews from TrackerControl and the Exodus Privacy Project have confirmed the absence of data collection and tracking.

The developers encourage participation in beta programs for iOS, Android, and Linux desktop platforms, reporting bugs through the issue tracker or via email, and contributing feature suggestions. Updates and community discussions are available on multiple social media channels and messaging platforms.

The International Obfuscated C Code Contest announced its 2025 winners on July 5, naming 23 programs that achieved creative uses of the C language.

Founded in 1984, the IOCCC asks participants to write C programs that are intentionally hard to read while remaining correct; judges introduce a new category for each winning entry. The 2025 competition included categories such as Best imaginary emulator, Best real emulator, and Most likely to dazzle.

Adrian Cable’s 366‑byte Subleq emulator, built with LLVM and capable of running Linux, was recognized for its application in software preservation. The program uses a single instruction, Subleq, and can be compiled to execute any architecture through an emulator.

Nick Craig‑Wood received three awards: a 66‑line Game Boy emulator formatted to resemble the console, a fractional Commodore 64 emulator written in FRACTRAN, and a Unicode‑based Forth program that generates a spinning Mandelbrot zoom.

Yusuke Endoh earned his 23rd win with a Nixie tube simulator whose source code highlights digits in color to mimic tube output, a Lichtenberg figure generator, and a self‑modifying program that outputs the diff of its own patches.

Tomoya Ishida’s 36‑line entry produced a five‑minute ambient sound file containing synthetic seashore sounds, earning the Most soothing award.

Jonah Uellenberg’s Pong program is a quine that displays its own source as the game screen; each compilation updates the source and the game frame, allowing play through repeated compilation.

Other notable entries include a 54‑line roguelike labeled Most likely to teleport, an ASCII‑animated Doctor Who title sequence by jingp49, and a single‑variable program that computes many digits of Euler’s constant.

The IOCCC continues to demonstrate the creative limits of the C language, and future contests are expected to introduce new categories and inventive solutions.

Manny Rutinel’s campaign for the Democratic nomination in Colorado’s 8th congressional district received at least $2 million in contributions from technology‑linked political action committees, including those associated with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and crypto entrepreneur Chris Larsen, as the primary election proceeded on Tuesday. The race pits Rutinel, a progressive candidate emphasizing Latino heritage, affordability and ICE reform, against centrist Democrat Shannon Bird, a former state representative. The influx of tech money reflects broader involvement of Silicon Valley donors in local elections, with contributions coming from committees tied to Schmidt and Larsen, as well as other technology executives. The spending has heightened attention to AI regulation and immigration policy in the campaign. Bird’s campaign has not disclosed comparable technology‑sector contributions. The primary is expected to be among the most expensive in the state due to the competitive nature of the district and the significant financial influx. The outcome will determine which candidate advances to the general election, where the influence of technology‑driven fundraising may continue to shape the race.

A paper posted on arXiv examined whether the structural and stylistic quality of code influences the ability of autonomous coding agents to navigate and modify it. The authors constructed minimal‑pair repositories that share architecture, dependencies and external behavior but differ in static‑analysis violations and cognitive complexity. Across six such pairs they designed 33 tasks and evaluated them with hidden tests at the applications’ public interfaces.

Testing the Claude Code agent on 660 trials showed that code cleanliness did not change the agent’s pass rate. Agents working on cleaner code used 7 to 8 percent fewer tokens and reduced file revisits by 34 percent.

The findings indicate that traditional maintainability principles remain relevant in AI‑driven development, affecting computational cost and navigational efficiency. The authors suggest that model choice, harness design, prompting and code cleanliness all materially influence agent behavior.

The study implies that enhancing code quality could lower operational expenses for developers employing AI coding agents, though additional research is required.

Uber announced in February plans to launch in seven new European markets in 2026, but the Financial Times reported that five of those launches are currently paused, including Austria, Norway, and Greece. The company said recent launches in Finland and Denmark have been successful, prompting a focus on existing markets, and its pending acquisition of Delivery Hero, which rejected a 10 billion‑euro offer in May, may be influencing the pause. An industry source said the pause could address antitrust concerns related to the potential acquisition, as Delivery Hero operates delivery services in several of the target countries. The company has not provided a timeline for resuming the paused launches.

A new study led by Tim Johnson of Curtin University argues that a high frequency of asteroid impacts during Earth's Hadean period provided sufficient heat to melt the early crust, facilitating the formation of buoyant continental crust.

Geologists have long debated how continental crust first appeared, with the oldest known rocks dating to about 4.0 billion years ago. The scarcity of Hadean evidence has forced researchers to rely on models and indirect observations.

The research uses crater counts on the Moon, which lacks plate tectonics, to estimate the flux of impactors larger than 10 kilometers in diameter. Scaling this flux to Earth suggests thousands of such impacts per year, delivering energy that would have heated the upper mantle.

Modeling shows that kinetic energy from these impacts, when converted to heat, exceeded radiogenic and core heat by roughly a factor of ten for most of the Hadean. This impact heating kept the crust thin—less than 5 kilometers—and largely molten, with partial melt fractions exceeding 30 percent at depths of 5 kilometers.

Because the lithosphere was not rigid, subduction and plate tectonics could not operate under these conditions. As the impact flux declined exponentially between 3.9 and 3.5 billion years ago, internal heat sources became dominant, cooling the mantle and allowing the crust to thicken to about 30 kilometers.

The thicker, cooler crust eventually supported plate tectonics, a prerequisite for the emergence of continental rocks that appear in the geological record around 4.0 billion years ago. The authors note that the argument rests on physics‑based modeling in the absence of direct rock evidence, but they emphasize the need to consider model outputs rather than dismiss them due to a lack of samples.

Future discoveries, such as newly dated mafic rocks from the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt, could test the model. If confirmed, the impact‑heating hypothesis would provide a new explanation for how Earth's first continents formed.

A collection of computer models from various manufacturers has been identified as appearing in numerous films and television series. The list spans from early machines such as the Altair 8800 and IBM PC to modern devices like the MacBook Pro and the Raspberry Pi, each linked to specific titles, episodes, or movies. Entries show a variety of brands including Acer, Acorn, Amstrad, Apple, Atari, Compaq, Dell, IBM, and many others, with each model cited alongside the media in which it was featured. For example, the IBM PC AT is noted for its appearance in 'From Beyond' and 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day,' while the Apple Macintosh Classic appears in 'American Gods' and 'The Challenger Disaster.' The compilation reflects the ongoing presence of computers in popular culture and may indicate continued interest in the intersection of technology and entertainment.