For a writer, the mechanical keyboard is a beautiful thing. It’s certainly not necessary for everyone, but a well-designed mechanical keyboard can turn a tedious day of typing into an aesthetically pleasing experience.

Given that most of my days involve sitting at a desk for hours, having a keyboard that I enjoy using is a necessity. I first got a mechanical keyboard about two years ago — the Keychron K2 — and I’ve never looked back.

Keychron is one of the most prominent brands within the mechanical keyboard industry, having made a name for itself after initially launching via Kickstarter back in 2017. The company has since produced dozens of different keyboards (as well as keypads) and a variety of mouse models.

Unlike other electronics, there isn’t a whole lot to owning a mechanical keyboard. The simplicity is part of the appeal. You unbox them, set them up (the K2 comes with little tilt legs that give you a slightly better angle from which to type), and plug them in.

From here, you have a couple of different options. The K2 comes with a simple USB cable, but there’s also an option for Bluetooth connection. If you value a clean, minimalist workspace, Bluetooth is probably the way to go.

While I am loyal to my older Keychron K2, there are a few upgraded and newer versions to consider. Keychron has released a variety of new models over the past two years, with a broad range of features and price tags.

In many cases, the form factor is the draw. One of the more interesting releases, called the Keychron K8 HE Wireless Magnetic Switch Custom Keyboard, comes with an all-wood body and is equipped with an LED backlight. That one is substantially more expensive at around $200. The K2, meanwhile, costs $60. But if you’re into the look, maybe it’s worth it.

If you’re a gamer, there’s also Keychron’s C0 HE One-Handed 8K Keyboard, which is a keypad built for convenience and speed and has an industrial aesthetic to it. However, interested gamers will have to wait — as it’s currently sold out.

The company has also updated its K, Q, and V series keyboards, with many of those ranging in price from $100 to $200, depending on the features and model.

One of the appealing elements of owning a mechanical keyboard is the versatility. You can swap out the key caps for a wide variety of others (indeed, there’s a whole submarket devoted to this) or make your own custom caps (I’ve never gone that overboard).

There is also the sound, of course. Some people balk at the accentuated noise of loudly clacking keys, but I’m a fan. In fact, the sound is one of the key selling points for a lot of consumers. The distinct auditory experience produced by said keyboards has even made its way into ASMR videos.

For me, the Keychron’s biggest selling point is its retro form factor. I get really nostalgic for old school electronics, and Keychron scratches this itch pretty well. It’s a beautiful-looking device, which brings to mind a different era of computing, when the style was more workman-like, less minimalist.

As far as home office purchases go, you could do a lot worse than to pick yourself up a piece of hardware that makes your desk look like it just time-traveled from the 1990s.

In Brief

TypeSafe AI, the developer of Jev, a new type of AI model that gained rapid popularity after launching just a few weeks ago, has raised $870 million at a $7.5 billion valuation. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Sequoia and existing investor DCVC.

The massive fundraise comes as little surprise given Jev went viral almost instantly after its September 15 release. The startup claims that a third of Fortune 500 companies are already using the model, a remarkably swift adoption by enterprises.

Jev is based on a transformer architecture, but it is not a large language model (LLM). It doesn’t output text, but instead produces probabilities, or what the company calls “calibrated decisions.” What has users and large corporations so excited about Jev is TypeSafe’s claim that it works significantly faster and uses far fewer tokens than LLMs. The company positions its approach as uniquely suited for automating tasks rather than generating text or code.

“We have been super good at human language for four years, but it’s not useful for automation because computers speak a different language,” TypeSafe co-founder Diogo Almeida told TechCrunch last month.

Along with Almeida, who was previously a researcher at OpenAI, TypeSafe was co-founded in 2024 by former Meta research engineer Sasha Sheng and Erik Gafni, an engineer and entrepreneur.

An Anthropic AI model submitted a false tip about an unsolved murder to the Philadelphia police.

The AI reportedly submitted this incorrect information to a public Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) tip line on July 18, but Anthropic didn’t discover the behavior until September 28. The police had not seen the tip because it was marked as spam.

Anthropic notified the PPD about the incident on Wednesday and met with the department the following day.

“The company must strengthen its safeguards to prevent similar incidents from impacting city systems without the city’s knowledge. The two-month delay in detecting and reporting the incident to the City is unacceptable,” the PPD said in a statement to 6abc.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the PPD elaborated on the incident in an emailed press release shared with TechCrunch.

“According to Anthropic, its model was conducting a test involving interactions with randomly selected websites when it accessed PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com and submitted false information concerning an unsolved homicide. The submission, dated July 18, 2026, at 11:27 p.m., purported to come from someone who might have information about the case,” the PPD said.

As autonomous AI agents are increasingly made available to consumers, this incident highlights the danger of giving AI the ability to carry out tasks without any human supervision.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has been especially vocal about his belief that AI development should be slowed down so that labs can implement adequate guardrails. Perhaps this stance was informed, in part, by witnessing his company’s tools submit false homicide tips.

These issues are not exclusive to Anthropic. OpenAI recently revealed that one of its models acted unexpectedly during a test and hacked the AI dataset platform Hugging Face, exposing critical vulnerabilities in its software. As AI models continue to be granted unchecked access to people’s computers and login credentials, this problem is expected to persist.

“Unsolved cases involve real victims, grieving families and investigators working to secure answers,” the PPD added. “Technology companies must take all appropriate steps necessary to prevent their systems from submitting false information to law enforcement.”

The PPD said that Anthropic plans to publish a report with more information about the incident and other instances of unintended model behavior on Friday.

Battery storage is now cheaper than a type of natural gas power plant favored by many data center developers, according to a new report from Wood Mackenzie.

On every continent and in each of the 43 markets that Wood Mackenzie surveyed, four-hour duration batteries were less expensive than open-cycle gas turbines. The consultancy predicts that the cost of electricity from batteries will continue to decline while electrons from gas turbines will only grow more expensive in the coming decades.

The report lands as energy prices in the U.S. and elsewhere continue to rise, fueling inflation as data centers push electricity demand to new heights. Prices for gas turbines have been driven up by AI data center developers, which have been buying any model they can get their hands on. The effects have been more acute for open-cycle gas turbines, which are more readily available but less efficient and more expensive to operate.

Those turbines are often used by utilities as peaking power plants, which step in to generate electricity in periods of high demand. As prices for those turbines rise, it can raise costs for utilities, too.

Open-cycle turbines are simpler to make than closed-cycle turbines, but even they now take two to four years to procure. Waitlists for closed-cycle turbines now extend into the early 2030s. Both backlogs have been spiking prices for all new natural gas power plants.

That’s not the case for every generating technology. Solar is now the cheapest form of new power in every market in Wood Mackenzie’s survey.

While solar remains cheapest even in North America, the situation remains complicated there. Solar prices are “under pressure” from tariffs and import restrictions, according to Wood Mackenzie, though utility-scale solar is expected to fare better. There, 168 gigawatts is largely protected from those near-term price shocks thanks to safe-harbor provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill, which kept tax credits for projects that have begun construction or are completed before the end of 2027.

The market for U.S. natural gas will narrow in the coming decade. In the Middle East and Africa, four-hour batteries will be 33% cheaper by 2035, “displacing gas peaking on cost across every gas market in the region.” In China, energy storage costs are 55% below its neighbors’.

“This economic shift is decisive and widening,” Ahmed Jameel Abdullah, principal analyst at Wood Mackenzie, said in a press release.

You’ve built the product. Now you need customers. But when you’re starting from zero, there may be no marketing budget, established brand, or sales team to help you find them. So how do you get the first 1,000 people to take a chance on what you’ve built?

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, Gamma CEO and co-founder Grant Lee, Engine founder and CEO Elia Wallen, and GV (Google Ventures) general partner Crystal Huang will take the Builders Stage for “The Zero-to-1K Playbook: How to Get Your First 1,000 Customers Without a Marketing Budget.”

They’ll break down how founders are using community building, product-led growth, founder-led sales, strategic outbound, and word of mouth to find those critical early customers.

Still working toward your first 1,000 customers? Secure your Disrupt pass now, save up to $100, and hear how founders are finding early customers when budget, brand, and scale aren’t available yet. Bring a co-founder, colleague, partner, or peer and save 50% on your pass.

Image Credits:TechCrunch

From early users to nearly 100 million

Grant Lee knows what it takes to grow well beyond those first customers. Before co-founding Gamma, he was COO of ClearBrain, which was acquired by Amplitude, and CFO of Optimizely. A Stanford-trained engineer with experience in finance and operations, he spent years creating the slide decks that eventually inspired him to rethink how people create and share ideas.

Gamma has since grown far beyond presentations. TechCrunch reported in March 2026 that the AI-powered visual communication platform was approaching 100 million users after reaching $100 million in annual recurring revenue in 2025. The company has continued expanding into websites, social content, and AI-generated marketing assets.

For an early-stage founder, the interesting part of that story starts well before 100 million users. How do you convince the first people to try a product from a company they’ve never heard of — and turn that early traction into momentum?

Get your ticket to Disrupt and hear Lee’s perspective on what it takes to start building a customer base from zero. Save up to $100 on your pass, and get a second pass at 50% off.

Building without an established brand

Elia Wallen brings another founder journey to the conversation. He started Travelers Haven in 2008 and bootstrapped it into one of the country’s largest corporate housing companies. He raised Engine’s first outside capital in 2019 and later shifted his full attention to the travel platform.

Today, Engine has served more than 30,000 businesses and 2 million travelers and is cash-flow positive. Its growth continued in July when Engine acquired Options Travel, a travel management company with more than 30 years in the business, along with its group-flights product, TempoTrip.

Wallen’s experience spans the stages early founders are trying to navigate: starting without an established brand, finding customers, building around what those customers need, and scaling from there.

If your startup needs customers long before it has a large marketing operation, add this Builders Stage session to your Disrupt agenda. Register now and save up to $100, and get a second at 50% off.

Image Credits:Kimberly White / Getty Images

What does an investor see in early customer traction?

Crystal Huang brings the investor’s view. As a general partner at GV, she concentrates on SaaS, infrastructure, and AI, with a particular interest in product- and developer-led adoption strategies. Before GV, she invested at NEA and Notable Capital and began her career in technology M&A at Blackstone.

She’ll also be evaluating startups firsthand at Disrupt as one of this year’s Startup Battlefield 200 judges.

Huang adds the investor lens: how early-stage companies approach product-led adoption and build momentum before they have the resources of an established business.

Want to hear how a founder’s early go-to-market strategy looks from both sides of the table? Secure your Disrupt pass and hear from founders who have built customer bases and an investor who evaluates how companies grow. Save up to $100 on your pass, and get a second of the same pass at 50%.

Make more early-stage connections at Disrupt

“The Zero-to-1K Playbook: How to Get Your First 1,000 Customers Without a Marketing Budget” is one of 200+ sessions across six industry stages, roundtables, and breakouts at Disrupt, taking place October 13-15 at Moscone West in San Francisco. More than 10,000 founders, investors, operators, and tech leaders are expected, along with 250+ speakers and 300+ exhibiting startups.

And for founders trying to find customers, investors, partners, or simply other people who understand the zero-to-one grind, the conversations don’t end when the sessions do. Matchmaking, dealmaking, and ad hoc networking give attendees opportunities to make the connections that can move a young company forward.

You may not have a big marketing budget yet. At Disrupt, you can hear how founders are finding early customers through strategies that don’t depend on one — and meet thousands of people building, funding, and buying what comes next. Explore your ticket options and lock in up to $100 in savings. Plus, get a second pass at 50% off.

When Sara Tashakorinia’s husband died in a car accident eight years ago, the last thing she needed was the roughly 570 hours of paperwork it takes, on average, to settle a loved one’s affairs. But for millions of people each year, this is their reality: a crushing loss, followed by a soullessly mundane avalanche of tedious administrative work.

“The day your loved one passes away, you also get this honorary badge of a project manager for a project you had no idea about, trying to navigate something and learn something when you literally have zero information,” Tashakorinia told TechCrunch.

After years of volunteering to help others navigate what she had to learn on her own, it occurred to Tashakorinia that AI might be able to help — not with the complex, messy experience of grieving and healing, but with the least human parts of the process, like finding the right tax forms, filing insurance claims, and shutting down bank accounts.

The result is LumenUs, the grief care platform that Tashakorinia founded last year to relieve grieving families of some of the administrative burden.

“I think going through it, your threshold of pain is so high, and you’re so lost that you don’t really realize, why do people treat you this way? Why was I left with a stack of paperwork, and why was the funeral home charging me a 300% markup on a casket?” Tashakorinia said.

While Tashakorinia hopes LumenUs will eventually support people throughout the lifelong grieving process, the startup will initially focus on people in the immediate aftermath of a death. When people initially join the platform, they go through an onboarding process in which they share information about the nature of their particular situation.

“We are asking very specific questions to understand the legal and financial means, and their state of mind, and this is only to personalize who they are, and then personalizing what happened,” Tashakorinia said.

From there, the platform organizes tasks by urgency, helping users decipher what needs to be done immediately and what can wait. In some cases, this can even help people discover that they’re entitled to money that can help ease the financial burden of death. In fact, billions of dollars in life insurance benefits go unclaimed because people don’t know they’re available.

“We are using AI to automate as much as we can to save time during this process, and give it back to [users],” she said.

Tashakorinia has a background in cybersecurity, which is sure to prove essential for building a product that asks people to share so much sensitive personal and financial information. She is building LumenUs alongside co-founders Sajad Mirzaei, a former engineer at Google and Box, and Larry Keeley, an innovation scientist, professor, and entrepreneur. The team is also consulting with clinicians and social workers while testing the product.

LumenUs, a participant in this year’s Startup Battlefield 200 — the annual showcase of promising early-stage startups at TechCrunch Disrupt, taking place October 13-15 in San Francisco — will launch in early access in October.

For Danu Robotics founder Amy Ma, the eureka moment came after years of working as a software developer at a London bank. It was the kind of high-touch office that’s typical in finance — but despite all the perks, Ma was alarmed to realize that the building’s recycling bins were being emptied into the trash.

“Even though they have tons of money, there’s all these different recycling bins that just end up in the same place,” Ma told TechCrunch.

The more she dug into the problem, the deeper it seemed to go. It wasn’t just her building. The economics of recycling as a whole often boil down to human beings sorting by hand through streams of waste to pull out different kinds of recyclable material.

“I saw the technology and thought, we can do so much better,” Ma remembers.

Now, she’s making good on that promise with six-year-old, Edinburgh, Scotland-based Danu Robotics, which makes a robot designed to sort through recycling more cheaply and quickly. Ma has been working on that idea for six years and is finally bringing her version of the product to market. Her robot, dubbed H.E.R.O., has a few advantages over its competitors. For example, it picks up items with a pincer claw instead of a suction system. But the bigger difference is the business approach: Danu leverages AI to continuously improve the robot’s software.

The approach is already seeing some traction. Danu has letters of interest from two large customers and $500,000 worth of signed contracts. More notably, more than 200 customers are in its sales pipeline, which gives the company a hook into the $20 billion market for recycling sorting across Europe and North America.

On the back of that promise, Dabnu has raised $5 million in late-seed funding to keep the commercial pressure on.

There’s already a robust market for robotic waste-pickers, particularly the suction-based arms offered by competitors like Glacier and RecycleEye. But Ma believes the economics of recycling will make it easy for a new competitor to prove its worth. Because recycling centers make money off the materials they’re able to sort out, there’s an immediate return on investment for a working system. Ma estimates that a working site will earn $485,000 in additional revenue from having the robot on the sorting line, compared with a $160,000 initial investment and $24,000 in maintenance fees each year. That’s significantly cheaper than the competition, and Ma believes the robot will be more efficient, too.

Since those machines are already shipping, Ma’s next goal is to make the robot sturdier, smaller, and more versatile. Once it’s portable enough, it can be used outside dedicated waste facilities, opening up a whole other world of use cases.

“Once it’s smaller, it can be used as a stand-alone recycling solution for events, for shopping centers, hospitals, or airports to recycle their waste at the source,” Ma told TechCrunch, “and that’s the way we can really change how we’re managing our packaging waste.”

Danu Robotics will be participating in Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt, October 13-15 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

In a tan polo shirt, brown leather belt, and round bolo tie, MIT PhD student Wil Norton kind of looks like a park ranger, leading our tour group through a tropical jungle. We’re not actually on safari, though — we’re at MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). But what we’re about to see is even more exotic than a cheetah or a jaguar: a pair of humanoid Unitree robots, each costing about $50,000.

(“They’ll tell you they cost $16,000,” Norton says. “That’s a lie.”)

We usually only see these robots on YouTube when they’re performing a synchronized martial arts routine, or dancing on “America’s Got Talent.” Here, they’re approachable. Even though I know it isn’t sentient, I want to be its friend.

With Norton’s permission, I approach the robot, whose nickname is Gabe. For a moment, I’m not sure how to interact with something that has a LiDAR sensor where its brain should be, but I default to treating it like a person.

“Hello, sir, it’s nice to meet you,” I say, grabbing its gloved, dexterous hand and shaking it.

Image Credits:TechCrunch

I think about this interaction later — my instinctive impulse to be friendly to a robot — when I attend Dr. Sherry Turkle‘s “Artificial Intimacy” book launch at MIT Future Fest.

Turkle, who joined the faculty at MIT in 1976, has been researching the relationship between humans and computers perhaps longer than anyone, charting technology’s psychological impact on us from the first home computers to ChatGPT.

“When we are drawn into even the most primitive exchanges with a relational artifact, we believe it cares for us,” Turkle writes in the book. “And we are wired to care for it in return.”

I’m not alone in my tendency to anthropomorphize robots and large language models (LLMs) — as Turkle notes, it seems to be in our nature. One study found that about 70% of people are polite when interacting with AI, while another showed that users are more likely to say “please” or “thank you” to chatbots once a conversation has progressed past a first prompt-and-response.

“People tend to categorize whether this is the right use or wrong use, but I don’t think that is a clear boundary,” Dr. Pat Pataranutaporn, a colleague of Turkle who founded the Cyborg Psychology research group at the MIT Media Lab, told TechCrunch. “The question is, who are we becoming when we talk to [AI]?”

There’s no material consequence of my politeness toward Gabe the robot, but as LLMs infiltrate everything from Google searches to customer service interactions, it has become routine for people to interact with these seemingly sentient chatbots. We’re more vulnerable than ever to the flip side of this impulse, which is that some people can ascribe so much legitimacy to the feelings of chatbots — which are programmed to never spark conflict — that they end up favoring them over other humans.

“You can think of it like fantasy and fiction. We go to the cinema even though we know the story is completely fictional, but we want to experience a certain dimension of human experience that maybe our reality cannot give us,” Pataranutaporn said. “How do we benefit from that ability to experience other dimensions of human experience without losing it to the fantasy, where you can no longer come back to the reality?”

Pataranutaporn describes himself as a “critical optimist,” and he studies AI’s potential to contribute to human flourishing. But he’s well aware of how dangerous this technology can be in the extremes. He even served as an expert in a wrongful death lawsuit over the suicide of 14-year-old Sewell Setzer, III, whose mother sued the chatbot platform Character.AI, alleging that a chatbot modeled after a “Game of Thrones” character had encouraged her son to end his life.

“It can create a situation where people don’t feel agency in actually creating their own future — like when you say that AI will replace everyone, people ask, what are we gonna do? And these companies are not really responding ethically or responsibly,” Pataranutaporn said. “How do we have imagination while still being responsible for the impact of that imagination?”

While Turkle’s book explores the risk of turning to AI for emotional support, rather than other people, she doesn’t think that AI-human interactions are universally harmful.

She recalls a project she advised in which a student created an AI bot to help people practice for job interviews.

“My big metaphor is, stay in your lane, chatbot!” Turkle said at the event. “Coaching for a job interview? That’s a lane. I can do that … A chatbot that says to a three-year-old, ‘I’m your parent, you can talk to me, not your parents,’ is not in a lane.”

But when this technology deviates from its lane even slightly, we become vulnerable to the way it can slowly chip away at our skepticism and make us trust it. It can start with something as simple as a handshake.

Tesla has changed the name of its advanced driver assistance system in Europe after pushback from Germany’s transportation ministry. It’s now called “Tesla Assisted Driving,” instead of “Full Self-Driving (Supervised).”

It’s a big capitulation from Tesla, which has been using the “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” name for years despite the system requiring humans to pay attention to the road and take over when necessary. But the name change could help Tesla achieve its goal of wider adoption on the continent, which could unlock a potentially massive new revenue stream for the company.

Germany’s transport minister, Steffen Bilger, said earlier this month that calling the software “Full Self-Driving” was somewhat misleading because it doesn’t perform the entire task of driving. He spoke with Tesla last month, and the company suggested the name change, according to an official release from the ministry. Bilger said he will now advocate for approval of Tesla Assisted Driving across Europe ahead of an EU-wide vote that could happen later this year. Tesla CEO Elon Musk thanked Bilger on X this week.

Musk has spent years agitating for Full Self-Driving (Supervised), or FSD, to be approved in Europe. “FSD in Europe will save lives of people in the car, as well as vulnerable road users like pedestrians, cyclists, and pets,” he wrote on X in June 2025. “Please let your government know that you want approval.”

In March of this year, he wrote that the “extreme regulatory burden” of the EU “stifles innovation in Europe,” adding that Europe “will love Tesla self-driving!”

Just a few weeks later, the Netherlands became the first European country to approve FSD (Supervised). On Wednesday, Reuters reported that Tesla’s campaign for European approval has been “built on faulty company safety research” and “flawed studies.” The outlet also reported that the Dutch vehicle safety regulator, RDW, faced fierce pressure from Tesla and its legion of online supporters.

Tesla’s software has certainly become more capable over the years. What used to be little more than a mix of lane centering and adaptive cruise control is now a driver assistance system that some owners use for nearly 100% of their daily driving. FSD can pull in and out of parking spots and navigate surface streets and highways. Tesla is so confident in the technology that it recently made it possible for FSD to intervene in a human driver’s control of the vehicle if it senses an oncoming collision — even if FSD is not active.

But FSD has been at the center of federal investigations and civil lawsuits over crashes in which it was allegedly in use. Its less capable predecessor, Autopilot, has been associated with dozens of fatalities. Tesla discontinued Autopilot earlier this year after a judge ruled Tesla had engaged in deceptive marketing about the system’s capabilities.

Orkut, the once-popular social networking platform that shut down more than a decade ago, may finally be making a comeback, as its founder has called on users to help revive it with a renewed focus on friendship, community, and human connection.

In a post on X on Thursday, Orkut Büyükkökten, the founder of the eponymous social network, urged users to visit Orkut.com and add their names in support of bringing it back, as well as invite others to join.

Orkut first debuted in 2004 as a side project by Büyükkökten, 51, while he was at Google. The social network went on to become hugely popular in India and Brazil but later lost ground to Facebook. Google eventually shut it down in September 2014, shifting its focus to other platforms, including Google+ and YouTube.

In a letter published on Orkut.com, Büyükkökten criticized how social media has evolved over the past two decades, particularly the growing influence of algorithms and AI-generated content. “Artificial intelligence is extraordinary technology, but it’s dissolving the one premise that made social networking special and worth building: that there was a person on the other side,” he wrote.

“I know how to get there: we rebuild the internet we first loved. The one with authentic people, real connection, and genuine belonging,” Büyükkökten added.

This is not the first time Büyükkökten has explored a return to social networking. In 2016, two years after Orkut’s shutdown, he launched another social network, Hello, focused on connecting people through shared interests. The platform shut down in 2020 after attracting more than 2 million downloads worldwide, compared with Orkut’s about 300 million active users.

In 2022, Büyükkökten hinted at another social networking venture in a note on Orkut.com, saying that he was “building something new.” He did not offer further details. Two years later, he told WIRED he was working on a social network that would “leverage AI and machine learning” to bring people together and build communities. That platform has yet to launch.

Now, Büyükkökten is asking people to register their support for Orkut’s return. He has, however, not clarified whether a new version of the platform is already in development or whether it will ever launch.

An email sent to Orkut seeking comment from Büyükkökten did not elicit a response.

I wrote this week about the bleak economics of consumer AI — but where some see a crisis, others see an opportunity.

Olivia Moore covers consumer AI as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz — and on Monday, she released a report on the top 100 consumer AI apps. ChatGPT is still the biggest player by a mile, but smaller players like Suno and ElevenLabs are showing real staying power. Even more interesting is what we don’t see, as Moore’s report details half a dozen consumer categories that seem to be completely untouched by AI.

Moore sees a huge opportunity in consumer AI, particularly if the industry can tap into revenue streams beyond just subscriptions and API charges. On a call this week, I talked with her about the unusual economics of consumer AI and why it’s still early days for the category.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

It’s an interesting moment for a report about consumer AI, since we’ve seen OpenAI pivot back to enterprise this year. It’s inspired a lot of pessimism about the overall revenue picture for consumer AI, including from me. But I take it you’re more optimistic?

I agree with you that OpenAI has moved back towards the enterprise. To me, it’s not necessarily a pivot because they’re still launching a lot in consumer. It’s more of an expansion. But I don’t blame them, as much as I love consumer, because almost all of the AI revenue thus far has come from subscriptions and then token usage. And that is much more concentrated on the enterprise and prosumer side.

How can consumer AI products change that revenue problem? The State of Markets report reminded us that just 2.2% of U.S. households are paying for AI. Do we need that number to rise before the market becomes attractive?

I actually don’t know if I want to see that user number increase. I’m more interested in getting back to a world where the consumer is monetized in a way that isn’t subscription dollars out of their own pocket.

I think it’s very easy in Silicon Valley, with people who are high-income and have corporate cards to pay for those tools, to say, “oh well, I’d rather pay for the product.” But I think most people would actually rather have free access to something and see some ads, and then they can decide if they want to subscribe or not to make the ads go away.

The other challenge is the marginal cost of AI services, which is still a lot higher than classic internet services like Facebook or Google Search. Do you see a lot of these services finding ways to keep those costs down, whether it’s open source or other lightweight models?

Yeah, I think we’re seeing improvements there. Even ChatGPT now has a Go plan, which is just $8 a month, and I’m assuming it runs on cheaper models. We don’t necessarily need frontier intelligence for every task, and so that could mean cheaper models, especially for some consumer use cases. It could also mean more consumer companies building on top of open source models. We’ve heard a lot of that from our founders lately, and it really feels like it’s starting to change.

The problem is that right now, the users driving the revenue are doing coding and other technical automation, where they probably do need frontier intelligence. I think as we get more people building for the consumer, where the model is not the product, we’ll start to see lower-cost models used more often.

It’s unusual to talk about technical automation in a consumer service, which feels like another unique feature of AI. Are we starting to blur the lines between consumer and enterprise?

I wrote an article about this maybe a year or so ago called The Great Expansion trying to get at this. Pre-AI, you would have companies like Canva that were consumer-first and often took six or seven years to even add teams or enterprise plans. Now we’re seeing companies like Gamma, ElevenLabs, and Cursor that start as consumer and within 18 months become majority-enterprise businesses.

Almost all of what we think of as consumer AI, I would argue, is prosumer AI. This really comes out on the revenue list, where there’s basically like three categories that power users are spending on. There’s product-building apps, so like Lovable, Replit, and Fal. There’s product marketing, which is AI ad generators like Higgsfield or HeyGen. Then there’s general work management, like Manus, Fireflies AI, and Granola. Those are like being paid for by consumers to start with, but I would argue that they’re not consumer in the way that we would think about pre-AI.

There are also all these whitespace categories: social apps, dating apps, marketplaces, retail, travel, finance, health. There are no entrants in our top 100 list in those categories, which is pretty surprising. And that’s what I think we need to see over the next six months.

So maybe we haven’t really seen true consumer AI yet?

It’s definitely very early.

Automattic’s interim chief financial officer Jeremy Klaperman has left his position after less than a month, TechCrunch has learned. Klaperman had been elevated to the new job last month after the governance crisis at the WordPress.com parent company, which saw its entire board either quit or be fired.

The company confirmed the departure with the following statement, shared by Automattic’s director of communications Megan Fox: “Automattic will always be grateful for Jeremy Klaperman’s leadership. We wish him the best of luck on his next endeavor.”

Before serving as the organization’s interim finance chief, Klaperman had served as the CFO of Automattic’s VIP Enterprise business unit.

He was meant to replace the former CFO, Mark Davies, who had briefly become Automattic’s CFO after the company’s board members voted to put CEO Matt Mullenweg on leave in September. Within 33 hours of the board’s decision, Mullenweg retook the CEO role, and the board was wiped clean.

Automattic’s chief legal officer Andy Missan had also left the company alongside Davies. Both executives had signed reciprocal severance deals during Mullenweg’s short leave of absence, TechCrunch previously reported. Automattic’s new board of directors was announced in late September, and includes best-selling science-fiction author Hugh Howey; two co-founders of the now-defunct social app IRL, Henry Khachatryan and Krutal Desai; plus author Amy Chan.

A source at Automattic told TechCrunch that Klaperman was upset the board was considering external candidates for the CFO role. Though he was announced internally as interim CFO, the board never legally approved his title, the source said. In addition, there was a disagreement with Mullenweg over a work project related to employee performance reviews, which led to Mullenweg’s demotion of Klaperman back to his former position at VIP. Klaperman resigned shortly thereafter.

Automattic’s spokesperson did not comment on the reason for Klaperman’s departure. The company is still performing an external search for a qualified CFO candidate, we understand.

After publication, the company issued a statement via X post, which implies that Klaperman was offended by the board’s search for external CFO candidates.

It read, “At Automattic, we consider it best practice to evaluate external candidates for critical roles alongside internal people stepping up. We are always talking to and recruiting the best talent. Sometimes people are offended or surprised by this and they resign, sometimes it has led to amazing mentoring or advising situations. We won’t comment on any specific person, but as a company we’re always trying to optimize and redefine ourselves to serve our customers better and promote the ideals we aspire to around Open Source, freedom, liberty, autonomy, and hackers.”

At Automattic, we consider it best practice to evaluate external candidates for critical roles alongside internal people stepping up. We are always talking to and recruiting the best talent. Sometimes people are offended or surprised by this and they resign, sometimes it has led… — Automattic (@automattic) October 9, 2026

When the company originally announced Klaperman’s new role as interim CFO internally on Automattic’s Slack, Mullenweg reiterated that he had “100% confidence” in the company’s cash and financial position.

Updated after publication with more information about Klaperman’s departure.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 brings founders, investors, operators, builders, and technology leaders to San Francisco from October 13-15. But the activity doesn’t stop when the conference floor closes.

Throughout Disrupt Week, startups and organizations from across the global tech ecosystem will host networking events, happy hours, showcases, demos, dinners, and more.

Here’s what’s happening around San Francisco from Saturday, October 10 through Friday, October 16.

Featured

Polish Innovation Evening: From Ideas to Connections — Poland Meets Silicon Valley Hosted by Polish Investment and Trade Agency (PAIH) and Upper Silesian Fund Join us aboard the Historic Klamath for an evening connecting Poland’s innovation ecosystem with Silicon Valley during TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. Meet Polish founders, investors, technology leaders, and ecosystem partners for a discussion followed by informal networking on the San Francisco waterfront. Learn more & RSVP →

Scaling Nordic Fintech Globally Hosted by Innovation Norway & Royal Norwegian Consulate General in San Francisco An evening of fintech, global growth, and great conversations, celebrating Aparta’s selection for TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200. Learn more & RSVP →

Silicon Valley – Pak US Tech Connect 2026 Hosted by Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) Pak-US Tech Connect brings together Pakistani technology companies, U.S. businesses, industry leaders, investors, partners, and ecosystem stakeholders to explore opportunities for business collaboration, technology partnerships, outsourcing, investment, and market expansion. Learn more & RSVP → Image Credits:Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB)

Saturday, October 10

The First Principles Way to Find the Next 10x Opportunity Hiding in Your Product 9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Hosted by PrincipiumX Learn how to use first-principles thinking to uncover overlooked customer needs, differentiate your product, strengthen product-market fit, and identify opportunities for significant growth through a real-world case study. RSVP →

Sunday, October 11

Happy Hour with AI Created Drinks by AI Barmen! 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. Hosted by AI Barmen Meet AI Barmen, a robotic bartender that creates personalized cocktails and mocktails through an interactive happy hour experience. RSVP →

EPIC SF Physical AI Demo Night @ Finding Next Move 2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. Hosted by EPIC Connector Pte. Ltd. Ten early-stage startups pitch their products and competitive moats to a hand-selected group of venture investors, followed by an open networking after-party. RSVP →

International Reception at the European Startup Embassy 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Hosted by Granite Landings LLC Join an international startup community for an evening of food, drinks, and networking designed to build better business relationships. RSVP →

Monday, October 12

The Partnership Exchange by onSpark 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. Hosted by onSpark The Partnership Exchange turns one evening into a live deal floor for founders who know partnerships drive growth. Walk in with your company, walk out with a real hit list. The onSpark team runs Hit List Live on the spot, mapping the exact partners who can move your revenue this year, then matching you with founders in the room who belong on each other’s lists. Every attendee gets featured in One Golden Nugget, the co-published spotlight series from Disrupt Week. RSVP →

Serve, Swipe, & Settle: Mixer for SaaS Leaders Scaling into Embedded Payments 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. Hosted by NMI SaaS founders, developers, and technical leaders can compare notes on embedded payments, monetization, and scaling beyond basic payment infrastructure over Ping-Pong, food, and drinks. RSVP →

The Future of Work Social Mixer + Open Demos: Worktech, Robotics & Agentic AI 5:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Hosted by Ontology of Value Explore work tech, robotics, and agentic AI through startup pitches, hands-on demos, and networking with founders, operators, and investors shaping the future of work. RSVP →

Long Lead Time: A Hardware Happy Hour 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Hosted by Syntro Connect with founders, engineers, and operators building robotics, chips, rockets, and other frontier hardware over drinks and light bites in a casual setting. RSVP →

Open to Work: The Game Show 7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Hosted by Khwajalabs A live game show turns the job hunt into networking: compete using your real résumé, pitch yourself onstage, and let the audience decide who advances. RSVP →

Tuesday, October 13

The Irish Shark Tank 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. Hosted by Enterprise Ireland Meet and mingle with Ireland’s hottest startups. Enterprise Ireland is back at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 and will welcome old friends and new faces to The Irish Shark Tank at Ireland House for happy hour. Availability is limited. RSVP →

SafetyWing Happy Hour at Harrington’s 5:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Hosted by SafetyWing Meet founders and HR leaders over drinks while connecting with SafetyWing and discussing the challenges of navigating health benefits for startups and their teams. RSVP →

SF Exclusive VIP Drinks for AI Founders and Accredited Investors 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. Hosted by EQUITY X INVESTMENTS, LLC An invite-only gathering for AI founders and accredited investors featuring drinks, direct introductions, and informal conversations with no pitches or panels. RSVP →

Harvard Griffin GSAS Alumni Networking Mixer 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. Hosted by Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Connect with Harvard Griffin GSAS alumni living and working in the Bay Area during an informal networking reception. Guests are welcome. RSVP →

South Asian Investor Founder Connect: TechCrunch Disrupt 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. Hosted by American South Asian Network Connect with South Asian founders, investors, operators, creators, and technology leaders through curated introductions and informal networking. RSVP →

Real World AI: Connect, Invest & Scale in Taiwan 5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. Hosted by Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs Discover how Taiwan, a powerhouse behind the global AI revolution, is bringing AI into the real world through robotics, intelligent hardware, and advanced manufacturing, with startup pitches, investor connections, and networking over light fare and drinks. RSVP →

Attacks Never Arrive: Happy Hour with Trotta 5:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Hosted by Trotta Join AI founders, security leaders, and operators for food, drinks, and conversation around social engineering, deepfakes, prompt injection, and emerging AI security threats. RSVP →

Content Creators Meetup @ TechCrunch Disrupt 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. Hosted by Founder-Led Media Founders and creators building in public come together to share practical lessons on content, hooks, distribution, and growing a founder-led audience. RSVP →

Pets of Disrupt: Founders, Investors & Their Pets 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. Hosted by Omelo Step away from the conference crowd for an informal evening with founders, investors, operators, builders, creators, and the pets that make San Francisco’s startup community more human. RSVP →

K Tech Startup Networking Reception | TCD 2026 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Hosted by WayFounder Meet 18 emerging Korean startups through quick founder introductions, curated conversations, and open networking with investors, operators, corporate leaders, and entrepreneurs. RSVP →

EdgeM8: B2B Partnership Mixer 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Hosted by EdgeM8 Connect with founders, revenue leaders, and executives working across go-to-market, partnerships, distribution, and technology while building relationships across the Bay Area startup ecosystem. RSVP →

Shinhan Square Bridge Meetup @ TechCrunch Disrupt 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Hosted by SWITH Meet 10 startups from the Shinhan Square Bridge Global program in an intimate evening of founder conversations, networking, food, and drinks. RSVP →

Wednesday, October 14

NextGen — TechCrunch Disrupt Week 2026 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. Hosted by TradeIL An invitation-only gathering bringing together Israeli founders, investors, technology executives, and strategic partners from across the Bay Area. RSVP →

Fynex x Orion VC | Curated Rooftop Party 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. Hosted by Fynex Join founders, operators, and AI-focused investors for a curated rooftop evening centered on networking, food, drinks, and conversations around AI and infrastructure. RSVP →

Love Soul AI & WellGem: Interactive Hologram Showcase & Founder Networking 5:15 p.m. – 7:15 p.m. Hosted by Love Soul AI The event takes place on the patio at Per Diem, beneath Salesforce Park and a short distance from Moscone West. Connect with fellow founders, investors, and members of the tech community while experiencing Love Soul AI’s hologram technology and enjoying superfood-inspired appetizers. All ages are welcome. Ticket required. RSVP →

Korea–US Startup & Investor Networking Night 5:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Hosted by KOTRA Silicon Valley Connect Korean startups entering the U.S. market with investors, founders, corporate partners, and Bay Area ecosystem leaders for conversations around investment, partnerships, and business opportunities. RSVP →

Scaling Nordic Fintech Globally 5:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Hosted by Innovation Norway & Royal Norwegian Consulate General in San Francisco An evening of fintech, global growth, and great conversations, celebrating Aparta’s selection for TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200. RSVP →

Ecosystem Mixer 5:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Hosted by Peak XV Partners Peak XV brings founders, operators, and investors together for an informal evening of drinks and conversation. No pitches required. RSVP →

Liquid Assets: A Private Markets Cocktail Party by Augment & Mintz 5:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Hosted by Augment and Mintz A private markets cocktail gathering with drinks, light bites, and informal conversation among founders, investors, and technology leaders. RSVP →

Watch It Run: Live Automation Meetup with Bolter 5:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Hosted by Improbable See business automation happen live as Bolter turns attendees’ most dreaded weekly processes into working automations during dinner, using plain-language descriptions instead of code. RSVP →

Polish Innovation Evening: From Ideas to Connections — Poland Meets Silicon Valley 5:30 p.m. – 8:45 p.m. Hosted by Polish Investment and Trade Agency and Upper Silesian Fund Join us aboard the Historic Klamath for an evening connecting Poland’s innovation ecosystem with Silicon Valley during TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. Meet Polish founders, investors, technology leaders, and ecosystem partners for a discussion followed by informal networking on the San Francisco waterfront. RSVP →

Rooftop Gathering: Pilaf Evening for Tech Founders and Investors 6:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. Hosted by INNOVA × BeGlobe PR Agency Join a private rooftop gathering built for tech builders, deep tech innovators, and investors for conversations over a shared meal. No standing around, no pitch decks — just real talk and a great view. RSVP →

Worldmodels—See the World in 4D 6:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m. Hosted by NLINK INC Explore physical AI, spatial intelligence, robotics, and world models through live 4D capture, demos, and conversations with founders, researchers, and investors. RSVP →

The Afterburn: TechCrunch Disrupt Edition 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. Hosted by Backblaze and Flamethrower Wind down after Disrupt with cocktails, food, and informal conversations among founders, builders, investors, and friends. No panels or presentations. RSVP →

Hardtech After Party 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Hosted by Whipsaw Connect with founders, engineers, investors, and design leaders building in robotics, wearables, connected devices, medtech, and other areas of hard tech. RSVP →

Token Economics: From Cost per Token to Value per Outcome 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Hosted by Hellyeah AI Founders, investors, engineers, and operators explore how AI companies turn inference costs into business value through pricing, routing, reliability, and token-level economics. RSVP →

Vault & Verify: An Evening of Ping Pong, Cocktails & Conversation 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Hosted by Descope Bring together security, privacy, and identity leaders for food, cocktails, friendly competition, and conversations about managing sensitive data and identity as AI systems become more autonomous. RSVP →

6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Hosted by SLI.pro Explore how founders, investors, and operators can identify meaningful talent signals when AI has made résumés, profiles, and interview answers increasingly polished. RSVP →

SQLDoom Deathmatch Night at Disrupt 6:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m. Hosted by CedarDB Play SQLDoom deathmatch against the CedarDB team alongside arcade games, food, drinks, and conversations with database engineers and startup founders. RSVP →

SignalFire’s Disrupt Arthaus After-Party 7:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m. Hosted by SignalFire Spend the evening with founders, investors, journalists, and builders at an arts campus featuring live music, immersive art and technology, food, and drinks. RSVP →

Thursday, October 15

NachoThursday: TechCrunch Disrupt SaaS & AI Founder + Investor Happy Hour 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. Hosted by NachoNacho A rooftop happy hour for SaaS and AI founders, C-suite leaders, investors, and tech media. Attendance is screened and limited to approved guests. RSVP →

Korea Emerging Tech Showcase 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. Hosted by Brinc Join a curated group of venture and corporate investors for an intimate evening with Korean founders from 14 emerging tech startups over food and wine at a private members’ club in San Francisco’s Financial District. Curated guest list. Limited capacity. Approval required. RSVP →

Fynex x Orion VC | Curated Rooftop Party 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. Hosted by Fynex and Orion VC Fynex and Orion VC host a rooftop gathering for AI founders, operators, and investors focused on AI and infrastructure. The guest list is curated to make the room itself part of the experience. RSVP →

LP, VC & Funded Founder Networking + Demo 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. Hosted by Founder Institute An intimate networking evening for LPs, GPs, and funded founders focused on technology, venture capital, and new relationships. RSVP →

Korea–US Startup & Investor Networking Night 5:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Hosted by KOTRA Silicon Valley Korean startups entering the U.S. market come together with investors, founders, corporate partners, and Bay Area ecosystem leaders for an evening of casual networking and meaningful connections around potential investment, partnership, and business opportunities. Registration is required. RSVP →

Japan Startups Showcase 5:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Hosted by 500 Global Meet 12 Japanese startups building for global markets across AI, enterprise software, health, biotech, defense, agtech, sports tech, and consumer technology, with live demos and direct conversations with founders. RSVP →

Venture Night @ TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Hosted by TechEmbassy Ten selected startups. Fast-paced pitches. Startup prizes. Venture Night brings founders, investors, and tech leaders together for a live pitch competition and Q&A, followed by a Founder Feedback Session, awards, and networking. RSVP →

Friday, October 16

Silicon Valley – Pak US Tech Connect 2026 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. Hosted by Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) Pak-US Tech Connect brings together Pakistani technology companies, U.S. businesses, industry leaders, investors, partners, and ecosystem stakeholders to explore opportunities for business collaboration, technology partnerships, outsourcing, investment, and market expansion. RSVP →

THE RUNWAY: A Morning Founder Run 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Hosted by Handler Start the day with a casual waterfront run along the Embarcadero, complete with startup-themed “runway” markers, followed by coffee and networking at the Ferry Building. RSVP →

Funded Founders @ Alchemy Springs 4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. Hosted by Press Club Combine sauna and cold-plunge experiences with conversations and networking around startups competing in this year’s Startup Battlefield 200. Space is limited. RSVP →

Find a Cofounder, Help or Join a Startup 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Hosted by Startup Oasis Hear startup pitches and then join breakout groups where attendees can offer feedback, make connections, or explore opportunities to work with the presenting teams. RSVP →

Event details, availability and registration requirements are subject to change. Check each event’s RSVP page for the latest information before attending.