Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Demand for AI “companion” applications outside of bigger names, like ChatGPT and Grok, is growing. Of the 337 active and revenue-generating AI companion apps available worldwide, 128 were released in 2025 so far, according to new data provided to TechCrunch by app intelligence firm Appfigures. This subsection of the AI market on mobile has now generated $82 million during the first half of the year and is on track to pull in over $120 million by year-end, the firm’s analysis indicates. Unlike general-purpose chatbots, AI companion apps anthropomorphize AI interactions by allowing users to converse with custom characters, including friends,…

SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. (AP) — The road to Williamsport was filled with more drama than usual for a couple Little League World Series participants this year, including a Venezuelan team that needed visa exemptions to make the trip and an American club that narrowly knocked off a defending champ.Baseball’s preeminent youth baseball tournament resumes Wednesday in central Pennsylvania. The festivities begin with a look at what makes the 20-team event special.ESPN is airing a documentary called “Big Dreams: Little League World Series 2024″ on Tuesday night. The filmmakers had great raw material. Lake Mary, Florida, defeated Taiwan 2-1 in eight…

In early 2023, David Petrou, a distinguished engineer and founding member of both Google Goggles and Google Glass, made a surprising move. After more than 17 years at the company, he departed to launch his own startup. “I was seeing how fast technology was changing, and I felt there are certain ideas that are best explored in the context of a startup,” Petrou told TechCrunch. His ultimate idea was to build Continua, a consumer-facing company that uses AI agents to enhance collaboration and interaction in group chats on SMS, iMessage, and Discord. “The simple way to think about it is…

In a moonshot move, AI search engine Perplexity has offered to buy Chrome from Google for $34.5 billion cash in an unsolicited offer, Reuters reported, and Perplexity has confirmed to TechCrunch. Perplexity tells TC the terms of the offer include a commitment to keep Chrome’s underlying engine, Chromium, open source and continue to invest in it. Perplexity’s offer includes a promise to invest $3 billion into the open source project. Perplexity is also promising not to change the user defaults of Chrome users, including the default search engine. That is, Perplexity is promising to leave Google as the search engine…

A New Jersey-based medical care and skin care products manufacturer is voluntarily recalling multiple types of hand soap, cleanser and antiseptic products due to bacteria contamination.DermaRite Industries, LLC announced a recall of its DermaKleen antiseptic lotion soap with vitamin E in 1,000-milliliter and 800-milliliter sizes, as well as KleenFoam antibacterial foam soap with aloe vera (1,000-milliliter sizes), DermaSarra external analgesic (7.5-ounce sizes), and PeriGiene antiseptic cleanser (7.5-ounce sizes), all of which were distributed in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.Impacted products have expiration dates ranging from July 2025 to February 2027. A full list of affected lot and reorder numbers can…

Oklahoma quarterback John Mateer says he has never gambled, and the school says there is no NCAA investigation after a recent report showed Mateer twice paid someone on Venmo in 2022 for “sports gambling.”“The allegations that I once participated in sports gambling are false,” Mateer said in a statement Tuesday on social media. “My previous Venmo descriptions did not accurately portray the transactions in question but were instead inside jokes between me and my friends.”Mateer, who was at Washington State during the time in question, said he can understand why the Venmo descriptions could lead one to believe otherwise, so…

Anthropic is increasing the amount of information that enterprise customers can send to Claude in a single prompt, part of an effort to attract more developers to the company’s popular AI coding models. For Anthropic’s API customers, the company’s Claude Sonnet 4 AI model now has a 1 million token context window — meaning the AI can handle requests as long as 750,000 words, more than the entire “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, or 75,000 lines of code. That’s roughly five times Claude’s previous limit (200,000 tokens), and more than double the 400,000 token context window offered by OpenAI’s GPT-5.…

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao’s enduring status as a powerhouse couple was on display Tuesday as they reflected on their shared lives at a ceremony for the archives that will catalogue their careers.The Kentuckians marked the expansion of the McConnell Chao Archives at McConnell’s alma mater, the University of Louisville. McConnell, the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history, is in his final term after the Republican senator revealed in February that he won’t seek reelection in 2026. Chao, his wife, is a former U.S. labor and transportation secretary for Republican administrations.“I didn’t get into this…

Just a week after OpenAI announced it would offer ChatGPT Enterprise to the entire federal executive branch workforce at $1 per year per agency, Anthropic has raised the stakes. The AI giant said Tuesday it would also offer its Claude models to government agencies for just $1 — but not only to the executive branch. Anthropic is targeting “all three branches” of the U.S. government, including the legislative and judiciary branches.  The package will be available for one year, says Anthropic. The move comes after OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind were added to the General Services Administration’s list of approved…

Self-driving truck maker Waabi has hired autonomous vehicle industry veteran and Uber Freight CEO Lior Ron to step in as chief operating officer, as the startup looks to scale its commercial operations ahead of its planned launch of driverless trucks on public highways later this year. Rebecca Tinucci, who previously spent six years building Tesla’s charging network before the automaker gutted its charging staff last year, will take over as head of Uber Freight. Ron will stay on as Uber Freight’s chairman. “[Ron] will lead the go-to-market strategy, expanding key partnerships, and really bringing Waabi from the phase that we’ve been…