Tech
Bluesky teases 2026 roadmap: A better Discover feed, real-time features, and more
Social network Bluesky is teasing its roadmap for the year ahead, emphasizing a focus on things like improving the app’s algorithmic Discover feed, offering its users better recommendations on who to follow, giving the app more of a real-time feel, and more.
At the same time, the company admitted that it needs to work on getting the “basics” right, too.
Launched to the public in early 2024 after an invite-only period, the decentralized X and Threads alternative has since scaled to over 42 million users, according to data sourced directly from the Bluesky API for developers.
Though it’s differentiated from mainstream social media with its custom feeds and configurable algorithms, Bluesky hasn’t caught up to rivals with regard to basic features, like private accounts, drafts, support for longer videos, and more.
Bluesky’s head of product, Alex Benzer, acknowledged some of these concerns in a new post on the company’s website, where he said that the “basics need to be solid” before Bluesky can expect users to stick around.
Those remarks come after a usage slowdown on Bluesky, which saw a 40% year-over-year drop in daily active users as of October 2025, according to data from market intelligence provider Similarweb, as reported by Forbes.
In addition to supporting drafts, Benzer said the app’s composer should handle media better, noting that three-minute-long videos aren’t enough, and videos should upload faster. Plus, he wants Bluesky to support posting more than four photos at a time, and thinks threads should be easier to create, too.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026
The need for private accounts wasn’t addressed, but those will take longer to realize, Bluesky has previously explained. The plan is for the underlying protocol, the AT Protocol (or AT Proto for short), to eventually support private accounts. But that won’t be coming anytime soon.
Benzer also pointed to improvements to the app’s Discover feed, which could add topic tags as a way to guide people to posts related to their interests. “Who to follow” suggestions will also be improved, as finding high-quality connections can improve the overall user experience.
Benzer believes that Bluesky needs to have more of a “real-time” feel, whether that’s around events like sports, or political moments of interest like elections. The company is building curation tools for its team to make high-quality and timely custom feeds available during live events, he said. The team is exploring other new features within feeds that would make these feeds feel “less like just scrolling through posts and more like hanging out,” Benzer said. (What that means, we’re not exactly sure!)
In terms of growing the overall ecosystem, which the community has dubbed the “Atmosphere,” the company will look to improve interoperability with other apps that are also built on the underlying AT Protocol.
For instance, if you go live on Twitch or Streamplace, another app powered by the AT Protocol, you’ll see a LIVE badge appear on your profile photo on Bluesky.
Benzer said another integration like this is coming “soon.”
While Bluesky has succeeded in adding users, actual usage on Bluesky ebbs and flows, with surges often timed to changes at X or moments of political tension. Meanwhile, Meta’s Threads has become the next-nearest competitor to X. New third-party data indicates that Threads is now outpacing X in daily mobile users, though X was still ahead on the desktop web.
Threads’ main advantage is that it’s backed by the resources of a tech giant, allowing for heavy cross-promotion, easier onboarding, and tons of resources. As a result, Threads has been rapidly shipping new features over the past year or so, including things like interest-based communities, better filters, DMs, long-form text, and disappearing posts. That’s helped to differentiate it from X and gain traction among users, including those who want a network that favors creator content over politics, which Threads had deprioritized up until a year ago.
Tech
Revolut eyes valuation of up to $200B in eventual IPO
British neobank Revolut seems to be eyeing a major valuation bump when it eventually goes public. The company is targeting a market cap between $150 billion and $200 billion in an initial public offering, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous investor sources.
The fintech giant, which secured a full banking license in the United Kingdom in March after years of waiting, was most recently valued at $75 billion, up from $45 billion in 2024, in a secondary share sale that made it one of Europe’s most valuable private tech companies.
Revolut’s co-founder and CEO, Nik Storonsky, last week said that the company’s IPO was at least “two years away,” according to Bloomberg.
According to PitchBook and the Financial Times, the company is working on another secondary share sale, scheduled for the second half of 2026, that would value it at more than $100 billion.
As of November 2025, the company had raised a total of $5.89 billion, according to PitchBook. Revolut reported revenue of $6 billion in the financial year ended December 31, 2025, up from $4 billion in 2024. The company’s net profit grew to $1.7 billion, up from $1 billion in 2024, and counted 68.3 million retail customers at the end of 2025.
Revolut declined to comment.
Founded in 2015, Revolut offers a range of services spanning multi-currency accounts, payment and transfer services, crypto products, insurance, and more. The neobank has been pouring truckloads of cash into expanding its operations internationally, and recently applied for a banking license in the United States.
Besides the U.K., Revolut has a banking license in the European Union, and it operates in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Brazil, and the U.S. Revolut launched operations in India last October, is about to start operating in Colombia this year, and has received a banking license in Mexico.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
Tech
Amazon taps Sweden’s Einride for its electric big rigs
Einride is adding 75 of its electric heavy duty trucks to Amazon’s Relay freight network as part of a deal that gives the Swedish startup a toehold in the e-commerce giant’s operations. Einride will also provide charging infrastructure across five locations in the United States, under the agreement announced Tuesday.
Amazon isn’t buying or operating the electric trucks. Instead, Einride will own and manage (using its own Saga AI software) the trucks, which can be used by drivers in Amazon’s Relay freight network. Relay, launched in 2017, is an app that truck drivers can use to book hauling gigs with Amazon.
Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli, who took over as chief nearly a year ago, said working with Amazon is a powerful validation of the startup’s technology and strategic vision.
“By deploying our intelligent platform within one of the world’s most sophisticated logistics networks, we are accelerating growth, while continuing to build industry-leading operational expertise,” he said in a statement.
Einride has gained attention and investment for its two-pronged approach to freight. The company has developed and now operates a fleet of about 200 heavy-duty electric trucks for companies like Heineken, PepsiCo, and Carlsberg Sweden in Europe, North America, and the UAE. It has also developed autonomous pod-like trucks, which stand out for their cab-less design.
The agreement with Amazon doesn’t include the autonomous pods.
Einride has landed this agreement at a critical time: The startup is finalizing a merger with blank-check company Legato Merger Corp. and is expected to go public soon.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
While the agreement might not carry the same weight for Amazon, which has a market cap of $2.7 trillion, it does contribute to its low-carbon goals. Amazon has said it wants to reach net-zero carbon emissions across its operations by 2040.
“This rollout is an important step forward in addressing one of the toughest challenges we face in decarbonizing our transportation network — electrifying heavy-duty trucking,” an Amazon spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We’re excited to continue to collaborate with Einride and learn from these operations as the trucks hit the road.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
Tech
YouTube expands its AI likeness detection technology to celebrities
YouTube is expanding its new “likeness detection” technology, which identifies AI-generated content, such as deepfakes, to people within the entertainment industry, the company announced on Tuesday.
The technology works similarly to YouTube’s existing Content ID system, which detects copyright-protected material in users’ uploaded videos, allowing rights owners to request removal or share in the video’s revenue.
Likeness detection does the same, but for simulated faces. The feature is meant to help protect creators and other public figures from having their identities used without their permission — a common problem for celebrities who find their likenesses have been used in scam advertisements.
The technology was first made available to a subset of YouTube creators in a pilot program last year before expanding more broadly to include politicians, government officials, and journalists this spring.
Now YouTube says the technology is being made available to those in the entertainment industry, including talent agencies, management companies, and the celebrities they represent. The company has support from major agencies like CAA, UTA, WME, and Untitled Management, which offered feedback on the new tool.
Use of the likeness detection tool does not require entertainers to have their own YouTube channels.
Instead, the feature scans for AI-generated content to detect visual matches of an enrolled participant’s face. Users can then choose to request removal of the video for privacy policy violations, submit a copyright removal request, or do nothing. YouTube notes that it won’t remove all content, as it permits parody and satire content under its rules.
In the future, the technology will support audio as well, the company says.
Related to this, YouTube has also been advocating for similar protections at a federal level, with its support for the NO FAKES Act in Washington, D.C. This would regulate the use of AI to create unauthorized re-creations of an individual’s voice and visual likeness.
The company hasn’t yet said how many removals of AI deepfakes have been managed by the tool so far, but noted in March that the amount of removals was still “very small.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
The new Dyson Supersonic Travel is the cheapest Supersonic yet
The gorgeous yet budget-friendly Samsung QN70F Neo QLED TV is the cheapest its ever been
