Caller identity platform Truecaller recently launched a new feature that lets one person become an admin of a family group, get alerts about fraud calls received by other members, and even end a call on their behalf if they suspect a family member might get scammed.

The company, which has over 450 million users, first launched the feature in December in a handful of countries like Sweden, Chile, Malaysia, and Kenya. Truecaller said that after seeing promising results, it decided to roll it out worldwide, including in India, the company’s biggest market. The feature is free, and users can create groups even if they are not on a paid Truecaller plan.

With this feature, the tech-savvy member of a family or friends group can become the admin of an up to five-member group. Once the other members join the group, the admin can get alerts about potentially fraudulent calls those members receive. If the admin believes that the call could harm the member, they can remotely end the call as well. While the admin can get alerts for fraud calls when a member is using iOS or Android, they can only end calls for members on Android.

On Android, members can also grant permission to the admin to detect real-time activity such as walking or driving, battery level, and phone sound settings (to check if the phone is in silent mode). Truecaller said this is helpful for admins to keep tabs on elderly members and to only call them when they are not walking or driving.

The admin can also block certain numbers and international calling codes and share a blocklist with group members.

Truecaller noted that the admin can’t see the non-spam call history or SMS history of group members.

“I think, unfortunately, all of us know somebody or another in our families or friends who have been impacted by fraud,” Kunal Dua, chief product officer at Truecaller, told TechCrunch over a call. “In that sense, it’s a fundamental shift for Truecaller in terms of what we’ve been focusing on as a problem,” he added.

Last year, Truecaller introduced a voicemail feature for Indian users featuring an AI assistant that listens for calls when a user is unavailable and provides a summary of the transcript. The company is exploring a similar AI approach for family protection to potentially alert the admin about what kind of fraud call a group member is receiving.

The company is also exploring using AI to screen calls and automatically disconnect them when certain words associated with scams are detected, such as “digital arrest” — a tactic in which perpetrators impersonate law enforcement officers to extract information or money from call recipients.

In India, scam calls have risen over time and caused financial losses across the country. Truecaller said that it identified over 7.7 billion fraud calls last year. Indian authorities have launched multiple initiatives, including a controversial policy called SIM binding that could hamper the working of apps like WhatsApp and Telegram.

Truecaller is facing headwinds. Its stock has dwindled by over 80% in the last 12 months. During its Q4 2025 report, the company said that its EBITDA — a measure of operating profitability — dipped 49% year-on-year, with ad revenue declining 31%. The company is also facing challenges from India’s Caller Name Presentation (CNAP) system, which displays the name of the caller as registered with their phone carrier. Truecaller has maintained that just displaying a caller’s name won’t reduce spam calls, arguing that its platform goes further by offering community-based reports.

“In India, there has been much talk about the imminent rollout of CNAP,” Truecaller CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala said during the Q4 2025 earnings call. “CNAP is partially rolled out, and so far, the impact on our user growth is limited. As we have said in the past, we expect that CNAP might have some impact on user growth, but that remains to be seen as CNAP reaches a full rollout.”

Continued Jhunjhunwala, “Our focus continues to be on delivering a superior product, and as you are aware, the consumer can choose to have CNAP and Truecaller in parallel, where we provide a lot more information and a lot more context and various other solutions, for the consumer.”

Eighteen months after selling his startup to chipmaker AMD for $665 million, Finnish entrepreneur Peter Sarlin has left his role as CEO of the unit now known as AMD Silo AI. He is now chairman at two new ventures: physical AI lab NestAI, and Qutwo, an AI startup aimed at helping companies prepare for the era of quantum computing.

Currently fully funded by Sarlin’s family office, PostScriptum, Qutwo describes itself as “an AI lab for the quantum era.” Rather than waiting for quantum computing to mature, however, it is already working with enterprise customers — including European fashion retailer Zalando, with which it is developing what the two companies call “lifestyle agents,” AI tools designed to go beyond product search and proactively suggest products and experiences.

Qutwo is built on the premise that AI is hitting an efficiency wall that quantum computing may eventually help solve. But the company is not betting on when that will happen, Sarlin told TechCrunch. Instead, the startup is building Qutwo OS as an orchestration layer that allows companies to shift from classical to quantum computing — making use of hybrid computing along the way.

Sarlin invested in Finnish quantum companies IQM and QMill through PostScriptum, and is one of a growing number of investors who believe it will eventually outperform classical computers in a wide range of industry applications while easing AI’s energy demands. But he also thinks that initial use cases will require mixed hardware environments, and that enterprises would rather focus on their business problems while Qutwo OS takes care of the routing.

In that respect, the potential advantage of the middle ground known as “quantum-inspired” computing is that it is already viable today, because it uses classical hardware while simulating quantum behavior, working around the hurdles that still hinder quantum hardware. Meanwhile, Qutwo OS is designed to be flexible, supporting quantum or non-quantum algorithms and chips alike.

Qutwo’s team brings experience on both sides of the quantum-AI divide. On the quantum side, there’s IQM co-founder Kuan Yen Tan and board member Antti Vasara, also chair at SemiQon, a Finnish semiconductor startup focused on quantum chips. The enterprise side is equally represented, by Sarlin himself and Kaj-Mikael Björk, one of his former co-founders at Silo AI. Pekka Lundmark, the former CEO of Finnish telecom giant Nokia, also joined Qutwo’s board.

Across both areas, the team counts over 30 quantum and AI scientists, and Sarlin is clear where the company stands. “We’re building for the quantum world, but Qutwo is an AI company,” he said, meaning that Qutwo is “pushing AI workloads from classical to quantum.”

This also means that its customer base could be quite broad. Beyond Zalando, Qutwo also launched a joint quantum AI research initiative with OP Pohjola, a major Finnish financial services provider.

From the outset, Qutwo has been commercially minded and already has “large design partnerships which are in the tens of millions,” Sarlin said. Design partnerships — in which a vendor co-develops its product alongside enterprise customers — are a way for Qutwo to learn what a customer expects as it builds its product. They are also a bet from enterprises looking to establish early footing when and if quantum computing does arrive.

Uber has added another company’s autonomous vehicles to its growing robotaxi network. Hyundai-owned Motional’s self-driving version of the Ioniq 5 is now available to be hailed for rides to and from five areas around the city — with a safety monitor in the car, for now.

Starting Friday, the vehicles will do pickup and drop-offs in the rideshare zones at Resorts World and Encore hotel casinos on the Strip, along with the Westgate, which is next to the Las Vegas Convention Center. The Motional AVs will also handle rides to and from the Town Square shopping center near the city’s airport, and curbside in Downtown Las Vegas.

Uber and Motional said Friday that they plan to expand the operating area in the future, but did not offer specifics. As in other cities, there is no way to specifically request a robotaxi ride. Customers will increase the chance of getting matched with one by enabling autonomous vehicle pickup within the Uber app.

The companies said they expect to be able to run a fully driverless service in Las Vegas by the end of this year.

The launch in Las Vegas is a milestone for Motional, which found itself in real trouble two years ago. Created as a joint venture between Hyundai and Aptiv, the company was behind on its goal of launching a robotaxi service with Uber rival Lyft. Aptiv pulled out of funding the joint venture, leaving Hyundai to decide whether to pick up the financial slack, or cut bait.