Tech
The Gemini-powered features in Google Workspace that are worth using
Google has been steadily integrating Gemini across Google Workspace, embedding AI into Docs, Gmail, Sheets, Slides, Drive, and Meet. With so many updates rolling out, the real question isn’t what Gemini can do; it’s what’s actually useful in day-to-day work.
The best Gemini features are arguably the more practical tools that help you manage information faster, such as summarizing, drafting content, organizing data, and tracking all those meetings. Let’s go through all the best ones.
The best Gemini features in Google Docs
What Gemini in Docs does best is automatic summarization. Instead of digging through a long report or research doc, you can ask Gemini for the key points or a quick outline. It’s a time-saver when you’re reviewing something or want to quickly explain the information to a colleague.
There’s also a new “Help me create” tool. You can describe what you want, like a newsletter or a report, and Gemini will pull in context from your Drive, Gmail, and Chat to generate a first draft as a strong starting point.
On top of that, there are other useful tools like “Help me write,” which can clean up your wording or expand on ideas, and “Match writing style,” which is great when multiple people are contributing to the same document and the tone is all over the place. There’s even a “Match the format” feature that lets you copy the structure of another document, which is handy if you’re working from a template. (These features are currently still in beta.)
The best Gemini features in Gmail
Gemini in Gmail is particularly useful when your inbox gets out of control. The “AI Inbox” feature filters out all the non-important messages and highlights the emails that matter, like a reminder for your upcoming doctor’s appointment or your son’s soccer practice next week.
Gemini also summarizes long email threads, which means you don’t have to scroll through a dozen back-and-forth messages just to figure out what’s going on. You can get the key points in an email summary card right at the top of the email.
“Help me write” is another handy capability. Gemini can generate replies based on the context of the conversation. Whether you want something more formal or shorter, it can rewrite messages quickly in the tone you want. Plus, it goes a bit further with contextual smart replies, which generate longer, more detailed responses.
There’s also an “AI Overview” feature, allowing you to ask Gemini a question such as “Who was the plumber who gave me a quote for the bathroom renovation last year?” and the AI will dig through your emails to find the conversation.
The best Gemini features in Google Sheets
With a single prompt, Gemini can grab relevant information from Gmail, Chat, and Drive and turn it into a fully structured spreadsheet. It can also help you visualize data by generating charts and graphs.
There’s also a “Fill with Gemini” feature that speeds up populating tables, which is useful when you’re starting from raw or incomplete data.
The best Gemini features in Google Slides
For creating slides, Gemini’s strength is formatting, which removes a lot of the repetitive work. It’s especially useful for internal presentations or when you just need a solid first draft quickly.
You can give it a prompt like “create a five-slide deck summarizing our Q1 results,” and it will build out a presentation that matches your theme, pulls in relevant content, and organizes it into slides with bullet points and visuals.
From there, you can tweak things by asking it to simplify slides, adjust formatting, or match a specific design style. There’s also a “refine text” feature if you need to shorten a paragraph or rephrase a sentence.
A bonus tool: You can tweak images in Slides using Nano Banana, Google’s image-editing model.
The best Gemini features in Google Meet
The standout Gemini feature in Meet is automatic note-taking. Instead of trying to listen and write at the same time, you can let Gemini capture the key points, decisions, and action items for you. After the meeting, everything is already organized and ready to share.
Gemini also helps out if you join late. You can ask what you missed and get a quick summary without interrupting the flow.
There are also practical upgrades like real-time translated captions, improvements to video, and the ability to reduce audio distortion to make meetings easier to follow.
The best Gemini features in Google Drive
Gemini in Drive allows you to quickly search for files, summarize a marketing plan, pull specific targets from a document, or even draft updates based on the latest files in your workspace. Gemini can also generate an “AI Overview” of the most relevant information across your documents, complete with sources. That means you don’t have to open five different files just to find one detail.
Plus, with a new beta tool called “Ask Gemini in Drive,” you can now ask complex questions across your calendar, documents, emails, and the web.
The best Gemini features in Calendar
As for Google Calendar, one of the standout AI-powered features is “Help me schedule.” Instead of manually scanning availability, you can describe what you need, and Gemini will suggest the best times based on everyone’s calendars. It can even take preferences into account, such as avoiding early mornings. Gemini can connect to your Gmail to detect available time slots, rather than proposing times blindly.
Gemini also helps with event creation. You can type a simple prompt like “Lunch with Nick,” and it will generate a full calendar event with the right date, time suggestions, and even location details.
It also improves rescheduling. If a meeting needs to shift, Gemini can suggest alternative times that minimize conflicts, instead of forcing you to manually recheck everyone’s availability, which is great when you have larger groups.
The best Gemini features in Chat
Instead of scrolling through long threads, you can ask Gemini to summarize a space, highlight key decisions, or pull out action items. This is especially helpful in active team channels where important details tend to get buried.
Gemini can also draft replies based on the context of the conversation. It also learns from your past conversations, so it can bring up key details and past moments in its chat suggestions to sound more natural.
Another useful feature is its ability to connect chats with files. You can ask questions about documents shared in a conversation without opening them.
The best Gemini features in Google Vids
Gemini in Google Vids helps you generate polished video content. Instead of starting from scratch, you can prompt Gemini to generate a rough cut based on a topic or outline. It can suggest scenes, structure your narrative, and draft scripts automatically.
Gemini can also handle voice-overs by generating script variations and adjusting the tone. With transcript trimming, Gemini identifies “ums” and any awkward pauses that you want to remove from the recording.
There’s also the ability to convert an image to video using Gemini Veo 3, as well as input a script and use an AI-powered avatar as the star of the video.
The best Gemini features in Forms
Gemini in Forms lets you describe what you want, such as a survey, and generate a complete form with relevant questions and structure.
It also helps refine questions. Gemini can suggest clearer wording and better answer formats, and identify gaps in your form that might lead to incomplete or low-quality responses. This is particularly useful when you’re trying to gather actionable data.
In addition, Gemini can summarize results as they come in, highlighting trends and key takeaways without requiring you to dig through raw data. Instead of exporting responses and analyzing them elsewhere, you get immediate insights directly within Forms.
Tech
Doss raises $55M for AI inventory management that plugs into ERP
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are often described as a company’s “central brain” because the software connects different departments — including finance, HR, and inventory — into a single database where everyone shares the same information.
In recent years, a new crop of AI-powered ERP startups, such as Rillet and Campfire, has emerged hoping to replace legacy offerings like NetSuite. These companies claim that traditional ERPs are clunky, expensive, and time-consuming to implement.
However, according to Doss co-founder and CEO Wiley Jones, many new AI ERPs lack robust inventory management, the process of ensuring that the data on physical goods remains synced with the accounting ledger.
Doss claims to solve this by providing an AI-native inventory management layer that integrates with existing accounting systems, whether traditional ERPs or ones built by AI-based startups.
On Tuesday, Doss announced that it raised a $55 million Series B co-led by Madrona and Premji Invest, with participation from Intuit Ventures. Other new and existing inventors in the round include Theory Ventures, General Catalyst, Contrary Capital, and Greyhound Capital.
Doss, founded in 2022, originally focused on a core accounting product similar to those offered by AI-native startups like Rillet and Campfire. But last year, the startup decided instead of competing with these companies, “we would rather partner with them, and play a different game,” Jones told TechCrunch.
Jones explained that AI-native ERP companies manage accounts receivable, accounts payable, and other finance functions, but most don’t offer procurement and inventory management that integrates with accounting workflows.
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“We’re building a lot of the traceability for the supply chain, but through the lens of plugging into a finance and accounting partner,” Jones said.
The company’s main partners include Rillet and Campfire. Many clients also use Doss in conjuction with Intuit’s QuickBooks.
“The reason that they work with us is that [physical goods management] is not something that they’re likely going to build as a core competency without putting in a lot of energy and effort,” Jones said.
Doss’ core customer base consists of mid-market consumer brands, typically generating between $20 million and $250 million in top-line revenue. One such customer is Verve Coffee Roasters, a high-end specialty coffee brand.
The startup sees itself as competing with traditional ERPs. But these players are not sitting ideal in the age of AI, either. NetSuite, for instance, has recently introduced its updated AI ERP. It also competes with other agentic procurement startups such as Didero.
While Jones admits that selling two ERP systems, one for accounting and another for inventory management like Doss, “is a hard sell,” he says that legacy ERPs are so hard to implement that many customers are choosing to have two newer, AI-powered systems.
“I think it’s going to be a very intense fight inside of mid-market that ultimately will be determined by whoever rebuilds their architecture to be most legible and usable for agents,” Jones said.
Editor’s Note: The story corrected the list of Doss’ partners.
Tech
Crunchyroll confirms data breach after hacker claims unauthorized access
Anime streaming service Crunchyroll has confirmed a data breach involving customer service ticket information following an incident with a third-party vendor, after a hacker claimed to have accessed user data and internal systems.
The streaming site, which Sony acquired from AT&T in 2020 for $1.18 billion, operates as a joint venture between U.S.-based Sony Pictures Entertainment and Japan-based Aniplex. Crunchyroll has more than 2,000 titles in over 12 languages and serves 15 million subscribers worldwide, per its website.
Reports of a threat actor claiming access to Crunchyroll user data surfaced online this week, with a hacker alleging that they obtained data about millions of users.
Crunchyroll said it is investigating the claims.
“Our investigation is ongoing, and we continue to work with leading cybersecurity experts,” the company said in a statement to TechCrunch, adding that it has not identified evidence of ongoing unauthorized access.
Separately, materials shared with TechCrunch by a cybersecurity-focused account, International Cyber Digest, indicate the attacker may have gained access to Crunchyroll’s Zendesk support system. Screenshots we have seen appear to show the company’s internal Slack messages and stolen support data, apparently stolen by hacking an employee at Telus Digital, an outsourcing giant that handles customer support for Crunchyroll. The hacker allegedly stole customer support ticket data until early 2025, at which point their access was revoked.
The cybersecurity account said the hack was separate from a recent breach affecting Telus Digital, which the company confirmed last week.
Crunchyroll did not respond to a follow-up question about whether the third-party vendor relates to its support partner, Telus Digital.
Telus Digital did not respond to requests for comments.
The hacker told BleepingComputer they had downloaded about eight million support ticket records from Crunchyroll’s systems, including roughly 6.8 million unique email addresses, though the claims have not been independently verified. The hacker also told the publication they gained access on March 12 after compromising an Okta single sign-on account belonging to a Crunchyroll support agent.
Tech
BKR Capital raises $14.5M (so far) to invest in Black founders
Canada’s BKR Capital announced Monday that its Fund II has closed CA$20 million (around $14.5 million), bringing it closer to its CA$50 million target.
This fund is looking to back “high-growth technology companies led by founders from the Black community, building solutions for the future of work, living, and global connectivity,” managing partner Lise Birikundavyi told TechCrunch. The firm is mainly looking at Canada but is open to backing select companies globally. The average check size will be between $250,000 and $1.5 million, she said.
Birikundavyi said that almost 70% of the Black population in Canada is first- or second-generation immigrants, “resulting in founders who build globally from day one, unlocking early access to international markets and creating a structural advantage in scaling.”
Though many U.S. firms have shied away from openly advertising a mission that could be perceived as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), Birikundavyi said her Toronto-based fund doesn’t share those exact fears. What’s happening in Canada is less of a DEI rollback and more of a reframing, she said, where investors are “prioritizing discussion on performance,” even though “the underlying opportunity remains unchanged.”
She added, “Expanding access to overlooked founders continues to surface high-quality deals, making this less about DEI and more about arbitrage investing.” She believes investors in Canada still see “inclusive investment” as good for the ecosystem and full of potentially lucrative business opportunities.
The firm’s thesis is rooted in the belief that “overlooked markets and diverse lived experiences can unlock outsized venture opportunities,” Birikundavyi said. The firm launched in 2021 and raised $22 million for its Fund I (which Birikundavyi said is performing better than at least 75% of the other funds launched around the same time). She said BKR Capital hopes to make its final close for Fund II in December and invest in 25 companies.
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