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Volunteer spots are limited, so don’t miss out! Apply before the October 19 deadline to be considered.

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Whether your ambitions lie in launching a startup, mastering marketing strategies, or coordinating remarkable events, this opportunity offers a unique insight into the world of startup events. And even after your volunteer duties, you’ll have full access to the event’s expert-led workshops, covering essential topics like user growth, fundraising, and brand development.

With an anticipated attendance of approximately 1,100 people at Founder Summit, volunteers will play a crucial role in ensuring a seamless and rewarding experience for all attendees. Your tasks may include assisting with registration, coordinating speakers, guiding guests, scanning tickets, or aiding in event setup.

Join us in making this event a success while gaining invaluable event management experience. And fear not, there will be ample time to soak in all the enriching startup insights that Founder Summit has to offer. Apply now and secure your spot!

Amazon on Thursday unveiled a new lineup of Alexa tablets that feature personalized intelligence from its Alexa+ AI assistant and full access to the Google Play Store. The lineup includes three models: Amazon Alexa Tablet 12 Pro, Amazon Alexa Tablet 11, and Amazon Alexa Tablet 8.

The tech giant says each tablet features an aluminum unibody design, high-resolution displays, and runs on Android. Plus, with access to the Google Play Store at launch, users will be able to download millions of apps, including YouTube, Netflix, Gmail, and more.

Until now, Amazon’s tablets have run Fire OS and ship with its own app store. With these new tablets, however, Amazon is taking a different approach to reach a wider audience. An Amazon spokesperson told TechCrunch that these are an all-new product line with new hardware and a new OS, rather than a rebrand of Fire Tablets.

The Amazon Alexa Tablet 12 Pro measures 6.5 mm thick and is engineered for “perfect balance,” Amazon explained in a press release. It houses a 12-inch, 280 PPI display, a 120Hz refresh rate, and a 3:2 aspect ratio for more usable screen space, which the company says is perfect for reading, watching, or working. It comes in two display options: a standard display and a Nanomatte display with anti-glare.

Amazon says the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro delivers nearly three times the processing performance and nine times the graphics performance of any tablet it has shipped before. The company says the tablet can easily handle everything from multi-window multitasking and graphics-intensive gaming to 4K streaming. It features Dolby Atmos speakers, Wi-Fi 6E, and 16 hours of video playback.

The company also announced the Alexa Tablet Pro Pen and Pro Keyboard, which Amazon says are designed to turn the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro into a full workstation.

The Alexa Tablet 12 Pro starts at $499.99, while the Nanomatte model starts at $549.99. The tablet comes in Graphite.

The new tablets are launching with built-in access to Alexa+. Users will be able to say “Alexa” or tap the “Ask Alexa” button to get answers to questions, control their smart home, and more. With On-Screen Intelligence, users will be able to ask Alexa to look at what’s on screen to receive contextual help. For example, while browsing a list of trails, users can ask Alexa, “Which of these hikes is best for me?”

The Alexa Tablet 11 is an 11-inch device with a 2.5K display at 276 pixels per inch, 90Hz smooth scrolling, and a 16:10 aspect ratio. The tech giant says it’s designed for streaming, gaming, reading, and browsing. It features 15 hours of video playback and dual Dolby Atmos speakers. It starts at $329.99 and comes in Graphite, Amethyst, and Matcha.

The Alexa Tablet 8 is the smallest and most portable of the three, featuring an 8.7-inch display and an all-aluminum design that weighs 329 grams. It’s designed to be held in one hand and carried anywhere for reading, browsing, and streaming on the go, Amazon says. It starts at $229.99 and comes in Graphite, Rosette, and Teal.

All of the new tablets are launching with a new Kindle reading experience. When users open the Kindle app, notifications are silenced, blue light is reduced, and battery life can last up to 20 hours.

The company also announced on Wednesday that it’s launching new Amazon Kids tablets, with 8.7-inch and 11-inch sizes available. Bundles include a tablet, a kid-proof case, and a year of Amazon Kids+, which provides access to thousands of kid-friendly books, games, videos, and apps in an ad-free environment.

There are separate versions for pre-K kids (ages 3+) and kids 6+, as younger kids get a soft bumper case in designs from franchises like Paw Patrol and Barbie, while older kids get a slim hard case with a built-in kickstand.

All three Amazon Alexa Tablets and the Amazon Kids Tablets will go on sale October 14, 2026, in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. They’ll launch in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain on October 19, while the Amazon Kids Tablets will also be available in Japan starting October 14.

Vesta, an AI-native software startup that helps lenders originate mortgages, announced on Thursday that it raised a $30 million round led by Conversion Capital.

The startup uses AI agents to automate much of the loan origination process, which, the founders say, helps lenders reduce the time and costs of processing mortgages. Three of the company’s customers, including Pennymac and New American Funding, also invested in the round alongside Citi Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. 

Mike Yu co-founded the company in 2020 with Devon Yang. Yu, the company’s CEO, told TechCrunch that now was the perfect time to raise because demand for the product has “exploded in the last year.” He said revenue is up 12x year over year and that the company has helped originate more than $100 billion a year in loans for lenders. The company has raised $85 million in funding to date.

“While the traction is great, we are still under 5% market share and now is the time to staff up, take the market, and invest in new product lines,” Yu said. 

Those new product lines include a personal assistant for mortgage issuers that can help perform tasks and track workflows. It takes around 40 days to close a mortgage in the U.S., costing around $11,000 per loan. “Most of that cost is human labor, and a major bottleneck in the timeline is just waiting for a person to get to reviewing your loan.” 

With Vesta, the idea is to allow humans to deploy a swarm of agents to speed completion of tasks. Customers decide what tasks they want to assign the Vesta agents: “Many of our customers start an AI agent with a person approving its work, then let it handle a share of loans on its own, then expand,” Yu explained, adding that some lenders are even using Vesta AI agents to make mortgage underwriting decisions. 

Companies remain responsible for underwriting decisions, he said, regardless of what software or AI agents they use, and Yu added that all actions and reasoning behind a decision are recorded for compliance and to audit AI decisions.

This level of autonomy stems from the vast improvements in AI models in the past year, which weren’t good enough, at that time, to build agents for the complex multi-stage tasks involved in mortgage lending. Before, the company was just focused on building the right data architecture to use the most advanced tools to automate the mortgage process. 

“For us, the big breakthrough was [Claude] Sonnet 4.5, which we just found to be much better at adhering to user-configured instructions over the time horizons we need than previous generations,” Yu said. 

Vesta is, in many ways, competing against both traditional mortgage systems like ICE Mortgage Technology and other AI-native companies also trying to automate the mortgage lending process like Xpanse. 

At least against legacy incumbents, Yu said Vesta’s advantage is that those companies weren’t built for AI agents, and “putting AI agents on top of them is very hard,” he said. As for what’s next, “our priority is earning the business of the rest of the mortgage industry,” Yu said. “Then, we’ll go wherever our customers take us.”