Social network Bluesky launched support for group chats on Thursday, another feature designed to make the app more competitive with its larger competitor, X.

While Elon Musk-owned X recently doubled down on chats with the launch of a stand-alone XChat app, Bluesky is only now catching up by offering a way for groups to interact more privately on its platform.

The feature, which is arriving in the latest version of the social app (v1.124), is one of the first to deliver on Bluesky’s plan to focus more on communities, rather than trying to be a social network where people post solely to reach a wider public audience.

That’s a notable shift in strategy, and one that arrives as Bluesky’s overall growth has slowed. Today, the network reaches some 44.8 million registered users, compared with X’s 600 million monthly active users. If Bluesky can’t reach the scale of competitors like X or Meta’s Threads, it may need to find new ways to make its app attractive to would-be users, including by offering different forms of social connection.

The startup added support for messaging in 2024, but it only more recently began offering encrypted chats, and only by integrating the third-party messaging service Germ. Now, Bluesky is offering support for group chats of up to 50 people, its announcement states.

That’s smaller than X’s support for 1,000 members, but it’s a start. And the company says it may increase this limit in the future.

Group chat creators can manage their chats however they like and can decide who is allowed to participate, the company noted. They can generate an invite link that can be shared across the web, including in Bluesky posts where it’s displayed as an embedded card.

Chat participants, meanwhile, can control who’s allowed to invite them to chats — everyone, only people they follow, or no one. The default setting will be “only people you follow,” unless users select a different choice for DMs.

Sharing media in group chats is not yet supported, as it will require additional safety and moderation systems, Bluesky says.

In a series of recent posts from Bluesky’s head of product, Alex Benzer spoke about how Bluesky will be working to make its app more community-focused in the days ahead.

“Today, Bluesky is one big space. Communities will be smaller spaces inside that where you can go deeper and hang out with people who care about the same stuff,” he wrote. Benzer also explained that the goal was to build more community features on the underlying protocol (AT Proto) with support from the wider developer ecosystem.

“On Bluesky, you’ll be able to create communities, join them, post in them, and get updates,” Benzer added.

The timing is particularly notable given that X announced in April that it was shutting down its Communities feature because of low usage and too much spam. Bluesky, seemingly, is trying to pick up where X left off by catering to those who want more control and ownership over their online community experience.

For instance, Benzer noted that communities on Bluesky will get their own handle that doubles as a URL, like community-name.bsky.social or community-name.bsky.space. They’ll also be able to be set it as either public, invite-only, or private, similar to the options available on Facebook Groups or Reddit.

With communities, Bluesky is ultimately betting that people are looking for an exit from platforms operated by Big Tech players, and could be enticed to explore more open technologies where they feel they have more control over the experience (and won’t have their account disabled by rogue AI moderation systems!).

Along with group chats, the updated version of Bluesky is also offering a new way to share profiles via a personalized QR code, similar to other social apps.

A San Francisco Airbnb host is suing The Bot Company, the $2 billion robotics startup founded by ex-Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt, for allegedly using his home as a secret robot testing lab. Sean Donovan claims workers booked his Portola neighbourhood property under false pretences in April, posing as remote workers from Thailand. He is seeking $12,383 in damages.

What Donovan found was not a group of digital nomads. Using his outdoor Ring camera, he counted more than 30 people entering and leaving the house over 11 nights. He overheard some of them discussing their “shifts,” he told SFGate.

When Donovan stopped by to take out the trash, he found bundles of wires leading inside. He followed them and discovered a six-foot robot he described as looking like a “borg” from Star Trek, or a giant “Roomba with treads.” The Bot Company builds household chore robots but has shared almost nothing about its prototypes publicly.

The damage was extensive. A 70-year-old family dining table was scratched and water-marked. A Franciscan pottery set went missing. A bathroom tile was chipped, a coffee table banged up, and a broken mug had its handle glued back on. An entire shoe rack disappeared. “They came in and put everything back in a new place,” Donovan told SFGate. “Silverware in a new drawer or a different room.”

Vogt co-founded The Bot Company in 2024 with Paril Jain, the former head of Tesla’s AI division. The startup has raised more than $300 million, including a $150 million round led by Greenoaks. It is valued at approximately $2 billion, despite having revealed almost nothing about what it is building.

Vogt’s previous venture did not end well. He was CEO of Cruise, GM’s robotaxi division, which was shut down in 2024 after a series of safety incidents. GM absorbed the technical team and redirected autonomous driving work toward personal vehicles.

There is a legitimate reason to test household robots in real homes rather than sanitised labs. Domestic environments are cluttered, unpredictable, and full of objects that break. But doing it without the property owner’s consent, under a false identity, crosses a line. The lawsuit alleges unauthorised commercial R&D activity, including robotic prototype testing and filming for commercial purposes.

Other robotics companies testing in real-world environments have faced similar scrutiny. Robotaxi operators have been criticised for using public roads as de facto test tracks. The Bot Company appears to have applied the same logic to someone’s living room, and the result was a trashed house and a rare, accidental glimpse at a prototype the company would rather have kept secret.

It took one sentence from Jensen Huang to move tens of billions of dollars. Marvell Technology shares surged about 25% in premarket trading on Tuesday after Nvidia’s chief executive, sharing a Computex stage in Taipei with Marvell boss Matt Murphy, predicted that the chip and networking company would be the next business to reach a $1tn valuation. That would be more than five times its current size.

Marvell’s valuation will climb now that the age of “useful AI has arrived,” Huang said, framing the company as a beneficiary of the same data-centre boom that has carried his own.

The Santa Clara firm makes the custom chips and optical interconnects that move data around AI clusters, the unglamorous plumbing of the boom rather than the headline processors. Its stock has gained roughly 158% this year, giving it a market value of about $192bn before Tuesday’s jump. If the premarket gain holds at the open, it would be Marvell’s biggest intraday move since May 2023.

Huang is not a disinterested cheerleader. Nvidia invested around $2bn in Marvell earlier this year, part of an effort to knit the smaller company’s custom silicon and networking gear more tightly into its own systems.

The endorsement, in other words, talks up a company Nvidia already owns a slice of, which is worth keeping in mind when a $5.4tn chief executive names the next member of his club.

The forecast landed amid a run of bullish chip news on the same day. Memory maker SK Hynix said it would double production capacity to ease a supply crunch. STMicroelectronics nearly doubled its 2026 data-centre revenue forecast, to about $1bn, and said sales could double again in 2027.

Arm said it expects to reach its $15bn semiconductor revenue target earlier than planned. The common thread is AI infrastructure spending, which the largest tech companies, Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft among them, have pledged to fund to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars this year.

Nvidia has been the clearest winner of that spending, its shares up more than 1,400% since 2023 and its market value around $5.4tn. Much of the demand now flows through the kind of connective hardware Marvell sells, and Nvidia has been pouring money into the surrounding ecosystem, including a multibillion-dollar bet on the photonics meant to replace copper inside data centres. Huang used the same Taipei stage this year to call Taiwan the “epicentre” of the AI build-out.

Roughly 15 companies carried market values above $1tn as of Monday, almost all of them in technology. Marvell is not the most valuable company below that line; dozens are worth more. What it has, for now, is the loudest endorsement, and the share price to show for it. Whether the trillion follows is a different question, and one a Computex soundbite does not answer.

Every founder who applies to Startup Battlefield wants the same thing: the Disrupt Main Stage. Six minutes to pitch and demo live, in front of top-tier Silicon Valley investors. A dedicated TechCrunch article published as you present. A shot at the $100,000 equity-free prize and the Disrupt Cup.

And all of that could be yours, but every path to Startup Battlefield success begins with an application. And we actually have extended the deadline for this year’s cohort to June 8, so you only have a brief window to send yours in.

Head here to start up that application right now, but for a head start, we have some advice based on past competitions, and some detail on why participant perks start well before the main stage at Disrupt kicks off.

What it takes to make the Startup Battlefield Top 20

The Startup Battlefield Top 20 represents the best of the best from the Startup Battlefield 200. Companies with ideas that are meaningfully different, category-defining, and capable of making a major impact in their industry or geography. Selection comes down to which companies are the most compelling, differentiated, and ready for a global stage.

Your product and founder videos are everything. They are the first impression and play the most significant role in identifying which companies are ready for the Disrupt Stage. Show your product in action. Be specific about what makes you different. Let your conviction come through on camera, not just your metrics.

Selected companies work closely with the TechCrunch team on pitch preparation ahead of Disrupt. Each company pitches and demos live for six minutes on the Disrupt Stage, followed by a live Q&A with top-tier investors like Aileen Lee (Cowboy Ventures), Kirsten Green (Forerunner), Navin Chaddha (Mayfield), Chris Farmer (SignalFire), Dayna Grayson (Construct Capital), Ann Miura-Ko (Floodgate), and Hans Tung (Notable Capital). 

Of the Top 20, five are selected to pitch again on the final day of Disrupt in front of a new panel of high-profile judges. The winner receives $100,000 in equity-free prize money and the Disrupt Cup.

Check out the Top 20 from 2024 and 2025. 

Not selected for the Top 20 initially? You’re still in the running 

The list isn’t final until Disrupt is underway. Every year, things change — founders drop out, schedules shift, and standout companies from the 200 rise quickly during the program.

We keep the Top 20 confidential until the event begins and maintain a shortlist of companies ready to step in. It happens every cycle.

And more importantly, being in the 200 is where the real opportunity begins. The stage is one moment. But the access, exposure, and network you gain as part of the cohort extends far beyond it.

What every Startup Battlefield 200 company gets

You don’t have to make the Top 20 for Startup Battlefield to change your trajectory.

Every selected company receives a fully funded demo booth at TechCrunch Disrupt; complimentary event passes for the team; access to a pre-event virtual program with world-class VCs, operators, and founders; dedicated pitch preparation; and an invitation to the private Startup Battlefield reception.

At Disrupt, all 200 companies present. Whether you’re on the Disrupt Stage competing for the $100,000 prize or on the Showcase Stage for Best in Industry, both are real opportunities to stand out in front of the investors, press, and partners who come to Disrupt to find what’s next.

On the editorial side, every company enters the TechCrunch ecosystem. Coverage isn’t guaranteed, but our editors actively track Startup Battlefield companies through articles, the Build Mode podcast, the Equity podcast, and future updates as you grow. Standout companies are often invited to pitch, speak, and return across TechCrunch platforms. It’s an opportunity that compounds over time.

Beyond that, you join the Startup Battlefield alumni community, which includes 1,700+ companies, such as Dropbox, Discord, and Cloudflare, which have collectively raised $32 billion and produced 250+ exits. This isn’t a mailing list — it’s a network of founders who’ve been through the same experience and continue to support each other.

Alumni receive ongoing opportunities to pitch and speak at TechCrunch events, discounted and complimentary access to future events, and exclusive perks from our partner network.

The stage is one moment. The network, visibility, and access are what last.

You get value just for applying to Startup Battlefield

Even if you’re not selected, applying has its upsides. Applicants receive exclusive discounts on Disrupt tickets and exhibit opportunities, along with resources from our partners, so you can stay close to the ecosystem and come back stronger next cycle.

If you’re on the fence about whether you’re ready, apply anyway. It’s free, it takes nothing off the table, and it’s our job to tell you if it’s not the right time. The founders who wait until they feel ready often wait too long. 

While you’re preparing, check out Build Mode, TechCrunch’s podcast for early-stage founders featuring past Startup Battlefield companies, breakout founders, and top-tier investors. Consider it the inside track on what it takes to build a Battlefield-ready company.

[Listen to Build Mode →]

Applications close June 8, 2026. TechCrunch Disrupt takes place October 13–15 in San Francisco.

Apply for Startup Battlefield 2026 if you think you have what it takes to make the Top 20.