J.B. Straubel talks Tesla, Redwood Materials and keeping a startup mentality at any scale
J.B. Straubel has worn many hats in his career: co-founder of Tesla, Tesla Board Member, and more recently, founder and CEO of battery materials and recycling startup Redwood Materials. But in his heart, he’s a engineer, he said during a fireside interview at TechCrunch Disrupt. “I think of myself first
Read moreAgTech leaders dish on untapped and overlooked opportunities for founders
Lab-grown meat is buzzy for a reason. The ick factor is palpable, and the benefits of scaling alternatives to factory farming are enormous. Yet, plenty of other crucial corners of agriculture often go overlooked— at least as far as headlines are concerned. At TechCrunch Disrupt 2023, we asked two leading
Read moreAgri-Trak is helping farms replace pen and paper with digital tools to track labor and production
Meet Agri-Trak, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform designed to help farms digitize, track and analyze their labor and production. The Pultneyville, New York-based startup presented today at TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield to detail how its labor tracking and H2-A compliance software is helping farms replace pen and paper with easy-to-use digital
Read moreAmazon Devices Event 2023: Everything you need to know about Alexa, Echo, Fire TV and more
Amazon kicked off its annual Fall Devices Event today, revealing its generative AI plans, a slew of Alexa and Echo announcements, Fire TV streaming news, along with updates to Amazon’s smart home gear like its Blink and Ring cameras and a new, yet very expensive, eero Wi-Fi system. It’s a
Read more5 things to get straight before submitting an RFP to a digital marketing agency
The already-colossal $200 billion online advertising industry is staring down unprecedented innovation — and even more significant revenue.
Read moreJusticeText taps AI to transcribe evidence for public defenders
While studying computer science at the University of Chicago, Devshi Mehrotra and Leslie Jones-Dove were inspired to build tech that centered on the needs of communities historically marginalized by law enforcement. They ended up reaching out to local public defenders, who told them that they were being overwhelmed by hours of
Read moreFront goes beyond the unified inbox with a Zendesk-style knowledge base
Customer operations platform Front is better known for its omnichannel inbox that lets you aggregate all customer conversations in a single view — emails, chat conversations, SMS, social media messages. Today, the company unveiled a handful of new features that turns Front into a more complete customer support platform. By
Read moreMeta targeted for fresh UK gov’t warning against E2E encryption for Messenger, Instagram
Buckle up for another encryption fight: Hot on the heels of securing parliament’s approval for its Online Safety Bill yesterday, the UK government is amping up pressure on Meta not to roll out end-to-end-encryption (E2EE) on Facebook Messenger and Instagram — unless it applies unspecified “safety measures” which the Home
Read moreAmazon is bringing generative AI to Fire TV along with new devices
At its annual devices event, Amazon updated its Fire TV lineup with new devices, including the Fire TV Stick 4K and Fire TV Stick 4K Max, as well as a new Fire TV-branded soundbar — following its rival Roku into expansions into other home entertainment products. But beyond the hardware
Read moreShortwave’s AI-powered assistant lets ask questions about your email history
Since large language models (LLMs) shot up in popularity, plenty of developers have built tools on top of OpenAI’s GPT or Anthropic’s Claude to help people draft emails in different tones and formats. Shortwave, an email client built by former Google employees, is launching an AI-powered assistant that lets you
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