Zoox robotaxis are finally rolling out, Waymo snags more cash, and Aurora delays its self-driving truck launch
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 is wrapped! And what a whirlwind it was. Some highlights? Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson weighed in on whether
Read moreMeta is making a robot hand that can ‘feel’ touch
Meta says it’s partnering with sensor firm GelSight and Wonik Robotics, a South Korean robotics company, to commercialize tactile sensors for AI. The new devices aren’t meant for consumers. Rather, they’re intended for scientists. Meta says it envisions them being used to advance research into AI that can “learn about
Read moreCollege social app Fizz’s ‘serial failed retiree’ CEO steps down as founder takes helm
Veteran entrepreneur Rakesh Mathur stepped down as CEO of the college social network Fizz, handing over the reins to 22-year-old founder Teddy Solomon. It’s full circle for Fizz, the anonymous platform that Solomon started with his Stanford classmate Ashton Cofer before they dropped out to work on the app full-time.
Read moreNvidia-Run:ai deal to be reviewed under EU’s merger rules
The European Union has tossed a spanner in the works of chipmaker Nvidia’s proposed acquisition of Tel Aviv-based AI workload management startup Run:ai. The deal, which was announced back in April — with a price-tag of $700 million per our sources — will be reviewed by the bloc after a request
Read moreClaude gets desktop apps and dictation support
Anthropic’s AI-powered chatbot, Claude, now has desktop apps. Anthropic is launching Claude apps for Mac and Windows today in public beta, which — as Anthropic writes in a blog post — “brings Claude’s capabilities directly to your preferred work environment.” These capabilities, to be clear, don’t include Anthropic’s recently announced
Read moreBoston Dynamics’ Atlas humanoid hot dogs for the camera
Automation skeptics ask: why humanoids? We’ve discussed many of the benefits and drawbacks of the robotics form factor, but Boston Dynamics’ latest electric Atlas video showcases one of the most under discussed factors: costumes. “Why build a humanoid robot?” the company rhetorically posits. “Because the world is designed for humans,
Read moreSpace CEOs talk about the challenges and opportunities of selling defense tech
Space executives took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt on Monday to talk about the challenges and opportunities of building out dual-use technology, or tech that has both a defense and a commercial use case. The dual-use strategy can be tricky for young startups to manage, however, because they run the
Read moreBuddy.ai is using AI and gaming to help children learn English as a second language
In 2014, Ivan Crewkov moved his family from Serbia to the U.S. as his startup, Cubic.AI, was preparing to launch a Kickstarter campaign for its smart speaker. A week before the campaign was supposed to go live, Amazon launched its Echo smart speaker, rendering Cubic.AI essentially dead in the water.
Read moreD-ID launches new high-quality avatars capable of real-time conversations
AI video platform D-ID announced today that it is releasing two new types of avatars — Express and Premium+ — for content creation. Companies are chasing the golden goose of creating AI avatars that are more humanlike and can potentially offload video creation for enterprise use cases in areas like
Read moreNoma is building tools to spot security issues with AI apps
Companies are concerned that their eagerness to adopt AI has made them more vulnerable to cyberthreats. Per a recent poll of over 350 IT leaders, more than half of the executives surveyed said the complexity of AI applications weakened their organization’s cybersecurity posture. More than two-fifths of executives believe their
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