Latest from Rebecca Bellan
Apps
Meta axed CrowdTangle, a tool for tracking disinformation. Critics claim its replacement has just ‘1% of the features’
Journalists, researchers and politicians are mourning Meta’s shutdown of CrowdTangle, which they used to track the spread of disinformation on Facebook and Instagram. In CrowdTangle’s place, Meta is offering its…
Waymo regularly takes its autonomous vehicles on winter road trips to test the cars in snowy environments. In 2017, it was Michigan. Last year, it was Buffalo. This year, Waymo…
Chinese autonomous vehicle company WeRide has received the green light to test its driverless vehicles with passengers in California. The step comes as WeRide begins the process to go public…
Transportation
UAW files federal labor charges against Trump, Musk for intimidating workers at X Spaces event
The United Auto Workers union said Tuesday that it filed federal labor charges against Donald Trump and Elon Musk. The union alleges that Trump and Musk attempted to “threaten and…
In line with Elon Musk’s increasing rhetoric on X of going back to the good old days, Tesla looks like it’s finally getting ready to open its 1950s-style diner. Tesla…
Waymo plans to start testing its fully autonomous vehicles with no human safety driver on freeways in the San Francisco Bay Area this week. Its employees will be the first…
WeRide, a Chinese autonomous vehicle company, is officially gearing up for a U.S. public debut, over a year after China started easing its effective ban of foreign IPOs. The company is…
Elon Musk doesn’t want Tesla to be just an automaker. He wants Tesla to be an AI company, one that’s figured out how to make cars drive themselves. Crucial to…
Los Angeles is notorious for its back-to-back traffic. Three events that promise to bring in millions of spectators from around the world — the 2026 World Cup, the Super Bowl…
Just three months after Maven’s public launch, Kenneth Stanley — the former OpenAI researcher who co-founded the social media platform designed to facilitate serendipitous interactions — is stepping down. Stanley…
Ride-hail giant Lyft will pilot a new feature called Price Lock that will let a rider purchase a monthly subscription “that caps the price for a specific route at a…
Uber is highlighting the success of its autonomous vehicle effort — likely to assuage investors concerned about incoming competition from Tesla.
Google will appeal a U.S. District Court judge’s opinion Monday that found the technology giant acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in online search. The decision from Judge Amit P.…
Dojo is Tesla’s custom-built supercomputer that’s designed to train its “Full Self-Driving” neural networks.
Transportation
Self-driving truck startup Aurora Innovation raises $483M in share sale ahead of commercial launch
Self-driving technology company Aurora Innovation was hoping to raise hundreds of millions in additional capital as it races toward a driverless commercial launch by the end of 2024. The company, which…
AI hardware has taken on a new shape with Friend’s $99 necklace — a pendant that gives you an AI friend to talk to and…
When Xiaoyin Qu was growing up in China, she was obsessed with learning how to build paper airplanes that could do flips in the air. Her parents, though, didn’t have…
Rad Power Bikes, the Seattle-based e-bike startup that has raised more than $300 million from investors, went through another round of layoffs in July, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. This is…
Perplexity AI will soon start sharing advertising revenue with news publishers when its chatbot surfaces their content in response to a user query, a move that appears designed to assuage…
Shared micromobility giant Lime is piloting two new vehicles designed to appeal to women and older folks who might appreciate a lower step-through frame, smaller wheels and an upgrade from…
Welcome back to another recap of Equity, TechCrunch’s flagship podcast about the business of startups. Today’s episode is packed with M&A talk, how one YouTuber…
The California Department of Motor Vehicles this week granted Nuro approval to test its third-generation R3 autonomous delivery vehicle in four Bay Area cities, giving the AV startup a positive…
The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Proposition 22 — the ballot measure that passed in November 2020 and classified app-based gig workers as independent contractors rather than employees —…
Don Burnette, CEO and co-founder of self-driving truck startup Kodiak Robotics, had an “aha” moment when the company started working with the U.S. Department of Defense. Kodiak’s mission has always…
Alphabet will spend an additional $5 billion on its self-driving subsidiary, Waymo, over the next few years, according to Ruth Porat, the company’s chief financial officer. Porat announced the commitment…
Waymo has started testing on public roads in San Francisco a new robotaxi built by Chinese electric automaker Zeekr. Waymo has “less than a handful” of the Zeekr vehicles in San…
On today’s episode of Equity, Rebecca Bellan did a deep dive into the CrowdStrike outage that affected around 8.5 million Windows devices around the world,…
Featured Article
Tracking the EV battery factory construction boom across North America
A wave of automakers and battery makers — foreign and domestic — have pledged to produce North American–made batteries before 2030.
The CrowdStrike outage that hit early Friday morning and knocked out computers running Microsoft Windows has grounded flights globally. Major U.S. airlines including United Airlines, American Airlines and Delta Air…
Welcome back to another recap of Equity, TechCrunch’s flagship podcast about the business of startups. This episode is packed with deals, antitrust musings, AI and…
