TechCrunch Mobility: The custom chip driving Waymo’s robotaxi ambitions
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation.
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Sources: TechCrunch, The Verge
Flock CEO calls for ‘compromise’ as surveillance company faces growing backlash
Flock Safety faces a growing public outcry over concerns that its surveillance technology could be misused.
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Is it legal to train AI models on copyrighted books? It’s complicated
Most published authors have, without their knowledge or consent, contributed to the development of the same AI tools that threaten to undermine their livelihoods. That seems illegal, right?
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Grand Theft Auto VI exists in its own universe
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on GTA VI and the state of the video game industry, follow Andrew Webster. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it…
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Two years after launch, Walmart’s Flipkart is closing in on India’s quick-commerce leaders
Flipkart's quick-commerce venture is delivering 1.1 million to 1.2 million orders a day, nearly triple its November volume.
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Harvard’s $699 startup bootcamp offers AI avatars of its instructors
In the HBS Foundry program, AI avatars provide feedback during practice pitches and board meetings.
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Will the DOJ’s investigation into a16z spook other VCs?
On the latest episode of Equity, we wonder why the DOJ is investigating startup board seats.
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Inherent, founded by DeepMind alumni, says its AI ‘teammate’ just outperformed Anthropic and OpenAI at replicating research
Built by DeepMind alumni, British AI lab Inherent released Faraday, an AI agent whose ability to replicate scientific papers could be a stepping stone for innovation.
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Amazon just hiked the prices for Echo, Fire TV, and Kindle products by up to 60 percent
Citing "significant increases in memory and storage component costs," Amazon has raised prices on Echos, Kindles, Fire TVs, and Eeros by up to 60 percent, as first reported by Fortune. The cheapest products in Amazon's lineup were hit hardest, with the Echo Dot smart speaker…
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OpenAI says California should strengthen its AI safety bill
OpenAI is calling for California to strengthen SB 53, an AI safety bill that the company previously opposed.
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Frontier AI labs still won’t say how they’d contain a rogue model
A new study finds leading AI labs have few publicly documented plans for containing rogue models, raising questions about preparedness as AI systems increasingly demonstrate unexpected and potentially dangerous behavior.
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US battery startups have found a lifeline in defense
U.S. battery startups pulled in $500 million in grants from the Department of Energy, throwing a lifeline to an industry that was on the ropes after EV incentives were slashed.
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Pixel 11 Pro XL review: Snappier cameras can’t hide an iterative upgrade
Google’s Pixel 11 Pro XL brings snappier cameras and genuinely useful AI features like Rambler, but its iterative upgrades may not be enough to tempt recent Pixel owners.
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An okay laptop with 16GB of RAM is better than a nice laptop with 8GB, and this $520 HP OmniBook proves it
Laptop prices are out of whack. $500 used to get you a tolerable laptop, and $900 got you a really good one. They often had similar CPU, RAM, and storage options because that stuff was comparatively cheap; the difference was often in build quality and screen rather than power.…
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Michael Polansky is training an AI model on skin that’s still alive
Michael Polansky — better known publicly as Lady Gaga's partner and a former top deputy to Sean Parker — has quietly spent years building an AI-driven startup that keeps living human skin tissue alive for weeks outside the body to discover new skincare compounds, and is only now…
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Japanese space tech startup Letara expands beyond satellite thrusters with $16M
Japanese space startup Letara is betting its hybrid rocket technology can move beyond small satellite thrusters into a broader market for space, defense and security, after raising ¥2.6 billion ($16 million).
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Anthropic’s Opus 4.6 is a smut-machine
Anthropic forbids its Claude models from generating sexually explicit content. But a series of tests conducted by TechCrunch found that it didn't take much to get past the restriction.
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Nvidia partners with data center developer Cloverleaf
Nvidia continues to pour money into data center development — just as AI data centers bring lots of money into Nvidia.
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