Even in the era of the virtual event, it tends to take me a few days to recover from the whirlwind of CES. Frontloading the year’s big hardware news is a bit less than ideal, but perhaps the changing nature of the big tech event will bring adjustments to the news cycle, as well. For […]
Uber spinout Serve Robotics gets $13M seed round to expand sidewalk robot deliveries
Serve Robotics, the autonomous sidewalk delivery company that spun out from Uber-owned Postmates in March, has closed an expanded seed round at $13 million. The company will use the funds to accelerate its expansion plans into new customer segments and geographic areas, which will require them to build more sidewalk robots to fuel that growth. […]
Actuator is go!
Today’s the big day! After months of toiling away in roundups, Actuator is finally graduating to your inbox as the latest addition to the TechCrunch newsletter family. I’ve written 40 of these things since our quiet, pre-name test launch back in February (we called ourselves “Robotics Roundup” for a few unfortunate months there). You can […]
Get an early look at the iMerit ML DataOps Summit agenda
Get ready to engage with more than 1,000+ senior-level leaders — the people forging data solutions that fuel artificial intelligence and machine learning — at the iMerit ML DataOps Summit on December 2, 2021. This day-long deep dive into AI and ML will touch on tech industries across the spectrum, including autonomous mobility, healthcare AI, […]
We don’t just need an AV revolution — we need a design evolution
Building an autonomous vehicle without any changes in design is like building a cell phone with a rotary dial.
The Station: Rivian makes its IPO move, Nuro pushes into Nevada and Waymo scales up in SF
The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every weekend in your inbox. Hello readers: Welcome to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B. I’m […]
Suing your way to the stars
Hello friends, and welcome back to Week in Review! I’m back from a very fun and rehabilitative couple weeks away from my phone, my Twitter account and the news cycle. That said, I actually really missed writing this newsletter, and while Greg did a fantastic job while I was out, I won’t be handing over […]
Actuator: Stop making sense
First of all, we’ve got a fancy new name. While “Robotics Roundup” was nothing if not very technically accurate, it lacked the kind of panache one ought to strive for when rounding up robotics. Actuator, on the other hand — that’s a mover and shaker. It’s a name you can take to the bank (or […]
Extra Crunch roundup: The Nuro EC-1, early-stage growth tactics, understanding Salesforce+
“With these self driving cars, it’s only a matter of time before a country song is written about a guy’s truck leaving him.”
The Nuro EC-1
Six years ago, I sat in the Google self-driving project’s Firefly vehicle — which I described, at the time, as a “little gumdrop on wheels” — and let it ferry me around a course in Mountain View.