Amazon workers at two Chicago warehouses walk out to demand better treatment

This morning, dozens of warehouse workers at two Amazon facilities near Chicago staged a pre-Christmas walkout during the busiest time of the year to demand better treatment and higher wages. “We have been passed over for raises. We are being overworked, even when there is sufficient people to work here,” a worker at the DLN2 […]

Spice AI wants to help developers build smarter applications

Spice AI, a Seattle-based startup that aims to make it significantly easier for developers to leverage AI in their applications, today announced that it has raised a $1 million seed funding round. That’s obviously not a huge round, but the investors will likely make you perk up a bit: Madrona Venture Group, Picus Capital, TA […]

“Our overall goal is to follow the lead of Oregon”

Seattle Votes to Decriminalize Psilocybin and Similar Substances [ungated] – “Seattle’s city council voted unanimously to relax its rules against naturally occurring drugs, joining a handful of other cities that have decriminalized psilocybin and simil…

China roundup: Tesla supplier CATL to buy Canada’s Millennial Lithium

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch’s China roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world. China’s anti-competition tech crackdown continues to redefine the dynamics among the country’s internet giants, leading to collaboration between Alibaba and Tencent in the payments race. In […]

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.

Sophos extends its spending spree with Refactr buy

Thoma Bravo-owned Sophos has announced its second takeover in as many weeks with the acquisition of Seattle-based DevSecOps startup Refactr. Refactr was founded in 2017 and offers an automation platform that helps cybersecurity and DevOps teams to collaboratively operate. The platform, which is used by the nonprofit Center for Internet Security and the U.S. Air […]