Waymo no longer has a waitlist for its San Francisco robotaxi service, removing the final obstacle for customers keen to use the self-driving technology. Waymo said Tuesday that anyone can download the app and then immediately hail one of its robotaxis in San Francisco — a move that mimics the Alphabet-owned company’s strategy in Phoenix, … Read more
Wisk Aero, a subsidiary of Boeing, has acquired Verocel, a software verification and validation company that’s been serving the aerospace industry for 25 years. Wisk has an autonomous-first approach to electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. The company’s Generation 6 aircraft, slated to begin airborne tests this year, is designed to be supervised by … Read more
Devs often rely on local environments — i.e. their laptops — to write, build and test code before shipping it to a cloud service to integrate and deploy it. There’s nothing wrong with that approach. But local development can introduce challenges, like conflicts between dev environments and, in the worst case, security exploits. The usability … Read more
Swipewipe, a U.S.-based photo management app that went viral among the Gen Z crowd, thanks in part to TikTok, is being acquired. French mobile app publisher and developer MWM is bringing the app in-house, after previously working with Swipewipe’s indie developer, Adam O’Kane, to grow the app’s usage. The acquisition allows Swipewipe’s founder to take … Read more
Snapchat on Tuesday announced a new suite of safety features, including updates to its account blocking functionality and enhanced friending safeguards, making it difficult for strangers to contact users on its platform. The new move comes amid concerns over predators exploiting teens on social media apps, which often results in severe incidents, including sextortion. One … Read more
SaaS startup Rocketlane, which serves professional services teams in countries including the U.S., India and Europe with its automation platform, has raised $24 million in a fresh investment. It plans to deploy AI to help enterprises better understand customer feedback. Professional services teams at an enterprise are tasked with delivering projects to clients on time … Read more
Google announced on Monday that it’s bringing its AI technology Gemini to teen students using their school accounts, after having already offered Gemini to teens using their personal accounts. The company is also giving educators access to new tools alongside this release. Google says that giving teens access to Gemini, can help prepare them with the … Read more
Live event audio streaming platform Mixhalo this week announced the launch of a new translation offering. The simply named Mixhalo Translate couples the startup’s ultra-low latency in-person streaming with AI-generated audio translations. It’s a pairing that makes plenty of sense in a conference setting. “Interpretation at conferences and live events is done the same way … Read more
This week while scrolling on X, formerly Twitter, I noticed that I had reposted a series of TechCrunch articles. Except, wait, no, I hadn’t. But someone else using my name had. I clicked on the profile, and there was another Rebecca Bellan, using the same default and header photos as my actual profile: me onstage … Read more
The majority of companies struggle to extract value from their data. Several years ago, Forrester reported that between 60% and 73% of data belonging to the average business goes unused for analytics. That’s because the data’s siloed or otherwise pigeonholed by technical and security considerations, making it difficult — if not impossible — to apply analytical tools. … Read more
