Rebecca Bellan, Author at TechCrunch

Self-driving truck startup Aurora Innovation to sell up to $420M in shares ahead of commercial launch

Rebecca Bellan — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 14:32:00 +0000

Self-driving technology company Aurora Innovation is looking to raise hundreds of millions in additional capital as it races toward a driverless commercial launch by the end of 2024. Aurora is pursuing a driver-as-a-service model, wherein carriers purchase trucks with the Aurora Driver tech on board and then offer their services via those trucks to shippers. […]

Heeyo built an AI chatbot to be a billion kids’ interactive tutor and friend

Rebecca Bellan — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 16:00:00 +0000

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 the aerodynamic expertise to support her newfound passion, and her teachers were too overwhelmed to give her dedicated attention. “That’s why I wanted to build […]

VC darling Rad Power Bikes hit with another round of layoffs

Rebecca Bellan — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 14:59:11 +0000

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 the company’s fifth round since April 2021, when it cut back 100 staffers. Rad’s latest layoffs follow a culling a year ago, when the e-bike […]

Perplexity details plan to share ad revenue with outlets cited by its AI chatbot

Rebecca Bellan — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 13:00:00 +0000

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 critics that have accused the startup of plagiarism and unethical web scraping. Dmitry Shevelenko, Perplexity’s head of business, told TechCrunch that the company was actually […]

Lime is piloting two new e-bikes to attract more women and older riders

Rebecca Bellan — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 04:00:00 +0000

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 pedal-assist. Lime has experimented with several new form factors over the years in a bid to capture customers and adapt to changing tastes and trends. […]

Autonomous delivery startup Nuro is gearing up for a comeback

Rebecca Bellan — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 18:52:49 +0000

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 boost after facing some setbacks and financial struggles. The approval gives Nuro the ability to test its driverless delivery vehicle in Mountain View, Palo Alto, […]

Uber, Lyft, DoorDash can continue to classify drivers as contractors in California

Rebecca Bellan — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 18:15:00 +0000

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 — is here to stay. The decision is a win for app-based companies like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart, which have fought hard to maintain their […]

Kodiak Robotics is taking self-driving trucks off-road to reach profitability faster

Rebecca Bellan — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 12:19:51 +0000

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 been to pursue long-haul autonomous trucking, but two years ago, the startup won a $50 million contract from the DoD to help the Army automate […]

Alphabet to invest another $5B into Waymo

Rebecca Bellan — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 21:49:00 +0000

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 to a new “multi-year investment” Tuesday during Alphabet’s second-quarter earnings call. “This new round of funding, which is consistent with recent annual investment levels, will […]

The Waymo-Zeekr robotaxi has come to San Francisco

Rebecca Bellan — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 16:30:28 +0000

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 Francisco today and isn’t driving them autonomously yet. Still, the fact that Waymo has hit the roads with a roomier, custom-built robotaxi signals the next […]

Tracking the EV battery factory construction boom across North America

Rebecca Bellan — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 13:31:20 +0000

A wave of automakers and battery makers — foreign and domestic — have pledged to produce North American–made batteries before 2030.

CrowdStrike outage: How your plane, train and automobile travel may be affected

Rebecca Bellan, Kirsten Korosec — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 22:37:17 +0000

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 Lines have halted flight operations around the world. According to FlightAware, which is tracking the cancellations live, 7% of United Airlines flights, 8% of American […]

After Tesla and OpenAI, Andrej Karpathy’s startup aims to apply AI assistants to education

Rebecca Bellan — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 20:12:34 +0000

Andrej Karpathy, former head of AI at Tesla and researcher at OpenAI, is launching Eureka Labs, an “AI native” education platform. In tech speak, that usually means built from the ground up with AI at its core. And while Eureka Labs’ AI ambitions are lofty, the company is starting with a more traditional approach to […]

How VanMoof’s new owners plan to win over its old customers

Rebecca Bellan — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 09:00:00 +0000

When VanMoof declared bankruptcy last year, it left around 5,000 customers who had preordered e-bikes in the lurch. Now VanMoof is up and running under new management, and the company’s current owners are courting those same customers by offering them a €1,000 discount off a new bike. It’s an audacious strategy, one that bets on […]

Archer’s vision of an air taxi network could benefit from Southwest customer data

Rebecca Bellan — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 16:39:36 +0000

Archer Aviation and Southwest Airlines are teaming up to figure out what it will take to build out a network of electric air taxis at California airports. Southwest’s customer data is at the heart of it. The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding Friday, which sets the foundation for Archer to tap Southwest’s customer […]

Joby Aviation is betting on hydrogen-electric aircraft for regional flight

Rebecca Bellan — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 10:00:00 +0000

Joby Aviation is still a year away from commercially launching its electric air taxi designed for urban environments, but the startup is already looking toward its next chapter: intercity flight, powered by hydrogen. To get the conversation started with regulators and demonstrate hydrogen’s capabilities, Joby told TechCrunch that it completed a 523-mile test flight with […]

Uber for Teens has reignited an old debate over fingerprinting drivers

Rebecca Bellan — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 20:36:59 +0000

Seven years ago, Uber and Lyft blocked an effort to require ride-hailing app drivers to get fingerprinted in California. But by launching Uber for Teens earlier this year, the company inadvertently resurfaced the issue. Now a broader debate is underway as startups, Uber, and California regulators hash out when a transportation service should be required […]

News outlets are accusing Perplexity of plagiarism and unethical web scraping

Rebecca Bellan — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 15:00:00 +0000

In the age of generative AI, when chatbots can provide detailed answers to questions based on content pulled from the internet, the line between fair use and plagiarism, and between routine web scraping and unethical summarization, is a thin one. Perplexity AI is a startup that combines a search engine with a large language model […]

As battery startups fail, Sila snaps up $375M in new funding

Rebecca Bellan — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 16:30:00 +0000

Amid a fraught environment for battery startups, Sila has raised $375 million to finish construction of a U.S. factory that will scale its next-generation battery technology for customers like Mercedes-Benz and Panasonic by the end of 2025. Sila, formerly known as Sila Nanotechnologies, is slated to finish construction of its Moses Lake, Washington plant in […]

Boeing’s Wisk Aero buys Verocel to boost software safety for its self-flying eVTOL

Rebecca Bellan — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Wisk Aero, a subsidiary of Boeing, has acquired Verocel, a software verification and validation company that's served the aerospace industry for 25 years.