Author: GT

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced late this week that it plans to streamline the Part 555 exemption process to make it faster for automakers that want to deploy self-driving vehicles built without human controls like a steering wheel or pedals.  The letter sent to “stakeholders” (meaning those companies working on AVs) is fairly opaque still. And manufacturers will still have to demonstrate that vehicles without traditional steering wheels, driver-operated…

Meta’s deal to partially acquire the AI startup Scale, giving it 49% ownership, is certainly unusual. What Scale officially announced is that the deal values the company at over $29 billion and that it will “distribute” proceeds to shareholders and vested equity holders (aka employees) granting them with “substantial liquidity” while allowing them to continue as shareholders. Meta is also hiring Scale’s famed founder CEO Alexandr Wang, who famously dropped out of MIT at age 19 to build the company, which offers AI training data verified by humans. This might sound like Meta would buy shares from existing shareholders, but…

Clay, a sales automation startup, has raised a Series C round at an approximate $3 billion valuation, led by CapitalG, according to three sources with knowledge of the deal. Clay and CapitalG didn’t respond to a request for comment.  The new round comes just a month after the New York startup announced that it will allow most of its employees to sell some of their shares at a $1.5 billion valuation. That secondary deal, known as a tender offer, was led by Sequoia, which agreed to purchase up to $20 million in employee stock. While it may seem that employees…

New York state lawmakers passed a bill on Thursday that aims to prevent frontier AI models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic from contributing to disaster scenarios, including the death or injury of more than 100 people, or more than $1 billion in damages. The passage of the RAISE Act represents a win for the AI safety movement, which has lost ground in recent years as Silicon Valley and the Trump administration have prioritized speed and innovation. Safety advocates including Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton and AI research pioneer Yoshua Bengio have championed the RAISE Act. Should it become law, the bill…

Instagram announced on Thursday that it will finally allow users to rearrange their grid and is testing a way for users to quietly post to their profile without having the content appear in users’ feeds. The social network is also launching the ability to stream songs from Spotify directly to your Instagram Notes, along with a new initiative to support emerging creators. Instagram says the ability to rearrange grids has been one of its most frequently requested features. With this update, users will be able to rearrange posts on their profile to customize the appearance of their grid. Up until…

Smartphone startup Nothing will sell its next flagship model, the Nothing Phone (3), in the U.S. through its website and Amazon, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. Nothing, which will unveil the new phone early next month in London, has released eight phones since its inception in 2020, but only one, the Phone (2), has made it to general sale in the U.S. so far. Before that, users had to sign up to buy a phone via a beta program, and there was no after-sales support, though you could return the device within 14 days to get a full refund. “We have…

HELSINKI (AP) — Finnish authorities have accused senior officers of a Russia-linked vessel that damaged undersea cables last year between Finland and Estonia of criminal offenses related to the wreckage.They say the oil tanker, the Eagle S, dragged its anchor to damage the Estlink-2 power cable and communication links between Finland and Estonia on Dec. 25. The Kremlin previously denied involvement in damaging the infrastructure, which provides power and communication for thousands of Europeans. The Eagle S is flagged in the Cook Islands, but has been described by Finnish customs officials and the European Union’s executive commission as part of…

Battery manufacturer Powin filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday. The Oregon-based company said it has more than $300 million in debt. The Chapter 11 filing will let the company continue operating while it restructures its debt. Powin manufactured grid-scale batteries using lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) cells from China. The company had been searching for alternative domestic suppliers, but the supply chain wasn’t sufficiently mature, Jeff Waters, the company’s former CEO, told Bloomberg in April. The company laid off nearly 250 employees earlier this month, and just 85 remain, less than a fifth of what it started the year with. Alongside the bankruptcy filing,…

Barbie-maker Mattel and OpenAI have teamed up to bring generative AI to the toy-making and ever-expanding pipeline of IP repackaging. This partnership marks new territory for OpenAI, which has signed licensing deals with news publishers and enterprise players, but never a toymaker. However, it’s consistent with the AI giant’s overall strategy of embedding itself across industries, and it might give OpenAI a foothold in Mattel’s growing entertainment arm. The iconic toymaker delighted grown-up audiences in 2023 when it released the blockbuster “Barbie” movie. The company is currently working on films based on other toys like Hot Wheels, Polly Pocket, Barney,…

Researchers revealed on Thursday that two European journalists had their iPhones hacked with spyware made by Paragon. Apple says it has fixed the bug that was used to hack their phones. The Citizen Lab wrote in its report, shared with TechCrunch ahead of its publication, that Apple had told its researchers that the flaw exploited in the attacks had been “mitigated in iOS 18.3.1,” a software update for iPhones released on February 10.  Until this week, the advisory of that security update mentioned only one unrelated flaw, which allowed attackers to disable an iPhone security mechanism that makes it harder…