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Beta Technologies’ bet on electric flight and Hyundai’s new Tesla charging port comes up short
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! Fifteen years ago, I started writing about a little EV startup that was trying to survive even as others failed in the clean tech boom-and-bust cycle. Back…
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Electric aircraft founder Kyle Clark threw out the Silicon Valley playbook
On a cool morning last November, 800 people gathered before sunrise in a South Burlington hangar to witness the maiden flight of Beta Technologies’ first electric aircraft to be built on its new scaled production line. Kyle Clark, Beta’s enigmatic founder and CEO, piloted the Alia CX300 — one of the startup’s two aircraft models…
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Trump’s FTC is looking into censorship on tech platforms
The Federal Trade Commission announced on Thursday that it will launch a public inquiry into “censorship by tech platforms,” soliciting comments from people who feel they have been demonetized, banned, or otherwise censored due to their speech or affiliations. “Tech firms should not be bullying their users,” said FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson in a statement.…
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Amazon shuts down Chime, its Zoom alternative
Amazon Chime, the tech giant’s underwhelming alternative to Zoom and Google Meet, is shutting down for good. The company on Wednesday confirmed it will end support for Chime, including its Business Calling features, on February 20, 2026. As part of this transition, Amazon stopped accepting new Chime accounts as of February 19, 2025. From now…
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In India, Apple’s iPhone 16e faces stiff competition from older models
Apple has brought the iPhone 16e to offer a more affordable option within the iPhone 16 lineup, targeting emerging markets including India. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
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Pre-seed firm Afore Capital has a fresh $185M fund and a new program to help founders discover ideas
Afore Capital, a firm that claims to be the largest dedicated pre-seed investor, was founded on the idea that the first check into a new startup should be larger than what most accelerators and early-stage investors were offering. When Afore raised its third $150 million fund in 2022, the firm wrote checks ranging from $1…
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61 US startups became unicorns in 2024: Here’s the full list
The list included Elon Musk’s xAI, as well as a good number of other AI startups. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
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Inside the Humane acquisition: HP offers big raises to some, others immediately laid off
Hours after the acquisition was announced, several Humane employees received job offers. Others were not so lucky. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
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Cherryrock Capital raises new $172M fund from all-star investors to back diverse founders
Cherryrock Capital, founded by ex-TaskRabbit CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot, announced Wednesday the closing of its $172 million Fund I with an all-star limited partner list that includes JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, MassMutual, Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures, Reid Hoffman, Mellody Hobson, and Sheryl Sandberg. Brown-Philpot told Bloomberg that the fund actually closed in January. The firm launched…
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Figure’s humanoid robot takes voice orders to help around the house
Figure founder and CEO Brett Adcock Thursday revealed a new machine learning model for humanoid robots. The news, which arrives two weeks after Adcock announced the Bay Area robotics firm’s decision to step away from an OpenAI collaboration, is centered around Helix, a “generalist” Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model. VLAs are a new phenomenon for robotics, leveraging…