Techin' Geek

Nevada, get ready for the robotaxis.

The Nevada Transportation Authority unanimously approved three permits Thursday that will allow Tesla, Uber, and Waymo to operate commercial robotaxi services in Clark County, home to Las Vegas. Together, these permits would deploy up to 8,000 robotaxis across the county over the next 12 months.

Tesla’s permit allows it to deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis, while Waymo is allowed operate up to 1,000 autonomous vehicles over the next year. Uber was also approved for 1,000 robotaxis, which it will operate through partnerships with Hyundai subsidiary Motional and Zoox. Zoox already holds an autonomous vehicle network company permit that allows it to operate 100 robotaxis.

Whether these companies will be able to launch that many robotaxis is an unanswered question. Testimony from Tesla representatives and the other companies suggests the answer is no.

“The 5,000 has always been a ceiling for us,” said Eric Early, Tesla’s Cybercab chief engineer, during the meeting. “I don’t think we’ll be in a position by this time next year to deploy 5,000 vehicles, and it’s not [because of] the technology. … I think we would be extremely happy and satisfied if we could get ourselves up to 2,500, maybe a bit higher than that in the next year.”

Even if these three companies roll out only half of those totals, Clark County — and Las Vegas specifically — is shaping up to be a major robotaxi battleground, with Tesla, Uber (via its autonomous vehicle partners Motional and Zoox), and Waymo all competing for the same riders.

That kind of fast, large-scale robotaxi deployment is poised to change the city — and specifically its workforce. Depending on who you ask, these companies will either deliver a whole new category of jobs designed to maintain, charge, and clean these vehicles or will wipe out an entire category of workers: human taxi and gig drivers.

Representatives from the Livery Operators Association and local taxi companies opposed the permits, arguing the approvals move too far, too fast.

“These applications raise two grave concerns,” said Kimberly Maxson-Rushton, a lawyer representing the Livery Operators Association, at the hearing. “One deals with the oversaturation of the commercial transportation industry as a whole in Nevada,” she said. “And the second one deals with the overcrowding of the roadways, and specifically the Golden Triangle.”

The Golden Triangle, an area between the airport and Las Vegas Boulevard and the surrounding area, is where most of the AV testing has occurred to date. Motional is also testing in the downtown area and in a shopping district known as Town Square.

Uber has tried to position itself as the Goldilocks option in this fight, advocating for a hybrid approach in which ride-hailing networks are made up of humans and robotaxis. The company has even lobbied for a system that would require robotaxis to operate on a ride-hailing network that also uses human drivers, a stance that puts it at odds with Waymo and doubles as a hedge against its own autonomous ambitions falling short of Tesla’s or Waymo’s.

Uber made a similar pitch during the NTA meeting, noting that a hybrid approach would allow cities to gradually integrate vehicles to meet peak demand rather than flooding the market all at once.

Meta’s experimental vibe-coding gaming app, Pocket, is now rolling out to everyone in the U.S. The app, which arrived quietly last month in the test market of Brazil, allows people to generate small, interactive games using AI prompts, which are published to a scrollable feed.

Based on Meta’s acqui-hire of the team at the vibe-coded gaming platform Gizmo earlier this year, these games — or “gizmos” as they’re called — respond to touch and the tilt of your phone, play sound effects, and can include clips of your favorite songs.

They can also use photos from your camera roll or access your camera. The resulting games can then be shared on your profile, where others can save them, remix them into other creations, or simply repost them.

The app is the latest example of Meta’s push to make AI creation tools mainstream, following its earlier efforts that included making AI-generated images with its Meta AI app as well as AI videos created with an experimental app called Vibes.

Pocket now joins these and several other standalone mobile applications from Meta in recent months. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has credited the increased output to AI-enabled software development, which makes it faster for the company to test and ship new ideas.

“Earlier this year, we shipped Instagram Instants. We also just launched Forum, a stand-alone Groups app, and Seller, a stand-alone Marketplace app. I expect it to become a lot easier to ship new apps,” he told analysts on July’s earnings call. “So we are planning to build out more ideas and use our recommendation systems to scale them.”

In addition to Instants, Forum, and the Seller app, Meta has shipped an experiment involving AI bedtime stories, and this week, a Meta AI app for Mac.

Stripe confirmed on Wednesday that it was buying OpenRouter. While the company didn’t disclose the deal price, sources told the New York Times that it paid $7.5 billion.

That’s a huge step up from OpenRouter’s $1.3 billion valuation in May. To put that price in context, the founders alone will reportedly receive $1.5 billion from the sale — more than the startup’s entire valuation just three months ago. Investors will get the remaining $6 billion, according to the NYT. Stripe reportedly had to outbid others interested in the fast-growing startup, including Databricks.

But the question is: what does a payments giant want with a startup that routes prompts between different AI models?

The short and funny answer, according to a leaked letter from Stripe’s founders to its investors about the deal, is: the singularity.

“It’s a fuzzy and perhaps already overworked term but we decided that January 1 marked the beginning of the singularity and we’ve been operating on that basis,” they wrote in the letter, published by Eric Newcomer, and verified by TechCrunch.

The singularity is supposed to mean the point at which humans and the tech we’ve created merge to become a new species. This is obviously a tongue-and-cheek reference (as Patrick Collison admitted when using the term it at his company’s conference in April). We’re fairly certain Stripe’s founders, the brothers Patrick and John Collison, don’t think humanity started turning into The Borg eight months ago.

But they have referred to the economic uptick that AI is bringing to Stripe. With AI, more companies are being launched and more of them are using Stripe’s offerings. Stripe says that 88% of the Forbes AI 50 are using its products, including OpenAI and Anthropic, as do 100% of Brex’s fastest-growing startups. No one knows how AI and agents will change the economy of the future, but everyone is certain it will change it dramatically.

That still doesn’t explain why Stripe wants a company mostly known for helping developers manage their model usage. Stripe’s founders acknowledged that their customer bases overlap.

“OpenRouter is exceptionally useful for any developer and Stripe is one of the world’s largest developer platforms,” the founders write in their letter. No doubt that just using OpenRouter internally will probably offer significant benefits to Stripe and make it easier to roll out future model-agnostic agentic offerings, too.

It seems as if OpenRouter will continue to operate independently after the deal closes in a few weeks, or so the startup promised in its own blog post, saying that its “product, mission, and current commitments remain unchanged.”

Still, until now, most of Stripe’s large acquisitions have been related to helping people collect and manage incoming cash. Buying OpenRouter looks like a move to other side of the ledger, too: expense management, beginning with AI expenses.

This acquisition “is Stripe’s deliberate attempt to embed itself into the middle of capital flows in the AI era,” said PitchBook’s research analyst Franco Granda.

It’s joining an unusual assortment of companies also entering token expense management. Databricks developed its own AI gateway. Rippling just launched one focused on employee AI spend and ROI. Ramp just launched one, also for AI expense management. And the list goes on.

For Stripe, buying the granddaddy of popular AI gateways for developers gives it insight into how coders are using AI. But it also gains a lever on AI demand itself. OpenRouter will grant it “some degree of power over suppliers such as the frontier labs themselves, as well as hyperscalers and neoclouds,” Granda said.

It may not be the Borg, but payments plus token expense management and a model router? That’s a lot of power.

For as long as anyone can remember, GitHub has been the de facto code host preferred by a majority of developers. However, in recent times, the platform has struggled with widely reported outages and performance degradation and, as it drops the ball, Cursor is waiting to pick it up.

The AI startup, which is now officially a part of SpaceX, launched Origin this week — a new code-hosting platform designed to do all of the things that developers typically use GitHub for: collaboratively work on codebases, browse and edit them, handle pull-requests (edits made by others asking to be added to the main codebase), and store them in repositories.

This seems like a natural next step for Cursor, whose primary focus until this point has been selling automated web development services through its AI Code Editor. Cursor has also said that “agent native” features will soon be available for Origin, although hasn’t shared many details yet. The company also says it is building a wider “app ecosystem” to support broader coding efforts within Origin.

Interestingly enough, using Origin doesn’t require a user to stop using GitHub. Indeed, Origin is designed to allow developers to work alongside GitHub and pass code back and forth between the two in an interoperable manner.

“Your GitHub repos can sit alongside the ones Cursor hosts,” Cursor says in its blog. “Connect GitHub to Cursor, pick your org, and you’ll see the repos you can sync. Select one and Cursor pulls it in.”

The launch of Origin coincides with ongoing frustration over a perceived dip in GitHub’s services. Indeed, on the same day that Cursor launched its new platform, GitHub suffered a quite lengthy worldwide outage. For over six hours, the site’s functions were reportedly degraded, with a nearly 20% error rate worldwide.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. either. Earlier this year, after a rash of outages, GitHub announced new actions to sate unhappy coders as its availability problems seemed to escalate. More broadly, the platform has suffered 257 outages over the past year, a recent analysis by LeadDev states. Such persistent issues have led to “a visible exodus of high-profile users,” writes LeadDev’s reporter Charles Humble.

Still, if Cursor wants to compete with GitHub, it will have its work cut out for it. According to GitHub’s own metrics, some 180 million developers use its platform as of last October. The platform, which was founded in 2007 and acquired by Microsoft in 2012, continues to be the largest source-code host in the world.

The Justice Department has launched a probe into Andreessen Horowitz regarding the firm’s partners serving on the boards of competing companies, Bloomberg reported.

The nearly year-long investigation focuses specifically on the firm’s board seats at Databricks, which is valued at $190 billion, and Fivetran, which combined with dbt Labs in June. The firm’s co-founder, Ben Horowitz, serves on the board of Databricks, while partner Martin Casado serves on the board of Fivetran.

Several VCs told TechCrunch they were surprised by news of the probe. Databricks and Fivetran are competitors now, but the two companies weren’t rivals when a16z invested in the startups, according to another Databricks investor who spoke on condition of anonymity. Databricks is largely known for its cloud storage products but, with its Lakeflow product, has expanded into AI data pipelines and application connectors. That’s Fivetran’s main business.

Given that Andreessen Horowitz has backed hundreds of companies, it’s almost inevitable that some startups will pivot or expand into the same markets, becoming competitors.

While backing direct rivals has become more acceptable recently, as evidenced by the many VCs that funded both Anthropic and OpenAI, holding a board seat on competing startups creates a far greater conflict of interest. Directors are generally privy to much more sensitive strategic information than non-board investors ever see.  

Such conflicts can be resolved by having a partner step down from one of the boards. However, because Databricks and Fivetran have different individuals from the same VC firm on their boards, a16z can institute a so-called Chinese wall between Horowitz and Casado, which would prevent the two partners from sharing confidential information about the two companies with each other, one investor said.

The investigation invokes Section 8 of the Clayton Act, a 112-year-old law stating that an individual or entity is barred from serving on the boards of competing companies. Since regulators have rarely targeted venture capital with this rule, the industry is watching the DOJ’s probe closely. If a16z is forced to surrender a seat, founders may place less value on board commitments from top-tier VCs, given that those investors might be forced to step down if a portfolio overlap creates a future conflict.

Andreessen Horowitz did not immediately respond to our request for comment, nor did it respond to Bloomberg. Databricks and DOJ declined comment.

Anthro Energy broke ground on Tuesday on a factory in Louisville, Kentucky, that can make enough battery materials for more than 300,000 electric vehicles.

But the facility’s headline output, 25 gigawatt-hours worth of electrolytes, is just part of the story. Anthro’s factory could give solid-state batteries a much needed boost in the U.S.

Battery manufacturers are scouring the planet for materials that aren’t encumbered by “foreign entity of concern” problems — in other words, materials that aren’t somehow controlled by Chinese companies. Anthro hopes its new facility, scheduled to start production in 2028, can help fill that need for many U.S. companies.

“When it opens, we’ll be serving domestic, high-spec customers, this emerging ecosystem for battery production where they frankly just needs electrolytes — a domestic source of China-free supply, FEOC-free supply,” David Mackanic, co-founder and CEO of Anthro Energy, told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview.

The startup, which raised its first funding round just four years ago, wants its Kentucky factory to become a key node in the emerging U.S. battery supply chain. “Within a 12-hour drive, you can get to 70% of the battery production facilities in the United States that exist today,” he said.

To build the factory, Anthro received a $24.9 million award from the Department of Energy under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and another $18.4 million in investment tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act. Kentucky pitched in another $2.3 million in tax incentives in exchange for creating 110 permanent jobs.

The Louisville factory will be set up to make a range of electrolytes, though Mackanic said he’d eventually like to see much of the output dedicated to Athro’s own polymer product, Proteus, which is designed to drop into an existing production line with minimal tweaks — a major reason why the startup can begin production using other company’s formulations. Once customers validate Anthro’s own material, the startup can shift production accordingly. 

There’s every reason to think at least a portion of those customers will make the switch eventually. Proteus is a polymer that promises pave the way to solid- and semi-solid-state batteries, a holy grail of the battery industry. Chinese companies are reportedly looking to start trial production of solid-state batteries in 2027.

Solid-state batteries promise to solve a range of challenges presented by the lithium-ion batteries commonly used today. Solid-state batteries help boost energy density, and by eliminating flammable electrolytes, they should reduce the risk of fires. Also, because they form a solid barrier between the anode and cathode, they prevent the appearance of dendrites, which are spiky growths that can bridge the two electrodes and cause short circuits.

But for all their promise, solid-state batteries have so far failed to reach their potential because no one has figured out how to cost-effectively manufacture durable cells at scale.

Anthro might have a solution to those challenges. In its manufacturing process, Anthro’s electrolyte flows into the cell as a liquid, allowing it to penetrate the anode and cathode, just like today’s liquid electrolytes. Later, it firms up, essentially gluing the two parts of the battery together.

The result is a cell that, depending on the formulation, is not just stronger — “10 to 15 times stronger than with a liquid electrolyte,” Mackanic said — but can be flexible, too. Ultimately, he envisions those qualities paying dividends not just in EVs, but drones and robots as well.

Plenty of other battery materials companies have failed at this precise moment, when they move from small-scale to larger scale production. But Mackanic is optimistic that the federal funding will help Anthro vault over the valley of death.

“To get into big applications, you have to have big production,” he said. “The Department of Energy award solves a lot of the chicken or the egg problem.”

An unprecedented number of Apple customers have reported receiving a recent threat notification alerting them to suspected spyware attacks targeting their devices, according to experts who investigate these types of incidents. 

Several people publicly and privately reported receiving Apple’s spyware alerts over the weekend, after Apple sent out a new wave of notifications on Friday alerting customers in 110 countries that they had been targeted with powerful spyware. 

From time to time, the technology giant sends these types of alerts in batches to customers that it believes have been either targeted or compromised with malware normally used by governments, which the company refers to as “mercenary spyware.” In the last few years, Apple says it has alerted people in more than 150 countries.

The latest batch appears to have been the largest yet, per one of the digital rights groups that Apple suggests victims of spyware reach out for help.  

Mohammed Al-Maskati, the director of the Access Now team of investigators who review and investigate reports to the helpline, told TechCrunch that since Friday, they have received a record high number of people reaching out for help. This includes people who had already received threat notifications in the past. 

Al-Maskati said the number is around 30% to 40% more than the nonprofit’s investigators usually receive after Apple sends out new notifications. 

An unusually large number of people have also publicly reported receiving these notifications over the weekend as well, according to several social media posts.

One of them is a Ukraine Armed Forces soldier who said he is fighting the war against Russia. The soldier, who asked to remain anonymous to protect himself, said that he initially thought it was a scam, until he verified it with Apple.

“I was a bit surprised to be honest, I wouldn’t have thought I was important enough for them to target me like this. I am flattered though,” the soldier told TechCrunch. 

The soldier also said that he is aware of other people in Ukraine’s military who have received the same notification. “They were a bit worried,” he said. 

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment, asking whether it was aware of other Ukrainians, particularly soldiers, receiving these notifications.  

John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at The Citizen Lab, a digital rights group that has investigated government spyware attacks for more than 15 years, told TechCrunch that the reports show that spyware attacks may be more prevalent than people realize. 

“The scale and geographic diversity of public posts about receiving notifications are pretty unprecedented,” said Scott-Railton. “For every public notification like this, you can imagine there’s a huge notification iceberg that the public will never learn about. This is a clear indication that something bigger is going on.”

Both Al-Maskati and Scott-Railton said that the volume of people receiving the alerts could also be attributed to Apple’s new methods of alerting users.

Starting this year, Apple now notifies users on their iPhone lock screen, in their Settings app, via the email associated with their Apple account, and when users log in to their Apple Account on the web.

“Apple’s new notification method has helped raise awareness of the issue’s importance, making it harder for users to ignore,” Al-Maskati said.

Apple did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. 

If you’ve received one of these notifications, take it seriously. If you are not a journalist, dissident, or human rights defender, there are other organizations that can help you investigate.

If you haven’t already, as Apple and experts suggest, turn on Lockdown Mode, a special security feature designed to make it harder to hack iPhones, iPads, and Mac computers. Apple has said that it is not aware of anyone who had Lockdown Mode enabled getting hacked.

Uber is investing in, and partnering with, drone delivery company Zipline with the goal of making one million deliveries per day using the startup’s drones by the end of 2029.

Zipline drones will make the first deliveries on the Uber Eats platform by the end of this year, the companies said on Monday. These deliveries will start in Zipline’s existing markets, and the companies want to expand into “dozens of U.S. cities.”

The companies didn’t disclose the investment amount.

Uber has been taking on multiple drone delivery partners as it looks for ways to keep growing Uber Eats. The ride-hail giant is replicating the early business model it’s adopted for robotaxis and other services built around autonomous vehicles, which is to essentially bring as many companies on to its platform as possible.

This approach has helped Uber stay at the forefront of these new technologies despite selling off its own programs like the aerial ride-sharing service, Uber Elevate, and Uber Autonomous Technologies Group, which was working on autonomous vehicles. Investments have been a huge part of the strategy, with Uber committing more than $10 billion to dozens of autonomous vehicle providers.

The strategy is not a panacea, though. Uber recently clashed with one of its highest-profile partners so far, Waymo, and the companies are now expected to walk away from each other when their contracts expire in 2028. Uber and Waymo are also on different sides of a growing fight over autonomous vehicle regulation.

The ride-hail giant had tested the waters of drone delivery when it still had its Elevate division. The company dipped back into the idea late last year when it announced a partnership with Israeli startup Flytrex, which also came with a minor investment.

Uber thinks Zipline’s drones can fulfill orders on Uber Eats within five to ten minutes. “Truly quick commerce is proving to be an even bigger market than the original food market was,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told the Wall Street Journal in an interview. “We think this can be an enormous tailwind for the next leg of growth for Eats.”

Zipline, based in San Francisco, recently closed an extended Series H funding round of $800 million, pushing its valuation to $7.6 billion.

“Every great transportation revolution has changed where people live, how businesses operate, and how economies grow,” Zipline co-founder Keller Cliffton said in a statement. “Together with Uber, we’re taking the next step toward building a world where getting what you need is as fast and effortless as sending a text, no matter where you are.”