Ford was the first to start offering the so-called North American Charging Standard (NACS) adapters last month for free.
Most automakers have announced that future EVs will incorporate Tesla’s charging tech into future vehicles.
Rivian’s next-generation vehicles, which it just revealed earlier this month, will also include the Tesla charging port.
Making Tesla’s Supercharger network accessible to owners means they now have 15,000 new fast chargers where they can plug in.
Rivian has also been building out its own network of fast-charging stations, which it calls the Rivian Adventure Network.
The TechCrunch team is in Barcelona this week to bring you all the action going on at Mobile World Congress 2024.
So far, we’ve seen some big announcements from companies, including new Android features from Google, Lenovo’s new laptop concept and rollable phone concept and Xiaomi’s robotic dog.
Motorola’s rollable concept phoneWhat’s the maximum size of a device that you will wear on your wrist?
The company has designed what it’s calling a “rollable concept phone” for Motorola that folds around your wrist.
In addition to design, Xiaomi has developed the five core EV technologies: E-Motor, CTB Integrated Battery, Xiaomi Die Casting, Xiaomi Pilot Autonomous Driving, and Smart Cabin.
The TechCrunch team is in Barcelona this week to bring you all the action going on at Mobile World Congress 2024.
So far, we’ve seen some big announcements from companies, including new Android features from Google, Lenovo’s new laptop concept and Xiaomi’s robotic dog.
As MWC progresses, here’s how you can follow along with our team’s coverage.
Last week, Brian reported that “Battery is precisely the sort of thing OnePlus needs to lean into,” given that its first generation product only had about 25 hours of battery life.
Xiaomi’s CyberDogAfter years of reporting on Xiaomi’s CyberDog, Brian Heater was finally able to see the robotic dog up-close at MWC.
Today, KKR added to that growing total when it announced it was going to acquire Broadcom’s end user computing business for $4 billion.
These pieces include VMware Workspace One and VMware Horizon, two remote desktop applications that had been part of the VMware family of products.
Almost immediately, Broadcom began slashing costs, starting with laying off over 2000 VMware employees, just a week after the deal was official.
KKR managing director Bradley Brown still sees a lot of room for growth moving forward to build out the EUC (end user computing) division into a vibrant stand-alone business.
One interesting aspect of this deal is that KKR intends to implement an employee ownership program, giving employees a chance to own equity in the new company alongside KKR.
When HPE announced its intention to acquire Juniper Networks for $14 billion in cold, hard cash earlier this month, it was a bit of a shock.
In fact, in a blog post announcing the deal, Juniper CEO Rami Rahim suggested it was more about AI.
“This combination with HPE is expected to enable us to deliver more comprehensive, more competitive, truly end-to-end experience-first AI-native solutions,” he wrote.
Assuming regulators don’t object — not exactly a given these days — this deal could close later this year or early next.
Since the deal was announced on January 12, HPE investors seem lukewarm about it; that is, if the stock price is any indication of their sentiment.
Google announced today that it’s rolling out a few new features for Pixel users.
Most notably, the tech giant announced that Pixel 8 Pro users will be able to use the phone’s Thermometer app to take their temperature, or someone else’s, with a forehead scan.
When Google first announced the Thermometer app, the tech giant said you could use it to take the temperature of things like your baby’s milk bottle or your coffee.
Now, the company says users can use the app to scan their own body temperature.
Google also announced that it’s launching “Circle to Search, a feature that it unveiled last week, to Pixel 8 and 8 Pro users.
The deal’s latest hurdle is the European Commission, which has set a February 14 deadline to reach a final decision.
According to a new report, the EU regulatory body is set to vote against acquisition, citing the perceived anti-competitive nature of deal.
In July, Amazon announced that it was lowering its asking price from $61 to $51.75 per share.
The day the initial deal was announced, iRobot cut its headcount by 10% — around 140 people – as part of a restructure.
As of this writing, share prices have dipped below $20 – one-third of where things where when the deal was announced.
And major features like multi-admin, which in theory allows Matter devices to work with every smart home platform simultaneously, remain broken pending future standards patches.
Lockly also announced at CES that its $80 Matter Link Hub, which allows users to manage older Lockly devices from Matter-supporting apps and devices, will become available later this year.
Aqara Hub M3Aqara, the smart home upstart, brought its long-teased Matter-compatible hub — the Hub M3 — to CES 2024.
Roborock S8 MaxV UltraRoborock, a longtime fixture of the robot vacuum cleaner market, launched its first Matter-compatible vacuum at CES: the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra.
But Amazon became the first to support Matter Casting, the video- and audio-beaming feature of the Matter smart home standard, on its smart displays and smart TVs this week.
Google announced today at CES that it has collaborated with Samsung to combine their sharing solutions into a singular cross-Android solution under the Quick Share name.
The new offering grows the network of devices that users can share content with across the Android ecosystem, including Chromebooks.
Back in 2020, Google introduced Nearby Share to make it easy for users to share files across devices.
Samsung also has its own similar capability called Quick Share.
Google also announced that it is working with PC manufacturers like LG to expand Quick Share to Windows PCs as a pre-installed app.
Headquartered roughly 20 miles north of Atlanta, in suburban Roswell, Georgia, GreyOrange was founded in 2011 – the year before Amazon’s Kiva deal shook the industry.
GreyOrange announced a $140 million Series C in 2018 and today announced that it has closed out a $135 million growth financing Series D. Anthelion Capital led the round, which also featured returning investments from Mithril, 3State Ventures and Blume Ventures.
Over the years, it has been working to build a full stack solution for warehouse, fulfillment and 3PL needs.
That includes Kiva-like AMRs (autonomous mobile robots), forklifts and bin systems for picking, coupled with its own first-party (“hardware-agnostic”) fleet management software.
CEO Akash Gupta noted that this round will – in part – go toward delivering systems to customers.
