Monday’s announcement arrives on the heels of Meta prompting Quest users to confirm their age so it can provide teens and preteens with appropriate experiences.
Meta said it will launch it first in the 20 markets where it already supports Quest for Business, Meta’s workplace-focused $14.99/month subscription.
It’s not clear how ubiquitous VR use is in schools: one provider, ClassVR, claims that 40,000 classrooms worldwide are using its products.
And another big question mark will relate to the cost of buying headsets — Quest 3’s, the latest headsets, start at around $500 apiece for basic models — buying apps and then subsequently supporting all of that infrastructure.
Meta said that it has already donated Quest headsets to 15 universities in the U.S., but it’s not clear how far it will go to subsidise growth longer-term.
Tesla is laying off thousands of employees as it tries to simultaneously cut costs and boost productivity, according to an internal email sent to staff by CEO Elon Musk, Electrek and Bloomberg News reported.
The electric automaker is cutting “more than 10%” of its global headcount, Musk said in the email.
Tesla finished 2023 with over 140,000 employees, meaning the cuts could impact more than 14,000 people.
The company has warned investors that sales growth could be “notably lower” in 2024 than its stated goal of 50% growth each year.
This will enable us to be lean, innovative and hungry for the next growth phase cycle,” Musk wrote.
TechCrunch Mobility: Cruise robotaxis return and Ford’s BlueCruise comes under scrutiny Plus, a Faraday Future whistleblower case and humanoid robots in car factoriesWelcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation.
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It was another wild week in the world of transportation, particularly in the EV startup and automated driving industries.
Exoes, a French-based startup that developed battery cooling technology for EVs, raised €35 million ($37.5 million) from BpiFrance and Meridiam Green Impact Growth Fund.
Both former employees have filed lawsuits claiming the troubled EV company has been lying about some of the few sales it has announced to date.
The fancy drip coffee maker has a $365 price tag to match.
The latest addition to its aficionado-forward lineup is the Aiden coffee machine, a sleek brewer taking a stab at transforming the at-home coffee experience.
Even my parents, who have Fellow products laid out on their counter, still use a basic coffee maker.
Aiden is designed for them.”The Aiden coffee maker promises precision and customization that rival professional setups, all from the comfort of one’s kitchen.
Aiden Precision Coffee Maker is today available for presale for $365 on FellowProducts.com, and the company says it will ship in September.
For decades, building material companies have shredded old newspapers to create cellulose insulation.
But as newspapers have declined, the cellulose insulation industry has found itself in a bind, chasing after dwindling supplies of raw material.
People have increasingly turned to e-commerce, and the amount of cardboard boxes has crept steadily upward.
To date, CleanFiber has been able to produce enough insulation for about 20,000 single-family homes.
Plus, Strimling points out that more stringent building codes mean that new homes require more insulation than ever before.
When it comes to news items that we love at TechCrunch, IPOs rank pretty darn high.
Another great newsy bit that comes along less frequently than we’d like is a startup buying another startup.
These deals are often very interesting as they either bring a gob of talent, or technology to an already growing company, potentially accelerating it.
So it was with joy that the Equity Podcast crew dug into Automattic buying Beeper for $125 million.
But certainly we are an ocean or two away from the heady days we saw back in 2021.
Last year, Elon Musk-owned social network X rolled out a feature for paid users to hide their checkmarks from others.
Just like a lot of decisions taken by X, there is no definite timeline as to when the hide your checkmark feature will go away.
I liked being a X Premium subscriber, but I didn't like the dumb checkmark.
pic.twitter.com/9vfarfOySV — Haje (@Haje) April 11, 2024BREAKING: #X seems to be removing the ability to hide the verification checkmark!
The company also started offering its Premium subscription to these users and Premium+ subscription to users with more than 5,000 verified followers.
Hinge Health, a nine-year-old company that offers a digital solution to treat chronic musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions, cut approximately 10% of its workforce on Thursday, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
The company said people who were laid off worked across various functions; according to employees posting on LinkedIn, some were engineers.
Before the layoffs, Hinge had more than 1,700 employees, according to a LinkedIn estimate.
The company has raised a total of $828 million, according to PitchBook data.
The company’s main competitor is General Catalyst and Khosla Ventures-backed Sword Health, which was last valued at $2 billion in November 2021.
That was also the year SpaceX launched its first 60 Starlink satellites.
The company was spending plenty of cash on research and development, too — $559 million in 2018 and $661 million the following year.
The Starlink program completed a milestone in 2019, when SpaceX launched the first batch of operational Starlink satellites in May of that year.
The company ended the year with cash and cash equivalents of $868 million for 2018 and $990 million for 2019.
The company launches its Starlink satellites with its own rocket, its Falcon 9 workhorse, which means it can launch the space-based internet satellites at unprecedented rates.
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