Forget Apple Vision Pro – rabbit r1 is 2024’s most exciting launch yet Apple is doing everything it can to make VR happen, but a tiny startup has a better vision of the futureThe year is off to a quick start in terms of new product launches and availability, even leaving aside the usual mid-tier smorgasbord that is CES.
Apple just started pre-sales of its Vision Pro mixed reality headset, with shipments beginning in early February; meanwhile Samsung debuted the next generation of the only viable iPhone competitor out there, the Galaxy S-series.
Unlike the Apple Vision Pro, which looks like the lavish, over-slick encumbered bit of technology’s past masquerading as technology’s future that it is, the rabbit r1 has a pared down, satisfying economy that I think comes much closer to what future generations want from their tech.
On the functionality side, Vision Pro is a an exercise in UI over saturation; the r1 aims to be as close as you can currently get to having no UI at all.
Rabbit is introducing the r1 when people are already in love with AI, as the term applies to large language models like ChatGPT.
While other automakers are dialing back their electric vehicle plans, BMW is quietly going all in.
“The tipping point for the combustion engine was last year,” CFO Walter Mertl told journalists at a roundtable in Munich recently.
The German automaker has seen sales of its fossil fuel vehicles plateau and is expecting a slow decline, he said.
“Growth will come increasingly from electric vehicles.”BMW sold a record 2.5 million vehicles last year, 15% of which were all-electric.
This year, the company thinks it’ll sell 500,000 EVs, or 33% more than last year.
European insurtech company Getsafe has acquired deineStudienfinanzierung, an aptly named German digital platform for student loans that was showcased on the local version of “Shark Tank” in 2019.
“Student loans are the second most popular form of external student financing in Germany after [grants].
Unlike in the U.S., universities in Germany are largely tuition-free, which means that student loans are generally used to cover living expenses.
The financing volume has returned to previous levels since.”Just like Getsafe didn’t invent insurance, deineStudienfinanzierung didn’t invent student loans.
By the time customers apply for a student loan, the barriers to switch are quite high.
Another CES has come and gone and transportation was still one of the central actors on one of the world’s largest tech stages.
Here are some of the tech themes that stood out to us at CES 2024.
With so many electric vehicles, it might not surprise folks to learn that EV charging companies were also there en masse.
HydrogenHydrogen power isn’t new, however, it’s taken a bit of a backseat lately to more traditional battery electric vehicles.
In-cabin hardware meets softwareAutomakers, automotive suppliers and even some startups, showed off their respective vision for the inside of the car.
In the depth of the pandemic, 500 or so backers chipped in to make Makera’s Carvera Kickstarter campaign, a fully automatic desktop CNC machine, hit its goal.
At CES in Las Vegas, Makera showed off the Carvera Air, its baby brother.
With almost the same work space, but less a few of the fancy features of its larger sibling, Makera Air is a (slightly) different beast, even better suited to learning the basics of CNC manufacturing.
“Technology is the future,” Erdreich asserted.
“And the future needs creators, not just consumers.”Erdreich has a clear vision for Makera and is excited about the company’s direction.
Threads’ roadmap for integrations with the fediverse, aka the network of decentralized apps that includes Twitter/X rival Mastodon and others, has been revealed.
In the meeting, which Coates characterized as a “good faith” effort by the Instagram team, the roadmap for Threads’ fediverse integration was laid out, starting with a December launch of a feature within the Threads app that would allow their posts to become visible to Mastodon clients.
Meta did, in fact, start testing ActivityPub integration in December, allowing Threads posts to appear on Mastodon.
In addition, this rule would potentially come into play when a user banned from Meta’s platform moved their content to another Mastodon server.
Other questions remained unresolved at this time — like whether Threads would surface third-party Mastodon content in its algorithmic feed, whether it would ultimately allow for algorithmic choice, whether Mastodon content would be made to appear visually differentiated from Threads’ content in some way, and more.
Honda is dunking on the ‘thick, heavy’ electric vehicle trend in an attempt to build buzz around its upcoming 0 series EVs.
Honda also didn’t say specify if it plans to use such materials when it commercially launches its first 0 series electric vehicles.
Honda has lagged in the switch to electrics, and it recently called it quits on a plan to co-develop “affordable” electric vehicles with GM.
Though Honda plans to launch an electric Prologue this year, the automaker intends to launch 30 EVs by 2030.
That’s why the 0 series launch will be a big moment for Honda.
We previewed Skyted’s voice-capturing mask last week, but when I came across the startup at CES 2024, I had to check it out for myself in person.
You can read all about the tech in our previous article, but what is it actually like in person?
“We launched a mobile application that will give you information about how big your ‘sound bubble’ is.
The team has some ideas:“We’re looking at various customer segments; mostly businesses, open spaces, like offices where this would be a huge.
We also looking at B2C, for use cases such as gaming,” explains Daridon.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that businesses of all sizes and across all sectors can benefit from generative AI.
McKinsey estimates generative AI will add $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually across numerous industries.
That’s just one reason why over 80% of enterprises will be working with generative AI models, APIs, or applications by 2026.
However, simply adopting generative AI doesn’t guarantee success.
However, only 17% of businesses are addressing generative AI risks, which leaves them vulnerable.
We’ve also included some surveys that we feel serve as important reminders of the things that went wrong in 2023.
And if you’re curious about how investors are preparing for 2024, we’ve got you covered with this survey of more than 40 investors.
We spoke to both investors and founders of fusion energy startups to see how much closer we are to running our lives off fusion power.
We spoke to founders about how they’re handling their workforce and the expectations they’re setting.
We spoke to founders about the nature of events they attend, how many events they cross out on their calendars, and how beneficial they’ve been.
