Waymo will begin offering a robotaxi service to the public in Los Angeles this week and in Austin by the end of the year, the company’s co-CEO Tekedra Mawakan said Wednesday at SXSW.
Opening up a robotaxi service means the public will be able to hail a ride in a driverless car via the Waymo One app.
Austin will become the fourth city where Waymo operates a commercial driverless service.
Waymo also operates a robotaxi service in Phoenix, San Francisco and soon Los Angeles.
Unlike Texas, regulators in California require companies hoping to deploy commercial robotaxi services to attain a number of permits.
Peak XV, the venture firm formerly known as India and Southeast Asia arm of Sequoia, didn’t disclose the size of the new fund.
The new fund, called Peak XV Anchor Fund, will be funded by an internal balance sheet, the source said, requesting anonymity as the matter is private.
The fund will enable Peak XV to “create a global network for learning and collaboration,” the venture firm said, according to the LP source.
The fund will enable Peak XV Partners to have broader skin in the game with its own fund and also explore investment in newer areas, the source said.
With Peak XV Anchor Fund, the venture firm plans to partner with other “managers across regions, strategies and sectors.”Peak XV didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Would-be Twitter/X rival Bluesky is looking to more directly invest in its developer community in order to foster growth.
The company last week announced “AT Protocol Grants,” a new program that will dole out small grants to developers building on its new social networking protocol.
Initially, Bluesky said it would release $10,000 in grants of $500 to $2,000 per project apiece, based on factors like cost, usage, and more.
The concept of decentralized social networking has been around longer than Bluesky, however, with many projects, including Mastodon, Misskey, Pixelfed, and others, backed by the ActivityPub protocol.
Bluesky says the projects receiving the grants can be useful to either developers or end users and will be paid out via public GitHub Sponsorships.
Astra Space, the launch company that went public in 2021 at a $2.1 billion valuation, is going private again after months of burning cash and failing to secure alternate investment.
The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2024, at which time Astra will cease trading on the Nasdaq.
In an investor presentation from February 2021, Astra touted a “mass produced portable launch system” that could launch from anywhere in the world.
At the time Astra completed its SPAC merger it also acquired Apollo Fusion, an electric propulsion developer for spacecraft, with the aim of integrating those systems into an Astra satellite constellation.
That constellation never came to fruition, however, and while the company did succeed in selling many Apollo Fusion propulsion systems it has struggled to turn that backlog into revenue.
SpaceX is aiming to launch its massive Starship rocket for the third time as soon as March 14, the company confirmed in a social media post Wednesday.
SpaceX is still awaiting regulatory approval from the Federal Aviation Administration for the launch, without which Starship will remain grounded.
SpaceX conducted the first Starship orbital flight test last April; there was a seven-month gap between it and the second test, which took place last November.
Both ended with mid-air explosions of the Super Heavy booster and the upper stage (which is also called Starship).
Meanwhile, the Starship upper stage will continue its ascent to orbit.
During Target’s investor event on Tuesday, the retail giant announced it is launching a paid membership program, Target Circle 360, on April 7 to compete with rivals Amazon and Walmart.
Target Circle 360 acts as the paid version of its free loyalty program Target Circle, which has existed since 2019.
Additionally, it’s renaming Target RedCard credit and debit cards to Target Circle, which will now give customers an extra 5% off purchases.
However, if you have a Target Circle credit card, it will still cost $49.
Walmart also sees success from its paid membership, Walmart+, which debuted in 2020 for $98/year.
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An internal congressional memo viewed by TechCrunch casts strong doubt on Rocket Lab’s claim that its Neutron rocket will be ready for launch in time to meet a crucial contract deadline from the Space Force.
This week in space historyOn March 6, 2009, the Kepler space telescope lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
Intuitive Machines’ first lunar lander officially lost power today after spending seven days on the moon.
That propulsion system, which uses a combination of cryogenic liquid oxygen and liquid methane, could unlock new capabilities in space and de-risk future missions by other commercial providers.
Before Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission, no lander had ever used this combination of propellants.
After the successful launch, Intuitive Machines’ also ran into a brief issue chilling the liquid oxygen feed line, which took longer than anticipated.
Two VR900 engines will also be used on Intuitive Machines’ much larger “Nova-D” spacecraft, to deliver 500-750 kilograms of payload to the moon.
An internal congressional memo viewed by TechCrunch casts strong doubt on Rocket Lab’s claim that its Neutron rocket will be ready for launch in time to meet a crucial contract deadline from the Space Force.
In response to industry feedback, Space Systems Command changed its procurement strategy for the next batch of national security launch contracts to accommodate newer launch providers.
Neutron is Rocket Lab’s medium-lift vehicle and is being added as a complement to its successful small Electron rocket.
Uncertainties around Archimedes’ hot fire tests are “the biggest issue” in Rocket Lab’s claims, the memo argues.
It also highlights proprietary timelines shared by other launch providers that suggest there is much work left to be included in RFPs by the VCSFA.
Substack is introducing direct messaging, allowing users to have private one-on-one conversations, the company announced today.
DMs can be accessed in the Chat tab on the Substack app and website.
After launching an X (formerly Twitter) clone last year called Notes, Substack is now copying yet another feature from the social network.
Substack says DMs was a highly requested feature among users, and many users have shared their excitement on the announcement post.
The launch of DMs comes a few days after Substack updated its peer-to-peer recommendation system, allowing writers to curate and share a list of publications for their readers to subscribe to.
