TechCrunch Daily Crunch

Roku launches a standalone Howdy app and positions it as a $2.99 ad-free streaming option. Whoop closes a $575M round that values the wearable company at about $10 billion. Airbnb rolls out private car pickups across 125 cities and ties the service into broader travel and hotel experiments. Short startup briefs cover seed funding and new developer programs.

News on Uber buying Blacklane to expand upscale ride services. Coverage of why OpenAI pulled Sora amid low usage and high compute costs. Breakdown of Meta testing Instagram Premium features like anonymous story views, viewer search and audience lists.

News about Netflix hiking subscription costs and rolling out new pricing tiers and viewer fees. A major VW investment boosts Rivian and advances joint winter-testing work. Google debuts tools to import chats and personal memories into Gemini using a prompt-guided transfer process.

A rundown of Anthropic's report on AI's limited job displacement and the widening skills gap. WhatsApp's new AI Writing Help that drafts replies and Meta's related privacy claims. Google's global rollout of Search Live with Gemini 3.1 Flash enabling audio and camera-powered conversations. Live Translate coming to iOS and more countries. Big funding moves from Shield AI and Contour.

Amazon picks up a startup building kid-size humanoid robots and plans real-world integrations. Meta rolls out a small business initiative to spur entrepreneurship and AI adoption. Spotify pilots a tool to let artists approve releases and block AI-generated misattributions. A startup roundup highlights fresh funding for Glimpse and ultra-thin solar cells for spacecraft.

Apple Music is integrating with Ticketmaster to surface nearby concerts and ticket links. Roku's $3 Howdy service is expanding onto Prime Video with a new content lineup. TikTok is rolling out bolder ad formats like logo takeovers, primetime slots and Top Reach that could feel more intrusive.

Discussion covers Elizabeth Warren's criticism of the Pentagon's move against Anthropic and the company's stance on military uses of AI. A startup-focused segment explores talks for OpenAI to secure part of Helion's future fusion power and Helion's scaling plans. Also covered are DoorDash's temporary relief payments for drivers and a developer tools acquisition search.

Coverage of Bezos' ambitious $100B industrial AI play and the Prometheus startup aiming at manufacturing and engineering models. A Reuters scoop on Amazon building a smartphone centered on Alexa and AI. Blue Origin filing for a solar-powered orbital data center and why compute in space appeals. Amazon buying River to scale stair-climbing delivery robots.

A big autonomous-vehicle deal as a major ride platform inks a multibillion-dollar plan to buy thousands of Rivian-built robotaxis and roll them into dozens of cities. New AI systems at a social platform aim to cut moderation errors and catch scams. A delivery app launches a Tasks app that pays couriers to collect audio and video to train AI and robotics.

A tour of Gemini-powered additions across Workspace tools and what they can do in practice. Short demos include automatic summarization and draft creation in documents. Email features show thread summaries and smart filtering. Sheets, Slides, and Forms get rapid data structuring and content generation. Meet and Calendar gain auto-notes, join-late summaries, and scheduling help.