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It’s been a long year for Voyager Digital. After filing for bankruptcy, the crypto lender thought it would be able to return some funds to its customers by selling its assets to FTX. As you know, things haven’t been going well at FTX either. That’s why Binance.US is stepping in today and offering to buy Voyager Digital’s assets for $1.022 billion.

It all started with the default of Three Arrows Capital earlier this year. It had some large repercussions across the crypto ecosystem. In particular, Voyager Digital realized that Three Arrows Capital owed it more $650 million. It had no choice but to file for Chapter 11 as a result.

“After a review of strategic options focused on maximizing value returned to customers on an expedited timeframe, Binance.US has been selected as the highest and best bidder for our assets,” Voyager Digital said on Twitter today.

With today’s bid, Binance.US agreed to buy Voyager’s crypto portfolio for $1.002 billion. It is also spending another $20 million for other assets of “incremental value”.

Binance.US wants to return crypto to Voyager Digital’s customers. They will be able to connect to Binance.US and see some crypto assets based on their previous positions on Voyager Digital.

“Upon close of the deal, users will be able to seamlessly access their digital assets on the Binance.US platform where they will continue to receive future disbursements from the Voyager estate,” Binance.US CEO Brian Shroder said in a statement.

Of course, users will also be able to liquidate their positions and get cash. But Binance.US will likely gain new users with this deal. Some of them may start using Binance.US as their crypto exchange. Others will just sign up to withdraw their Voyager Digital funds.

Last month, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, said that its US arm would make a new bid for Voyager Digital’s assets. “Binance.US will make another bid for Voyager now, given FTX is no longer able to follow through on that commitment,” he said.

The deal hasn’t closed just yet. Due to the Chapter 11 process, there will be a court hearing on January 5, 2023. The Bankruptcy Court will decide if it approves the deal.

Binance.US to buy Voyager Digital’s assets for $1 billion by Romain Dillet originally published on TechCrunch

Hot on the heels of Ledger announcing it’s working with iPod creator Tony Fadell to create its newest hardware wallet, competing hardware wallet startup Foundation Devices announced it has raised a $7 million seed round to double down on its “sovereign computing platform,” which it says is empowering its users to “reclaim their digital sovereignty.”

The company’s main product, Passport, costs $260 and looks like a mid-2000s Vertu luxury phone, but is, in fact, a hardware crypto wallet built with security and a mobile-first approach in mind.

The company is taking a novel approach to hardware wallets in that it open sources both the hardware and software for every device it releases. Yes, that means that, should you be so inclined, you can go on GitHub and look at every line of code, every component, every mechanical design and the full bill of materials — every aspect of the design of every one of its products. The company says open source is a core part of its mission and vision.

Foundation’s $7 million seed round was led by Polychain Capital (which appears to be flying the banner of crypto winter at the moment, in that, despite reportedly having more than $600 million under management, the fund seems to have spent approximately $9 on its website design).

Others participating in the round include new investors Greenfield Capital and Lightning Ventures, and a number of follow-on investments from existing investors, including Third Prime, Warburg Serres, Unpopular Ventures and Bolt. The investment was made on a SAFE note with a $35 million valuation cap. (Disclosure: Haje worked in a non-investment role as the director of portfolio at Bolt, an early investor in Foundation Devices. Bolt’s investment into Foundation was made after Haje left the VC firm.)

The company claims it has sold “thousands” of the original Passport, and in March this year launched the second version of its flagship product. TechCrunch caught up with the company’s founder and CEO, Zach Herbert, at the Baukunst Creative Technologist conference earlier this year, where he detailed a refreshing take on the future of crypto. (A recording of the talk “Not Your Computer, Not Your Keys,” is available on YouTube.)

“[The implosion of FTX] is a wake-up call around the importance of self-custody. It’s now beyond clear that storing your coins on an exchange is extremely risky. I also think it’s a wake-up call in terms of corruption and the fact that regulators are not actually protecting you. And then, it’s a wake-up call regarding the media. The mainstream media coverage of FTX has been horrible,” Herbert said in an interview with Baukunst’s Tyler Mincey, who is also a board member at Foundation. “There are accounts on Twitter giving excellent coverage of the clear, premeditated fraud that took place, but The New York Times, The Washington Post, these very respected media outlets, I don’t know how you can read their coverage. On Twitter, you can find drastically better, much less biased coverage. And people are waking up to that. But the unfortunate thing is a lot of people have lost their life savings.”

Foundation was founded in April 2020, focusing on building open source hardware and software products that provide users with a “seamless, end-to-end sovereignty experience.” The company’s focus is security-above-all, which has included some crucial choices, including manufacturing its products in the U.S. The company’s founder has very little patience or trust in overseas manufacturing.

“There’s a geopolitical imperative, and a security imperative, to manufacture in the United States. I think we’re moving toward a multipolar world and it’s only going to get crazier. I personally would never trust a device to store my bitcoin that was made in China,” Herbert said. “And I want to be on the ground at the factory myself. We manufacture in New England, and I live in the Boston area. I’m at the factory at least every couple of weeks.”

One thing is for sure: The company’s devices certainly look very different than many hardware crypto wallets out there. That was not by accident.

“We call what we’re aiming for digital deco, inspired by the visual language of art deco. We’re embracing color and ornate design. The cryptocurrency industry has focused on dark colors for some reason,” Herbert explained. “I think that’s completely wrong for our industry. I think it should be about futuristic optimism. Bitcoin is supposed to be a counter to the dystopian future, and our design should reflect that.”

And the company is picking an aggressive fight with crypto exchanges: “We strive to play a large part in empowering users to pull their bitcoin off of exchanges and achieve digital sovereignty,” Herbert told TechCrunch.

TechCrunch interviewed Herbert to get a deeper look at the company and its hopes, dreams and ambitions. We talk about the funding round, the need for open source, why self-custody is hard but necessary for crypto and much more. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What makes you the perfect person to run this company?

I’m a mechanical engineer by training and I’ve been obsessed with computers since I was little. I learned about bitcoin in 2013, and it quickly grew into an all-consuming passion. At first, I was interested in the investment potential, under the thesis that bitcoin represents an ideal form of money — that its limited supply means that, as demand increases, so will bitcoin’s price. Bitcoin’s culture morphed my views. As I consumed unending amounts of bitcoin-related content, I began to understand the importance of sound money, of sovereignty, of privacy, of the need to separate money and state.

In 2017, I dropped out of Harvard Business School’s MBA program to join a Boston-based crypto company, first as head of operations and ultimately as COO. We built hardware and software, including cryptocurrency ASIC mining hardware. I couldn’t stop thinking about the stagnation in self-custody tools, especially hardware wallets. So I and some fellow teammates launched Foundation Devices in April 2020.

Personally, I feel like I have two conflicting identities. The first is as a technology executive, startup founder, engineering alum and almost-MBA. That’s my legacy professional identity. But more and more, my real identity is as a Bitcoiner, a sovereign individual. These conflicting identities are probably why Foundation has been able to achieve its success thus far, why we’ve been able to raise venture money for ideas that have historically been considered fringe and why I’m confident we’ll continue to grow and bring amazing sovereign computing products to market.

How does this fundraise unlock the next steps for the company?

Self-custody today is simply too hard for most people; it’s why so many people were hurt this year with the collapse of FTX, BlockFi, Celsius and more. Notably, we think self-custody alone is insufficient — true sovereignty requires privacy. So we’re differentiating ourselves by building expert-level privacy features into our products and making them accessible to everyday users. For example, Envoy connects to the Tor network by default, ensuring that we can’t see users’ IP addresses or know anything about their balances or identities.

Foundation raises $7M to return ‘sovereignty’ to a chaotic crypto world by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

ImagenAI, a startup using AI to help professional photographers edit photos and automate post-production work, today announced that it raised $30 million in an all-equity growth investment from Summit Partners. The new capital brings Imagen’s total raised to $34 million, and co-founder and CEO Yotam Gil tells TechCrunch that it’ll be used to expand the startup’s software-as-a-service offering through mergers and acquisitions and product research and development.

Imagen’s success comes as investors grow increasingly bullish on AI tools for generating and editing artwork, including photorealistic art. Cupixel, whose AI tech takes images to create outlines of the photo for drawings or paintings, recently raised $5 million. Meanwhile, Runway ML, which is developing an AI-powered creative suite for artists and which was a major research contributor to the text-to-image AI Stable Diffusion, landed $50 million in early December.

Imagen was co-founded by Gil, Ron Oren (ex-head of Sinsense’s R&D division) and Yoav Chai (formerly a Mellanox chip designer) in 2020, inspired by Chai’s experience waiting months for his wedding photos. In speaking with photographers, the co-founders say they realized a major pain point in the industry: post-production is repetitive and time-consuming. Because each photographer has their own style, the process isn’t necessarily easy to automate with existing tools.

The solution they arrived at — Imagen (not to be confused with Google’s Imagen) — aims to learn a photographer’s personal style based on around 3,000 samples of their previous work. Available as a cloud-based plugin for Adobe Lightroom Classic, ImagenAI taps machine learning to attempt to capture editing styles and predict dozens of different editing parameters, taking around a half-second — and $0.05 per photo — to complete an edit.

Gil explains that Imagen’s editing profiles evolve over time, theoretically becoming more personalized as Imagen processes photos in various scenes and lighting conditions. The platform is ingesting more than 150 million photos annually for “tens of thousands” of customers globally, he said.

“Imagen profiles evolve and learn with the user over time, allowing better accuracy and consistency in applying each photographer’s style to new photos ingested into Imagen,” Gil said. “Any photographer that edits at scale and spends a lot of time on post production can benefit from time and cost savings while maintaining quality.”

Imagen also provides pretrained profiles, called Talent AI Profiles, based on “industry-leading” photographers’ unique editing styles. Gil claims that they’re tested on a large database of photos to ensure that they produce consistent results.

“Before Imagen, photographers could either edit manually or outsource to an editing service, which is costly, has a long turnaround time and doesn’t offer a guarantee on the results’ consistency,” Gil said. “Imagen democratizes professional photography post-production, eliminating the need for multiple professional photo editors to process a brand’s visual assets, and enabling photography assets to become available and usable much faster.”

Gil says that Imagen is currently profitable, with more than $10 million in annual recurring revenue coming in. In the near term, the company plans to launch a “culling” product that’ll select the best photos from a photoshoot and a local adjustments tool to identify specific parts in photos, such as subjects, to apply different editing adjustments.

When asked about competitors (other than manual outsourcing, of course), Gil acknowledges that Adobe for one maintains a number of AI image editing tools inside its products, particularly Lightroom. But he argues that none are as personalized or customizable as Imagen — at least not yet.

“Imagen’s ability to edit with a user’s own style, and to adjust editing to each photo based on the photo’s characteristics, gives a huge value to the user,” Gil said. “[With Imagen,] photographers can improve their earning potential by creating more valuable time to shoot and less time wasted on editing. As inflation and macroeconomic trends affect personal spending on events like weddings, and enterprise budgets for things like advertising campaigns, efficiency will be even more critical to achieving scale.”

Steffan K. Peyer, the managing director at Summit Partners, unsurprisingly agrees.

“There are more than a million professional photographers out there – plus many more aspiring enthusiasts – and many are limited by the immense burden of manual post-production work associated with each photo shoot,” he said via email. “With growth in digital assets and increasing expectations for both higher-quality and greater quantity of professional images, the Imagen team has built a platform that leverages proprietary, personalized machine learning technology previously not possible at scale.”

Imagen, which has 50 employees globally, expects to double the size of its workforce next year.

ImagenAI, which uses AI to personalize photo editing styles, lands $30M by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

The European Commission (EC) has confirmed that it’s proceeding with an antitrust investigation into Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms Inc. (Meta), over the way it ties together its core social network and Marketplace classified ads service.

The Commission’s Statement of Objectionsalso points to “unfair trading conditions” related to how it uses data gleaned from rival online classified ads services.

Today’s announcement comes some 18 months after both the EC and the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced separate but collaborative efforts to investigate whether Meta was abusing its dominant market position, leveraging data from its social network to give itself an unfair advantage over rivals in the online classified ads space. The CMA revealed back in August that it would be proceeding with its case against Meta, and the EC is now following suit.

Marketplace, which Meta launched back in 2016, allows any Facebook user to buy and sell just about anything, from clothes and books to smartphones and furniture. But the EC has now taken the view that the company is likely in breach of European Union (EU) antitrust rules, through “distorting competition in the markets for online classified ads” by tethering its classifieds product to the social network side of its business. This, it says, may infringe on Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) that has provisions for companies abusing a dominant market position.

“With its Facebook social network, Meta reaches globally billions of monthly users and millions active advertisers,” noted Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission’s executive vice-president for competition policy, in a statement. “Our preliminary concern is that Meta ties its dominant social network Facebook to its online classified ad services called Facebook Marketplace. This means Facebook users have no choice but to have access to Facebook Marketplace.”

In tandem, the scope of the EC’s investigation also covers rival classified ads services that advertise on Meta’s online properties such as Facebook and Instagram, calling the terms and conditions it forces on the advertisers “unjustified” and “disproportionate.” Essentially, the EC is looking at how Meta may use advertising-related data from its competitors to benefit Marketplace.

“We are concerned that Meta imposed unfair trading conditions, allowing it to use of data on competing online classified ad services,” Vestager added. “If confirmed, Meta’s practices would be illegal under our competition rules.”

Legal wrangles

Meta and its big tech brethren are facing a swathe of legal and regulatory wrangles in Europe. Meta and Google are currently facing an investigation over alleged anti-competitive collusion in the ad tech realm, while in the U.K. Meta’s surveillance-based business model is facing a legal challenge over how it processes data for ad targeting.

Today’s news signals the first time Meta has been formally accused of abusing a dominant market position in Europe. A Statement of Objection essentially means that the EC writes to the alleged offending company informing them of the EC’s specific objections, and allows the company to respond with any of their own objections or comments. After that, the EC has the power to instruct that the company stops doing what it’s doing, while it can also impose a fine of up to 10% of its global turnover. There is no specific legal deadline in place for such antitrust investigations to conclude.

TechCrunch reached out to Meta for comment, and will update if or when we hear back.

Meta abused its dominant market position to benefit Facebook Marketplace, EU’s initial findings show by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

Content is the core of customer experience. A company’s product or service can be phenomenal, but if the enterprise content — marketing, messaging, customer service communications, product documentation or even brand voice and style — is poorly written or unfocused, you’ll have a difficult time attracting and retaining customers.

That’s where content governance comes in. It involves taking a systematic approach to measuring your current content’s status and actively guiding content creation to achieve your stated goals, such as increasing sign-ups for a newsletter or increasing conversion rates. Content governance systems take the key elements of a style guide and content strategy and turn them into even more thorough, usable and holistic frameworks for your entire company. It goes beyond strategy, using AI and NLP to generate actionable advice on how to improve content.

The biggest benefit of this is content that establishes trust. The more businesses can retain quality in their support content, the more likely customers are to trust the solutions provided.

Choose metrics that matter

Your company is already likely using vanity metrics, like open rates, shares and time spent on a page, to measure how well your content seems to be performing. But how does that translate into a return on investment (ROI)?

For example, vanity metrics might indicate that a landing page is performing badly, but they won’t tell you why. You can see that a page has high bounce and exit rates and that customers click away from it quickly, yet there’s no indication of the reasoning behind those metrics.

The truth is: vanity metrics don’t measure how engaged potential customers are; they simply gauge the relative popularity of your business. This makes measuring ROI tricky. With a content governance system, you need to ensure you’re tracking the right kind of metrics for your website.

Specifically, you should gauge how clear and inclusive your language is, as well as how well the tone fits your customer base. If a web page scores poorly in these categories, there are likely spelling mistakes, run-on sentences, exclusionary language and inconsistent references to products on the page.

Take IKEA, for example. With so many product names, instruction manuals and support articles, maintaining consistent terminology across all departments is a priority. Building your own furniture is difficult enough without getting bogged down by conflicting descriptions of assembly parts or being unable to find a how-to article because the product is spelled differently.

Here’s another example: A landing page for an online sports retailer opens with a sentence like “Running shoes for every athlete, no matter how hard he trains, how long he’s been running, or how far he goes, we have shoes for him,” could lead female runners to assume the site is only for male athletes.

These kinds of issues are immediate turn-offs and drive away many potential customers. Tracking performance scores that go beyond popularity gives you a better idea of why a particular page or content funnel isn’t doing as well as it should be. You’ll also better understand which problems you need to fix.

With all that in mind, here are some essential steps to take when implementing your own content governance system and how each step will impact your company’s ROI.

Create a brand style guide

Brand cohesiveness keeps your content consistent across the entire company. Determine which terminology to use in assets like sales presentations, website copy, blog posts, Google Ads, customer service messages and product documentation. What kind of language resonates best with your target audience? If you don’t already have a company style guide, take some time to find out what that looks like and upload a final, digital version somewhere your writers can easily access it.

Design and implement a content governance system to increase ROI by Ram Iyer originally published on TechCrunch

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation.Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the full edition of the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. This is a shorter version of The Station newsletter that is emailed to subscribers. Want all the deals, news roundups and commentary? Subscribe forfree.

Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B.

Welp, it’s been quite a year for transportation, hasn’t it? The Inflation Reduction Act, the SPAC fallout, the first deliveries from EV startups, Tesla’s factory expansion and FSD beta software rollout, layoffs and consolidation in the autonomous vehicle industry along with some huge commercial AV launch milestones were some of the big news events in 2022.

Why am I reflecting on the year when it’s not even done yet? This is the last Station newsletter for the remainder of 2022. The Station will return (don’t worry) in 2023 with all the news, inside scoops and insights you crave.

Until then, frens and readers, here is wishing you some rest and relaxation, maybe time with those who you hold most dear and a great ride or drive in your favorite vehicle. I’ll be turning to my feet this coming week: the trails await!

Oh and yes, I will be in Vegas for CES 2023. I’ve had a sneak peek on a few news items. The upshot? and automotive tech and electrification take center stage. Stay tuned.

Do you have some ideas of what you want to see more of (or less of) here at The Station or TechCrunch, in general? Shoot me a note at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com. I’d love to hear from you.

One last gift for before the year closes. We want you to join us in Boston on April 20 at TechCrunch Early Stage 2023, and we’ve got a great end-of-2022 discount to help you out with the rest of your holiday shopping.Register with this linkby 11:59pm PT on December 31 and book a Founder Pass for just $75 – regularly $149!

Early Stage is TechCrunch’s one-day founder summit, where you’ll get actionable advice and takeaways from top experts, meet other entrepreneurs taking similar journeys, share your own experiences and build the confidence to take the next steps towards growing your business. Don’t wait – book your Founder Pass today for just $75 with thislink!

You can drop us a note at tips@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

Micromobbin’

Let’s kick things off with a shameless self-promotion warning: If you love micromobility and you love me covering it, show your support! Micromobility Industries has put together a Rider’s Choice Awards, and I’m in the running for best micromobility journalist. Go on, vote.

Arcimoto is partnering with Faction and GoCar Tours to turn its three-wheeled Fun Utility Vehicle in Las Vegas. Using Faction’s low level autonomy and remote operators, Arcimoto’s vehicles will “drive themselves” to hotels along the Vegas strip for tourists to grab and drive along a GPS-guided route.

Bosch is urging U.S. regulators to adopt stricter e-bike regulations.

The Cake-Polestar e-moped mashup is cute and powerful.

Helbiz has launched a travel insurance????

In Paris, e-mopeds have made up the majority of sales since the city intro’d paid parking for gas-powered mopeds. In Germany, e-bikes are the most popular form of EV.

Just after Rad Power Bikes wowed us with its new trike, the company announced it’s laying off 63 employees.

Taiwan has extended its electric two-wheel subsidy by another four years. The country’s goal is to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and all electric new passenger vehicles by 2040. Part of the investment from the government will go into the installation of battery charging and swapping facilities (looking at you, Gogoro), and the transformation of traditional scooter shops.

Just in time for Christmas sloshing, Tier has launched an in-app accuracy test to combat drunk fools riding its scooters during the holiday party season. Riders will have to take a test when it’s active, which will be during the busiest party days. Tier is encouraging would-be drunk riders to pre-book a taxi through its partner Free Now.

The UK’s transport minister has said forcing people to wear helmets while cycling would deter too many would-be converts from cycling, “thereby reducing the wider health and environmental benefits.”

See you in 2023!

Deal of the week

This “deal of the week” is really more of a deal autopsy. I’m talking about Quanergy Systems, the solid-state lidar sensor developer that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The bankruptcy isn’t the only remarkable part. What is so stunning about the filing is how quickly Quanergy collapsed. Just 10 months ago, Quanergy became a publicly traded company through a SPAC merger at an implied equity valuation of $1.4 billion.

A few years ago, there were more than 70 lidar companies all vying for funding, partnerships and commercial success. Consolidation has been plucking off companies one by one; I expect it will ramp up in 2023.

Other deals that got my attention …

Alterna Equity Partners bought the long-haul transportation and logistics company Bulk Express.

AutoNation is expanding its after-sales service through a $190 million acquisition of startup RepairSmith.

BRV Capital launched its Mobility Fund, a fund dedicated to advancing connected, electric and autonomous cars, with an eye towards the next disruptive tech.

Cargoroo raised $10.5 million to expand its shared cargo e-bike service across Europe.

Divergent, the California company that developed an alternative production process using 3D printing and generative design software, landed a $100 million investment from Hexagon. Who says no one is attracting funding these day? woof.

EnviroSpark, the Georgia-based EV charging company, raised $10 million in funding round led by Ultra Capital. The company announced its $5 million Series A funding earlier this year, bringing total outside investment to $15 million. Additional investors include Frank Blake, former chairman and CEO at The Home Depot, Tim Tassopoulos, president and chief operating officer of Chick-fil-A, Mark Bonfigli, founder and former CEO of Dealer.com, Dave Stockert, former president and CEO of Post Properties and Paul Bowers, former chairman, president and CEO of Georgia Power.

Getir, a Turkey-based delivery startup that relies on two-wheelers, acquired German rival Gorillas in a deal worth $1.2 billion.

Group14 Technologies, the battery anode technology developer, raised $214 million in a Series C funding from Microsoft’s $1 billion Climate Innovation Fund, Lightrock Climate Impact Fund, Moore Strategic Ventures, Oman Investment Authority and Molicel.

Partly, the New Zealand-based company, raised a $21 million Series A funding round led by Octopus Ventures. Shasta Ventures, Square Peg, Blackbird, Ten13, Square co-founder Randy Reddig, Hillfarrance and I2BF. Existing investors such as Figma CEO Dylan Field, Notion co-founder Akshay Kothari and Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck also participated.

SafeAI, an autonomous heavy equipment startup, raised $38 million in a Series B funding round from Builders VC, McKinley Management, George Kaiser Family Foundation, Energy Innovation Capital. Moog also joined the round as a strategic investor.

Tropos Technologies, an electric commercial Low Speed Electric Vehicles manufacturers, raised $10 million from Workhorse Group.

Zeekr, the premium electric car brand under China’s Geely, confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering. If it goes through, it’ll be the first major Chinese listing in the country in nearly two years, following China’s effective ban of foreign IPOs.

Notable reads and other tidbits

Autonomous vehicle tech

Aurora released its 2022 safety report. The report covers how its management software is designed to respond to problems on the road, details its approach to simulation and new information on its approach to cybersecurity.

The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration opened a preliminary investigation into the robotaxis developed and operated by GM self-driving subsidiary Cruise.

Uber Eats partnered with startup Cartken to deliver food via sidewalk delivery robot in Miami.

Waymo is opening up its driverless robotaxi route between downtown Phoenix and Sky Harbor International Airport to the general public.

Zipline expanded its partnership with the Rwanda government that will add new delivery sites in rural and urban locations throughout the country — a move that is expected to triple its delivery volume.

Electric vehicles, batteries & charging

Arcimoto, the maker of the three-wheeled electric Fun Utility Vehicles (FUVs), teamed up with Faction to develop EVs that can be delivered to a customer’s hotel through a combination of low-level autonomy and tele-assist technology.

Elon Musk sold more than 20 million shares of Tesla stock between Monday and Wednesday. The sale is worth about $3.5 billion, according to a regulatory filing. Musk’s latest stock dump follows the nearly $4 billion worth of shares he sold last month.

Ford Motor added a third production shift to its Michigan plant that produces the electric F-150 Lightning.

Lyft partnered with Wallbox to offer its drivers a discount on Wallbox L2 EV chargers.

Panasonic entered into multi-year agreements to supply batteries for Lucid Group’s Lucid Air and upcoming Gravity SUV. Production will come from both a facility in Japan and in the future from Panasonic’s battery production facility in De Soto, Kansas.

Redwood Materials is building a new $3.5 billion battery materials and recycling facility on a 600-acre campus near Charleston, South Carolina that will eventually employ 1,500 people and make enough cathode and anode components to supply 1 million EVs annually.

Rivian and Mercedes-Benz have paused plans to produce electric commercial vans in Europe just three months after the two automakers announced the partnership.

Tesla announced Tesla Electric, an electric plan exclusively offered in parts of Texas where retail choice is available, like Houston and Dallas. The product turns Tesla into a retail electric provider in the Lone Star State and allows Powerwall owners to sell some of their excess electricity back to the grid, with Tesla as the go-between.

Gig economy

The battle over gig worker status is heating up.

In-car tech

Honda is pulling away from a design practice that’s shaped auto-making since the 1930s. TechCrunch reporter Harri Weber digs into Honda’s move into virtual reality.

Tesla added a bunch of features in its latest OTA update; most notable is Steam, which brings along thousands of games. This app, however, is limited to Model S and X vehicles with 16GB of RAM (only found in vehicles made in 2022).

Speaking of Tesla, a judge ordered the company to upgrade a computer in a customer’s vehicle for free to allow the person to subscribe to the so-called Full Self-Driving program.

People

Herbert Diess, the former VW Group, has been tapped for the supervisory board chairman position at semiconductor group Infineon. His appointment is subject to a confirming vote at the chipmaker’s annual meeting on Feb. 16.

Hyundai Motor and Kia suppliers employed child labor at Alabama factories in recent years, a Reuters investigation found.

Michael Simcoe, vice president of global design at GM was promoted to senior vice president of global design, effective Jan. 1. Simcoe will continue to report to GM President Mark Reuss.

Nikola Corp. founder Trevor Milton asked for a new trial on securities fraud charges.

Northvolt named former SAP CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe as its new chairman. Current Chairman Carl-Erik Lagercrantz will become the vice chairman of Northvolt.

TuSimple appointed James Lu to its board of directors as an Independent Director. Lu is chairperson of Grindr, the LGBTQ social dating application. He is also director, chairman and CEO of investment company Life Concepts Holdings and director of Internet publishing company Fusion Media.

Zeekr files for an IPO, Elon sells more Tesla shares and a message to readers by Kirsten Korosec originally published on TechCrunch

Elon Musk’s reign over Twitter — marked by chaos from his snap decisions, massive layoffs, and endless product u-turns — could be taking its most dramatic turn yet, if Twitter users have their say.

A poll put up by Musk on Sunday asking if he should step down as head of the company closed today with users voting resoundingly in favor of him leaving. Nearly 17.4 million people responded over 12 hours, and 57.5% of them voted “Yes” versus 42.5% of them voting “No” — a margin of 15% supporting him leaving. “I will abide by the results of this poll,” Musk noted in the poll.

We’re going to detail all the reasons here why this shouldn’t be taken too strictly as a directive to Elon. But first, the very distinct takeaways. People are still on Twitter; people care what happens; and those online — in the last 12 hours at least — do not, in the majority, really want more of Elon’s Antics. That there is a way of giving people a voice and that people speak out is important in and of itself.

But now for the main reason why you should not hold your breath or be too upset when nothing happens: Elon, at the end of the day, will do what he wants.

No, he’s not exactly good for his word, as we’ve seen many times over. (Just ask Tesla shareholders how his promises have worked out.) And no, we have no way of verifying poll results. And, yes, Musk could just decide to redo the poll until he gets whatever result he wants — whatever result he wants today, that is. Musk’s only predictable quality seems to be that he’s unpredictable.

And because of all of the above, do we really know what his actual motive was in putting up the poll?

Is he: Actually giving himself an exit option? FEeding potential investors hypothetical alternatives? Scrappily generating more rubbernecking traffic? The last one is a distinct possibility, given how Twitter — depleted of more than half the staff it had before Musk took over — has pretty much dropped the ball on all the set pieces it’s been building up over the years to generate audience and revenue.

Maybe he’ll poll that question next!

Musk has been in Qatar (errrr I think I can say that here on TC and not get banned on Twitter, yes?), ostensibly to watch the World Cup (but boy are there a lot of wealthy folks there looking to do ever more investing in the West). His tweets from the game have been some of the most watched on Twitter pertaining to the final yesterday.

Sure, his one-night takeover of the sports curation beat has been great, but at some point someone has to clean up the mess in the stadium.

Should Elon step down as head of Twitter? Users vote Yes by a margin of 15% by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch

Google has announced that it is bringing India’s online document storage service DigiLocker to the Files app on Android to let users access verified government-issued documents from the app.

At the annual Google for India conference on Monday, Google announced its partnership with the Indian government to roll out the DigiLocker integration within the Files app. The search giant also announced a machine learning-based model that will help identify and organize important files including official documents and government ID cards.

“We expect that DigiLocker’s integration and partnership on Android will drive smoother and ubiquitous access to digitized documents in a safe and secure manner for all our users,” Abhishek Singh said while announcing the partnership with Google. Singh acts as the President and CEO of NeGD, the MD & CEO of Digital India Corporation (DIC) and also the CEO Karmayogi Bharat.

Singh said that DigiLocker has over 137 million registered users. The service also has over 2,300 issuers who have issued more than 5.6 billion documents to date, he said.

Google didn’t disclose any exact timelines on when the integration will be available to users. It also didn’t reveal whether the experience will also available to iOS at some point in the future.

At the eighth edition of the annual conference, Google also announced AI-driven updates related to search and showcased an AI offering for Google Lens that will help users decode handwriting of doctors. Additionally, Google introduced Courses as a feature on YouTube to provide more monetization areas to creators developing educational content.

Google introduces India’s DigiLocker integration to Files app to access official documents by Jagmeet Singh originally published on TechCrunch

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said Monday that India is going through an important period of time as it drafts several key regulations and asserted that it stands to benefit from open and connected internet.

India, which legalized several amendments to the nation’s IT rules after contentious back and forth with many tech giants last year, is in the process of shaping and shipping several other key regulatory frameworks that seek to bring a series of major changes to how telecom services, on-demand video players and firms in other sectors operate and handle consumers’ data.

On Monday, the Google chief sat with India’s IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw at the company’s annual India event to discuss a wide-range of subjects including regulations.

Vaishnaw said the government is working on a range of bills that reflect the country’s realities.

“Prime Minister has given us a clear target of creating a comprehensive legal regulatory framework. So we’re creating three horizontals: First we have the telecom bill that is for the carriers. Second is the digital protection bill, which is focused around enforcing citizens’ privacy rights. And this is, the Digital India bill that will look at practically everything else that is required to be seen,” he said, adding that all these bills should become law in within the next 14 to 16 months.

Tech giants including Google, Meta and Amazon have requested a series of changes to some of the proposed bills. In a recent meeting with Meta executives, the Indian government reportedly asked the firm to put in efforts so that content takedown orders issued by the authorities are processed within an hour, Indian news outlet MoneyControl reported earlier.

Asked what he makes of India’s proposed regulations, Pichai said:

“If you look at the scale at which tech is working and touching so many lives around the world, to me it makes sense that tech needs responsible regulation. I think it’s important for countries to think about how to best safeguard their citizens. We are engaging constructively.

India has a leadership role to play here. It’s important to make sure you’re balancing the safeguards you’re putting for people and creating innovative frameworks so that companies can innovate on top of certainty in the legal framework.

So I think it’s an important moment in time. But through it all, hopefully, India can also be a voice for … India will also be a big export economy and benefit from open and connected internet. Getting that balance right will be, I think, important.”

Important that India’s regulations provide legal and innovation certainty to firms, Google CEO says by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

For years, teachers have used YouTube to promote their lessons and persuade learners to join their classes off the platform. YouTube said on Monday it is taking broader steps to make the video service more appealing to educators and learners and also provide more monetization avenues to the creators.

At its annual India conference on Monday, Google unveiled Courses, a feature that will seek to bring structured learning experience on YouTube.

Teachers will be able to publish and organize their videos and provide text reading materials and questions right on the video app. They will be allowed to offer the content for free or charge a fee, the company said.

Courses will span academic subjects as well as vocational interests, the company said. Viewers who buy a Course will be able to watch the videos without ads.

The feature will roll out to users in India “soon,” and will represent a “new monetization option for our creators,” the company said.

Monday’s move represents Google’s growing push to make inroads in India’s education market, where over 300 million students go to schools. Meta and Amazon have also made deep investments in the space in recent years.

YouTube to launch Courses in edtech push in India by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch