Technology

Volkswagen’s $700 million investment in China’s electric vehicle startup XPeng is this week’s auto industry news. This partnership could set a precedent for Western automakers looking to leverage Chinese firms’ EV expertise, while Chinese firms can benefit from their foreign allies’ global distribution. Volkswagen will produce two battery-powered models using …

A few weeks ago, Uncork Capital announced that it had closed on $400 million in capital commitments for two new funds: $200 million for a seed-stage vehicle and $200 million for an opportunity-style fund that mostly supports startups in its portfolio. The funds are twice what Uncork raised in 2019 …

AMD will invest $400 million in India over the next five years and open its largest design center in Bengaluru, joining the growing list of companies supporting India’s semiconductor manufacturing ambitions. At SemiconIndia 2023 in Gujarat, India, AMD CTO Mark Papermaster announced the chipmaker’s investment plans. “Our investment will build …

Peacock has lagged behind streaming competitors. On Thursday, the streaming service reported a 9% increase in subscribers to 24 million from 22 million in its second quarter. Peacock trails Netflix, which added 5.9 million subscribers in the same quarter. Disney+ lost four million subscribers in Q2 2023, but its total …

Mastodon, an open-source decentralized social network and one of many Twitter, er X, competitors, has traditionally shunned advertising. According to founder and CEO Eugen Rochko, Patreon has funded the company mostly. Mastodon announced on Wednesday that it will sell merchandise to raise funds for development. Dopatwo will design Mastodon t-shirts, …

According to a new Reuters report, Tesla overstated its EVs’ range estimates, causing owners to flood its service center. Elon Musk ordered algorithms to boost range numbers, according to anonymous sources and industry experts. Service requests skyrocketed with sales. Tesla created a “diversion team” to handle “range cases”—owners complaining of …

Twitter’s X rebrand has failed. The company didn’t secure the intellectual property rights to the X brand, Reuters reported, and the site’s haphazard rollout had parts referencing “X” while others still encouraged you to “search Twitter” or “Tweet.” Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters sign was removed without a permit, prompting police …

Amazon vs. the world: retail. That’s always been true and always will. Many factors have made the company seem unstoppable. Amazon’s smart purchase and construction of global fulfillment centers is one. Last count, it operated 305 in the U.S., each 800,000 square feet. Local warehouses help the company set the …

Mark Zuckerberg’s best fortune is Elon Musk. As Musk rebrands Twitter to X, Facebook’s Meta rebrand seems less bad. Zuckerberg can lift weights now, but he needs to help Meta recover from a rough few years. After rebranding to Meta in 2021, Facebook spent $13.7 billion on VR and AR …

According to the official bug report, Google fixed an Apple employee-discovered Chrome zero-day. The bug is unremarkable, but how it was found and reported to Google is. A Google employee said an Apple employee participating in a March Capture The Flag (CTF) hacking competition discovered the bug. However, that Apple …