Waymo, the self-driving company under Alphabet, began testing its robotaxis in Atlanta on Tuesday, adding another city to its ever-expanding testing and deployment domain.Over the next few months, Waymo will deploy a handful of cars driven manually by humans to gather mapping data and get familiar with Atlanta’s environment, Sandy Karp, a Waymo spokesperson, told TechCrunch. Later, Waymo aims to test its robotaxis in Atlanta without the safety driver in the front seat.Winter in Buffalo ❄️🦬, Spring in DC 🌸🏛️ ...

Tesla has ended discounts on inventory across its entire electric vehicle lineup — even as sales for EVs have flagged — as part of a larger and vague plan by CEO Elon Musk to “streamline the whole Tesla sales and delivery system.”“It has become complex and inefficient,” Musk wrote in a post on X, the social media company he owns, in response to another user’s comment.Musk’s announcement on X comes a day after thousands of Tesla employees lost their jobs. The layoffs, which will affect more than 10% of staff ...

Tesla’s layoffs and executive departures took a bite out its share price this week. The well-known electric vehicle company shed around 10% of its staff, impacting an estimated 14,000 staff or more. Two well-known executives also decided it was time to move on.In response to the news, shares of Tesla lost ground. The company’s value has eroded this year, falling 35% through the end of trading yesterday.The year has not been kind to Tesla. It missed delivery estimates for the first quarter, has reportedly re ...

Tesla layoffs hit high performers, some departments slashed, sources say 'I lost 20% of my team, some really good players too' Tesla management told employees Monday that the recent layoffs — which gutted some departments by 20% and even hit high performers — were largely due to poor financial performance, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The layoffs were announced to staff just a week before Tesla is scheduled to report its first-quarter earnings. The move comes as Tesla has seen its prof ...

The Oversight Board, Meta’s semi-independent policy council, it turning its attention to how the company’s social platforms are handling explicit, AI-generated images. Tuesday, it announced investigations into two separate cases over how Instagram in India and Facebook in the U.S. handled AI-generated images of public figures after Meta’s systems fell short on detecting and responding to the explicit content.In both cases, the sites have now taken down the media. The board is not naming the individuals targ ...

As the Gulf region gains growing strategic importance for the tech war between the U.S. and China, Microsoft makes a big move into one of its richest oil countries.On Monday evening, Microsoft announced a $1.5 billion strategic investment in G42, the Abu Dhabi-based company that has become a major force in the United Arab Emirates’ ambition to be a global leader in artificial intelligence. The minority stake will give Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, a seat on G42’s board of directors.The d ...

Tesla layoffs hit high performers, slashes some departments, sources say 'I lost 20% of my team, some really good players too'Tesla management told employees Monday that the recent round of layoffs — which gutted some departments by 20% and even hit high performers– were largely due to poor financial performance, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.The layoffs were announced to staff just a week before Tesla is scheduled to report its first-quarter earnings. The move comes as Tesla has seen it ...

Ahead of a full meeting of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) this week (April 16 and 17), which is expected to produce guidance on a controversial tactic used by Meta to force Facebook and Instagram users to consent to its tracking, almost two dozen civil society groups and nonprofits have penned an open letter urging the bloc’s data protection bodies not to endorse a strategy they say is intended to bypass the EU’s privacy protections for commercial gain.Many of the signatories, which include the l ...

Meta has said that it plans to “temporarily” shutter Threads in Turkey from April 29, in response to an interim injunction imposed by the Turkish competition authority last month over the way Meta shares data between Threads and Instagram.The Turkish Competition Authority (TCA), known as Rekabet Kurumu, issued findings on March 18, noting that its investigations found that Meta was abusing its market dominant position by combining the data of users who create Threads profile with that of their Instagram acc ...

Tesla is laying off thousands of workers as it tries to simultaneously cut costs and boost productivity, according to CEO Elon Musk.The electric automaker is cutting “more than 10%” of its global headcount, Musk said in an email reported by Electrek and Bloomberg News. Tesla finished 2023 with over 140,000 employees, meaning the cuts could impact more than 14,000 people.The layoffs come just two weeks after Tesla announced its first year-over-year sales drop in years, amid a wider cooling of EV sales. The c ...