I have accomplished the unthinkable: I have learned to sleep soundly through the night without my phone at my bedside. Please, hold your applause. If it weren’t for the Dreamie alarm clock, I’m not sure that this Herculean feat would have been possible.

If it feels as though I am bragging that I brushed my teeth this morning, then you are not Dreamie’s target audience. But I certainly am, and I’m not alone in feeling so attached to my phone that I’m basically a cyborg.

I know that using my phone in bed interferes with my sleep, and poor sleep interferes with basically everything else about my mental and physical health. Yet before Dreamie, I went more than a decade with my phone at my bedside every single night – that’s tens of thousands of nights spent so attached to my glowing rectangle that I couldn’t imagine the horror of waking up in the middle of the night without it.

I’m not totally helpless. Over the last few years, I’ve established a habit of reading before bed, which makes me feel markedly more relaxed when it’s finally time to shut my eyes. Still, I’ve never been a good sleeper (just ask my parents, who suffered endlessly for taking me to see a museum exhibit about the Titanic when I was a child, which made me think I was going to die on the Titanic). Sometimes, when I can’t drown out my noisy brain, the only thing that can get me to sleep is to close my eyes and listen to podcasts or audiobooks (as long as they’re not about the Titanic).

Whoever designed the Dreamie seems to share my affliction, because what sets Dreamie apart from all of the other fancy alarm clocks is laughably simple: It can play podcasts.

Before we get to the podcasts, though, we need to zoom out. Here’s how Dreamie works.

In “ambience” mode, it’s just a normal clock – but it has another series of modes that make up your sleep routine.

The “wind down” starts your routine, signaling that it’s almost time for bed. I have mine set to sound like a fireplace crackle with a soft, orange light, which fades and glows to imitate actual fire. I have the fireplace running for about 25 minutes, during which I’m usually reading. Then, it transitions to the “noise mask” mode, which I set to sound like a thunderstorm — but if I get sleepy earlier, I can turn it on then. Whatever sound you pick will play until your wakeup routine begins, with the “sunrise” light slowly getting brighter until it’s time for your alarm to go off. (You can also choose no sound, if you prefer.)

Dreamie’s best feature is its “back to sleep mode.” If you wake up in the middle of the night, you can turn on “back to sleep,” which plays whatever media you choose, whether it’s a breathing routine that comes loaded onto the device, another soundscape, or any podcast you want to listen to. You can choose the episode or show ahead of time so that you’re not scrolling around the interface in the middle of the night, making you feel even more awake. You can opt to use Dreamie with Bluetooth headphones, so if you share a bed with someone else, you won’t disturb them… but you have to wear headphones to sleep.

Dreamie is Wi-Fi enabled, which means it can download whatever podcast you want from the internet. For that, you have the architecture of podcasts to thank – since podcasts are distributed by RSS feeds, any developer can create their own custom RSS app, which is how Dreamie can play them. (Let’s take a moment to appreciate RSS, one of the last relics of the open internet, which Spotify has actively tried to quash in favor of its own walled garden.)

It’s embarrassing that this feature is so useful for me. Usually, if I wake up and can’t fall back asleep, I have to pick up my actual phone to turn on a podcast. But you see, I’m a millennial, which means that if I’ve gotten any notification after I’ve fallen asleep, I will reflexively open that notification before I turn on my podcast or audiobook. From there, it’s a cascade of bad decisions that lead to me being awake for two hours in the middle of the night.

My own actions are to blame here, but I know that my bad habits are not unique – one survey of 2,000 American adults found that 87% of us sleep with our phones in our bedrooms. I don’t need scientific studies to tell me that I sleep worse when I spend too much time looking at my phone, but there’s data to support my experience. With Dreamie, I can simply just swipe down to turn on the “back to sleep” mode and listen to nerds talk about baseball statistics.

My bad phone-in-bed habits extend to the morning. When I wake up, I usually spend about half an hour scrolling on my phone before I get out of bed. But if I’m not distracted by my phone, I can get out of bed much faster and start my day feeling like a person, rather than a hungry, caffeine-deprived zombie who has to pee.

Dreamie costs $250, which is steep for an alarm clock. At least there’s no subscription or companion app that you need to download. Even though it’s pretty dense with features, the user interface is pretty straightforward, resembling the iPhone Clock app.

At times while testing the Dreamie, I “cheated” and used my phone in bed to listen to audiobooks (sometimes, you just really want to listen to something specific that isn’t a podcast). At first, I kept the spirit of the Dreamie alive and prevented myself from using my phone for any other reason. But that just wasn’t realistic. Inevitably, I used my phone in the middle of the night.

I don’t know if Dreamie can ever realistically support apps like Libby or Libro.fm, since there are technical limitations at play. Maybe in the future, Dreamie can give us a way to upload our own media, including downloaded audiobooks.

Toward the end of my review period with Dreamie, I also started testing the Brick, which I have been using to block every app on my phone at night except for podcast and audiobook apps. At $59, it’s more affordable than the Dreamie, so if I were to buy one of these devices for real, I think I’d be able to get most of the same benefits from the Brick. Still, there’s something nice about being able to leave my phone in a completely separate room. Even if your phone is “Bricked,: it’s still your phone. And do you really want your phone to be the last thing you see every day?

I recently had the opportunity to test out a wearable from Bee, the AI wrist gadget that Amazon acquired last year and has since updated with a number of new features.

Like other AI wearables, Bee is designed as a kind personal assistant: it records, transcribes, and summarizes the user’s conversations throughout the day, providing an ongoing note-taking capability that’s useful if you’re forgetful or just want to be more organized about your life. If you sync it with your calendar, it can also send you alerts and reminders about things you’re supposed to do throughout the day.

TechCrunch has written about Bee before, and the way it works is pretty simple: the user powers it up, puts it on, syncs it with the Bee mobile app, and enters some basic personal information. Bee has a built-in recorder that can be turned on and off by clicking the wearable’s button. When Bee is recording, a green light flashes. When it’s not, that green light goes off. After a conversation has been recorded, the app will create an automated summary that is easy to read, as well as an entire transcription of the conversation.

Your mileage may vary on how exciting (or not) this whole conceit is. The problem for me is that I am something of a privacy enthusiast. In a world where the average person is beset from all sides by constant digital surveillance, I appreciate any opportunity I can get to not be recorded. Therefore, the idea of walking around with an eavesdropping gizmo strapped to my wrist 24/7 was not particularly appealing.

Yet, even I have to admit that — in the right context — Bee could have a lot of potential to help organize your life.

Bee really comes through in the context of professional engagements. If your day is full of meetings and you have trouble keeping it all straight, Bee could be a moderately competent assistant.

During a business-related phone call this week, I activated Bee after getting confirmation that I could record our meeting. Afterward, the app faithfully regurgitated a summary of the conversation, helpfully breaking down each segment of our talk so that I could review it later without having to re-listen to our entire conversation. This was undeniably helpful, although it should be noted that this isn’t something that’s markedly different than those offered by other transcription services, like Otter or Granola and others, which also offer transcriptions and auto-generated summaries.

That said, you could envision a situation in which a professional who has to navigate between various meetings throughout the day would be well-served by this device. You could just keep Bee running throughout the day and, later, review the conversation summaries for anything you’re not clear about.

Bee does a relatively good job at summarizing conversations, but the actual transcripts offered by the wearable can be a bit of a mess. Previous critics have noted that you usually have to manually enter the names of other speakers, as Bee doesn’t always know who is talking. During my conversation, I noticed that it had also omitted certain sections of our chat — nothing huge, but it wasn’t a complete account of everything that had been said.

I also took Bee to my semi-weekly movie night with my friends and left it running throughout the night. Given the fact that we watched Reservoir Dogs, I was mildly afraid that the wearable would mistake all of the vulgar carnage for real-life bloodshed and potentially trigger some sort of internal alarm. However, Bee knew — basically — what was happening. The wearable figured out that we were watching a movie and, in the summary of events afterward, the wearable labeled the conversation “Tarantino Film Scene Analysis.”

While Bee shows early promise as a professional tool, I would not want this thing recording me in my personal life. Weirdly enough, Bee has largely been marketed as a product for personal use. To be comfortable with that, you have to be comfortable with Bee having access to a majority of both your offline and digital life.

Indeed, to work well, Bee needs expansive mobile permissions — including access to your location, photos, phone contacts, calendar, and mobile notifications. You can also share your health data with it — should you, for whatever reason, want it to know about your sleep patterns or your resting heart rate.

The large accumulation of data Bee collects is stored in the cloud, which — again, for the digital privacy enthusiast — presents its own concerns. In a message to tech YouTuber Becca Farsace, Bee apparently unveiled a demo of the device running entirely locally. Were the company able to produce such a device, I would be thoroughly impressed — and might even consider buying one. That said, Amazon hasn’t offered any update on those plans.

As for Bee’s digital privacy protections, the company says that it offers encryption to protect user data — both at rest and in-transit. In its privacy policy, the company states that it has “implemented technical and organizational security measures designed to protect the security of any personal information” that the company processes. Bee also claims that it undergoes “rigorous third-party security audits” and employs continuous security monitoring. That all sounds quite good, although it’s worth noting that Amazon — like many large tech companies — has been subject to the occasional data security issue or two (not exactly surprising for a company that governs as much of the global cloud environment as it does, but still).

In short, Bee is a curious piece of hardware that, given some time and some tweaking, could have some promising professional applications further down the road. As a digital assistant for your personal life, however, it might prove to be a little too invasive for some users.

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Robotaxis are here! And yet, they’re not. 

That contradiction neatly captures Waymo’s current reality. Anyone walking around San Francisco could reasonably declare that robotaxis have arrived. But arrival, even at scale, doesn’t guarantee permanence. Such is the dogged threat hanging over every company trying to commercialize autonomous vehicles.

Waymo paused operations in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio because its robotaxis are struggling to deal with heavy rain and flooded roads — and specifically knowing when not to enter them. As I prepared to send this newsletter, we learned the company extended that to Austin and Nashville as well. It’s been a persistent problem for Waymo, which prompted the company to issue a recall last week.

In the same week, Waymo halted robotaxi operations on freeways in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Miami as it works to improve performance in construction zones.

For now, the arrival of robotaxis is conditional. That doesn’t mean this conditional status will last forever, but it’s a reminder that launching commercially is not mission accomplished. Waymo — arguably the leader in commercial robotaxi ridership and fleet size — is in the thick of that process. For every new city it enters or capability it unlocks, a new edge case is discovered.

Situationship or corporationmaxxing?

I’m ditching my “Little bird” section this week to dive into SpaceX, its IPO, and the situationship in the Elon Musk business universe.

I typically don’t dedicate too much space in this newsletter to space. Heh. But the SpaceX IPO filing dropped this week, and the man at its helm is also deeply tied to Tesla. So, here we are, talking about space and, more specifically, how Elon Musk uses resources from one company to service another. 

The interconnected nature of Tesla and SpaceX isn’t a secret; Tesla is a publicly traded company and does disclose financial transactions with other Musk-affiliated entities. This new IPO filing does the same and with a bit more detail. And now that Musk’s company xAI has merged with SpaceX, the IPO puts all of these transactions under one company. 

For example, SpaceX purchased $506 million of Tesla’s commercial energy storage products, called Megapack, in 2025 — nearly a threefold increase from the previous year. SpaceX also bought $131 million of Cybertrucks last year. SpaceX paid Musk’s infrastructure firm, The Boring Company, $1 million to construct tunnels in Bastrop, Texas. Musk’s social media company X, which was acquired by xAI last year and has since merged with SpaceX, also spent $1 million leasing space from The Boring Company. 

Then there is Tesla’s investment in xAI. Following SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI, that investment was converted into an equity interest in SpaceX.

These costs will likely be eclipsed by two future SpaceX-Tesla projects: building Terafab, a chip-manufacturing facility, and Macrohard, an AI platform the two companies are developing that will use autonomous agents to augment the work of humans.

All of this leads to my question for you. Will SpaceX and Tesla merge?

To participate in our polls, sign up here to get TechCrunch Mobility directly in your inbox!

For other SpaceX coverage, check out these stories:

Everything in the SpaceX IPO filing
A breakdown of how Elon Musk increased his power 
Who will benefit most?
xAI burned through $6.4B last year 
xAI keeps turning to gas turbines to power data centers

Deals!

Aboard, a Southern California-based startup developing extended-range electric travel trailers, raised $13 million in a pre-Series A round led by Ondine Capital and Llama Ventures. Fun fact: The company hired Richard Kim — an automotive designer known for his work on the BMW i3 and i8 and as co-founder of the defunct EV startup Canoo — as a consultant.

Quartermaster, an Arlington, Virginia-based startup developing a distributed sensing network for ships, raised $43 million in a Series A funding round co-led by First Round Capital and Quiet Capital.

May Mobility, an autonomous vehicle technology startup, formed a strategic agreement with Ecarx, an automotive tech company backed by Geely founder Li Shufu. Under the deal, Ecarx will supply May Mobility with thousands of purpose-built robotaxi vehicles. The companies plan to partner with a third party to initially deploy the AVs next year and scale to commercialization by 2028. The total value of the project is estimated to be about $750 million over its entire duration.

Scapia, an Indian travel booking startup, raised $63 million in a funding round led by General Catalyst, with existing investors Peak XV Partners and Z47 also participating.

Uber increased its stake and now owns 19.5% of German food delivery company Delivery Hero, Bloomberg reported. 

Notable reads and other tidbits

Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at MIT, shared his recent presentation on AI and how its future depends on human behavior, governance, and trust.

The global EV economy is K-shaped, and this is the country that is being left behind. 

Lyft published a blog that lays out the company’s position on autonomous vehicles. In its view — and one that is similar to rival Uber — a ride-hailing service requires human drivers and robot ones. This makes sense politically; Lyft doesn’t want to rattle its human gig workers. It also reflects the realities of where robotaxis are, in terms of scale. The upshot: Robotaxis are not a part of daily life for most people in the United States.

Self-driving tech startup Nuro hired Michael Mancini as its chief financial officer. Mancini was previously CFO at Energy Recovery, Astranis Space Technologies, and Aerion Supersonic.

Stellantis, the automaker behind the Jeep and Ram brands, has tapped self-driving startup Wayve to bring hands-free driving to its vehicles in 2028. Meanwhile, Stellantis unveiled its $70 billion turnaround plan, which includes 11 new models for North America — and even some Chryslers!

Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) driver-assistance software is now available in Lithuania. This is the second European country to approve its use. Reminder: Making FSD available in Europe is critical to Tesla’s and CEO Elon Musk’s ambitions. It’s also financially important for Musk, whose $1 trillion pay package is tied to hitting a number of product goals, including hitting “10 million active FSD subscriptions” by 2035.

A San Francisco doctor who sued Waymo because its identity-verification system misidentified him as a terrorist dropped the lawsuit after the company resolved the issue.

One more thing …

The last time I was in a Nissan Leaf was two years ago when I test drove a 2024 Nissan Leaf SV Plus, which cost $37,815 (including the destination fee). And at the time, I described the experience as a mixed bag. I recently got back in one, this time a 2026 Nissan Leaf Platinum+, priced at $42,635, including destination charges and some special add-ons like two-tone paint and the floor mat package. 

This model, the third generation of the Leaf, had an improved EPA estimated range of 259 miles (and some versions go above 300 miles). But that wasn’t the first upgrade I noticed. This new Leaf had a lighter, more modern, dare I say upscale, interior cabin. I won’t quite say “sleek,” but it was enjoyable and a notable upgrade. (Notice the cool lighting at night in the picture above?) My version, which should be noted was the top trim, came with a wireless phone-charging pad, dimming panoramic roof, a heads-up display, and a long, curved 14.3-inch central screen.

Last time, I complained about the lack of tech for a vehicle priced above $30,000 — like a backup camera with high resolution. There are several notable improvements that come standard and correct my previous criticism, including a 360-degree camera, wireless Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, and adaptive cruise control. This time around, I was happy to get back in a Nissan Leaf.

Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or my Signal at kkorosec.07, or email Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com.