Tech
TechCrunch Mobility: Rivian’s R2 gambit
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for all things “future of transportation.” To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility!
I was out for a few days last week and we have a bit of catching up to do! I won’t rehash too much, but expect a few of the bigger news items — ahem, Wayve’s $1.2 billion raise — to make it in here.
One more housekeeping note: I will be in Austin next week for SXSW, the annual tech, music, film, and culture event that always attracts an interesting collection of tech founders, creators, politicians, and other industry folks. I plan to attend the Rivian event, where the company is expected to reveal full details of its upcoming R2 line. I will also be moderating a panel called Innovation & Impact: Female Leaders Transforming Legacy Industries, alongside Rivian CFO Claire McDonough, Madison Reed CEO and founder Amy Errett, and Spotify chief public affairs officer Dustee Jenkins. If you’re there, please reach out!
Speaking of Rivian, the company is planning one of the fastest launches of a new all-electric car in the U.S. with its forthcoming R2 SUV. And the stakes couldn’t be any higher.
Senior reporter Sean O’Kane looked at historical sales data as well as Rivian’s own projections for 2026. Rivian said it expects to sell between 20,000 and 25,000 R2s this year, the first of which will head to customers in June once production begins.
That means it has six months to reach that goal. Even if Rivian hits the low end of that target, its sales rate will outpace every other comparable electric vehicle at or under $60,000 aside from the Tesla Model Y, O’Kane writes. Read the full story here.
My question is what tactical move is Rivian planning to use to reach that goal? It won’t be enough to merely state, “Pent-up demand, stupid.” This is no small feat. I expect Rivian to try a variety of tactics to spread the word and turn interest in its EVs into actual sales. What do you think the company will do? Email me!
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A little bird
No little birds this week — or at least ones we can share. Remember, if you have a tip for us, you can either email me at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or reach me through Signal at kkorosec.07. Sean O’Kane’s email is sean.okane@techcrunch.com
Deals!
This is from last week, but it’s worth commenting on. I’m talking about Wayve and its $1.2 billion raise (up to $1.5 billion if it can unlock a $300 million milestone-based investment from Uber). As I mentioned in my article, everyone seems to want a piece of this U.K. startup, which is now valued at $8.6 billion.
Wayve is taking a different approach to automated driving. It doesn’t want to be the operator. Instead it wants to license its software — both a fully automated driving product and a less capable one meant for advanced driver-assistance systems — to automakers and robotaxi operators. Wayve has taken a self-learning approach to its software. The company developed a software layer using an end-to-end neural network that doesn’t require high-definition maps and only uses data to teach the vehicle how to drive. It’s hardware agnostic, which could be appealing to Wayve backers Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Stellantis.
Other deals that got my attention …
Denso, the Toyota Motor-affiliated auto-parts supplier, made a takeover proposal for Kyoto-based chip maker Rohm, the WSJ reported.
Einride, the Swedish startup known for building both electric trucks and autonomous pods that are designed to carry freight, secured an oversubscribed $113 million PIPE (private investment in public equity) ahead of its public debut, which is expected for the first half of 2026.
Harbinger acquired autonomous-driving software company Phantom AI. Terms were not disclosed.
Holyvolt, the Swedish battery tech company backed by Volvo, acquired battery materials company Wildcat Discovery Technologies in a deal valued at $73 million.
Momenta, the Chinese autonomous vehicle developer backed by GM and Tencent Holdings, has filed confidentially for an initial public offering in Hong Kong, Bloomberg reported. The company may seek to raise at least $1 billion in its IPO.
Nominal, a software startup that helps defense, space, energy, and automotive companies test their manufacturing processes, raised $80 million in a Series B extension round at a $1 billion valuation, led by Founders Fund.
Toyota upped its offer price for supplier Toyota Industries to $30 billion.
Zeno, an African startup, raised $25 million in a Series A round to expand its app-controlled battery-swap network and produce more of its Emara motorcycles. About $20.5 million of that was an equity fundraise led by Congruent Ventures with participation from Active Impact and Lowercarbon Capital. The remaining $4.5 million is a debt facility from Camber Road and Trifecta Capital.
Notable reads and other tidbits
Chinese automaker BYD unveiled a new battery pack that it says is capable of charging from 10% to 70% in five minutes. This is certainly a game changer, but there is an important caveat to this claim: It needs a specific EV charger.
Hyundai, Toyota, and Chinese automakers like Chery potentially face the most impact from the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, as the Middle East accounts for a significant percentage of their deliveries, according to an analysis from Bernstein, CNBC reported.
Volkswagen Group surpassed an EV milestone this week. The company said it has delivered 4 million all-electric vehicles since it launched its first model in 2013. Half of those came from the Volkswagen brand. The remaining sales came from Škoda, SEAT/CUPRA, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, and Porsche.
A video shows a Waymo robotaxi blocking an ambulance as it responded to the scene of a mass shooting in Austin over the weekend. A spokesperson for Austin-Travis-County EMS told Axios that an officer followed established protocol to address the situation and was able to quickly move the vehicle. Waymo didn’t provide a statement to outlets at the time. The incident is the latest in which a first responder was used to move a Waymo and raises questions about the readiness of the technology.
One more thing …
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has scheduled a forum on autonomous vehicle safety for Tuesday. A who’s who of AV leaders are expected to attend, including Aurora co-founder and CEO Chris Urmson, Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana, and Zoox CEO Aicha Evans.
Tech
Alexa+ gets a new ‘adults only’ personality option that curses but won’t do NSFW content
Amazon’s AI assistant Alexa+ is getting another new personality. On Thursday, the company announced it’s expanding its lineup of personality styles for users to choose from to include a “Sassy” option, which is for adults only. Notes Amazon, before opting to use the Sassy personality, users will be required to go through additional security checks in the Alexa app.
The personality style will also not be available when Amazon Kids is enabled, Amazon says.
The new option joins others like Brief, Chill, and Sweet, launched last month.
When you toggle on the option for Sassy in the Alexa mobile app, you’re warned that the Sassy style uses explicit language, which is why it requires a security check. On iOS, this involved a Face ID scan.
The AI assistant explained its style to us like this: “The Sassy style is built on one premise: help first, judge always. Every answer comes wrapped in wit and a well-placed roast — it’ll answer your question; it’ll just make you feel something about it first. Expect reality checks delivered with charm, compliments that somehow sting, and warmth you didn’t see coming. Equal-opportunity irreverence, zero apologies. Honest, sharp, and funny — and somehow that’s more helpful than helpful.”
Alexa’s app also had warned that the style could contain “mature subject matter.”
However, further investigation discovered this is not Amazon’s version of something like Grok’s adult AI companions. The AI assistant said the new option won’t get into areas like explicit sexual content, hate speech, illegal activities, personal attacks, or anything that could cause harm to oneself or others.
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The move is the latest example of how Amazon is trying to make Alexa+ more customizable, as it revamps the assistant for the generative AI era. By offering the assistant different personalities — including one positioned as more adult — Amazon is borrowing from a broader trend in AI, where companies have been experimenting with tone, style, and personas to make their assistants more engaging and personalized to the individual users’ choices.
Tech
Tesla becomes a utility in the UK, setting up showdown with Octopus Energy
Tesla is now an officially licensed utility in the United Kingdom, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. The automotive and energy company recently received a license from the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, allowing it to sell electricity directly to households and commercial and industrial users.
The company has long dabbled in electricity markets. Its first pure energy products, the Powerwall and Powerpack, were introduced in 2015, but it wasn’t until a year later when Tesla merged with SolarCity that it started scaling the division rapidly. In 2022, the company launched Tesla Electric in Texas, which allowed it to sell electricity directly to customers. Powerwall owners can sell electrons from their batteries to participate in the company’s virtual power plant.
The new division, known as Tesla Energy Ventures, will compete with existing utilities in the U.K., including EDF, E.ON, and Octopus Energy. The competition with Octopus should prove particularly interesting. Since its founding in 2015, Octopus has become the country’s largest utility by focusing on slick software, renewable energy, and creative marketing. Sound familiar?
Tech
A writer is suing Grammarly for turning her and other authors into ‘AI editors’ without consent
Grammarly released a controversial feature last week that uses AI to simulate editorial feedback, making it seem like you’re getting a critique from novelist Stephen King, the late scientist Carl Sagan, or tech journalist Kara Swisher. But Grammarly did not get permission from the hundreds of experts it included in this feature, called “Expert Review,” to use their names.
One of the affected writers, journalist Julia Angwin, has filed a class action lawsuit against Superhuman, the parent company that owns Grammarly, arguing that the company violated the privacy and publicity rights of her and the other writers it impersonated. A class action lawsuit allows writers to join Angwin in her case.
“I have worked for decades honing my skills as a writer and editor, and I am distressed to discover that a tech company is selling an imposter version of my hard-earned expertise,” Angwin said in a statement.
The situation is more than a little ironic — Angwin has spent her career leading investigations into tech companies’ impacts on privacy. Other critics of this kind of technology, like renowned AI ethicist Timnit Gebru, were also included in Grammarly’s “Expert Review.”
The “Expert Review” feature, available only to subscribers paying $144 a year, predictably fails to deliver on the promise of thoughtful feedback.
Casey Newton, the founder and editor of the tech newsletter Platformer and another person impersonated by Grammarly, fed one of his articles into the tool and got feedback from Grammarly’s approximation of tech journalist Kara Swisher. Grammarly’s imitation of Swisher produced “feedback” so generic that it raises the question of why the company would go through the rigmarole of using these writers’ likenesses in the first place.
Here is what Grammarly’s approximation of Kara Swisher told him: “Could you briefly compare how daily AI users versus AI skeptics articulate risk, creating a through-line readers can follow?”
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Newton relayed the message from the AI approximation of Kara Swisher to the actual, real human being, Kara Swisher.
“You rapacious information and identity thieves better get ready for me to go full McConaughey on you,” Swisher texted Newton (referring to Grammarly). “Also, you suck.”
Grammarly has since disabled the “Expert Review” feature, according to a LinkedIn post by Superhuman CEO Shishir Mehrotra. While Mehrotra offered an apology, he continued to defend the idea of the feature.
“Imagine your professor sharpening your essay, your sales leader reshaping a customer pitch, a thoughtful critic challenging your arguments, or a leading expert elevating your proposal,” he wrote. “For experts, this is a chance to build that same ubiquitous bond with users, much like Grammarly has.”
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