Tech
Volkswagen’s cheapest EV ever is the first to use Rivian software
Volkswagen’s ultra-cheap EV called the ID EVERY1 — a small four-door hatchback revealed Wednesday — will be the first to roll out with software and architecture from Rivian, according to a source familiar with the new model.
The EV is expected to go into production in 2027 with a starting price of 20,000 euros ($21,500). A second EV called the ID.2all, which will be priced in the 25,000 euro price category, will be available in 2026. Both vehicles are part of the automaker’s new of category electric urban front-wheel drive cars that are being developing under the so-called “Brand Group Core” that makes up the volume brands in the VW Group. And both vehicles are for the European market.
The EVERY1 will be the first to ship with Rivian’s vehicle architecture and software as part of a $5.8 billion joint venture struck last year between the German automaker and U.S. EV maker. The ID.2all is based on the E3 1.1 architecture and software developed by VW’s software unit Cariad.
VW didn’t name Rivian in its reveal Wednesday, although there were numerous nods to next-generation software. Kai Grünitz, member of the Volkswagen Brand Board of Management responsible for Technical Development, noted it would be the first model in the entire VW Group to use a “fundamentally new, particularly powerful software architecture.”
“This means the future entry-level Volkswagen can be equipped with new functions throughout its entire life cycle,” he said. “Even after purchase of a new car, the small Volkswagen can still be individually adapted to customer needs.”
Sources who didn’t want to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed to TechCrunch that Rivian’s software will be in the ID EVERY1 EV. TechCrunch has reached out to Rivian and VW and will update the article if the companies respond.
The new joint venture provides Rivian with a needed influx of cash and the opportunity to diversify its business. Meanwhile, VW Group gains a next-generation electrical architecture and software for EVs that will help it better compete. Both companies have said that the joint venture, called Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies, will reduce development costs and help scale new technologies more quickly.
The joint venture is a 50-50 partnership with co-CEOs. Rivian’s head of software, Wassym Bensaid, and Volkswagen Group’s chief technical engineer, Carsten Helbing, will lead the joint venture. The team will be based initially in Palo Alto, California. Three other sites are in development in North America and Europe, the companies have previously said.
“The ID. EVERY1 represents the last piece of the puzzle on our way to the widest model selection in the volume segment,” Thomas Schäfer, CEO of the Volkswagen Passenger Cars brand and Head of the Brand Group Core, said in a statement. “We will then offer every customer the right car with the right drive system–including affordable all-electric entry-level mobility. Our goal is to be the world’s technologically leading high-volume manufacturer by 2030. And as a brand for everyone–just as you would expect from Volkswagen.”
The Volkswagen ID EVERY1 is just a concept for now — and with only a few details attached to the unveiling. The concept vehicle reaches a top speed of 130 km/h (80 miles per hour) and is powered by a newly developed electric drive motor with 70 kW, according to Volkswagen. The German automaker said the range on the EVERY1 will be at least 250 kilometers (150 miles). The vehicle is small but larger than VW’s former UP! vehicle. The company said it will have enough space for four people and a luggage compartment volume of 305 liters.
Tech
Tesla brings its robotaxi service to Dallas and Houston
Tesla is expanding its robotaxi service to Dallas and Houston, according to a social media post from the company.
The post says simply that “Robotaxi is now rolling out in Dallas & Houston 🤠” and includes a 14-second video showing Tesla vehicles driving without human monitors or drivers in the front seat.
The company now offers robotaxi service in three cities, all of them in Texas, after launching in Austin last year and starting to offer rides without safety drivers in January 2026. In a February filing, Tesla said that its Austin robotaxis have been involved in 14 crashes since launch.
It also offers a more limited ride service with human drivers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Tesla may not be running many vehicles in either of these new markets yet, with crowdsourced data on the Robotaxi Tracker website only registering a single vehicle in each city (compared to 46 active vehicles logged in Austin).
Tech
Netflix plans to add a vertical video feed, use AI for recommendations
Netflix is going to launch a TikTok-like vertical video feed within its apps this month, and plans to use AI broadly for content creation and recommendations, the company said on Thursday.
Netflix has been testing a vertical video feed since last year. The short video feature could aid users with discovering video podcasts, along with the current slate of shows and movies. The company is also leaning more into using AI for recommendations after launching a ChatGPT-powered search feature last year.
“We have been in personalization and recommendation for two decades, but we still see tremendous room to make it better by leveraging newer technologies,” Netflix co-CEO Gregory Peters said during the company’s first-quarter conference call. “Recommendation systems based on new model architectures not only improve current personalization but also let us iterate and improve more quickly — adding support for different content types much more efficiently.”
Co-CEO Ted Sarandos said he sees AI tools improving the entire content creation process. “In general, we expect GenAI to make content better; better tools, better processes […] It takes a great artist to make great art, and AI won’t change that. But AI will give those artists better tools to bring those visions to life,” he said.
Last month, Netflix bought Ben Affleck’s AI creation company InterPositive, which, Sarandos said, has garnered interest from creators.
“With our acquisition of InterPositive, we think it accelerates our GenAI capability because it is proprietary technology created specifically for filmmakers and filmmaking, different from other GenAI video applications. While our ownership of InterPositive is very new, we have generated interest with creators who have spent time with the tools, and we are seeing momentum build around adoption,” he noted.
Netflix also mentioned that it wants to use AI to improve its ad suite, and allow for new formats and customization to get better returns. The company expects to generate ad revenue of $3 billion this year.
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Netflix reported revenue of $12.25 billion in Q1 2026, up 16.2% year-year-year, and said profit jumped 83% to $5.28 billion. Alongside the first-quarter results, Netflix said its co-founder and chair, Reed Hastings, is leaving the company’s board this summer.
Notably, the company hiked subscription prices in the U.S. late last month, which could have a positive impact next quarter. The company said it ended 2025 with 325 million paying subscribers.
Tech
Bluesky confirms DDoS attack is cause of continued app outages
Bluesky’s website and app are still struggling on Friday after experiencing service interruptions that chief operating officer Rose Wang attributed to an ongoing cyberattack.
On Thursday evening, the social media company confirmed that a “sophisticated Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack” was to blame for the issues, which had originally started on April 15 at around 8:40 p.m. ET.
Distributed denial-of-service attacks often involve pummeling apps or websites with large amounts of junk web traffic aimed at overloading and knocking its servers offline. While these kinds of cyberattacks do not involve intrusions into a company’s systems, these incidents can still be disruptive to both the company and its users.
In a post on the Bluesky account, the company shared the cause of the problem and noted that the attack was “impacting our operations, with users experiencing intermittent interruptions in service for their feeds, notifications, threads, and search.”
Bluesky said that it has not seen any evidence of unauthorized access to private data, however.
When originally reached for comment on Thursday, Bluesky only pointed us to the status.bsky.app page and account (@status.bsky.app) for updates. The company did not provide an estimated time for a fix.
The network’s status page is currently not working, however.
Bluesky said it will provide another update on the status of the attack and its mitigation by 1 p.m. ET on Friday.
Because the outages are intermittent, the Bluesky site and app will load at times, slowly, and other times will display error messages.
For instance, switching to a particular feed within the app could display a message that says, “This feed is currently receiving high traffic and is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later. Message from server: Rate Limit Exceeded.”
Popular feeds like Discover or the official Bluesky Team’s feed often see this problem, even as users’ own personal feeds are functional.
Other times, like when trying to visit a user’s profile, the site will display an error message, forcing you to refresh and try again.
Bluesky protocol engineer Bryan Newbold remarked around 3:46 a.m. ET on Wednesday, “oof, our services are getting hit pretty hard tonight.”
Notably, the service disruptions are impacting Bluesky, but other communities, like Blacksky, that run their own infrastructure on the underlying protocol that powers the decentralized social network, are still functioning.
Blacksky’s team told TechCrunch that the Bluesky outage has led to a “significant spike” in migration requests from Bluesky users over the past 12 hours, as users, devs, and other ATmosphere founders like Sebastian at Eurosky have been promoting its services.
It was clear that Bluesky’s team was in a hectic state this week while facing these issues, as one message on its status page had a typo: ” investigating an incident with service in one of our reginos [sic].”
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