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☆ Ikea's fleet of 250 autonomous drones takes stock of warehouse inventory without any human intervention
▼ + stars: | 2024-09-20 | by ( John Kell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Three years ago, a drone took flight at an Ikea warehouse in Switzerland for the first time. They're more self-sufficient, too: For every 10 minutes that a Verity drone is in flight, it charges for 20 minutes. Ikea's investments in Verity's drone technology fit into its broader strategy to explore and test newer supply-chain technologies. Jönsson added that deploying drones has allowed employees to have more time for analyzing inventory data. Before using warehouse drones, workers would check thousands of pallets repeatedly in order to manage inventory.

Persons: Verity, —, Raffaello D'Andrea, — there's, Uber, Jeff Bezos, Bezos, Domino's, there's, DroneUp, D'Andrea, Verity hasn't, it's, Moller, Erik Jönsson, they're, haven't, Jönsson Organizations: Ikea, Chain Management, Service, Amazon, Walmart, Companies, McKinsey & Company, McKinsey, Ikea's, Ingka, Maersk, Samsung Group, Ingka Investments, Nvidia, Federal Aviation Administration, Investors, Kiva Systems, Amazon Robotics, Qualcomm Ventures, A.P, Moller Holding, Exor Ventures Locations: Switzerland, Swiss, Dutch, —, Zealand, Arizona , Florida, Utah, Dallas

☆ GM’s Cruise will offer robotaxis on Uber’s platform starting next year
▼ + stars: | 2024-08-23 | by ( ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

Reuters —Cruise will offer its autonomous vehicles on Uber’s platform starting next year, the companies said on Thursday, as the General Motors-backed robotaxi firm attempts a comeback. The multi-year partnership will allow Uber riders to choose a trip using a Cruise autonomous vehicle, they said. Uber’s partnership with Cruise comes as Tesla CEO Elon Musk is set to unveil its delayed plans for a robotaxi product in October amid slowing demand for electric vehicles. Commercializing autonomous vehicles has been tougher than expected and taken longer than promised due to complex technology, soaring investments, tight regulatory scrutiny and federal investigations. Trips by self-driving vehicles on Uber’s platform rose six-fold in the June quarter year-on-year, helped by partnerships with companies including Waymo, as well as startup Waabi for freight services.

Persons: Reuters — Cruise, Uber, Alphabet’s, Cruise, Elon Musk, Dara Khosrowshahi Organizations: Reuters, General Motors Locations: Phoenix, U.S, San Francisco

☆ Startups are building robots that can perceive the human world. Here's why VC firms like Khosla and a16z say that spatial intelligence will be the next big thing in AI.
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-09 | by ( Samantha Stokes | Emma Cosgrove | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Spatial intelligence allows robots to navigate and interact with their environment more efficiently, which means that robots can perform more complex tasks with higher precision and adaptability. AdvertisementEven so, investors say that spatial intelligence represents a quantum leap for the robotics industry, a space already benefiting from an AI boom. Lior Susan, CEO and founder of Eclipse Ventures, is betting that the difficulty of building AI with spatial intelligence will yield bigger returns in the future. "You see this boom of generative AI startups that are actually buying a lot of compute that do not have a business model yet," Susan said. Big tech is rolling in, tooBigger tech companies are also gearing up to compete in robotics' spatial intelligence race—both as builders and investors.

Persons: —, Andreessen Horowitz, Catalyst, Howard Morgan, Max Rimple, Erin Price, Wright, Fei, Fei Li, Kanu Gulati, Khosla, –, Gulati, Lior Susan, Susan, Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang Organizations: Service, Khosla Ventures, Business, B Capital, Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue Management, Stanford University, Eclipse Ventures, Intelligence, Lux, Sequoia Capital, Microsoft, Nvidia, Carbon Robotics, AIs Locations: LLMs, OpenAI, Lux Capital, Taipei

☆ Uber, Khosla, Nvidia invest in $200 million funding round for autonomous trucking startup Waabi
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-18 | by ( Riley De León | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Autonomous trucking startup Waabi announced Tuesday it has raised $200 million in an oversubscribed Series B funding round led by existing investors Uber and Khosla Ventures. Waabi's latest funding round also includes Nvidia, a new investor in the company, as well as Porsche and the venture capital arm of Volvo. Using generative AI, Waabi has built a single AI system that is capable of reasoning, just as humans do, and that can come up with problems human minds couldn't conceptualize. The new investor round brings Waabi's total funding to $280 million since being founded in 2021. "This funding round gives us everything we need, both financially and strategically, to launch fully driverless trucks and accelerate our growth in 2025," Urtasun said.

Persons: Waabi, couldn't, Raquel Urtasun, Jensen Huang, Urtasun Organizations: Uber, Khosla Ventures, Nvidia, Porsche, Volvo, Uber Freight, U.S, Trucking, CNBC Locations: Toronto, Dallas, Houston, Texas, U.S, Waabi

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