Rohit Prasad, Vice President and Senior Scientist, Amazon Alexa Team. When Amazon’s first Alexa-enabled smart speaker hit the market in 2014, it was a novelty: a voice-activated interface for processing natural language that could perform a number of simple tasks. Fast forward to today, and the internet connected platform has rapidly expanded and become its … Read more
Nayel Nassar and Jennifer Gates, eldest daughter of Bill and Melinda French Gates. (Instagram photo via @nayelnassar) Melinda French Gates is paying special attention to the Tokyo Olympics this week as her future son-in-law represents Eqypt in equestrian sports. French Gates tweeted Tuesday about Nayel Nassar, the fiancée of her and Bill Gates’ eldest daughter, … Read more
The suborbital space travelers Oliver Daemen, Wally Funk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Bezos stand in front of the camera in front of a Blue Origin New Shepard booster. (Jeff Bezos via Instagram) Jeff Bezos and his crew are still completing their training for Blue Origin’s first-ever manned spaceflight, scheduled for Tuesday, but Bezos’ space company … Read more
Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly newsletter for startups and markets. It is inspired by what the day of the week is Exchange column dig in, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Would you like it in your inbox every Saturday? Log In Here. It’s the end of a short week, … Read more
Mark Nelson was named CEO of Tableau Software in March and leads the Seattle-based company as part of Salesforce. (Tableau and GeekWire photos) Seattle-based Tableau Software is no longer an independent public company, but is back under the watchful eye of Wall Street for a different reason. Foreclosure bought the data visualization company for more … Read more
The country is investing heavily in its own satellite constellations in near-earth orbit There was a wave of companies in recent years hoping to offer broadband internet from thousands of satellites in low earth orbit (LEO) that cover most of the earth’s surface. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen excitement in this category. Companies … Read more
Merging physical and digital: A crowd at The International, Valve’s Dota 2 eSports tournament in Seattle in 2017, three years before the pandemic. (GeekWire file photo / Kevin Lisota) The pandemic had a seismic impact on face-to-face meetings and events, requiring organizers and attendees to adapt to a whole new reality. The aftermath could prove … Read more
New Shepard’s booster descends to Blue Origin’s landing pad. (Blue origin via YouTube) The Blue Origin space project by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos flew a mannequin into space today during the 15th test flight for its reusable suborbital spaceship New Shepard – but for the first time living, breathing people practiced every step before takeoff … Read more
Spent a day Driving a pre-production 2022 Mercedes Benz EQS gave an in-depth look at what the German automaker did with the billions of dollars it spent on electrification. The EQS is a carefully crafted flagship sedan that combines the automaker’s MBUX infotainment system, a new electric platform and performance improvements. It is an inexcusable … Read more
Annie Liu has always been quite at odds with her identity. At home she only spoke Chinese, and out in the world she switched to another language and changed her behavior to better adapt. “I think I really just wanted to find a passion that could really combine these two parts of my identity,” said … Read more