Some of the world's leading automakers are all turning to the same company to help bring past the self-driving finish line. Aurora CEO and Co-Founder Chris Urmson joins Cheddar at CES to discuss his firm's newly-announced partnership with Volkswagen Group. He describes his company's goal as providing the "drivers," by way of software, for autonomous vehicles.
The partnership is focused on developing "mobility as a service" initiative in major cities. Urmson describes how Aurora will help Volkswagen Group's fleet of self-driving cars, known as Sedric, connect people in urban communities. He explains how the service initiative will help people with mobility issues of their own, as well as making transportation easier for commuters.
Urmson reveals how his company spent the past year working with Volkswagen Group to integrate its system into the automaker's fleet. He breaks down Aurora's high-pedigree founding team, including himself, a veteran of Google's self-driving initiative, and Sterling Anderson, one of the minds behind the launch of Tesla's Model X.
Hero CEO Kal Vepuri came up with the idea for his company when he began taking care of his ill mother. The company now counts among its investors former NBA Commissioner David Stern, private equity investor Alan Patricof, and ClassPass CEO Fritz Lanman.
Deepa Seetharaman, tech reporter for the Wall Street Journal, said the company is still unsure of who's responsible for the most recent hack, in which 30 million user accounts were compromised. And perhaps more importantly, it still doesn't know where all the data went.
Jesse Dorogusker, the company's Hardware Lead, said the new device fits the mission to meet the needs of a broader array of vendors. The launch comes about a week after CFO Sarah Friar said she was leaving the company to become CEO of social networking site Nextdoor.
JT Genter, senior points and miles writer at The Points Guy, strapped in for the newly-revived, 18-hour direct flight between Singapore and Newark, NJ, on Singapore Airlines. He told us how he coped with what is now the longest flight in the world.
The economic opportunity for bitcoin has breathed new life into a previously retired aluminum plant in Massena, New York. Cheddar visited Coinmint to get a look inside one of the world's largest bitcoin mining operations.
Popular courier service Postmates is interviewing banks with the intention of going public in early 2019, according to the Wall Street Journal's Maureen Farrell. It's part of a changing dynamic, where red-hot tech companies are now racing to market, rather than waiting.
The worst data breach in Facebook's history was likely done by spammers, not a foreign state, according to a report. Whether that's any comfort to the tens of millions of people whose personal information ー including names, emails, religious affiliations, and locations ー was accessed in the wide-ranging attack remains to be seen.
Michael Pachter, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, isn't buying into the Netflix hype even after the good Q3 earnings.
Discord, initially a popular app for in-game messaging, is launching a store with hundreds of games users can access for a monthly fee. Jason Citron, co-founder and CEO of Discord, said the company's growth is a "side effect" of gaming becoming more social.
MedMen, which just completed the largest pot-related acquisition to date in America, is preparing for the day when American drug laws catch up, said spokesman Daniel Yi.
