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.
Comcast announced Thursday it will focus on snapping up British broadcaster Sky, clearing the way for Disney to acquire Fox's film and TV studios, the networks FX and NatGeo, and its stake in Hulu. The deal, however, would make the streaming landscape "more fragmented," says Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey.
Amazon Prime Day notched a record when members purchased more than 100 million products on the company-made shopping holiday. By and large, bigger retailers triumphed over smaller companies. The challenge for Amazon, though, according to Sucharita Kodali, retail analyst at Forrester, is how to offer more niche brands enough value that they don't opt instead to go direct-to-consumer.
Cigna CEO David Cordani is co-author of "The Courage To Go Forward," a new book that explores the unique impact of micro communities. Cordani hopes Cigna's recent acquisition of Express Scripts will localize healthcare networks and expand his consumer base.
The EU is hitting Google with a $5 billion fine over antitrust violations. The European Commission claims Google's Android operating system unfairly stifled competition.
Walmart is reportedly thinking of launching a streaming service. According to The Information, the retail giant is eyeing a cheaper alternative to Amazon and Netflix, which would cost just $8.
And we talk to Galia Benartzi, co-founder and head of business development at Bancor, which is the world's largest decentralized crypto exchange. Benartzi tells Cheddar how Bancor is hoping to eradicate poverty in parts of Kenya through a new token.
Walmart is reportedly developing a new streaming service that can rival competitors Netflix and Amazon. But the massive costs associated with might make it difficult to succeed. "This is a really hard business to get into," says The Information reporter Jessica Toonkel, who broke the story on Walmart's plans.
Europe is slapping the company with a massive fine for violating antitrust laws and eliminating competition by combining its search engine and apps as one Android operating system. Google was also fined $3 billion by the EU last year for manipulating search results.
The backlash from President Trump's meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin continued well into Tuesday, with politicians from both sides of the aisle condemning Trump. During his meeting with Putin on Monday, Trump seemed to side with the Russian President over U.S. intelligence officials on the issue of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Shares of Netflix tumbled after the company reported lower-than-expected subscriber growth in its quarterly earnings report on Monday. The streaming giant also missed Wall Street estimates on revenue and earnings per share.
And Jonathan Trager, CEO of Group Elephant, joins Cheddar to talk about his organization's mission to stop the poaching of elephants and rhinos in South Africa.
An app called CommonStock has come out of stealth mode with more than $1.8 million in seed funding to make stock trading more social, Cheddar has learned. "We’ve created what’s like a virtual trading floor where anyone can create a group and easily share information about a stock or crypto,” said CEO David McDonough.
The streaming player company introduced a set of wireless speakers to be integrated into the Roku system. “We know that when users sit down, and they stream their favorite shows or listen to music, if they’ve got great sound as a part of that, it’s just a more immersive experience,” says Mark Ely, vice president of product management for Roku.
The streaming platform added fewer subscribers and generated less revenue than projected in the second quarter. Shares plunged by more than 12 percent in after-hours trading.
