Startups

Here’s what’s happening on day 1 of TC Sessions: Mobility

Comment

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Attention mobility enthusiasts! It’s been three long years since our last in-person mobility event, but the day has finally come. Welcome to Day One of TC Sessions: Mobility 2022! Get ready for two days of programming dedicated to taking a deeper dive into the future of transportation and to meet the people who are shaping it.

Mobility’s a rapidly evolving revolution, and we’re thrilled to have the community’s best founders, investors and technologists standing by ready to help you build your startup, expand your portfolio or take your career to the next level.

Here’s a brief taste of today’s events — speakers, interviews and breakout sessions. Visit the TC Sessions: Mobility agenda, plan your day and don’t forget about the world-class networking — we built time for it into the schedule.

Are you an early-stage mobility startup looking to better understand current trends in mobility investment? Look no further than the panel How to Land Early-Stage Funding featuring three investors on the main stage: Yoon Choi (partner, Muirwoods Ventures), Mar Hershenson (co-founder and managing partner, Pear VC) and Gabriel Scheer (director, Innovation, Mobility & Energy, Elemental Excelerator).

What will it take to execute urban air mobility operations in cities? We’ll sit down with Gary Gysin, president and CEO of Wisk Aero, Cyrus Sigari, co-founder and managing partner at UP.Partners and Bonny Simi, head of air operations and people at Joby Aviation, and talk about both the challenges and opportunities in the urban air mobility space and what it will take to not just launch in cities, but to actually be of value to residents.

Love vehicle debuts? Join Jesse Levinson (co-founder & CTO, Zoox) for a Vehicle Spotlight.

If autonomous vehicles drive you wild, don’t miss the conversation with Laura Major (CTO, Motional) and Oliver Cameron (VP, Product, Cruise) as they discuss turning an AV innovation into a product and the technical and deployment challenges to creating a product people can and will want to use.

Looking for something interactive and topic focused? Make time to join one of the many roundtable discussions we’ll have taking place throughout the day. These smaller, intimate sessions are designed to allow industry experts and attendees the time and forum to get to the heart of various topics across the mobility spectrum.

We haven’t even touched on the TC Sessions: Mobility Pitch-off and the early-stage startups you’ll find on our expo floor. You don’t want to miss out on what the future of mobility holds. The next great unicorn might be out there waiting to be found.

As with all of our TC Sessions events, we also have some fantastic breakout sessions. Three sessions are spread out throughout a jam-packed Day One: How Pony.ai Navigates Diverse Traffic Scenarios and Inclement Weather Globally with Shuyang Cheng (Tech lead manager, Perception, Pony.ai) and Yimeng Zhang (VP of Engineering & U.S. Site Lead, Pony.ai), Data: Your Key to Successful Autonomous Mobility with Wilson Pang (chief technology officer, Appen) and Rachel Kellam (product manager, Appen) and A New Sensing Paradigm: How GPR Uses Subterranean Maps to Enable Automated Driving in Any Condition with Tarik Bolat (CEO and co-founder, GPR).

There you have it folks — just a smattering of the fascinating interviews, breakout sessions and discussions taking place on Day One. Don’t forget to explore the outstanding early-stage startups exhibiting in the expo. Connect, converse and collaborate at TC Sessions: Mobility!

No FOMO allowed: Didn’t get a ticket? Don’t fret, you can still buy a pass for as little as $65. See you there!

More TechCrunch

The change would see Instagram becoming more like the free version of YouTube, which requires users to view ads before and in the middle of watching videos.

Instagram confirms test of ‘unskippable’ ads

Commerce platform Shopify has acquired Checkout Blocks, allowing Shopify Plus merchants to make no-code customizations in their checkout to enhance customer experience and potentially boost sales.  Checkout Blocks, which debuted…

Shopify acquires Checkout Blocks, a checkout customization app

After the Digital Markets Act (DMA) forced Apple to allow third-party app stores for iOS in Europe, several developers have launched alternative stores, like the AltStore and MacPaw’s Setapp (currently…

Aptoide launches its alternative iOS game store in the EU

Time is relentless and, right now, it’s no friend to procrastination-prone early-stage startup founders. The application window for Startup Battlefield 200 (SB 200) at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 slams shut in…

One week left: Apply to TC Disrupt Startup Battlefield 200

Cloudera, the once high-flying Hadoop startup, raised $1 billion and went public in 2018 before being acquired by private equity for $5.3 billion in 2021. Today, the company announced that…

Cloudera acquires Verta to bring some AI chops to its data platform

The global spend management sector is experiencing a tailwind of sorts. North America is arguably the biggest market in this space, but spend management companies have seen demand rise across…

Spend management startup SiFi raises $10M to grow further in Saudi Arabia

Neural Concept lets designers model how components will perform before they can be manufactured.

Swiss startup Neural Concept raises $27M to cut EV design time to 18 months

The StrictlyVC roadtrip continues! Coming off of sold-out events in London, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, we’re heading to Washington, D.C. for a cozy-vc-packed, evening at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre…

Don’t miss StrictlyVC in DC next week

X will now allow users to post consensually produced NSFW content as long as it is prominently labeled as such.

X tweaks rules to formally allow adult content

Ashby consolidates existing talent acquisition tools and leans heavily on AI to automate the more repetitive steps in the recruitment pipeline.

Ashby injects recruiting with a dose of AI

Spotify has announced it’s hiking subscriptions for customers in the U.S., the second such price increase in the space of a year. The music-streaming giant reports that premium pricing will…

Spotify to increase premium pricing in the US to $11.99 per month

Monzo has announced its 2024 financial results, revealing its first full-year pre-tax profit. The company also confirmed that it’s in the early stages of expanding into the broader European market…

UK neobank Monzo reports first full (pre-tax) profit, prepares for EU expansion with Dublin hub

Featured Article

Inside Apple’s efforts to build a better recycling robot

Last week, TechCrunch paid a visit to Apple’s Austin, Texas manufacturing facilities. Since 2013, the company has built its Mac Pro desktop about 20 minutes north of downtown. The 400,000-square-foot facility sits in a maze of industry parks, a quick trip south from the company’s in-progress corporate campus. In recent years, the capital city has…

9 hours ago
Inside Apple’s efforts to build a better recycling robot

Early attempts at making dedicated hardware to house artificial intelligence smarts have been criticized as, well, a bit rubbish. But here’s an AI gadget-in-the-making that’s all about rubbish, literally: Finnish…

Binit is bringing AI to trash

Temasek has previously invested in Lenskart, and this new funding follows a $500 million investment by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority last year.

Temasek, Fidelity buy $200M stake in Lenskart at $5B valuation

Less than one year after its iOS launch, French startup ten ten has gone viral with a walkie talkie app that allows teens to send voice messages to their close…

French startup ten ten reinvents the walkie-talkie

Featured Article

Unicorn-rich VC Wesley Chan owes his success to a Craigslist job washing lab beakers

While all of Wesley Chan’s success has been well-documented over the years, his personal journey…not so much. Chan spoke to TechCrunch about the ways his life impacts how he invests in startups.

1 day ago
Unicorn-rich VC Wesley Chan owes his success to a Craigslist job washing lab beakers

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump now has an account on the short-form video app that he once tried to ban. Trump’s TikTok account, which launched on Saturday night, features…

Trump takes off on TikTok

With fewer than 400,000 inhabitants, Iceland receives more than its fair share of tourists — and of venture capital.

Iceland’s startup scene is all about making the most of the country’s resources

Kobo put out a handful of new e-readers a few weeks back: color versions of the excellent Libra 2 and Clara, as well as an updated monochrome version of the…

Kobo’s new e-readers are a sidegrade most can skip (with one exception)

In an interview at his home near Reykjavík, the entrepreneur-turned-VC shared thoughts on his ventures and the journey that led him from Unity to climate tech, a homecoming of sorts.

Unity co-founder David Helgason’s next act: Gaming the climate crisis

Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review — TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the week’s biggest news. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. Over the past eight years,…

Fisker collapsed under the weight of its founder’s promises

What is AI? We’ve put together this non-technical guide to give anyone a fighting chance to understand how and why today’s AI works.

WTF is AI?

President Joe Biden has vetoed H.J.Res. 109, a congressional resolution that would have overturned the Securities and Exchange Commission’s current approach to banks and crypto. Specifically, the resolution targeted the…

President Biden vetoes crypto custody bill

Featured Article

Industries may be ready for humanoid robots, but are the robots ready for them?

How large a role humanoids will play in that ecosystem is, perhaps, the biggest question on everyone’s mind at the moment.

2 days ago
Industries may be ready for humanoid robots, but are the robots ready for them?

VCs are clamoring to invest in hot AI companies, and willing to pay exorbitant share prices for coveted spots on their cap tables. Even so, most aren’t able to get…

VCs are selling shares of hot AI companies like Anthropic and xAI to small investors in a wild SPV market

The fashion industry has a huge problem: Despite many returned items being unworn or undamaged, a lot, if not the majority, end up in the trash. An estimated 9.5 billion…

Deal Dive: How (Re)vive grew 10x last year by helping retailers recycle and sell returned items

Tumblr officially shut down “Tips,” an opt-in feature where creators could receive one-time payments from their followers.  As of today, the tipping icon has automatically disappeared from all posts and…

You can no longer use Tumblr’s tipping feature 

Generative AI improvements are increasingly being made through data curation and collection — not architectural — improvements. Big Tech has an advantage.

AI training data has a price tag that only Big Tech can afford

Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world…

This Week in AI: Can we (and could we ever) trust OpenAI?