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Chipotle This past spring, Chipotle announced the launch of a tech-focused venture fund to nurture food and service-oriented technologies. The first round of investments just went out, and the news says a lot about the future of quick service. Through its Cultivate Next venture fund, Chipotle is backing Hyphen, a food service platform designed to help automate kitchens […] More
Architects using a tablet at a construction site. Image: Getty A February National Association of Realtors study cited that record-high home prices combined with record-low inventory have created an affordable housing supply crisis in America. A subsequent study found that a lack of affordable housing is now the country’s biggest obstacle to home buying. Can […] More
Husqvarna Yes, it’s a marketing gimmick. Sure, it’s kind of hokey. But darn it if this doesn’t unexpectedly pull at the heartstrings. Husqvarna, the maker of autonomous home lawn mowers that look something like RC tactical assault vehicles from Mad Max times, is releasing an unusual software update to celebrate a lonely robot thousands of […] More
Amazon It’s official. After years of development announcements, Amazon will be rolling out delivery by drone for Prime customers in areas of California and Texas. While that’s a small slice of customers, for now, this news couldn’t be more important for the commercial drone sector, which has been gathering tons of momentum over the last […] More
Esper Bionics If you wear glasses, you may have realized your visual deficit can also be an unexpected style boon. Thanks to a company combining wearable robotics with stunning (and newly award-winning) design, the same is becoming true for prosthetics. Esper Bionics, a New York-based startup that develops human enhancement devices, was recently given a Red […] More
NDLA A new partnership aims to take a big bite out of the scourge of single-use plastic. With the help of some robots and economies of scale, it’s a positive step in a problem that seems wholly intractable. Compostable packaging company Zume, which has innovated the manufacture of high output molded fiber packaging using robots, is […] More
Image: photoworldwide/ Getty Images There’s been a flurry of fundraising around companies seeking to help computers understand natural language. It could presage a change in the way we use and experience language and the written word. As we covered this summer, speech recognition company Speechmatics raised over $60M toward its ambition of global language comprehension. […] More
A Serve Robotics autonomous vehicle delivers takeout in Southern California. Serve Robotics Last year we predicted that 2022 would be the year that AI and robotics took over the quick-serve pizza sector. A new collaboration between a robotic pizzeria and a fleet of delivery robots is the latest example of that prediction coming to life […] More
