There are some jobs human bodies just weren't meant to do. Unloading trucks and shipping containers is a repetitive, grueling task ' and a big reason warehouse injury rates are more than twice the national average. The Pickle Robot Company wants its machines to do the heavy lifting. The company's one-armed robots autonomously unload trailers, picking up boxes weighing up to 50 pounds and placing them onto onboard conveyor belts for warehouses of all types. The company name, an homage to The Apple Computer Company, hints at the ambitions of founders AJ Meyer '09, Ariana Eisenstein '15, SM '16, and Dan Paluska '97, SM '00. The founders want to make the company the technology leader for supply chain automation. The company's unloading robots combine generative AI and machine-learning algorithms with sensors, cameras, and machine-vision software to navigate new environments on day one and improve performance over time. Much of the company's hardware is adapted from industrial partners. You may recognize the arm, for instance, from car manufacturing lines ' though you may not have seen it in bright pickle-green....

AWS announced a wave of new AI agent tools at re:Invent 2025, but can Amazon actually catch up to the AI leaders' While the cloud giant is betting big on enterprise AI with its third-gen chip and database discounts that got developers cheering, it's still fighting to prove it can compete beyond infrastructure. This week on Equity, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into the ROI on AI agents, plus the collision course between Hollywood and generative AI, and why everyone wants their own version of Spotify Wrapped. Theresa Loconsolo is an audio producer at TechCrunch focusing on Equity, the network's flagship podcast. Before joining TechCrunch in 2022, she was one of 2 producers at a four-station conglomerate where she wrote, recorded, voiced and edited content, and engineered live performances and interviews from guests like lovelytheband. Theresa is based in New Jersey and holds a bachelors degree in Communication from Monmouth University. Show your CFO the marketing proof they want!Join a free webinar hosted by Pantheon on Tuesday December 9 at 10am PT to learn where spend delivers & how to build a 2026 strategy grounded in real results....

ChatGPT's growth is starting to taper off, according to new data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Today, the OpenAI-owned AI chatbot remains the leader in the space, accounting for 50% of global downloads on mobile devices and 55% of the global monthly active users. However, Google's Gemini has begun to outpace ChatGPT in terms of download growth, growth of monthly active users, and growth of time spent in app, the firm found. Over time, that increased pace of adoption could help Gemini narrow the gap with ChatGPT. That's something OpenAI is now worried about, as its recent 'code red' memo indicated. The missive, penned by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, instructed staff to focus on improving the company's AI products, particularly in areas like personalization, reliability, image generation, and more. But the new data indicates that ChatGPT's global monthly active users only grew by around 6% from August to November, to reach roughly 810 million. (The monthly active user numbers in the above chart are rounded, the firm notes.) This figure could suggest the AI chatbot is nearing market saturation, Sensor Tower says....

This summer, President Donald Trump told my colleague Michael Scherer that 'America First' means whatever he decides it means. Now'as he blows up boats near Venezuela, amasses military assets near its coast, calls for the closure of its airspace, and tries to oust its leader'he is testing the limits of the term. Trump took over the GOP promising an 'America First' foreign policy to a war-weary nation that had soured on attempts to police and reshape the world. Doing so distinguished him from rivals aligned with George W. Bush and the Iraq War. But Trump was never ideologically committed to restraint. The most outspoken critic of the president's latest hawkish turn is Senator Rand Paul, who has blamed the influence of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Senator Lindsey Graham. If Trump invades Venezuela, the Republican from Kentucky told Nick Gillespie of Reason magazine, 'his movement will dissolve.' Trump says land strikes inside Venezuela are coming soon and dismisses Paul as 'a sick Wacko, who refuses to vote for our great Republican Party, MAGA, or America First.'...