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Rivian will deliver the first R2 SUVs on June 9 | TechCrunch
Rivian has finally revealed that the first customers of the company’s new R2 SUV will get their vehicles on June 9.

The automaker has spent the last few months ramping up its efforts to release the R2, which is more affordable and aimed at a larger market than its current R1 lineup. The new SUV will initially be available in a trim that starts just under ,000, though Rivian has announced plans to release a “standard” version that starts at ,490 in 2027. 







The company has teased an even more affordable version “starting around ,000” late next year — a price tag Rivian has promoted since the R2 reveal in 2024.

Rivian has high expectations for the R2. Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe has said it is “maybe the most important thing we’ve launched to date.” The company is betting on an extremely fast ramp-up, with as many as 25,000 vehicles delivered by the end of this year. Ultimately, Rivian hopes the R2 and its hatchback sibling, the R3, will help the company turn a profit for the first time since its founding in 2009.


#Rivian #deliver #SUVs #June #TechCrunchelectric vehicles,EVs,Rivian

Rivian will deliver the first R2 SUVs on June 9 | TechCrunch

Rivian has finally revealed that the first customers of the company’s new R2 SUV will get their vehicles on June 9.

The automaker has spent the last few months ramping up its efforts to release the R2, which is more affordable and aimed at a larger market than its current R1 lineup. The new SUV will initially be available in a trim that starts just under $60,000, though Rivian has announced plans to release a “standard” version that starts at $48,490 in 2027.

The company has teased an even more affordable version “starting around $45,000” late next year — a price tag Rivian has promoted since the R2 reveal in 2024.

Rivian has high expectations for the R2. Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe has said it is “maybe the most important thing we’ve launched to date.” The company is betting on an extremely fast ramp-up, with as many as 25,000 vehicles delivered by the end of this year. Ultimately, Rivian hopes the R2 and its hatchback sibling, the R3, will help the company turn a profit for the first time since its founding in 2009.

#Rivian #deliver #SUVs #June #TechCrunchelectric vehicles,EVs,Rivian

Rivian has finally revealed that the first customers of the company’s new R2 SUV will get their vehicles on June 9.

The automaker has spent the last few months ramping up its efforts to release the R2, which is more affordable and aimed at a larger market than its current R1 lineup. The new SUV will initially be available in a trim that starts just under $60,000, though Rivian has announced plans to release a “standard” version that starts at $48,490 in 2027.

The company has teased an even more affordable version “starting around $45,000” late next year — a price tag Rivian has promoted since the R2 reveal in 2024.

Rivian has high expectations for the R2. Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe has said it is “maybe the most important thing we’ve launched to date.” The company is betting on an extremely fast ramp-up, with as many as 25,000 vehicles delivered by the end of this year. Ultimately, Rivian hopes the R2 and its hatchback sibling, the R3, will help the company turn a profit for the first time since its founding in 2009.

Source link
#Rivian #deliver #SUVs #June #TechCrunch

Parents want one thing, and one thing only, out of AI: to add a list of soccer games or “spirit week” theme days from an email or a poorly formatted flyer onto their calendar in one shot. And I have good news for parents with iPhones — the new Siri can finally do this.

After stumbling through its first launch of an AI-imbued Siri, Apple is trying again. The newly upgraded Siri AI can chat with you about what might be killing the roses in your yard, put together a shopping list for the hardware store, and set a reminder to lay down some compost in that flower bed. It can reference information in your email and calendar to make its recommendations or provide an actually helpful answer to the question: “When should I leave for the airport?” And yes, it can even add a list of events from an email to your calendar. I tried all of these scenarios out for myself and I saw it happen. AI Siri is for real this time.

This is like, baby’s first AI assistant stuff, but it’s huge that it actually works.

Honestly Bun Mee is my go-to, so this is a good call.

But it’s also a pretty basic set of features for an AI assistant in 2026, particularly if you compare it to what Gemini has been doing on Android for the past couple of years. Google’s chatbot has been able to add multiple calendar events from a screenshot for at least a year at this point. It’s been diagnosing plant problems and scheduling maintenance reminders for months now, if not longer. New Siri is built on Gemini models, so it makes a lot of sense that the first iteration of Siri AI feels a little bit “Gemini, circa 2025.”

Siri AI has its own flavor, though. Apple has a lot of proprietary stuff going on under the hood and in the cloud. It draws from an on-device pool of data that’s gleaned from things like email and messages. This information is indexed so Siri can tap into the relevant bits when needed. Prompts that can’t be handled fully on device are sent to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute with only the relevant pieces of personal data attached. Gemini handles personal context differently; you opt into sharing your Gmail or calendar, and then it’ll go directly to those sources to get the information when needed.

Siri AI working well depends a lot on the AI understanding context. So far, it’s doing pretty well. I asked it when I needed to return some camera gear I rented for WWDC, and it found the information from a calendar event I’d made and in an email (it’s due back Friday, for the record). Likewise, prompting it with something like “add these events to my calendar” will consistently trigger it to reference the information on my screen. So far, so good.

I couldn’t get Siri to engage in any shenanigans — I didn’t exactly stress test it, but the guardrails were strong enough to return a curt “I can’t help you with that” to a shady prompt. Fair. As a conversationalist, new Siri also seems a bit more dispassionate than Gemini. I gave them both the same prompt asking why the flowers in front of my house seemed to be wilting. They both gave wordy responses with a lot of possible causes, but Gemini’s started with “That is incredibly frustrating…” where Siri was more direct and got right into diagnosing the situation.

Siri AI’s response to my question gets to the point quicker.

Gemini sends its sympathies.

The new Siri handled my follow-up requests well, too. I asked it to recommend a garden center “near home” and it came up with a good suggestion. It also created a new reminder list with some checklist items for my garden rehab project and added a calendar event, all from a single prompt. Pretty basic stuff, but this is Siri. The fact that it works at all is a step forward that’s been years in the making.

New Siri pops up in a lot of places on the iPhone. I’ve gotten into the habit of swiping down on the homescreen and using search to get to apps, and every time I do there’s a big prompt to “search or ask” with a glowing, blinking cursor. Long pressing the wake button summons Siri from the Dynamic Island now, too, rather than presenting it as a glowing border around the screen. The changes all add up to a subtle feeling that you’re never very far away from Siri.

The changes all add up to a subtle feeling that you’re never very far away from Siri

This iteration of Siri feels like the AI assistant you’d build if you knew you couldn’t screw it up. It supports a pretty basic set of features — it’s not out here DoorDashing your burritos for you — but it actually does what’s advertised. For the company that made big promises of Siri two years ago that never materialized, that’s a big deal. “It works” and “It will actually ship to customers” are the two targets that Apple couldn’t miss here. It’s only in a developer beta now, but it’s realer than the first AI Siri we were shown at WWDC ever was. Apple needs this version of Siri to earn back trust. And based on what I’ve seen so far, this looks like a small step toward getting that trust back.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.
#Siri #worksAI,Apple,Hands-on,Reviews,Tech,WWDC 2026">I tried Siri AI, and so far it actually worksParents want one thing, and one thing only, out of AI: to add a list of soccer games or “spirit week” theme days from an email or a poorly formatted flyer onto their calendar in one shot. And I have good news for parents with iPhones — the new Siri can finally do this.After stumbling through its first launch of an AI-imbued Siri, Apple is trying again. The newly upgraded Siri AI can chat with you about what might be killing the roses in your yard, put together a shopping list for the hardware store, and set a reminder to lay down some compost in that flower bed. It can reference information in your email and calendar to make its recommendations or provide an actually helpful answer to the question: “When should I leave for the airport?” And yes, it can even add a list of events from an email to your calendar. I tried all of these scenarios out for myself and I saw it happen. AI Siri is for real this time.This is like, baby’s first AI assistant stuff, but it’s huge that it actually works.Honestly Bun Mee is my go-to, so this is a good call.But it’s also a pretty basic set of features for an AI assistant in 2026, particularly if you compare it to what Gemini has been doing on Android for the past couple of years. Google’s chatbot has been able to add multiple calendar events from a screenshot for at least a year at this point. It’s been diagnosing plant problems and scheduling maintenance reminders for months now, if not longer. New Siri is built on Gemini models, so it makes a lot of sense that the first iteration of Siri AI feels a little bit “Gemini, circa 2025.”Siri AI has its own flavor, though. Apple has a lot of proprietary stuff going on under the hood and in the cloud. It draws from an on-device pool of data that’s gleaned from things like email and messages. This information is indexed so Siri can tap into the relevant bits when needed. Prompts that can’t be handled fully on device are sent to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute with only the relevant pieces of personal data attached. Gemini handles personal context differently; you opt into sharing your Gmail or calendar, and then it’ll go directly to those sources to get the information when needed.Siri AI working well depends a lot on the AI understanding context. So far, it’s doing pretty well. I asked it when I needed to return some camera gear I rented for WWDC, and it found the information from a calendar event I’d made and in an email (it’s due back Friday, for the record). Likewise, prompting it with something like “add these events to my calendar” will consistently trigger it to reference the information on my screen. So far, so good.I couldn’t get Siri to engage in any shenanigans — I didn’t exactly stress test it, but the guardrails were strong enough to return a curt “I can’t help you with that” to a shady prompt. Fair. As a conversationalist, new Siri also seems a bit more dispassionate than Gemini. I gave them both the same prompt asking why the flowers in front of my house seemed to be wilting. They both gave wordy responses with a lot of possible causes, but Gemini’s started with “That is incredibly frustrating…” where Siri was more direct and got right into diagnosing the situation.Siri AI’s response to my question gets to the point quicker.Gemini sends its sympathies. The new Siri handled my follow-up requests well, too. I asked it to recommend a garden center “near home” and it came up with a good suggestion. It also created a new reminder list with some checklist items for my garden rehab project and added a calendar event, all from a single prompt. Pretty basic stuff, but this is Siri. The fact that it works at all is a step forward that’s been years in the making.New Siri pops up in a lot of places on the iPhone. I’ve gotten into the habit of swiping down on the homescreen and using search to get to apps, and every time I do there’s a big prompt to “search or ask” with a glowing, blinking cursor. Long pressing the wake button summons Siri from the Dynamic Island now, too, rather than presenting it as a glowing border around the screen. The changes all add up to a subtle feeling that you’re never very far away from Siri.The changes all add up to a subtle feeling that you’re never very far away from SiriThis iteration of Siri feels like the AI assistant you’d build if you knew you couldn’t screw it up. It supports a pretty basic set of features — it’s not out here DoorDashing your burritos for you — but it actually does what’s advertised. For the company that made big promises of Siri two years ago that never materialized, that’s a big deal. “It works” and “It will actually ship to customers” are the two targets that Apple couldn’t miss here. It’s only in a developer beta now, but it’s realer than the first AI Siri we were shown at WWDC ever was. Apple needs this version of Siri to earn back trust. And based on what I’ve seen so far, this looks like a small step toward getting that trust back.Photography by Allison Johnson / The VergeFollow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Allison JohnsonCloseAllison JohnsonPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Allison JohnsonAICloseAIPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All AIAppleCloseApplePosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All AppleHands-onCloseHands-onPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All Hands-onReviewsCloseReviewsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All ReviewsTechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechWWDC 2026CloseWWDC 2026Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All WWDC 2026#Siri #worksAI,Apple,Hands-on,Reviews,Tech,WWDC 2026

onto their calendar in one shot. And I have good news for parents with iPhones — the new Siri can finally do this.

After stumbling through its first launch of an AI-imbued Siri, Apple is trying again. The newly upgraded Siri AI can chat with you about what might be killing the roses in your yard, put together a shopping list for the hardware store, and set a reminder to lay down some compost in that flower bed. It can reference information in your email and calendar to make its recommendations or provide an actually helpful answer to the question: “When should I leave for the airport?” And yes, it can even add a list of events from an email to your calendar. I tried all of these scenarios out for myself and I saw it happen. AI Siri is for real this time.

This is like, baby’s first AI assistant stuff, but it’s huge that it actually works.

Honestly Bun Mee is my go-to, so this is a good call.

But it’s also a pretty basic set of features for an AI assistant in 2026, particularly if you compare it to what Gemini has been doing on Android for the past couple of years. Google’s chatbot has been able to add multiple calendar events from a screenshot for at least a year at this point. It’s been diagnosing plant problems and scheduling maintenance reminders for months now, if not longer. New Siri is built on Gemini models, so it makes a lot of sense that the first iteration of Siri AI feels a little bit “Gemini, circa 2025.”

Siri AI has its own flavor, though. Apple has a lot of proprietary stuff going on under the hood and in the cloud. It draws from an on-device pool of data that’s gleaned from things like email and messages. This information is indexed so Siri can tap into the relevant bits when needed. Prompts that can’t be handled fully on device are sent to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute with only the relevant pieces of personal data attached. Gemini handles personal context differently; you opt into sharing your Gmail or calendar, and then it’ll go directly to those sources to get the information when needed.

Siri AI working well depends a lot on the AI understanding context. So far, it’s doing pretty well. I asked it when I needed to return some camera gear I rented for WWDC, and it found the information from a calendar event I’d made and in an email (it’s due back Friday, for the record). Likewise, prompting it with something like “add these events to my calendar” will consistently trigger it to reference the information on my screen. So far, so good.

I couldn’t get Siri to engage in any shenanigans — I didn’t exactly stress test it, but the guardrails were strong enough to return a curt “I can’t help you with that” to a shady prompt. Fair. As a conversationalist, new Siri also seems a bit more dispassionate than Gemini. I gave them both the same prompt asking why the flowers in front of my house seemed to be wilting. They both gave wordy responses with a lot of possible causes, but Gemini’s started with “That is incredibly frustrating…” where Siri was more direct and got right into diagnosing the situation.

Siri AI’s response to my question gets to the point quicker.

Gemini sends its sympathies.

The new Siri handled my follow-up requests well, too. I asked it to recommend a garden center “near home” and it came up with a good suggestion. It also created a new reminder list with some checklist items for my garden rehab project and added a calendar event, all from a single prompt. Pretty basic stuff, but this is Siri. The fact that it works at all is a step forward that’s been years in the making.

New Siri pops up in a lot of places on the iPhone. I’ve gotten into the habit of swiping down on the homescreen and using search to get to apps, and every time I do there’s a big prompt to “search or ask” with a glowing, blinking cursor. Long pressing the wake button summons Siri from the Dynamic Island now, too, rather than presenting it as a glowing border around the screen. The changes all add up to a subtle feeling that you’re never very far away from Siri.

The changes all add up to a subtle feeling that you’re never very far away from Siri

This iteration of Siri feels like the AI assistant you’d build if you knew you couldn’t screw it up. It supports a pretty basic set of features — it’s not out here DoorDashing your burritos for you — but it actually does what’s advertised. For the company that made big promises of Siri two years ago that never materialized, that’s a big deal. “It works” and “It will actually ship to customers” are the two targets that Apple couldn’t miss here. It’s only in a developer beta now, but it’s realer than the first AI Siri we were shown at WWDC ever was. Apple needs this version of Siri to earn back trust. And based on what I’ve seen so far, this looks like a small step toward getting that trust back.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.

#Siri #worksAI,Apple,Hands-on,Reviews,Tech,WWDC 2026">I tried Siri AI, and so far it actually works

Parents want one thing, and one thing only, out of AI: to add a list of soccer games or “spirit week” theme days from an email or a poorly formatted flyer onto their calendar in one shot. And I have good news for parents with iPhones — the new Siri can finally do this.

After stumbling through its first launch of an AI-imbued Siri, Apple is trying again. The newly upgraded Siri AI can chat with you about what might be killing the roses in your yard, put together a shopping list for the hardware store, and set a reminder to lay down some compost in that flower bed. It can reference information in your email and calendar to make its recommendations or provide an actually helpful answer to the question: “When should I leave for the airport?” And yes, it can even add a list of events from an email to your calendar. I tried all of these scenarios out for myself and I saw it happen. AI Siri is for real this time.

This is like, baby’s first AI assistant stuff, but it’s huge that it actually works.

Honestly Bun Mee is my go-to, so this is a good call.

But it’s also a pretty basic set of features for an AI assistant in 2026, particularly if you compare it to what Gemini has been doing on Android for the past couple of years. Google’s chatbot has been able to add multiple calendar events from a screenshot for at least a year at this point. It’s been diagnosing plant problems and scheduling maintenance reminders for months now, if not longer. New Siri is built on Gemini models, so it makes a lot of sense that the first iteration of Siri AI feels a little bit “Gemini, circa 2025.”

Siri AI has its own flavor, though. Apple has a lot of proprietary stuff going on under the hood and in the cloud. It draws from an on-device pool of data that’s gleaned from things like email and messages. This information is indexed so Siri can tap into the relevant bits when needed. Prompts that can’t be handled fully on device are sent to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute with only the relevant pieces of personal data attached. Gemini handles personal context differently; you opt into sharing your Gmail or calendar, and then it’ll go directly to those sources to get the information when needed.

Siri AI working well depends a lot on the AI understanding context. So far, it’s doing pretty well. I asked it when I needed to return some camera gear I rented for WWDC, and it found the information from a calendar event I’d made and in an email (it’s due back Friday, for the record). Likewise, prompting it with something like “add these events to my calendar” will consistently trigger it to reference the information on my screen. So far, so good.

I couldn’t get Siri to engage in any shenanigans — I didn’t exactly stress test it, but the guardrails were strong enough to return a curt “I can’t help you with that” to a shady prompt. Fair. As a conversationalist, new Siri also seems a bit more dispassionate than Gemini. I gave them both the same prompt asking why the flowers in front of my house seemed to be wilting. They both gave wordy responses with a lot of possible causes, but Gemini’s started with “That is incredibly frustrating…” where Siri was more direct and got right into diagnosing the situation.

Siri AI’s response to my question gets to the point quicker.

Gemini sends its sympathies.

The new Siri handled my follow-up requests well, too. I asked it to recommend a garden center “near home” and it came up with a good suggestion. It also created a new reminder list with some checklist items for my garden rehab project and added a calendar event, all from a single prompt. Pretty basic stuff, but this is Siri. The fact that it works at all is a step forward that’s been years in the making.

New Siri pops up in a lot of places on the iPhone. I’ve gotten into the habit of swiping down on the homescreen and using search to get to apps, and every time I do there’s a big prompt to “search or ask” with a glowing, blinking cursor. Long pressing the wake button summons Siri from the Dynamic Island now, too, rather than presenting it as a glowing border around the screen. The changes all add up to a subtle feeling that you’re never very far away from Siri.

The changes all add up to a subtle feeling that you’re never very far away from Siri

This iteration of Siri feels like the AI assistant you’d build if you knew you couldn’t screw it up. It supports a pretty basic set of features — it’s not out here DoorDashing your burritos for you — but it actually does what’s advertised. For the company that made big promises of Siri two years ago that never materialized, that’s a big deal. “It works” and “It will actually ship to customers” are the two targets that Apple couldn’t miss here. It’s only in a developer beta now, but it’s realer than the first AI Siri we were shown at WWDC ever was. Apple needs this version of Siri to earn back trust. And based on what I’ve seen so far, this looks like a small step toward getting that trust back.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge

Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.
#Siri #worksAI,Apple,Hands-on,Reviews,Tech,WWDC 2026
Google just made its budget AI subscription plan a lot more budget-friendly, bringing a price war that’s been brewing in emerging markets squarely to American consumers.

The company announced Monday that it is cutting the monthly price of Google AI Plus from $7.99 to $4.99 — while doubling the storage included at that tier, from 200 gigabytes to 400 gigabytes.

Vikas Kansal, product lead for Gemini AI subscriptions, said on X that the storage updates would roll out to users over the next several days.

Google AI Plus launched in January as the most affordable paid AI subscription in the U.S. market, aimed at individual users and students rather than enterprise customers. Apparently that wasn’t cheap enough.

It includes a decent feature set, too, including video generation via Omni Flash; the creative studio Google Flow; and NotebookLM, Google’s AI research assistant. For heavier users, Google also offers AI Pro and AI Ultra at higher price points and usage limits.

The price cut is worth indexing on for reasons beyond Google’s own product roadmap. Subscription pricing hasn’t yet been a key battleground among AI providers in the U.S. But that’s changing in real time, suggests Chi-Hua Chien, co-founder and managing partner at consumer-focused venture firm Goodwater Capital; he sees Monday’s announcement as the next salvo in the commoditization era for AI infrastructure, pointing to Google’s structural advantages — vertical integration, distribution, the ability to bundle — as precisely the kind of force that’s likely to erode margins for purer-play AI providers over time.

The historical parallel he reaches for is instructive. “If you look at the web era, the infrastructure companies were Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Northern Telecom, Lucent, Akamai, Equinix,” he told TechCrunch. “A lot of those companies survived for a period of time but aren’t worth a lot today.” The reason, he said, is that during every big tech shift — from PC to web to mobile — the infrastructure players “get commoditized very aggressively because the end customer doesn’t think, ‘Ooh, are my bits moving on Cisco networking equipment?’ They’re just thinking, ‘How do I move my bits as cheaply as possible?’”

He sees the same dynamic coming in the not-too-distant future for today’s AI infrastructure layer — including the frontier model providers themselves.

“My prediction for a lot of these infrastructure companies — and when I say infrastructure, I mean an OpenAI or an Anthropic, or the backend components, energy, chips, hosting — there will be a period of time when these companies are valuable,” he said. “But over time, you will see them get increasingly commoditized.”

It’s certainly something that a bigger pool of investors will be pondering soon. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have filed confidentially to go public, and their ability to command premium valuations may soon be tested by exactly the kind of price competition Chien is describing.

That competition has been building for nearly a year in markets like India, one of the fastest-growing AI user bases in the world. OpenAI drew first blood there in August of last year, launching ChatGPT Go at roughly $4.60 a month — a fraction of its standard $20 Plus plan. Google followed in December with a sub-$5 AI Plus plan of its own for Indian users.

Monday’s announcement suggests the same logic that drove those emerging-market moves — undercut, bundle, and capture users before rivals do — has now crossed over to the U.S. market.

Anthropic, notably, hasn’t followed. Unlike OpenAI and Google, it has yet to introduce localized pricing for India or a budget tier anywhere, a move that may become harder to avoid as its rivals keep slashing prices.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

#Google #fired #warning #shot #subscription #price #wars #TechCrunchAI,google ai,Google AI Plus">Google just fired a warning shot in the AI subscription price wars | TechCrunch
Google just made its budget AI subscription plan a lot more budget-friendly, bringing a price war that’s been brewing in emerging markets squarely to American consumers.

The company announced Monday that it is cutting the monthly price of Google AI Plus from .99 to .99 — while doubling the storage included at that tier, from 200 gigabytes to 400 gigabytes.







Vikas Kansal, product lead for Gemini AI subscriptions, said on X that the storage updates would roll out to users over the next several days.

Google AI Plus launched in January as the most affordable paid AI subscription in the U.S. market, aimed at individual users and students rather than enterprise customers. Apparently that wasn’t cheap enough. 

It includes a decent feature set, too, including video generation via Omni Flash; the creative studio Google Flow; and NotebookLM, Google’s AI research assistant. For heavier users, Google also offers AI Pro and AI Ultra at higher price points and usage limits.

The price cut is worth indexing on for reasons beyond Google’s own product roadmap. Subscription pricing hasn’t yet been a key battleground among AI providers in the U.S. But that’s changing in real time, suggests Chi-Hua Chien, co-founder and managing partner at consumer-focused venture firm Goodwater Capital; he sees Monday’s announcement as the next salvo in the commoditization era for AI infrastructure, pointing to Google’s structural advantages — vertical integration, distribution, the ability to bundle — as precisely the kind of force that’s likely to erode margins for purer-play AI providers over time.

The historical parallel he reaches for is instructive. “If you look at the web era, the infrastructure companies were Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Northern Telecom, Lucent, Akamai, Equinix,” he told TechCrunch. “A lot of those companies survived for a period of time but aren’t worth a lot today.” The reason, he said, is that during every big tech shift — from PC to web to mobile — the infrastructure players “get commoditized very aggressively because the end customer doesn’t think, ‘Ooh, are my bits moving on Cisco networking equipment?’ They’re just thinking, ‘How do I move my bits as cheaply as possible?’”


He sees the same dynamic coming in the not-too-distant future for today’s AI infrastructure layer — including the frontier model providers themselves.

“My prediction for a lot of these infrastructure companies — and when I say infrastructure, I mean an OpenAI or an Anthropic, or the backend components, energy, chips, hosting — there will be a period of time when these companies are valuable,” he said. “But over time, you will see them get increasingly commoditized.”

It’s certainly something that a bigger pool of investors will be pondering soon. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have filed confidentially to go public, and their ability to command premium valuations may soon be tested by exactly the kind of price competition Chien is describing.







That competition has been building for nearly a year in markets like India, one of the fastest-growing AI user bases in the world. OpenAI drew first blood there in August of last year, launching ChatGPT Go at roughly .60 a month — a fraction of its standard  Plus plan. Google followed in December with a sub- AI Plus plan of its own for Indian users. 

Monday’s announcement suggests the same logic that drove those emerging-market moves — undercut, bundle, and capture users before rivals do — has now crossed over to the U.S. market.

Anthropic, notably, hasn’t followed. Unlike OpenAI and Google, it has yet to introduce localized pricing for India or a budget tier anywhere, a move that may become harder to avoid as its rivals keep slashing prices.


When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Google #fired #warning #shot #subscription #price #wars #TechCrunchAI,google ai,Google AI Plus

said on X that the storage updates would roll out to users over the next several days.

Google AI Plus launched in January as the most affordable paid AI subscription in the U.S. market, aimed at individual users and students rather than enterprise customers. Apparently that wasn’t cheap enough.

It includes a decent feature set, too, including video generation via Omni Flash; the creative studio Google Flow; and NotebookLM, Google’s AI research assistant. For heavier users, Google also offers AI Pro and AI Ultra at higher price points and usage limits.

The price cut is worth indexing on for reasons beyond Google’s own product roadmap. Subscription pricing hasn’t yet been a key battleground among AI providers in the U.S. But that’s changing in real time, suggests Chi-Hua Chien, co-founder and managing partner at consumer-focused venture firm Goodwater Capital; he sees Monday’s announcement as the next salvo in the commoditization era for AI infrastructure, pointing to Google’s structural advantages — vertical integration, distribution, the ability to bundle — as precisely the kind of force that’s likely to erode margins for purer-play AI providers over time.

The historical parallel he reaches for is instructive. “If you look at the web era, the infrastructure companies were Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Northern Telecom, Lucent, Akamai, Equinix,” he told TechCrunch. “A lot of those companies survived for a period of time but aren’t worth a lot today.” The reason, he said, is that during every big tech shift — from PC to web to mobile — the infrastructure players “get commoditized very aggressively because the end customer doesn’t think, ‘Ooh, are my bits moving on Cisco networking equipment?’ They’re just thinking, ‘How do I move my bits as cheaply as possible?’”

He sees the same dynamic coming in the not-too-distant future for today’s AI infrastructure layer — including the frontier model providers themselves.

“My prediction for a lot of these infrastructure companies — and when I say infrastructure, I mean an OpenAI or an Anthropic, or the backend components, energy, chips, hosting — there will be a period of time when these companies are valuable,” he said. “But over time, you will see them get increasingly commoditized.”

It’s certainly something that a bigger pool of investors will be pondering soon. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have filed confidentially to go public, and their ability to command premium valuations may soon be tested by exactly the kind of price competition Chien is describing.

That competition has been building for nearly a year in markets like India, one of the fastest-growing AI user bases in the world. OpenAI drew first blood there in August of last year, launching ChatGPT Go at roughly $4.60 a month — a fraction of its standard $20 Plus plan. Google followed in December with a sub-$5 AI Plus plan of its own for Indian users.

Monday’s announcement suggests the same logic that drove those emerging-market moves — undercut, bundle, and capture users before rivals do — has now crossed over to the U.S. market.

Anthropic, notably, hasn’t followed. Unlike OpenAI and Google, it has yet to introduce localized pricing for India or a budget tier anywhere, a move that may become harder to avoid as its rivals keep slashing prices.

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#Google #fired #warning #shot #subscription #price #wars #TechCrunchAI,google ai,Google AI Plus">Google just fired a warning shot in the AI subscription price wars | TechCrunch

Google just made its budget AI subscription plan a lot more budget-friendly, bringing a price war that’s been brewing in emerging markets squarely to American consumers.

The company announced Monday that it is cutting the monthly price of Google AI Plus from $7.99 to $4.99 — while doubling the storage included at that tier, from 200 gigabytes to 400 gigabytes.

Vikas Kansal, product lead for Gemini AI subscriptions, said on X that the storage updates would roll out to users over the next several days.

Google AI Plus launched in January as the most affordable paid AI subscription in the U.S. market, aimed at individual users and students rather than enterprise customers. Apparently that wasn’t cheap enough.

It includes a decent feature set, too, including video generation via Omni Flash; the creative studio Google Flow; and NotebookLM, Google’s AI research assistant. For heavier users, Google also offers AI Pro and AI Ultra at higher price points and usage limits.

The price cut is worth indexing on for reasons beyond Google’s own product roadmap. Subscription pricing hasn’t yet been a key battleground among AI providers in the U.S. But that’s changing in real time, suggests Chi-Hua Chien, co-founder and managing partner at consumer-focused venture firm Goodwater Capital; he sees Monday’s announcement as the next salvo in the commoditization era for AI infrastructure, pointing to Google’s structural advantages — vertical integration, distribution, the ability to bundle — as precisely the kind of force that’s likely to erode margins for purer-play AI providers over time.

The historical parallel he reaches for is instructive. “If you look at the web era, the infrastructure companies were Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Northern Telecom, Lucent, Akamai, Equinix,” he told TechCrunch. “A lot of those companies survived for a period of time but aren’t worth a lot today.” The reason, he said, is that during every big tech shift — from PC to web to mobile — the infrastructure players “get commoditized very aggressively because the end customer doesn’t think, ‘Ooh, are my bits moving on Cisco networking equipment?’ They’re just thinking, ‘How do I move my bits as cheaply as possible?’”

He sees the same dynamic coming in the not-too-distant future for today’s AI infrastructure layer — including the frontier model providers themselves.

“My prediction for a lot of these infrastructure companies — and when I say infrastructure, I mean an OpenAI or an Anthropic, or the backend components, energy, chips, hosting — there will be a period of time when these companies are valuable,” he said. “But over time, you will see them get increasingly commoditized.”

It’s certainly something that a bigger pool of investors will be pondering soon. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have filed confidentially to go public, and their ability to command premium valuations may soon be tested by exactly the kind of price competition Chien is describing.

That competition has been building for nearly a year in markets like India, one of the fastest-growing AI user bases in the world. OpenAI drew first blood there in August of last year, launching ChatGPT Go at roughly $4.60 a month — a fraction of its standard $20 Plus plan. Google followed in December with a sub-$5 AI Plus plan of its own for Indian users.

Monday’s announcement suggests the same logic that drove those emerging-market moves — undercut, bundle, and capture users before rivals do — has now crossed over to the U.S. market.

Anthropic, notably, hasn’t followed. Unlike OpenAI and Google, it has yet to introduce localized pricing for India or a budget tier anywhere, a move that may become harder to avoid as its rivals keep slashing prices.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

#Google #fired #warning #shot #subscription #price #wars #TechCrunchAI,google ai,Google AI Plus

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