Meta announced on Tuesday that it’s launching two Ray-Ban smart glasses that are designed for prescription wearers. While many people already use Meta glasses with prescription lenses, the company says these new ones support nearly all prescriptions and are built to better serve people who rely on all-day eyewear.

The new glasses start ​at $499 and will be available at optical retailers in the U.S. ​and select international markets, starting April 14. They will be available in two styles: Blayzer, a rectangular design available in Standard and Large sizes, and Scriber, a more rounded frame style.

Meta says these glasses are the most comfortable ones it has ever designed, as they’re made for all-day comfort.

Ray-Ban Meta Blayzer Optics (Gen 2) and Ray-Ban Scriber Optics (Gen 2) glasses are designed for a personalized fit, featuring flexible overextension hinges, interchangeable nose pads, and temple tips that can be adjusted by an optician to suit your face shape.

Image Credits:Meta

Meta also announced that it’s introducing new colors and lens options for Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta frames. The Ray-Ban Meta Skyler frames will come in Shiny Transparent Peach with Transitions Brown Lenses, Headliner frame in Matte Transparent Peach with Transitions Grey Lenses, and the Wayfarer frame in Shiny Transparent Grey with Transitions Sapphire Lenses.

As for the Oakley Meta Vanguard glasses, Meta will offer them in Vanguard Black with Prizm Black Lenses, Vanguard White with Prizm Rose Gold Lenses, Vanguard Black with Prizm Transitions Ember Lenses, HSTN Black with Prizm Dark Golf Lenses, and HSTN Light Curry with Clear to Brown Transitions Lenses.

Meta is bringing more AI features to its smart glasses too. The company says it’s making nutrition tracking on its glasses easier, as users can now use voice or a quick photo to log meals hands-free. Meta AI captures key nutrition details and adds them to your food log. Over time, your food log will deliver personalized insights to help you make healthier choices.

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Meta is also introducing hands-free WhatsApp summaries and recall into its Early Access Program (EAP). Users will be able to ask, “Hey Meta, catch me up on my messages,” for a group chat summary, or ask for specific details like, “What did Jamie suggest for dinner?” Meta says interactions are processed on-device and remain private with end-to-end encryption.

Additionally, Neural Handwriting on Meta Ray-Ban Display is rolling out to everyone in the coming weeks. With this feature, users can write with their finger on any surface to reply to messages silently and discreetly. It works across Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and native Android and iOS messaging.

The fitness industry is consolidating fast — and the latest deal is one of the biggest yet. Playlist, the parent company behind fitness brands Booker, ClassPass, and Mindbody, has officially merged with EGYM, a startup known for its smart gym equipment, AI-driven workout plans, and corporate wellness marketplace Wellpass.

Playlist announced on Tuesday that the transaction is officially complete after first disclosing the agreement in January. With everything now finalized, EGYM will operate under Playlist alongside its other brands, and leadership will be shared between Playlist CEO Fritz Lanman and EGYM CEO Philipp Roesch-Schlanderer.

The deal values the combined company at $7.5 billion.

The merger is expected to create a fitness and wellness powerhouse. By bringing EGYM into the mix alongside B2B platforms like Booker, which supports spas and salons, and Mindbody, which offers software widely used by gyms and studios, plus the consumer app ClassPass, Playlist is stitching together multiple layers of the industry into a single system. Together, the combined company spans everything from how fitness businesses operate to how users discover and book classes, to how workouts are delivered in the gym, and even how employers offer fitness as a benefit.

The scale is particularly notable. The company says it will reach millions of users across more than 30 countries, bringing together over 40,000 businesses on Mindbody, more than 88,000 venues on ClassPass, upwards of 20,000 employer partners through EGYM Wellpass, and over 33,000 fitness locations with EGYM equipment.

It’s hardly alone in making such moves. Recent moves include MyFitnessPal acquiring Cal AI, an AI calorie counting app, and Strava buying two apps: cycling app The Breakaway and running app Runna.

EGYM itself acquired U.S.-based FitReserve in 2024.

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The merger is also a shift away from Playlist’s earlier plans to go public. Back in 2024, the company was operating as Mindbody-ClassPass and was exploring a potential IPO. By 2025, it instead rebranded as Playlist, bringing its three core businesses under a single identity.

As previously announced, the deal included $785 million in new investment led by Jared Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, as well as Vista Equity Partners, Temasek, and L Catterton. The new funding is expected to support future AI efforts and help EGYM expand further into North America and Asia, where its presence had previously been relatively limited.

Playlist has already rolled out several AI-powered capabilities. These include Mindbody’s Messenger AI, which helps brands respond to inquiries and booking requests; ClassPass’s SmartTools, which use machine learning to determine how many spots should be allocated for each class; and EGYM Genius, which enables gyms to deliver personalized training plans that adapt to members’ goals and the equipment available at their facility.

The company declined to share details about any upcoming AI features.

Runway is moving beyond building AI video models and into shaping what gets built on top of them.

The AI video generation startup has launched a $10 million venture fund to invest in early-stage companies building across AI, media, and world simulation, the company’s founders told TechCrunch. It’s also rolling out a Builders program offering seed to series C startups free API credits, a move that suggests Runway wants to create an ecosystem around what it calls “video intelligence.”

Runway has become one of the leading players in AI video generation, with its tools used across film, advertising, and marketing. But with the launch of its “general world models” last December, the company is now pushing beyond creative tooling into broader applications. And it’s looking to tap startups as a way to explore use cases it can’t pursue alone.

“We think that through video, we’re going to get to video intelligence, and it’s going to open a wider set of use cases in different industries that we can’t double down on today, but that maybe we can support with our research,” Alejandro Matamala Ortiz, Runway’s co-founder and chief design officer, told TechCrunch.

Runway’s thesis for the fund is divided into three buckets:

Technical teams that are pushing the frontier of AI and building new kinds of architecture. Builders creating the application layer on top of foundation models and bringing AI to new use cases. Companies experimenting with new forms of media creation, storytelling, and distribution.

For the past year and a half, Runway has quietly backed a handful of early-stage founders and companies, Ortiz said. Those include LanceDB, which builds databases for AI applications, and Tamarind Bio, which uses AI to design new proteins for drug discovery. Some startups, like real-time audio generation firm Cartesia, are working on products that complement its own.

“The next generation of AI models will be built on multimodal data – video, audio, images, text together,” Chang She, co-founder and CEO of LanceDB, told TechCrunch in a statement. “LanceDB is building the infrastructure layer that makes that possible, and Runway is one of the few investors who understands why that matters.”

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Runway has raised close to $860 million to date from backers like Nvidia and Qatar Investment Authority, and is valued at around $5.3 billion post-money. It seeded the $10 million fund with existing investors and close partners, with plans to write checks of up to $500,000 for pre-seed and seed-stage startups.

Runway isn’t the only AI startup that’s turning around to invest in companies just starting out on their journeys. OpenAI is the OG with its Startup Fund, and AI search startup Perplexity launched its own $50 million venture fund last year for seed-stage startups. CoreWeave also launched CoreWeave Ventures in September to back AI companies.

“Many companies like ours are investing heavily on the primitives that will unlock a new set of applications or new types of companies,” Ortiz said. “Companies like ours that are still fairly small with only 150 people can’t focus on everything. But we do see opportunities in partnering very early with new teams that can benefit from what we’re doing.”

Building with Characters

A sample Character made by Runway. Image Credits:Runway AI

That same philosophy is what is driving Runway’s new program for builders. Eligible early-stage startups can start applying for the program to get 500,000 API credits and access to Characters, Runway’s recently released real-time video agent API that’s powered by its new family of general world models.

Characters lets users interact with generative AI agents in real time, giving them a face and a voice that can range from cartoonish to photorealistic. The Builders program is designed, in part, to see what startups build with the technology.

“Until [recently], we didn’t have the possibilities of talking to a real-time video agent, so we are really trying to see which teams see the potential and positive impacts of this technology,” Ortiz said.

The program is already live, with a founding cohort that includes Cartesia, MSCHF, Oasys Health, Spara, Subject, and Supersonik. They’re using Characters to power things like AI customer support agents, interactive brand characters, personalized onboarding experiences, real-time sales assistants, and synthetic media tools.

Ortiz said he’s excited about the potential for telemedicine and education. And since entertainment is Runway’s bread and butter, Ortiz said he expects Characters to be used in gaming and new kinds of entertainment experiences.

“This is part of our general world models, which is what we’re pushing for next: a set of models that are interactive, real-time, and immersive,” Ortiz said. “When you start combining all of these pieces, you can imagine that you will be able to generate and simulate entire environments, and participate and have conversations with the characters in these worlds.”

Other startups like Inworld and Charisma are also building interactive AI characters for games and storytelling, while companies like StoReel are experimenting with AI-generated shows users can engage with directly. Some, like Character AI, are already popular for their AI characters you can talk to.

“We do really believe that there’s a new kind of internet that’s going to be more personalized, more immersive, and in real-time,” Ortiz said.

Micromobility company Also, which was created inside Rivian and spun out last year, will work with DoorDash to develop autonomous delivery vehicles, the companies announced Tuesday.

As part of the deal, DoorDash took part in Also’s $200 million Series C funding round, which was led by previous investor Greenoaks Capital. DoorDash is getting a seat on Also’s board of directors, too.

The raise brings Also’s total funding to $505 million, and puts its valuation above $1 billion. The startup got off the ground with a $105 million investment from Eclipse, which is also backing Mind Robotics — an external industrial AI company that Rivian created late last year.

Also began as a skunkworks project inside Rivian in 2022. The EV-maker initially set out to build an electric bike, and even collaborated with Jony Ive’s design firm LoveFrom, as TechCrunch first reported last year. Also’s first product is a high-end, funky-looking e-bike, but it has also shown off designs for small, pedal-assist delivery vehicles.

Amazon — which is a major investor in, and partner with Rivian — placed an order for thousands of these delivery vehicles late last year. Also has said these can carry more than 400 pounds of packages while still being small enough to fit in a bike lane.

The DoorDash deal is the first indication that Also will be developing autonomous versions of its small electric vehicles. Rivian founder RJ Scaringe and Also CEO Chris Yu told TechCrunch last year that almost any form factor was on the table — within practical limits.

Rivian and Also have said that the micromobility startup would leverage the automaker’s tech in its products, as well as its retail presence and economies of scale. It’s not clear if Also will leverage the autonomy tech that Rivian has been working on.

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Rivian currently plans to use a mix of cameras, ultrasonic sensors, radar, and eventually lidar to bring autonomy to its vehicles. And late last year Rivian revealed it has developed its own custom silicon and autonomy computer in an effort to make its own vehicles increasingly capable of self-driving. Scaringe has already hinted that Mind Robotics would use this chip, so it’s possible that Also could as well. TechCrunch has reached out to both Rivian and Also and will update this story if they respond.

It’s possible, that DoorDash will handle the autonomous tech.

The company has its own autonomy department and spent several years developing a robot vehicle called Dot that is equipped with lidar, radar, and camera sensors and can autonomously drive on roads, bike lanes, and sidewalks. The brightly colored vehicle with cartoon-like eyes can travel up to 20 miles an hour and is delivering in the Metro Phoenix area.

Roku announced on Tuesday that it’s launching a standalone mobile app for Howdy, its recently-launched ad-free streaming service that costs $2.99 per month. The app is available on both iOS and Android in the U.S.

Launched in August 2025, Howdy features a library of nearly 10,000 hours of content from Roku’s partners, including Lionsgate, Sony Pictures, Disney Entertainment, Warner Bros. Discovery, and FilmRise, alongside select Roku Original titles.

The library features titles like “A Haunting in Venice,” “Ice Age,” “Weeds,” and “Kids in the Hall,” as well as rom-coms, medical dramas, ’90s comedies, classics, and more.

With this new app, Roku says subscribers can access Howdy’s library of content on the go.

Priced at $2.99 per month, Howdy is currently the cheapest ad-free streaming service on the market. At launch, Roku said Howdy was designed to complement, not compete with, premium services.

“At a time when most things are getting more expensive, Howdy is designed to make premium, ad-free streaming more affordable and accessible for all viewers,” said Gil Fuchsberg, President of Subscriptions, Partnerships and Corporate Development at Roku, in a press release. “Launching the Howdy mobile app on iOS and Android enables us to continue growing the service beyond the Roku platform, bringing Howdy’s unique value and quality entertainment to even more viewers.”

The launch of the app comes a week after Roku announced that Howdy was launching on Amazon’s Prime Video. The announcement marked the new streaming service’s first expansion outside the Roku ecosystem. Last year, Roku and Amazon also signed a major deal to share advertising data for its connected TVs.

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Roku’s launch of Howdy came two months after the company paid $185 million to acquire Frndly TV, a streaming service that offers live TV, on-demand video, and cloud-based DVR.

Howdy also joins The Roku Channel, the company’s free, ad-supported (FAST) streaming service. The Roku Channel is the most popular FAST service, ahead of competitors Tubi and Pluto TV. More than 125 million people use the platform every day, Roku says.

Roku released its 2025 fourth-quarter earnings last month, posting a net income of $80.5 million. The company also announced that it’s going to launch new streaming bundles.