Amazon rolled out Alexa Plus nationwide and launched a new free tier, making its revamped AI-powered assistant available to everyone in the US, including a free option for non-Prime users, according to The Verge. The announcement was made on February 4, 2026.
In other tech news, SNAK Venture Partners announced the close of its oversubscribed $50 million debut fund, anchored by the Pritzker Group, founded by Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and his brother, Tony, TechCrunch reported Wednesday. SNAK founders Sonia Nagar and Adam Koopersmith, formerly of Pritzker Group, launched their firm earlier this year to back digital marketplaces. "It felt like the timing was right and there was support within the firm to go do this," Nagar said, according to TechCrunch. Their vision is to digitize industries like supply chain and construction.
Apeiron Labs secured $29 million to develop autonomous underwater robots, TechCrunch reported in an exclusive. Founder and CEO Ravi Pappu aims to revolutionize ocean data collection, which he says is currently slow and expensive, requiring ships that cost $100,000 a day. "Getting data from the subsurface ocean has always been really hard," Pappu told TechCrunch.
Accel doubled down on Fibr AI, leading a $5.7 million seed round following an earlier $1.8 million pre-seed investment in 2024, TechCrunch reported. The total funding for the startup, which aims to personalize website experiences using AI agents, now stands at $7.5 million. WillowTree Ventures and MVP Ventures also participated in the round. Fibr AI seeks to bridge the gap between personalized advertising and static website experiences.
Spotify announced changes to its built-in song lyrics feature, including global availability of lyrics translations, offline viewing for Premium subscribers, and a relocation of the feature within the app, according to TechCrunch on Wednesday. These changes follow previous tweaks, including a brief attempt to paywall lyrics in 2024. The company hopes the new offline lyrics feature will encourage users to upgrade to Premium.
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