You hop into your vehicle, push a button, and it drives you to the office while you catch up on emails. After dropping you off, your car heads out to run some errands before picking you up in time for your kids’ activities.

That’s the vision for the future of transportation that GM CEO Mary Barra laid out during a media event in New York City on Wednesday.

“It’s more than just a vehicle. It makes your life easier, more streamlined, and more importantly, safer,” she said. “That’s what we’re working toward at General Motors.”

GM executives underscored this vision with numerous announcements, including plans to debut eyes-off driving starting in 2028, a new centralized computing platform, and the introduction of Google Gemini into vehicles beginning next year.

Wandering eye: GM plans to launch eyes-off driving tech on the Cadillac Escalade IQ, initially on highways. The system will signal to drivers that it’s active via turquoise lighting across the dashboard and exterior mirrors. This capability, according to GM, will enable drivers to “sit back, read, or catch up on messages while the vehicle handles the drive.”

GM’s advanced driver-assistance system, Super Cruise, which enables hands-free driving in certain situations, has been on the market since 2017 and is available on 23 models. GM says it has mapped 600,000 miles of hands-free roads in North America, and that Super Cruise users have logged over 700 million hands-free miles.

Keep reading here.—JG

An e-bike spinoff from EV maker Rivian started with a question:

“Why doesn’t that magical experience that you get out of a Rivian exist in anything smaller than a car?”

That’s how Chris Yu, president of the Palo-Alto based spinoff, recalls a conversation he had years ago with Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe. That question led to Yu joining Rivian and heading up a skunkworks team focused on micromobility that became Also, a name that can be challenging for those of us who traffic in the written word.

Also, in which Rivian controls a minority stake, emerged from stealth earlier this year, with Rivian’s backing and $105 million in Series B funding from VC firm Eclipse. In July, Also announced an investment from Greenoaks valuing the startup at $1 billion. And on Wednesday, it revealed its flagship product: an electric bike dubbed the TM-B (TM stands for transcendent mobility).

“We think this is the answer and the way to catalyze widespread awareness, excitement, inspiration behind adopting any one of these smaller-than-car modes,” Yu told Tech Brew.

Clean sheet: Yu likened what Also is attempting to do with micromobility to the early days of electrification and how Tesla pioneered a vertically integrated, pure-play approach to EVs.

“What we’re really excited about…is bringing that same level of step change and evolution and user experience…across any of the modes that are smaller than a car,” he said.

Keep reading here.—JG

This week, Walmart said it is joining forces with OpenAI to take shopping to the next level. This fall, Walmart and Sam’s Club customers will be able to shop directly within ChatGPT. The new AI-driven shopping experience is being touted as an effort to meet shoppers where they are, as referral traffic from AI sources like ChatGPT to retailer websites peaked this summer.

In September, Shopify announced a similar partnership with ChatGPT in which its merchants will be able to sell directly in ChatGPT conversations. “Shopping is changing fast,” Vanessa Lee, VP of product at Shopify, said in a statement. “People are discovering products in AI conversations, not just through search or ads. This will let our merchants show up naturally in those moments and give shoppers a way to buy without breaking their flow."

Indeed, conversational commerce is becoming a hot topic among retailers as shopper queries become longer.

In a LinkedIn post, Justin Urso, co-founder at Triive, an AI-first retail tech company, described the Walmart-OpenAI partnership as a “watershed moment.”

“This move removes the ‘go to a site → search → filter → checkout’ steps and brings shopping closer to where people already are—in conversation, in context,” Urso wrote. “In integrating directly with ChatGPT/Instant Checkout, Walmart is inserting its commerce layer into platforms where users spend time and instead of forcing users to exit and ‘go to Walmart.’”

As Retail Brew previously reported, Walmart has been “integrating newer technologies into its e-commerce plan as part of a larger reset,” and while the Walmart-ChatGPT checkout is not live yet, execution and rollout of the feature will be crucial to determine its success.

Keep reading here.—VC

Just browsing: Perhaps the consumeriest of all consumer tech is the web browser: We all use one, and the majority of us use Google Chrome. That’s why OpenAI’s debut of its AI-powered browser, Atlas, is kind of a big deal.

The Verge detailed the browser itself, which was demoed during a livestream this week, while CNBC noted that the announcement led to a dip in Alphabet’s stock.

My precious: Fitness tech company Oura recently launched a product called the Oura Ring 4 Ceramic, made of zirconia ceramic and available in four colors. Marketing Brew’s Jennimai Nguyen talked with the company’s CMO about its strategy to go after millennials:

“We wanted to get out of the clichés of ‘young people doing yoga’ and [avoid] the tropes,” Doug Sweeny told Marketing Brew. “We wanted to broaden it up and talk about really living your best life.”

Flashy demos fade fast—but solid infrastructure lasts. On October 28, Tech Brew and Skyflow unpack what really powers successful autonomous agents: trust, transparency, and governance frameworks that protect data from day one. Don’t just chase trends—build something that lasts.

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew’s weekly news quiz has been compared to getting a company-wide shout out from your boss. It’s that satisfying.

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