China’s CPC Central Committee and State Council issued comprehensive labour rules for the country’s 200+ million gig workers, the first time the party’s highest authority has formalised protections for platform workers. The rules mandate minimum wage, maximum working hours enforced by the app itself, algorithm transparency subject to collective bargaining with unions, and a 2027 compliance deadline. The regulations are both labour policy and demand-side economics: Beijing’s consumption-driven growth pivot requires gig workers earning $563-845/month to become consumers, and the platform companies — Meituan, Didi, Alibaba, are profitable enough to absorb the costs.
China’s most powerful governing bodies, the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and the State Council, issued comprehensive labour rules for gig workers on Sunday, the first time the party’s highest authority has formalised protections for the more than 200 million people who deliver food, drive cars, and livestream products through online platforms. The mandate requires platforms to pay at least the local minimum wage, enforces maximum working hours after which the app must stop sending orders, mandates algorithm transparency when platform policies affect pay or task assignment, and sets a target of 2027 for broadly standardising labour practices across the platform economy. Previous regulatory efforts came from individual ministries and carried the weight of guidelines. This comes from the top, and it covers everyone: Meituan, Didi Chuxing, Alibaba’s Ele.me, JD.com, SF Express, and ten other major platform and logistics operators summoned by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security in February for what the government called “employment administrative guidance.”
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The rules
The regulations establish several concrete protections that did not previously exist in binding form. Platforms must ensure gig workers receive at least the local minimum wage, with reasonable additional compensation for work during public holidays. Enterprises must negotiate with labour unions or worker representatives to determine maximum consecutive order-taking time and maximum daily working hours. When workers reach those limits, the system must stop dispatching new orders and send push notifications through the app reminding workers to rest. Businesses must enter into employment contracts with workers when conditions for an employment relationship are met, and for workers who fall below that threshold, they must sign written agreements specifying terms. Platform enterprises must seek worker input when formulating or revising labour rules, which must be publicly displayed for at least seven days before taking effect.
The algorithm provisions are the most significant departure from previous Chinese labour regulation and from anything the European Union or the United States has enacted for gig workers. Platforms must develop and regularly revise the algorithms that control onboarding, task assignment, piece rates, commission structures, compensation, work hours, and incentive or penalty systems. They must consider labour union or worker representative opinions when designing those algorithms and must agree to negotiations if unions request them. They must furnish the information and materials necessary for those negotiations. This is not a transparency requirement in the Western sense, where a company publishes a report about its algorithm. It is a requirement that the algorithm itself become a subject of collective bargaining, that the code governing how a delivery rider earns a living be open to negotiation with worker representatives.Many jobs are being reshaped at the task level by AI rather than disappearing wholesale, and nowhere is that reshaping more literal than in the gig economy, where the algorithm is the manager, the dispatcher, and the payroll department.
The conditions the regulations address have been documented for years. In September 2020, Renwu magazine published “Delivery Workers, Trapped in the System,” an investigation based on six months of research that became the most viral article on the Chinese internet that year. It documented how Meituan and Ele.me’s algorithms progressively shortened delivery times, forcing riders to run red lights, drive against traffic, and sprint up staircases. Per-order pay was determined by a system that factored in average daily orders, punctuality, customer ratings, and complaints, a calculation opaque to the riders whose income depended on it. In Shanghai, in the first half of 2017, one delivery rider was injured or killed every 2.5 days. In Chengdu, in the first seven months of 2018, there were roughly 10,000 traffic violations by delivery riders, 196 accidents, and 155 injuries or deaths, approximately one per day. In September 2024, a delivery rider in Hangzhou collapsed and died after working 18-hour days. A 2023 survey found that roughly half of food delivery riders earn between 4,000 and 5,999 yuan per month, $563 to $845, and only 7% earn more than 8,000 yuan.
Ele.me’s response to the Renwu investigation was to introduce a button allowing customers to “wait five extra minutes,” a gesture that was widely criticised for shifting responsibility from the platform to the consumer.Workplace surveillance under a different nameis not unique to Chinese platforms. Meta has installed tracking software on American employees’ computers to monitor keystrokes and mouse movements. But the scale of algorithmic control in China’s gig economy is different. Meituan alone had 4.72 million active riders as of 2020. Didi created 30.66 million flexible job opportunities. Meituan and Ele.me together control approximately 98% of China’s food delivery market. When two companies’ algorithms govern the working conditions of six million delivery drivers, regulating those algorithms is not a labour policy niche. It is macroeconomic governance.
The context
The timing of the regulations is inseparable from China’s economic circumstances. Youth unemployment stood at 16.5% in December 2025, and some economists estimate the real figure exceeds 40% when discouraged workers and those in involuntary part-time work are included. More than 12 million university graduates are expected to enter the job market in 2026, and many of them will find their first employment on a platform. The 15th Five-Year Plan, covering 2026 to 2030, elevates consumption to a dedicated chapter for the first time, reflecting Beijing’s strategic pivot from export-led and investment-led growth toward domestic consumption. That pivot requires household income to grow, which requires the 200 million workers in flexible employment, roughly 27% of the total workforce and 43% of the urban labour force, to earn enough to spend. Gig workers who earn $563 a month and have no social insurance are not consumers who drive a consumption economy. They are a fiscal liability and a source of social instability. The regulations are labour policy, but they are also demand-side economics.
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China has nearly closed the AI performance gap with the United States, spending 23 times less on AI investment to do so, and the platform companies that employ these gig workers are at the centre of that achievement. Meituan, Didi, and Alibaba are not just delivery and ride-hailing firms. They are AI companies whose logistics algorithms, recommendation engines, and autonomous delivery experiments represent some of the most advanced commercial AI deployments in the world. Beijing’s calculation is that it can impose labour costs on these platforms without destroying the innovation ecosystem, because the platforms are profitable enough to absorb them and because the alternative, 200 million workers with no protections and no purchasing power, is worse for the economy than higher delivery costs.
The comparison
The EU Platform Workers Directive, adopted in December 2024 with a transposition deadline of December 2026, takes a different approach. It establishes a rebuttable legal presumption of employment: if a platform exercises direction and control over a worker, the worker is presumed to be an employee unless the platform proves otherwise. The burden of proof is on the company. Workers cannot be fired solely by algorithm. The UK Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that Uber drivers are workers, not independent contractors, and that waiting time counts toward minimum wage calculations. California’s Assembly Bill 5 presumed gig workers were employees, but the platforms spent over $200 million campaigning for Proposition 22, which exempted them and was upheld by a state appeals court in 2023.The EU AI Act targets safety, transparency, and ethics but falls short on socio-economic impact, and the Platform Workers Directive was partly an attempt to fill that gap.
China’s approach is less categorical than the EU’s presumption of employment and more interventionist than America’s deference to corporate self-governance. It creates a spectrum: formal employment relationships requiring full contracts and benefits at one end, a middle category with written agreements and partial protections in the middle, and a regulatory floor of minimum wage, maximum hours, and algorithm transparency for everyone. The middle category is where the ambiguity lies. It gives platforms a classification that carries fewer obligations than full employment but more than the independent contractor status that Uber and DoorDash insist on in the United States. Whether that middle category becomes a genuine improvement or a loophole that platforms exploit to avoid full employment obligations depends on enforcement, and enforcement is the historical weakness of Chinese gig worker regulation.China’s AI governance framework requires all generative AI models to pass a security evaluation, and the Cyberspace Administration of China enforces those requirements rigorously. Whether the labour agencies tasked with enforcing the new gig worker rules will demonstrate the same rigour is an open question.
The test
The companies have already begun responding. SF Express set aside 200 million yuan, approximately $29 million, to increase delivery worker income. Didi announced 1.1 billion yuan in driver subsidies. Alibaba pledged to cover at least 50% of social security for delivery riders. JD.com committed to full social benefits for all full-time riders. Meituan and Ele.me both pledged enhanced social security coverage. These are not trivial commitments, but they are pledges made under regulatory pressure, and the gap between a pledge and a payslip is where previous Chinese gig worker regulations have failed. The 2021 guiding opinions from eight ministries covered labour income, safety, social security, and conflict resolution. They were widely acknowledged and narrowly implemented. Delivery times kept shrinking. Riders kept dying. Algorithms kept optimising for speed over safety.
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The difference this time is the source. Ministry-level guidelines can be deprioritised. A mandate from the CPC Central Committee and the State Council cannot. The 2027 compliance deadline gives platforms 18 months to restructure their labour relationships, algorithm governance, and social insurance contributions. The enforcement mechanisms remain underspecified in the publicly available text, and that is a legitimate concern. But the political signal is unambiguous. Xi Jinping’s government has decided that the platform economy’s treatment of its workers is a problem significant enough to warrant the highest level of party intervention. Whether the intervention produces the kind of structural change that 200 million workers need, or whether it produces another round of corporate pledges that dissolve into algorithmic business-as-usual, is the test that 2027 will answer. China has written the rules. The question, as always in Chinese regulation, is who enforces them and what happens when they are broken.
Folks who pony up for the privilege of purchasing bulk goods at big-box wholesaler Costco might be quick to tell you there are many reasons they opt to shop there. While it may not be the first reason they list, it’s likely that the wholesale chain’s customer-friendly return policy is one of the more legitimate pluses. If you’re unaware of Costco’s policy, it offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee on virtually any item you purchase within its walls.
That, of course, means that almost any item you buy at your local Costco can also be returned within 90 days of purchase. “Almost” would be a word worth keying in on when it comes to the wholesaler’s policy, however, as there are some items that are simply not eligible for a return. Costco does, after all, sell virtually everything you can imagine these days, including even tires for cars, trucks, and SUVs. Since the chain’s wholesale setup allows it to undercut some retailers on pricing for desirable models from the major tire manufacturers, tires have become big sellers at Costco.
However, if you choose to buy your tires there, you may not be able to return them, as Costco has designated them as items with a “limited useful life expectancy.” That list also includes things like batteries, which begin to degrade almost immediately after being installed. That fact is enough to disqualify tires from its otherwise liberal return policy. There are, however, scenarios in which tire returns may be accepted at Costco.
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What to know about Costco’s policy on tire returns
B2GDrone/Shutterstock
Regarding those products with “limited useful life expectancy,” it appears that Costco’s no-return policy applies to items that have already been used. For instance, batteries that have been opened and installed in a device cannot be returned. Ditto for tires that have already been installed on a vehicle and driven on. If, however, you purchased your new tires online from Costco and decided that you no longer wanted or needed them, they can be returned unused to the store for a refund.
According to Costco’s FAQ page for tire purchases, there are two avenues available to members who’ve decided they don’t want to keep their tires, with the wholesaler offering a refund to those who promptly visit the Wholesale Tire Center once the tires have arrived. You can also contact Costco directly, and a representative will submit a refund request on your behalf. That refund can be credited back to your original method if you purchased the tires from Costco.com. However, exchanges are not an option in this scenario, with Costco requiring shoppers to place a separate order if they want different tires.
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While Costco will apparently not accept returns on installed or used tires, shoppers may not be completely out of luck if they are not satisfied with their new tires. That’s because many manufacturers offer warranty coverage on their tires for as many as 60 days, as is the case with the family-owned Michelin brand. Those policies tend to require that customers return the tire to the point of purchase, where sellers like Costco can offer an exchange for a tire of equal or lesser value.
Samsung is rolling out a new ‘Trips’ feature to Samsung Wallet
This automatically groups your travel plans, creating a timeline within the Wallet
You can also manually add itinerary items and notes
Samsung Wallet just got a big upgrade, as the company is now rolling out what it calls ‘Trips’ — a feature that lets you organize and manage your travel plans all in one place.
You can add all your travel tickets to Trips, whether they’re for flights, hotels, buses, trains, car rentals, sporting events, or excursions, and then it automatically groups them together based on things like time and location, and creates a travel timeline.
You can also go beyond just adding eligible tickets by manually adding itinerary items and including your own memos alongside saved items.
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The end result is that you can have a comprehensive travel schedule, complete with tickets and important information, all within Samsung Wallet.
All your travel plans in one place
(Image credit: Samsung)
Trips is a nice idea, since your tickets can already be housed in the Samsung Wallet, so it’s an app you’ll probably be turning to a lot. It makes sense to be able to include other relevant information too — and have it all grouped so it’s kept organized and easy to find.
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And this isn’t something you’ll really find anywhere else on Android. Google Wallet lets you add similar kinds of tickets, but won’t automatically turn them into a grouped timeline, and while there are third-party apps for creating travel itineraries, you usually have to manually add tickets to them, if they support tickets at all.
Trips is rolling out this month, so if you don’t already have it on your Samsung phone, you should do soon — though right now, it’s only coming to users in the US, UK, and South Korea.
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Public stock exchanges “appear to be warming to climate tech startups,” reports TechCrunch. “Or at least some of them.”
This week, nuclear startup X-energy went public, raising $1 billion in an upsized share offering that appears to have delivered a windfall for its investors, including Amazon [and Google]. Retail investors apparently can’t get enough, with the stock popping 25% in its first hour of trading. Also this week, geothermal startup Fervo said it filed for an initial public offering. The size of the Fervo IPO has yet to be disclosed, but private investors have valued the company at around $3 billion, according to PitchBook.
The move to go public aligns with what investors told TechCrunch at the end of last year. After years of tepid attitudes toward climate tech companies, they expected public markets to start welcoming energy-related startups. Nearly every investor that weighed in on the question said the startups with the best chances of going public specialize in either nuclear fission or enhanced geothermal. Fervo, specifically, was mentioned several times. Thank data centers for that. The AI craze has taken a trend of rising demand for electricity and made it sexy and salable.
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Tesla earnings came and went, and much of it fell into the “we expected this” category. Investors seemed surprised by the $1.4 billion in free cash flow, which gave shares a brief bump, and revenue met or slightly exceeded expectations, depending on which batch of analysts you reviewed.
The earnings call, however, did deliver one eyebrow-raising moment that prompted readers (including some ex-Tesla engineers and other founders in the industry) to reach out to me with some schadenfreude-tinted prose. CEO Elon Musk admitted that millions of Tesla owners will need hardware upgrades to run a future, more capable version of its Full Self-Driving software that doesn’t require human supervision.
There are financial and legal implications for Tesla. As senior reporter Sean O’Kane wrote, Tesla owners with Hardware 3 cars have spent years bugging the company and Musk for a straight answer about whether they would be able to run this advanced version of Full Self-Driving — which, it should be noted, Tesla has not yet released or even proven it is capable of releasing. Tesla sold these Hardware 3 cars between 2019 and 2023.
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Now, here is the kicker and it made me guffaw. Musk said the company would need to physically upgrade each of these vehicles, a feat that would require Tesla to set up microfactories in several major cities to service potentially millions of vehicles.
Microfactories? Yes, you heard correctly. This is not going to be cheap, and it could be one of the line items in Tesla’s capital expenditures budget, which it expanded to a whopping $25 billion this year.
A little bird
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
Senior reporter Sean O’Kane obtained (and verified) an internal memo sent by Redwood Materials founder and CEO JB Straubel that announced layoffs and a restructuring. (Thanks to the little bird who shared it.) Straubel is a former CTO of Tesla.
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The company laid off around 135 employees, or roughly 10% of its workforce, as it restructures to better accommodate its growing energy storage business. O’Kane later learned several executives have also recently left. Chief operating officer Chris Lister is retiring, and at least three other VPs have left in recent months, with the company telling TechCrunch there has been a focus on reducing layers of management.
Last week, I shared that a new autonomous hauler startup (think a cabless autonomous big rig) backed by Eclipse was about to break cover and announce a seed round, thanks to a little bird. Welp, it happened just days later.
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The San Francisco-based startup, called Humble Robotics, raised $24 million in a seed round. Eclipse led the round, which also included backing by Energy Impact Partners and RedBlue Capital, a small early-stage VC firm that is surprisingly active.
As I had been told, Humble really is chock-full of Silicon Valley elite, including founder Eyal Cohen, who previously had stints at Apple special projects, Uber ATG, Pronto, and Waabi. He also founded Spark AI, which was acquired by John Deere in 2023.
Other execs include Drew Gray, who has a similarly AV-heavy résumé, including early days at Cruise, before jumping over to self-driving trucks startup Otto, which was acquired by Uber. After leaving Uber, he became CTO at Voyage, which was then acquired by Cruise.
A full-circle moment, cemented by this fun fact: Humble Robotics is in the same building Cruise was in right after the startup moved out of founder Kyle Vogt’s garage. I know, we keep circling back to 2016.
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Except it’s not 2016, and Cohen and Gray talked to me about how much has changed since then, why this is the time to launch an AV startup, and where the industry is headed. Stay tuned for that story next week.
Lyft stuck to the North American market for much of its history, while Uber took a global, expand-at-all-costs strategy. Lyft has been trying to catch up since last year when it bought German multi-mobility app Freenow from BMW and Mercedes-Benz Mobility for about $197 million in cash.
Now it’s acquiring ride-hailing app Gett’s U.K. business. Lyft says the deal will give it the majority of registered black cab drivers across Greater London on the Lyft platform. The company didn’t disclose the terms, but Calcalist reported it was $55 million.
The company is also building out other means of transport in the region, including its recently renewed partnership with Serco to provide the bikes and stations for Europe’s bike-share system Santander Cycles. Lyft is also planning to start testing autonomous rides in London with Baidu later this year.
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Other deals that got my attention …
A&K Robotics, a Vancouver, Canada-based maker of autonomous vehicles for airports, raised an $8 million CAD Series A round led by BDC’s Industrial Innovation Venture Fund and Vantage Futures.
Decade Energy, which provides power infrastructure at logistics depots, raised €22 million in funding led by Eiffel Investment Group and SET Ventures, along with existing investors.
Reliable Robotics, a Silicon Valley startup developing autonomous systems for aircraft, raised $160 million in a round led by Nimble Partners, existing backers Eclipse, Lightspeed, Coatue, and Pathbreaker Ventures, and new investors Island Green Capital, Socium Ventures, AE Ventures (a strategic partner of the Boeing Company), RTX Ventures, Presidio Ventures (Sumitomo Corporation), UP.Partners, KAS Venture Partners, What If Ventures, Calm Ventures, Gaingels, and Mana Ventures. History lesson: Co-founder and CEO Robert Rose had a brief stint at Tesla where he was senior director of Autopilot and helped ship that first iteration in 2015.
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PlusAI and blank-check company Churchill Capital Corp IXterminated its SPAC merger deal due to market conditions.
Porsche is selling its stake in the Bugatti Rimac joint venture, which it formed in 2021, as well as electric-vehicle maker Rimac Group. Porsche, which holds a 20.6% stake in Rimac and a 45% stake in the joint venture, is selling to HOF Capital. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
Notable reads and other tidbits
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
Einride is adding 75 of its electric heavy-duty trucks to Amazon’s Relay freight network as part of a deal that gives the Swedish startup a toehold in the e-commerce giant’s operations.
Ford and Chinese automaker Geely reportedly held talks about extending a European tie-up into the U.S., the Wall Street Journal reported. The implications, of course, would be Chinese vehicles entering the U.S. market. But it sounds like talks have stalled, leaving this consequential deal in limbo. Bloomberg reported that Ford has denied these claims.
Porsche is adding another EV to its lineup. The Cayenne electric coupe will come to market in late summer. There’s some interesting data in my article on why this one might be a winner for Porsche.
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The first customer-ready Rivian R2 SUVs rolled off the production line at its factory in Normal, Illinois, just days after it was hit by an EF-1 tornado that tore off part of the roof. Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said Rivian doesn’t anticipate any delays to the R2, which are expected to reach customers in June.
One more thing …
Image Credits:Kirsten Korosec
As diligent readers of this newsletter know, I test-drive a fair number of vehicles, and sometimes they are not EVs. Take the Aston Martin Vantage Roadster, for instance. I was anxious to get into the roadster, not just because this $205,000 chiltern-green machine is sleek, powerful, and a convertible. I wanted to test the Apple CarPlay Ultra, the next-generation infotainment system that projects iPhone content to the vehicle’s screens (including the instrument cluster) and integrates vehicle controls like the radio, performance settings, and climate. CarPlay Ultra first launched in the Aston Martin, which isn’t exactly easy to get my hands on.
My first experience with Apple Ultra CarPlay last summer was mixed. It was great — when it worked, but it often didn’t. The problem seemed to be tied to a bug that showed two versions of the vehicle in the Bluetooth settings.
This time around, the setup was instant and it never glitched. Hooray. And it always worked. This really matters for Aston Martin, which for years was stuck with Mercedes-Benz’ old COMAND system. (Mercedes ditched that system in 2018 for its new MBUX one).
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The institute said its strategy is aligned with government policies such as Silicon Island and Impact 2030 while helping towards Ireland’s obligations under the European Chips Act.
Tyndall National Institute is aiming to place itself at the core of Ireland’s semiconductor ecosystem, while strengthening Irish and European positions in the sector, with its new five-year strategy.
‘Tyndall 2030’ is aligned with government policies such as ‘Silicon Island’ and ‘Impact 2030’ while helping towards delivery of Ireland’s obligations under the European Chips Act, according to the organisation.
Launching its strategy on Saturday (25 April), Tyndall noted the centrality of semiconductors to every aspect of modern life and their importance to Ireland and Europe’s competitiveness and digital sovereignty.
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The framework plans for a “significant expansion of Ireland’s semiconductor capability, through increased infrastructure, investment in research programmes and the development of future talent”, according to Tyndall.
“Tyndall 2030 is about translating world-class research into real-world impact,” said Prof William Scanlon, CEO of Tyndall.
“We are investing in both our people and our infrastructure to expand the footprint of Tyndall as a national asset, one that connects ideas, accelerates innovation, and delivers measurable economic value.
Tyndall 2030’s five core pillars are cited as research leadership, innovation, infrastructure, talent and optimal positioning of Ireland in the space. The body plans to “significantly scale its economic and societal impact” by growing annual income to more than €80m and expanding its workforce to more than 750 people.
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Taoiseach Micheál Martin, TD said: “Tyndall, along with Ireland’s national semiconductor strategy, Silicon Island, is ensuring that Ireland remains a global leader in the technologies that underpin everything from climate action to AI data centres.”
The University College Cork-based institute said it is currently “widely recognised as a European and global leader in semiconductor research and advancement” and “plays a central role in Ireland’s semiconductor ecosystem” across “the full technology value chain”.
Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science James Lawless, TD said: “Tyndall 2030 sets out an ambitious vision to strengthen Ireland’s research and innovation capability in the critical technologies that will shape our future.”
We’ve all had that sinking feeling after a long weekend or holiday: opening our inbox to find projects that haven’t yet moved forward but haven’t been scrapped either. They sit in limbo, quietly draining time and reducing productivity.
These are what we call ‘Zombie Projects’, and they are becoming a real productivity problem for UK businesses. Our recent research found that 41% of UK workers usually carry projects over from one year into the next, and 90% of respondents surveyed globally say they’ve caused problems.
Sven Peters
AI Evangelist at Atlassian.
They are also damaging employee morale and wellbeing, with a third (33%) of UK workers feeling stressed and overwhelmed by these projects, and 28% saying they lead to team burnout.
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In today’s fast-paced and demanding work environment, this type of ongoing project becomes an operational nightmare, especially against a backdrop where UK productivity declined last quarter.
Luckily, AI tools can help by surfacing information and analysing which projects are inactive or no longer needed, and support teams to make decisions around which projects to see through and which to retire.
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A lack of clear ownership keeps Zombie Projects alive
Zombie Projects continue for a common reason; many workers are unclear about who has the authority to end a project, or when it is acceptable to do so. This creates a decision gap, and work continues by default.
Most team structures are designed to deliver projects, not to abruptly close them. Without a clearly assigned leader or decision maker, it’s hard to find the moment when a project should end, so progress slows, and teams don’t see any meaningful outcomes, but activity doesn’t fully stop.
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Modern work patterns, where an employee can have multiple tabs open at the same time, amplify this, as it’s far easier to leave tasks open than to actively close them.
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Psychological factors also reinforce the fear of shutting down a project, and 30% of UK employees fear being perceived negatively if they make the decision to retire a project.
Set clear parameters, and apply AI
So, getting a handle on Zombie Projects needs to start with defining ownership, putting in place clear statuses, and documenting everything in a shared system, so teams can understand where projects are starting to grind to a halt. This could include defining how projects are labelled as ‘complete’ or ‘ongoing’, or sharing regular updates tied to outcomes that have been agreed by the whole team.
This is where AI can then be applied to help manage and triage projects effectively. In fact, half of the workers in our recent survey felt that having a dedicated AI agent for Zombie Projects would allow them to decide which projects are deemed the highest priority, and what isn’t essential work.
An AI tool can help to monitor project activity against agreed parameters and highlight where work is drifting off track or slowing down. AI helps increase visibility, reduce ambiguity, and support clearer decision-making.
It can continuously surface stalled work, flag misalignment, and rank tasks by impact so individual workers and teams can be clear on how to get a project back off the ground or take a call to close it.
This can also reduce the manual burden on employees, as instead of manually assessing documents and trying to determine which ones matter most, AI can quickly summarize the most important projects or actions in a snapshot: work that’s powering progress, work that’s consuming capacity without clear objectives, and work that hasn’t advanced.
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Ultimately, AI doesn’t create more time, but it can expose where time is being wasted, especially within dormant work, and help make informed decisions on when to put a Zombie Project to rest.
Ending the zombie project gap, once and for all
Projects turn into Zombie Projects when teams don’t feel clear on who is taking ownership of decisions, and when the information needed to make those decisions is hard to find and understand. Applying AI to projects can make it clearer and easier to see where things are falling off track and make informed decisions on how to progress or retire projects.
The value of AI in this context is not automation alone, but better decisions. Intelligent, integrated AI tools can surface the context and insight needed to distinguish between initiatives worth reviving and those that should be retired. This shifts the conversation from emotional or stakeholder-driven considerations to evidence based prioritization.
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Working in this way is good for productivity, but it will also reduce stress and burnout among teams, and free up time to work on the projects that really matter – not the ones that are just weighing teams down.
This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.
The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit
Toyota regularly weighs in as the world’s largest automaker by volume, and even if you aren’t sure what the Toyota name actually means or where its logo comes from, the company’s badge is easily one of the most recognizable ones in the world. However, if you’ve looked closely at the badge on certain Toyota models over the last decade and a half, you may have noticed different colors on some models.
The logo itself, with its overlapping ovals representing the letter “T” and a steering wheel, is the same — but some vehicles add a blue-colored halo to the design. The blue emblem was used on Toyota’s hybrid models, serving as a subtle way to distinguish Toyota hybrids from their non-hybrid counterparts for years. This was particularly important for models like the Camry and RAV4, which were formerly offered with both hybrid and non-hybrid powertrains.
In late 2023, however, Toyota began to phase out the familiar blue badges on its hybrid models. This was primarily driven by the automaker’s move toward its then-new “Beyond Zero” branding, which encompasses all its electrified models, as well as other alternative-fuel vehicles it makes. Most notably, the shift comes as an increasingly large part of Toyota’s lineup comes standard with hybrid powertrains.
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From one hybrid era to another
Sallehudin Ahmad/Shutterstock
The blue halo Toyota badge first appeared on the third-generation Prius when it debuted in 2009. While the Prius has suffered a dip in popularity in 2026, the wedge-shaped hybrid was the model that symbolized Toyota’s hybrid technology more than any other in the 2000s and early 2010s – and the blue Toyota badge was one of its unique touches. As the hybrid lineup continued to expand, the blue Toyota badge would appear on other hybrid models like the Camry, Corolla, and RAV4, which were sold alongside their non-hybrid counterparts wearing the standard Toyota badge.
By the early 2020s, most of Toyota’s cars and smaller SUVs were offered with available hybrid powertrains, almost making the blue hybrid badge a formality rather than a unique identifier. Likewise, the growth of the EV market and new brands like Tesla had begun to overshadow Toyota’s increasingly mainstream hybrid lineup as the poster children for low-emissions motoring.
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Enter the Beyond Zero branding. While other automakers went all-in on EVs, Toyota’s Beyond Zero approach is much more diversified, and includes the company’s vast gasoline-electric hybrid lineup along with plug-in hybrids, full EVs, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. With this new approach, it was time to kiss the old, blue Toyota hybrid logo goodbye.
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Welcome to Beyond Zero
With the old badges gone, Toyota opted for a subtle new blue dot emblem on the rear to represent the Beyond Zero branding. The same emblem also appears on all of Toyota’s newer electrified models. This new badge first appeared on the new 2023 Prius, and really hit mainstream awareness with the redesigned 2025 Camry, which introduced a standard hybrid powertrain across the lineup.
Along with the move away from the blue Toyota logo badge itself, Toyota also began to do away with the old “Hybrid” badging in favor of “HEV”, which stands for ‘hybrid electric vehicle”. Meanwhile, Toyota’s all-electric models, like the bZ, get the same Beyond Zero blue dot emblem, but with the letters “BEV” for “battery electric vehicle”.
Toyota hybrids may no longer be the hippest or most fashionable way to advertise one’s green sensibilities, but that’s probably a good thing for both Toyota as a company and for our planet. Not only are Toyota hybrids more refined and more popular than ever, but the company’s fuel-saving technology has also become so widespread and so normalized that the cars no longer need their own version of the Toyota badge. In fact, if they’d kept the blue badge for all hybrid models, it’s likely the original badge that would have become the outlier.
Your smartphone has a pile of apps. OpenAI wants to replace all of them with one AI agent that just gets things done. That’s the vision behind the company’s plans to build its own smartphone, complete with a custom processor co-developed with MediaTek and Qualcomm, as first reported by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo on X.
And Sam Altman seems to agree. In a post on X, the OpenAI CEO wrote, “feels like a good time to seriously rethink how operating systems and user interfaces are designed.” That is not a subtle hint.
feels like a good time to seriously rethink how operating systems and user interfaces are designed
(also the internet; there should be a protocol that is equally usable by people and agents)
We have seen earlier attempts at developing truly agentic AI in the form of Rabbit, Humane AI Pin, and other AI devices. However, those devices lacked the tight integration with our phones, apps, and services, resulting in failure. It seems that OpenAI wants to sidestep the limitation by creating its own phone to provide users with a true AI assistant.
There are three solid reasons. First, to deliver a truly comprehensive AI agent experience, OpenAI needs full control over both the software and the hardware. Relying on Android or iOS means playing by someone else’s rules.
Second, your smartphone knows more about you than any other device. It tracks your location, your habits, and your daily context in real time. That kind of data is gold for an AI agent trying to anticipate your needs before you even ask.
Third, smartphones are and will remain the biggest device category on the planet. If OpenAI wants to scale, this is where it needs to be.
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How will the AI actually work on this phone?
According to Ming-Chi Kuo, the new OpenAI smartphone will work on a two-layer system. The phone will handle lighter tasks on-device, like understanding your context, managing memory, and running smaller AI models. Heavier tasks get offloaded to the cloud.
It’s similar to what Apple does with its iPhone and Private Cloud Compute, but OpenAI has the benefit of an actually working artificial intelligence model and not the disaster Apple calls Apple Intelligence.
Apple
On the business side, OpenAI is likely looking at bundling hardware with subscriptions, similar to how Apple bundles services, while also building a developer ecosystem around its AI agents.
Who is helping OpenAI build this thing?
Mr. Kuo reports that MediaTek and Qualcomm are the processor co-development partners, while Luxshare is the exclusive system co-design and manufacturing partner. Luxshare is particularly interesting here.
According to Kuo, the company has long tried to challenge Hon Hai’s (read Foxconn) dominant position in Apple’s supply chain without much success. This project gives Luxshare an early foothold in what could be the next major smartphone generation, and that is a big deal for the company.
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In Pictures Ltd. / Getty Images
2028 feels far away, but if OpenAI pulls this off, the smartphone you are using today might look very different in the near future.
As reported by severaloutlets, the Trump administration dismissed members of the National Science Board (NSB), which is tasked with establishing policies for the National Science Foundation. It’s not clear how many members have been dismissed. According to screenshots shared with The Washington Post, board members received a message that their position was “terminated, effective immediately.
The NSB establishes policies for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the independent US agency responsible for apportioning about 25 percent of federal support towards research conducted by the country’s colleges and universities. The foundation has existed for over 75 years and has contributed to the development of MRIs and cellphones, among other breakthroughs. Up to 25 active members can head the NSB, however, the current board only has 22 members; the NSF’s former director, Sethuraman Panchanathan, abruptly resigned last year.
In response, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren called the latest decision a “real bozo the clown move” in a statement. “This is the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation,” Lofgren, who also serves as the Ranking Member of the House’s Science, Space and Technology Committee, added in the statement. “It unfortunately is no surprise a president who has attacked NSF from day one would seek to destroy the board that helps guide the Foundation.”
It’s unclear if the NSB’s next scheduled board meeting for May 5 will take place. When asked about the recent terminations and the next meeting, the NSB referred to the White House for additional details. We’ve reached out to the Trump administration for confirmation and will update the story when we hear back.
Many of us will have seen the portable solar panels offered on our favourite online purveyors of electronics, but some who have bought them remain unimpressed with their performance. [t.oster92] had just such an issue, and concluded that since it had great dull-day performance, it wasn’t the panels themselves that were at fault. There followed a teardown and an investigation of the circuitry inside.
The panels fed a small PCB containing a buck converter, with an 8-pin SOIC carrying an untraceable part number. Some detective work revealed it was likely to be a rebadged version of a more common part, which exposed the problem as a converter without the rating to deliver the power it should. The solution, at least in part, was to replace it with a more powerful chip on a module and reap the benefits.
This would be the end of the story, but this is an ongoing project. Next up will be adding MPPT capability to extract the last bit of juice from those panels. That makes this one a story to keep an eye on, because we could all use a decent set of panels.
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This hack is part of our 2026 Green Powered Challenge.
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