Tech
Anthro Energy breaks ground on factory that could pave the road to solid-state batteries
Anthro Energy broke ground on Tuesday on a factory in Louisville, Kentucky, that can make enough battery materials for more than 300,000 electric vehicles.
But the facility’s headline output, 25 gigawatt-hours worth of electrolytes, is just part of the story. Anthro’s factory could give solid-state batteries a much needed boost in the U.S.
Battery manufacturers are scouring the planet for materials that aren’t encumbered by “foreign entity of concern” problems — in other words, materials that aren’t somehow controlled by Chinese companies. Anthro hopes its new facility, scheduled to start production in 2028, can help fill that need for many U.S. companies.
“When it opens, we’ll be serving domestic, high-spec customers, this emerging ecosystem for battery production where they frankly just needs electrolytes — a domestic source of China-free supply, FEOC-free supply,” David Mackanic, co-founder and CEO of Anthro Energy, told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview.
The startup, which raised its first funding round just four years ago, wants its Kentucky factory to become a key node in the emerging U.S. battery supply chain. “Within a 12-hour drive, you can get to 70% of the battery production facilities in the United States that exist today,” he said.
To build the factory, Anthro received a $24.9 million award from the Department of Energy under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and another $18.4 million in investment tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act. Kentucky pitched in another $2.3 million in tax incentives in exchange for creating 110 permanent jobs.
The Louisville factory will be set up to make a range of electrolytes, though Mackanic said he’d eventually like to see much of the output dedicated to Athro’s own polymer product, Proteus, which is designed to drop into an existing production line with minimal tweaks — a major reason why the startup can begin production using other company’s formulations. Once customers validate Anthro’s own material, the startup can shift production accordingly.
There’s every reason to think at least a portion of those customers will make the switch eventually. Proteus is a polymer that promises pave the way to solid- and semi-solid-state batteries, a holy grail of the battery industry. Chinese companies are reportedly looking to start trial production of solid-state batteries in 2027.
Solid-state batteries promise to solve a range of challenges presented by the lithium-ion batteries commonly used today. Solid-state batteries help boost energy density, and by eliminating flammable electrolytes, they should reduce the risk of fires. Also, because they form a solid barrier between the anode and cathode, they prevent the appearance of dendrites, which are spiky growths that can bridge the two electrodes and cause short circuits.
But for all their promise, solid-state batteries have so far failed to reach their potential because no one has figured out how to cost-effectively manufacture durable cells at scale.
Anthro might have a solution to those challenges. In its manufacturing process, Anthro’s electrolyte flows into the cell as a liquid, allowing it to penetrate the anode and cathode, just like today’s liquid electrolytes. Later, it firms up, essentially gluing the two parts of the battery together.
The result is a cell that, depending on the formulation, is not just stronger — “10 to 15 times stronger than with a liquid electrolyte,” Mackanic said — but can be flexible, too. Ultimately, he envisions those qualities paying dividends not just in EVs, but drones and robots as well.
Plenty of other battery materials companies have failed at this precise moment, when they move from small-scale to larger scale production. But Mackanic is optimistic that the federal funding will help Anthro vault over the valley of death.
“To get into big applications, you have to have big production,” he said. “The Department of Energy award solves a lot of the chicken or the egg problem.”
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Tech
Comcast adds motion sensing to millions of its newer routers, with a privacy catch
Comcast has rolled out a new motion sensing technology to its latest home routers, allowing homeowners to receive notifications about activity detected inside their house while they are away.
The free feature, called Wi-Fi Motion, turns newer Xfinity gateways into motion sensors by detecting interruptions to the Wi-Fi signal of the wireless network, and sends a notification through the Xfinity app.
As first reported by The Verge, the new Wi-Fi Motion feature works for advanced Xfinity gateways XB7 and newer models and is opt-in, which means users can choose whether to switch on the feature in the Xfinity app. As quoted by the publication, customers can use this feature for “motion detection in their home and for a basic level of security.”
There is a privacy trade-off. By enabling the feature, Comcast says it may disclose information generated from a customer’s use of Wi-Fi Motion to outside parties under a broad array of reasons — and Comcast also says it doesn’t have to tell you.
“Comcast may disclose information generated by your Wi-Fi Motion to third parties without further notice to you in connection with any law enforcement investigation or proceeding, any dispute to which Comcast is a party, or pursuant to a court order or subpoena,” reads an Xfinity support page.
That’s something to consider before you switch on the feature, particularly if you’re privacy conscious.
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Tech
Why Apple’s camera-equipped AirPods may not be the ‘pervert pods’ consumers fear
Camera-equipped AI wearables today have developed a bit of a reputation problem. Devices like Meta’s Ray-Bans raise concerns about people being recorded without their consent. So the idea that Apple is reportedly preparing to release AirPods with cameras in them seems to conflict with the iPhone maker’s desire to position itself as a privacy-focused tech company.
But Apple’s now-leaked camera-equipped AirPods may not be as creepy as they first sound.
The rumored cameras were reportedly confirmed via video footage found in Apple’s macOS 26.7 RC (short for “release candidate,” or the final test version of the software before it ships publicly). The footage shows a man holding up a book while wearing AirPods and apparently having a conversation with Siri about it.
The audio track accompanying the video says: “With Visual Intelligence, your world becomes savable. See something you like? Just ask me to save it for later.”
The addition of cameras to the popular wireless earbuds is further confirmed through code that references a “Hair Detected” error, which would warn users when their hair is covering the AirPods’ camera. The launch of such a device could very easily backfire on Apple if not done right.
For a company whose brand is built on trust, this is a bigger gamble for Apple than one of its typical hardware refreshes. AirPods currently blend as a simple iPhone accessory that people wear all day without a second thought. A change like this could instead push them to the front of people’s minds, making them wonder whether the person opposite them is secretly recording.
Apple appears to have thought this through, based on prior reporting. According to an earlier report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the AirPods with cameras won’t be able to record media. As Gurman put it:
“The cameras essentially act as eyes for the Siri digital assistant and aren’t designed to take photos or video. These components — located in both the right and left earbuds — allow the device to capture visual information in low resolution.”
In other words, the goal isn’t to turn one of Apple’s best-selling accessories into a surveillance device (lest they become “pervert pods”). It’s to provide a way for AirPods owners to engage with the newly upgraded Siri AI, which is set to ship in September with Apple’s iOS 27 and other software updates.
That means an AirPods wearer could look at something — like a book, as shown in the leaked video, or perhaps some ingredients they’re preparing to cook, per Gurman’s earlier reporting — and simply ask Siri for help. The feature could also be useful for turn-by-turn walking directions when navigating an unfamiliar city.
For Apple, the bigger strategic bet is that this feature could also push consumers toward, if not a screen-free future entirely, then at least one where there’s less need to pull out an iPhone throughout the day. By baking AI access into a commonly worn and already socially acceptable wearable, Apple’s customers could interact with the world around them in a more natural way than staring down at a glowing screen.
There is one wrinkle, though. Gurman also reported that the new AirPods would include an LED indicator that lights up whenever the device is sharing visual data to the cloud. He questioned the light’s visibility, given the AirPods’ small size, but either way, its inclusion could work against Apple. Though it’s the right thing to do from a transparency and privacy perspective, that LED risks visually lumping AirPods in with other AI wearables already facing public skepticism, like the Meta Ray-Bans, Snap’s Specs, or Google’s new AI glasses. Apple can control what the cameras do, but it’ll have far less control over what people assume they do.
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Tech
Bluesky says its recent outage was caused by another DDoS attack
Social networking site Bluesky says its recent day-long disruption was caused by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that flooded the site with junk traffic. The social network confirmed the incident in a post on Monday, confirming the attack had taken place over the previous 24 hours.
“We have upgraded our defenses in response, and we continue to monitor the situation,” Bluesky said in a post, without disclosing any more details.
A spokesperson for Bluesky did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s questions about the attack.
DDoS attacks involve pummeling a website or server with large amounts of junk traffic with the aim of overloading its resources and knocking it offline. These kinds of attacks often rely on using large amounts of hijacked internet-connected devices — enlisted into a residential proxy network or a botnet — to harness their unused internet bandwidth to flood web servers.
Security researchers discussing the attacks in the IFIN public forum report that Iran-backed attackers have claimed responsibility for the attack. Iran has increased its attacks on U.S. businesses and critical infrastructure since the start of the U.S. and Israel-led war earlier this year.
This is the latest large-scale DDoS attack to affect the social networking site in recent months. In April, the site was hit by a prolonged series of outages caused by a similar flood of web traffic. It’s unclear if the attacks are linked.
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