# Roku Howdy Launch, Whoop Medical Pivot, Airbnb Services Expansion, and AI Ecosystem Moves

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-04-01

## Transcript

This is TechCrunch.
We sent here for you.
Then a guy of Road Trip or Giefs.
When your fluke for spawn has your account or not reaching must was often had.
Yeah, all then we for you here.
Enterprise.
Here for you.
In this year, we're going to be thousand electroface for Amazon Lieferungen in Guns Europa eingesets.
For Lieferungen with Fußball for younger kicker.
On Tuesday, Roku announced that it's launching a standalone mobile app for Howdy.
You know, it's recently launched ad-free streaming service that costs two ninety-nine a month.
Keep up, folks.
The app's available on both iOS and Android and in the US.
Now, launched in August 2025.
I know so long ago.
Howdy features a library of nearly 10,000 hours of content from Roku's partners.
That includes Lionsgate, Sony Pictures, Disney Entertainment, Warner Brothers, Discovery, and FilmRise alongside Select Roku original titles.
We're talking titles like a haunting in Venice, Ice Age, Weeds, and of course, my favorite, Kids in the Hall, as well as ROM comms, medical dramas, 90s comedies, classics, and more.
With this new map, Roku says subscribers can access Howdy's library of content on the go and crush some heads while they're at it, if you know you know.
Priced at $299 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.
The launch of the app comes a full week after Roku announced that Howdy was launching on Amazon's Prime video.
Now, one notable addition to the captable is Abbott, the medical device giant.
Whoop founder and CEO Will Ahmed told Techrunch the partnership signals a broader push into health and medical capabilities, though he noted there's more to come on that specific announcement.
The funding arrives as Whoop hits some major business milestones by Ahmed's telling.
The company exited last year at a $1.1 billion bookings run rate of 103% year over year.
As for what comes next with all that capital, Ahmed pointed to talent and hiring, marketing and brand awareness, and continued RD investment, along with accelerating international expansion.
Of course, the obvious question looming over a round of this size at this valuation, is an IPO coming?
Ahmed said the company is doing a lot of the no regrets work to be a public company, but stopped short of signaling any imminent plans to list.
Given that Whoop is a consumer brand with major name recognition among health conscious and performance-oriented users, it's the kind of company that could generate real retail investor enthusiasm whenever it does decide to make that move.
In the meantime, Whoop has much more runway and a much bigger number next to its name.
You see, the company's partnering with transportation company Welcome Pickups to let users book a private car service in cities such as Paris, Bali, and Mexico City.
The travel company said that it's been running a pilot this year in Europe and Asia, where thousands of guests used it with an average rating of 4.96.
Airbnb said that once you book a stay in a city where the service is available, you'll see an option to schedule a private cab in the trips tab of the Airbnb app.
Users can view their cab reservation details and make changes directly from the app.
The company said that it plans to expand this service to more cities and locations throughout the year.
Airbnb launched its services category last summer alongside an expansion into experiences.
Aha, so why hoof it when you could have someone drive you around?
At that time, it offered 10 categories of services, allowing users to book chefs, catering, prepared meals, photography, massages, spa treatment, personal training, hair, nails, and makeup across eight countries.
In November, the company announced a partnership with Instacart to allow guests to order groceries before and during their stay in select cities in the U.S.
With the new feature rollout, Airbnb is moving toward a full stack of service offerings.
The company has also been experimenting with letting users book hotel rooms.
During its Q4 2025 earnings call, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said that the opportunity in hotels is massive, and it'll allow the platform to become a part of a user's trip, no matter what kind of stay a guest wants.
Now let's learn the latest in startup business news all in about one minute with our very own producer, Dennis.
Imran, thank you.
And to build the autonomous machine of the future, sometimes your model needs a model.
Companies developing self-driving cars, robots manipulating physical environment, or autonomous construction equipment, collect thousands, if not millions, of hours of video data for evaluation and training.
Organizing and cataloging that video is now a job for humans who have to watch all of it.
Even fast forwarding, that doesn't scale.
Startup Nomadic ML wants to solve problems for customers who have 95% of their fleet data sitting in archives.
The company announced an $8.4 million seed round Tuesday at a post-money valuation of $50 million.
And Startup 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.
And that'll do it for me.
Imron, back to you.
And folks, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Aisha Malik Akani, Loizos, Ivan Meita, and more awesome TechCrunch journalists.
We'll see you here tomorrow.
Same tech time, same crunch channel.
And until then find us at TechRunch.com.
So sparrency bishop pro bewerbus and jederzeit flexible.
Jetzt Termin vereinbaren auf stepsdown.
Stepsdown.