# Uber Hotel Expansion and AI-Driven Development Speed

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-04-30

## Transcript

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Thanks in part to AI, Uber is now in the hotel business.
I'm Imran Shaikh and your Wednesday Daily Crunch featuring three big tech headlines starts right now.
A new project to bring back Vine's six-second looping videos is now available for download on the App Store and Google Play.
Divine, as this Vine reboot is called, offers access to an archive of roughly 500,000 Vine videos, restored from a backup of the original service, and allows creators to post new Vines once again.
Divine was financed by And Other Stuff, a non-profit formed in May 2025 by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.
The non-profit is focused on funding experimental open-source projects that have the potential to transform the social media landscape.
You see, Dorsey's backing of Divine doesn't make him a traditional investor since he's not looking to get a return here.
Rather, his goal is to correct an earlier mistake he made as CEO of Twitter.
Shutting down Vine in the first place.
The effort has attracted the attention of several early Vine creators, including Lele Pons, Jimmy Here, Mighty Duck, and Jack and Jack, among others.
Divine user profiles are viewable on the web, even if you don't have the Divine mobile app.
Divine, which again launched Wednesday, also includes features like Compilation Mode, which reflects how much of today's youngest generation grew up watching Vines.
With this mode, people can create their own lists of videos to make their own compilations.
Divine is now available as a free download on the App Store, Google Play, and the Noster-powered Zap Store.
Initially, it'll roll out access to those on the waitlist and will let others in gradually via the use of invite codes.
Happy birthday, Google Translate!
You're now 20 years old.
And to celebrate the birthday, the company has added a new feature that lets users practice their pronunciation and enunciation of words and phrases in different languages.
When you translate a word, sentence, or phrase, you can navigate into the practice menu to find a pronounce button, which shows you phonetics that you can say out loud to practice speaking the translated text.
The app then scores your pronunciation and gives you feedback, like some sounds were a little unclear.
You can listen to the app's pronunciation of the text too.
The feature is rolling out in the US and India and currently supports English, Spanish, and Hindi.
This feature resembles Duolingo and how it lets you practice speaking words and sentences.
Last month, the company rolled out its live headphone translation feature to iOS and expanded its availability on Android devices to Germany, Spain, France, Nigeria, Italy, the United Kingdom, Japan, Bangladesh, and Thailand.
Uber customers in the U.S.
can now book hotels directly through the app, one of several new features announced Wednesday that pushes far beyond the company's original ride-hailing purpose and even deeper into its users' lives.
Uber announced the new hotel booking feature on Wednesday during its product-heavy annual Go-Get event in NYC.
At launch, Uber customers will have access to more than 700,000 hotels worldwide through a partnership with Expedia Group, the travel company that Uber CEO Dara Khazr-Shahi led.
for 12 years.
Uberset vacation rental inventory from startup Vrbo will be added to the app later this year.
And in a pitch to sell more customers on its Uber One subscription, Uberset members will get 20% discounts off of a rolling list of 10,000 hotels when booked through the app.
Members will also receive 10% back in Uber credits on all bookings.
The hotel bookings, new AI-powered voice bookings feature, and a widespread search tool are among a handful of new products unveiled Wednesday that went from idea to launching in the app within months thanks to agentic AI tools like Cursor, Uber Chief Technology Officer Praveen Napali Naga told TechCrunch.
Naga said a feature like the hotel bookings would have taken at least a year or two, a lengthy process that includes the initial development, building it, and then testing and debugging before launching it to customers.
That time frame has been cut in half, and he expects now that more engineers have adopted these agentic AI workflows, they'll move even faster.
The company is also rolling out a feature called Eats for the Way, which allows customers who have reserved an Uber Black to also order a drink or snack that'll be in the vehicle when it arrives.
We now go over to producer Dennis for the latest in startup business news all in about one minute.
Imran, thank you.
And BCI, Brain Computer Interface Technology, in which neural signals are routed from a person's head to a computer, was once the stuff of science fiction.
But these days, the technology represents a competitive corner of the tech industry.
One of the companies racing to commercialize BCI is Neurable, which this week announced that it's looking to license its mind-reading technology to consumer wearables.
Neurable specializes in non-invasive BCI.
which distinguishes itself from firms like Neuralink, the Elon Musk-founded startup known for inserting computer chips directly into people's skulls, and that its product doesn't require users to undergo brain surgery to enjoy its benefits.
Neurable's technology works through a combination of EEG sensors and signal processing that can scan a user's brain activity, analyze it with AI, and provide information about a person's cognitive performance.
In December, Neurable raised $35 million in a Series A, which it plans to use to scale the commercialization of its technology.
This week, the company announced that, as part of its expansion effort, it's looking to license its technology to a variety of consumer-facing companies.
And that'll do it for me.
Imran, back to you.
And folks, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Kirsten Kurosik, Ivan Mehta, Sarah Perez, and more awesome TechCrunch journalists.
We'll see you here tomorrow.
Same Tech Time, same Crunch channel.
And until then, find us at TechCrunch.com.
Every Tuesday, we cover the latest Apple news on MacBreak Weekly.
Hi, this is Leo Laporte inviting you to join us this week as we talk about the big news.
Tim Cook announces he is stepping down as CEO of Apple as soon as September 1st.
Who's taking over and what does it mean for the future of Apple?
We discuss with Jason Snell, Andy Anaco, and Christina Warren.
That's this week on MacBreak Weekly.
You'll find it at twit.tv slash mbw or wherever you get your podcasts.