# Strategic Shifts in Pricing, EV Capital, and AI Acquisition

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-06-06

## Transcript

This is TechCrunch.
Netflix is confirming that it's raising prices again.
I'm Imran Shaikh and your Friday Daily Crunch starts right now.
Winter testing has been completed for the VW ID Everyone, the first vehicle under a joint venture between Rivian and Volkswagen Group to be equipped with the EV maker's software and electrical architecture.
Now, that's not just progress toward getting this vehicle into customers' hands.
It also unlocks another $1 billion investment from Volkswagen Group into Rivian.
Now, about $750 million of that is coming in the form of an equity investment.
The other $250 million is either equity or convertible debt, depending on which prototypes Volkswagen Group provided to Rivian for testing.
The companies didn't make this immediately clear.
The German automotive giant has already invested a little more than $3 billion in Rivian as part of their joint venture, and there's more to come.
Rivian will be able to borrow up to $1 billion from Volkswagen Group starting in October.
Rivian also gets another $460 million equity investment from Volkswagen after the first vehicle goes on sale using the joint venture's tech.
Now, all told, the deal could be worth as much as $5.8 billion to Rivian.
The winter testing milestone payment has been delivered just months before Rivian starts selling the R2 SUV, which founder and CEO RJ Skaring has said is may be the most important thing we've launched to date.
Not surprisingly, Rivian is banking on a very fast scaling of R2 production and sales.
Now when it comes to AI chatbots, there is currently a war on for consumer attention.
While the big chatbot providers are looking to increase their user count, and in a minor coup for itself, Google just made it significantly easier for users of those other chatbots to defect to Gemini.
You see, on Thursday, the company announced what it calls switching tools, new widgets that are designed to allow users to transfer memories, basically chunks of personal information, and even entire chat histories from other chatbots directly into Gemini.
Users can easily share key preferences, relationships, and personal context in this way, the company says.
Now, the idea is to make it significantly easier to adopt Google's AI assistant, as users won't have to spend large amounts of time retraining Gemini on who they are and what they want.
The memory feature works like this.
Gemini will suggest a prompt that the user can enter into their current chatbot, which will then generate a response that can be copied and pasted back into Gemini.
In this fashion, Gemini coaches the user on what kinds of information it would be helpful to know about them, while also helping facilitate the transmission of that information back into its own archive.
Netflix has quietly hiked its prices yet again.
The streaming giant's most affordable ad-supported tier, well, now costs $8.99 per month, up from the previous $7.99 monthly subscription fee, Netflix confirmed to TechCrunch in an email.
Now, the standard plan without ads also now costs $19.99 per month, a $2 increase from the previous $17.99 subscription fee, while the premium plan is also going up by $2 and will now cost $26.99 per month.
It's also getting more expensive to add extra viewers outside of your household.
To add a user to an ad-supported plan, it now costs $7.99 instead of $6.99.
And if you're adding an extra viewer to an ad-free plan, well, it now costs...
$9.99 as opposed to $8.99.
The company told TechCrunch that the changes are designed to reflect improvements to its wide range of entertainment and the quality of its service.
Well, well, well.
The price hikes were first spotted by Android Authority.
Netflix says new members who sign up will see the new plan prices for March 26, while existing subscribers will see the updated prices roll out over the coming months.
Existing members will be notified by email a month before the new prices are applied to them.
Netflix last raised prices in January 2025.
And since then, the company has updated its platform with a series of new additions, including the rollout of video podcasts as well as more live streaming content.
The company also recently announced plans to revamp its mobile app and expand its short-form video feature.
The new increase has come as Netflix just last month backed out of a bid for Warner Bros.
Discovery.
And folks, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Lucas Ropec and Aisha Malik.
We'll see you here next week, and until then, find us at TechCrunch.com.