# Hardware Price Hikes and AI Chip Strategy

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-08-26

## Transcript

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Apple debuts its most powerful chip ever.
I'm Imran Shaikh and your Daily Crunch starts right now.
On Tuesday, Uber said it's introducing a new live video streaming feature for parents to keep track of their children's safety during rides.
Now, the company said that the feature will roll out across the U.S.
nationwide in the coming weeks.
The new live streaming feature uses the driver's selfie camera for the video feed.
Once the ride starts, the parent or guardian account gets a notification if the video stream is available.
If they choose to watch the stream, both the driver and the teen are notified.
Uber said that only parents or guardians accounts linked to the teen's account can look at the live stream.
There's no opt-out for others who might be traveling with the teen to not appear on the live feed.
Once the ride ends, no one, including the driver, the teen...
or the parent or the guardian has access to the video.
While Uber said the video is encrypted, it is not clear if it's end-to-end encrypted, meaning that Uber would not be able to access the recording.
A spokesperson for Uber did not say when asked by TechCrunch.
The company said that the feature is live in nine markets, including Atlanta, Cleveland, Rhode Island, and others.
Over the coming weeks, it'll be available across the entire United States.
Uber debuted teen accounts in the U.S.
all the way back in 2023, and since then, it's expanded the future to more than 50 countries.
Well, it's looking like over the weekend, Amazon significantly raised the prices of its hardware devices, jacking them up by as much as 60% in some cases.
Now, the price explosion impacted Fire TVs, Echoes, Kindles, and Eros.
One egregious example that's been cited is that of the once humble Echo Dot, one of Amazon's cheapest smart speakers, the price of which jumped 60% overnight from $49.99 to $79.99.
Whew.
Price tracking sites like Camel Camel Camel show the stark uptick, which has previously hovered much lower.
When reached for comment by TechCrunch, Amazon shared the following.
The consumer electronics industry is facing significant increases in memory and storage component costs.
After absorbing these increases for as long as we could, we recently adjusted pricing across our product lines.
Now, the company also said that it would continue to offer occasional promotions to customers over the course of the next year.
Amazon's price hikes reinforce the reality that it's a terrible time to buy hardware.
You see, the global memory shortage fueled by the AI boom, also known as Ramageddon, is driving up the cost of producing devices of all stripes.
As a result, companies are increasingly passing on the costs to their customers.
In a sign of the times, Apple even recently hiked its prices and has sought off.
offset the steep new rates by introducing a device leasing program, thus allowing users to pay off their devices over time.
The RAM shortage is expected to continue throughout 2027 before prices potentially crest and then stabilize in 2028.
Apple announced two new processors on Tuesday, which power its new Mac Mini and Mac Studio models.
The M5 Ultra and M6 chips.
Now, the M5 Ultra, which Apple deems its most powerful chip ever, fuses two dual-die M5 Max chips to form Apple's first quad-die chip, designed to manage hefty AI workloads.
The chip includes an up to 36-core CPU and up to 80-core GPU and 1.2 terabytes per second of unified memory bandwidth, which is 50% more than the M3 Ultra, which Apple released.
only about a year and a half ago.
Now, while the M5 Ultra is designed for professionals doing compute-intensive work like complex 3D rendering, visual effects, and running frontier AI models, the Mac Studio with M5 Ultra will no doubt appeal to hobbyist AI developers as well.
But Apple's M6 chip is more geared toward these everyday users, according to the company.
You see, Apple trailed behind its competition when it comes to building its own proprietary AI model.
I mean, the long-awaited Siri upgrade is powered by Google's Gemini, for crying out loud.
But Apple has excelled in using on-device tech to allow users to more securely take advantage of tools like Face ID and Touch ID, which would be a privacy nightmare if processed via the cloud.
Similarly, Apple's emphasis on powering on-device AI workloads could be where the company has a chance to shine, offering a more secure, controlled environment for developers to experiment with new AI tools.
Apple's newest Mac mini devices are available for pre-order now, starting at $899.
They'll ship after September 22nd.
We now go to the latest in startup business news all in about one minute with our friend, producer Dennis.
Emron, thank you, and let's talk about Airbound.
This Indian startup building autonomous drones has raised $37 million in fresh capital as it pushes to make moving goods through the air as cheap as trucking them by road.
The Series A comes less than a year after Airbound raised an $8.65 million seed round.
With this funding, the three-year-old startup has raised nearly $50 million.
Airbound and other startups in this sector argue that drones can move certain goods faster and cheaper than vehicles on the road.
And while there have been successful deployments, drone delivery is still far from matching the scale and versatility of trucking.
Airbound is trying to close this gap by redesigning the aircraft to make it more competitive with ground transportation.
And folks, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Lucas Ropek, Sarah Perez, Amanda Silberling 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.
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