Visa invests in Replit to power agentic payments for developers

Oura on Thursday unveiled the fifth generation of its popular smart ring, starting at $399. The Ring 5, which Oura describes as the world’s smallest smart ring, arrives just a year and a half after the company launched the Ring 4 and seven months after the Ring 4 Ceramic. The Ring 5 is 40% smaller than its predecessor and comes with more accurate sensing and enhanced battery life. The Ring 5 is launching alongside new software updates that include blood pressure signals, live activity tracking, on-demand care, and other features that will also roll out to the Oura Ring Gen3 and later. The new smart ring is available for pre-order starting today and will start shipping on June 4. It’s available in sizes 6 to 13 and comes in six finishes, including a redesigned Gold with a truer gold tone, an updated Deep Rose with a copper-like look, plus Silver, Brushed Silver, Black, and Stealth. The Black and Silver retail for $399, while the rest cost $499. For comparison, the Ring 4 started at $349. Maz Brumand, VP of Product at Oura, told TechCrunch that the company reduced the ring’s width by about two millimeters and its thickness by roughly 30%. Brumand noted that Oura members had been asking the company to make a ring that was smaller and thinner, prompting the shift toward a slimmer design. Oura achieved the new size by redesigning the mechanical, electrical, optical, battery, and sensing architectures, Brumand explained. Image Credits:Oura The new ring is designed to be desirable to a broader audience, especially people who have found smart rings too bulky in the past. Oura says the latest model is designed to look and feel like any other ring. While Oura could previously get away with a bulkier design as the dominant player in the smart ring market, new products from subscription-free rivals like RingConn and Ultrahuman have increased the pressure to innovate. Increased competition also likely explains why Oura is launching a new ring just a year and a half after the Ring 4, compared with the roughly three-year gap between the Ring 3 and Ring 4. It’s also worth noting that the announcement of the Ring 5 arrives a day before RingConn’s Gen 3 is set to start shipping. In terms of the enhanced battery life, the Ring 5 can last between six to nine days, compared to the five to eight days on the Ring 4. Oura also says it has reengineered its sensors for better skin contact and added more powerful LEDs in an effort to increase accuracy across a wider range of finger sizes and skin tones. Software updates As for the software updates, Oura is launching “Health Radar,” which is designed to monitor key biometric signals in the background to surface patterns members should pay attention to. Health Radar is launching with two foundational capabilities: Blood Pressure Signals and Nighttime Breathing. Oura says it will continuously detect shifts and patterns that may indicate cardiovascular strain, alerting members when their biometrics suggest signs of increasing blood pressure. With Blood Pressure Signals, Oura tracks blood pressure patterns during sleep when the body’s cardiovascular patterns are most stable, since blood pressure should naturally dip overnight. When it doesn’t, it can signal potential cardiovascular risk that daytime readings may miss, Oura notes. Image Credits:Oura Members will also be able to log actual blood pressure readings from cuffs directly in the Oura app. With Nighttime Breathing, Oura wants to give users a better understanding of how sleep and breathing patterns may impact their health. Members will get a 30-day rolling view of sleep-related breathing patterns and disturbances, expanding on the nightly breathing regularity insights they already receive. Oura is also moving beyond insights into offering actual care. The company is partnering with Counsel Health, an on-demand platform that combines AI with licensed physicians to bring care directly into the Oura app. Members will be able to ask health

Volvo Cars reached an agreement with the Trump administration that exempts the automaker from a U.S. crackdown on Chinese-connected vehicle technology. The Swedish automaker, which is majority owned by China’s Geely Holding, said Tuesday that it received specific authorization from the U.S. Department of Commerce to continue importing and selling vehicles with Chinese connected car technology in the United States. Connected car tech involves the software that covers everything from syncing with phones to some automated driving features. Bloomberg was first to report the special authorization. Volvo was banned under rules finalized by the Biden administration in January 2025 that blocked vehicles equipped with software and hardware developed and maintained by Chinese companies over national security concerns. The rules kicked off with 2027 model-year vehicles equipped with software developed and maintained by Chinese companies. Another ban that prohibits the import of vehicle connected hardware begins with 2030 model-year vehicles. Volvo vehicles are primarily made in Sweden and imported to the United States, with the exception of the EX90, which is assembled at the company’s factory in South Carolina. But Volvo’s ties to China’s Geely — and its manufacturing operations in the country — meant it would be banned under the new rules. Volvo said the approval followed “constructive discussions” with the Commerce department and other U.S. officials regarding the company’s governance, technology, and data security. The automaker said it can now move forward with its expansion plans in the United States. The automaker announced in September 2025 plans to bring two additional vehicles — the XC60 mid-size SUV and a new hybrid vehicle — into production at the South Carolina factory. In March, Volvo said it will also bring all production of the Polestar 3, an EV from its sister company Polestar, to the U.S. factory. The Polestar 3 is currently also produced in Chengdu, China. The rule, known as “Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain: Connected Vehicles,” spends considerable time on the threat of vehicles with automated driving systems developed by companies with Chinese ties. Under the rules, Chinese companies would be prohibited from testing autonomous vehicles in the United States. Today, several of these companies including Baidu’s Apollo Autonomous Driving LLC, Pony.ai, and WeRide have permits to test their autonomous vehicle technology (with a human safety operator behind the wheel) in California. TechCrunch has reached out to the Department of Motor Vehicles, the agency that regulates AVs in the state, to learn if these permits will be revoked. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Kirsten Korosec is a reporter and editor who has covered the future of transportation from EVs and autonomous vehicles to urban air mobility and in-car tech for more than a decade. She is currently the transportation editor at TechCrunch and co-host of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast. She is also co-founder and co-host of the podcast, “The Autonocast.” She previously wrote for Fortune, The Verge, Bloomberg, MIT Technology Review and CBS Interactive. You can contact or verify outreach from Kirsten by emailing kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at kkorosec.07 on Signal. View Bio

Palantir hosted a hack week this spring to try to turn internal consternation over the company’s work with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into clearer oversight tools for products used in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, according to material reviewed by WIRED.The new tools provide organizations, including DHS and ICE, more information on how their workers use Palantir software. Organizations can set up alerts for “concerning behavior,” like exfiltrating datasets, and search the session logs of individual users. They also allow organizations to see which users have viewed specific sets of information.Palantir declined to comment.Palantir regularly holds hack weeks, challenging engineers from across the company to experiment with and solve problems in its products. This hack week focused on Palantir’s work with DHS and ICE, which has come under fire from both external critics and workers who fear the company’s tools are empowering the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.“This effort embodies the culture of the Palantir that I choose to work at,” Ted Mabrey, head of Palantir’s commercial business, wrote in an email to staff in early May. “You have the option to slam cynical emojis in slack channels, distrust your colleagues, and choose to think that narrative-motivated outsiders lying about Palantir’s work are more honest than the people showing up to do that work every day. Or you can have the courage to engage and innovate.”Bringing together employees from across Palantir, this year’s hack week focused on building new tools to provide additional oversight over user behavior on platforms like Foundry, the company’s data integration and analysis tool.Palantir’s work with ICE has grown enormously over the last year. Last year, WIRED reported that ICE paid the company $30 million to build a product called “ImmigrationOS” that would provide “near real-time visibility” on self-deportations out of the US. It’s also been reported that the company built a separate tool called Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) that creates maps of individuals who have been targeted for deportation.Some of the new tools created during hack week have already been deployed, with others set to roll out later this year, according to an email reviewed by WIRED. (“These tools materially expand the usability of Audit logs and checkpoints,” wrote one team lead, “not just on [Palantir’s DHS contract], but anywhere Foundry operates in high-sensitivity environments.”)Got a Tip?Are you a current or former Palantir worker who wants to talk about what's happening? We'd like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact the reporter securely on Signal at makenakelly.32.“This hackweek demonstrated that Palantir can convert internal attention around work [on the DHS contract] into additional platform-level safeguards,” the team lead wrote in the May email. “Rather than turning away from challenging work, commercial FDEs [forward deployed engineers] across the company wanted to jump into the breach.”Palantir’s involvement with ICE faced harsh internal backlash earlier this year after Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti was shot and killed by federal agents. Internal Slack chats reviewed by WIRED showed employees questioning the ethics behind the work and demanding more transparency into it.“Can Palantir put any pressure on ICE at all?” one worker wrote at the time. “I’ve read stories of folks rounded up who were seeking asylum with no order to leave the country, no criminal record, and consistently check in with authorities. Literally no reason to be rounded up. Surely we aren’t helping do that?”Still, Palantir has continued working with ICE. In February, DHS reached a $1 billion purchasing agreement with Palantir, making it easier to secure the company’s products across all branches of the agency, including ICE. The agreement reinforced Palantir’s f