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Not much news from me this week, but I've been doing a lot of prep for TechCrunch Early Stage taking place in Boston on April 25th. It will be a fantastic show and you still have time to get tickets early. -Bird prices, if you're quick.
The most interesting startup stories of the week
Stability ai says goodbye to its founder and CEO, Emad Mostaque, who decided to pursue the dream of decentralized ai, leaving the unicorn startup without a permanent CEO. The company, known for burning through cash faster than a teenager with his first debit card, is now in the hands of interim co-CEOs Shan Shan Wong and Christian Laforte. Mostaque, in a dramatic outing, turned to
Microsoft has orchestrated a heist worthy of a Hollywood plot, nabbing the co-founders and much of the staff of Inflection ai, along with the rights to use its technology, for a whopping $650 million. The deal, which seems to me more like a ransom payment than an M&A initiative, includes $620 million for the privilege of using Inflection's technology and an additional $30 million to ensure that Inflection does not sue for Microsoft's bold talent grab. Microsoft board member and Inflection co-founder Reid Hoffman took to LinkedIn to assure everyone that Inflection investors would sleep well tonight, with early backers seeing a 1.5x return and later backers a modest 1.1 times, even though the math doesn't quite add up. By the way, it is quite bold to describe a 1.5x return as a “nice advantage”; most early stage funds would be quite upset.
- They said your data would be safe: Facebook (now Meta) was caught red-handed and its digital hands in the Snapchat cookie jar. Facebook's undercover operation, dubbed “Project Ghostbusters,” aimed to spy on Snapchat's encrypted traffic, seeking to decode user behavior and gain a competitive advantage.
- The new Robinhood credit card: Robinhood introduced its Gold Card, a credit card so packed with features it might make Apple Card users pause for a second. For the low price of being a Robinhood Gold member (because who doesn't want to pay $5 a month for the privilege of spending more money?), you can also earn 3% to 5% cash back on everything.
- Could Nvidia be the next AWS?: Nvidia and Amazon Web Services (AWS) might just be the accidental heroes of the tech world, stumbling upon their core businesses like a little kid finding a bunch of hidden cookies. AWS discovered that it could sell its internal compute and storage services, while Nvidia discovered that its gaming GPUs were unexpectedly perfect for ai workloads.
Stability ai CEO resigns because “you're not going to beat centralized ai with more centralized ai.” Image credits: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Trend of the week: transportation problems
The New York Stock Exchange has given the boot to electric vehicle startup Fisker, citing its “abnormally low” stock prices. It appears that Fisker's financial trail is more of a tightrope, with shares falling more than 28% in a single day, a failed deal with Nissan (or so the rumor suggests) and a triggered payment clause in his loans that cannot be pay. – paint a picture of a company on the edge of a cliff. Of course, it won't have helped that the electric vehicle maker has lost track of customer payments worth millions of dollars.
- Can Arrival's remains save Canoo?: Bankrupt Arrival sells its leftovers to Canoo, another EV challenger teetering on the brink of viability, in a deal that has less to do with innovation and more to do with Canoo desperately trying to cobble together a production line with the offerings. Arrival garage sale.
- Sowwy, friends: Steve Burns, the ousted founder, chairman and CEO of bankrupt electric vehicle startup Lordstown Motors, settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for misleading investors about the pickup truck lawsuit The company's flagship all-electric Endurance pickup.
- Let the car drive itself for a month: Tesla is about to start offering every customer in the United States a one-month trial of its $12,000 driver-assist system, which it calls Full Self-Driving Beta, as long as they have a car with compatible hardware.
Canoo will deliver a light tactical vehicle in 2022. Image credits: Canoo
This week's most interesting fundraisers
Super{set} is doubling down on boring but rich data and ai-powered startups, and just added $90 million to its war chest. This move comes on the heels of his $200 million exit from marketing firm Habu to LiveRamp. The company is not your average risk studio. With a small portfolio of 16 companies and a penchant for turning venture capital investment memos from art to science, super{set} is on a mission to design practical applications. With their new digs on an entire floor of San Francisco's 140 New Montgomery building, they're not just investing in startups; They are buying the future of the city itself.
Tired of cramped hotel rooms and IKEA-averse owners, Alex Chatzielefttheriou decided to fill the void himself. As we move through the pandemic-induced nomadic work boom, Blueground is now gobbling up the competition faster than a tourist with a free breakfast buffet. With the acquisition of companies such as Tabas and Travelers Haven, Blueground has expanded its empire to include more than 15,000 apartments in 17 countries, proving that there is no better place than a house that you can reserve for a month. Even as the proptech sector feels pressure from rising interest rates, Blueground's recent $45 million Series D funding round and significant credit facility suggest investors are still willing to bet big for Chatzielefttheriou's vision of a world where everyone can live in a fully furnished apartment. at least temporarily.
- 10 million dollars for the microbe party: Wase has designed a compact system that treats dirty by-products from breweries and food processors on site and converts them into biogas. This isn't your grandmother's anaerobic digester; It's a microbial party, complete with electrically charged fins for the bacteria to have fun, producing about 30% more methane and leaving less residual waste.
- More money for diversity: New Summit Investments is on the verge of a significant leap in its impact investing trajectory, aiming for a target of $100 million for its latest fund, eclipsing its previous fund of $40 million closed in 2022.
- New battery chemistry: In their bid to squeeze more capacity out of electric vehicle batteries, automakers are increasingly turning to silicon. Ionobell, an early-stage startup that recently closed a $3.9 million extension round, says its silicon material will be cheaper than established competition.
Image credits: Lyudinka/Getty Images (modified by TechCrunch)
Other must-see stories from TechCrunch…
Every week, there are always a few stories I want to share with you that somehow don't fit into the categories above. It would be a shame if you missed out, so here's a random bag of goodies for you:
- Umm, what?: Marissa Mayer's startup Sunshine went from being Silicon Valley's next big thing to pioneering the innovative world of… managing contacts and sharing photos, leaving the Internet collectively scratching its head and wondering, “Is that all?” ?
- Friend, where is your data?: Three years after a hacker's “coming soon” tease, 73 million AT&T customers' personal data has hit the Internet, and while AT&T plays the silent game, customers are left to verify their own data leaks like a dystopian DIY project.
- Come on, apple: In a move that has less to do with innovation and more to do with being a gatekeeper, Apple's dismantling of Beeper's quest to bring iMessage to Android users is now a Justice Department showcase of how to quell the competition and keep the blue bubble club exclusive.
- Who needs privacy anyway? Glassdoor, the haven of anonymous business reviews, appears to have become a privacy nightmare by sneakily adding users' real names to their profiles, making “anonymous” the most ironic word in its dictionary.
- Welcome to Spotify University: Spotify, not content with dominating its music, podcasts, and audiobooks, is now looking at your brain cells with its latest foray into e-learning, because apparently we all need another reason to never leave the Spotify ecosystem.
