Welcome to Startups Weekly — HeyThe weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to receive it in your inbox every Friday.
Look, I know this is our weekly startup newsletter, and as the most valuable company in the world, Apple is kind of the ultimate “non-startup,” but judging by the traffic to the site, you’re all such avid fans that it seems remiss not to do a quick recap: Apple held a short 40-minute event this week where it introduced new iPad Airs, new iPad Pros (with a fancy new stacking screen technology), a new Magic Keyboard, a new Pencil Pro, brand new M4 chip and more. Oh, and they finally “admitted” that iPads look more like small laptops than large iPhones, so the company moved the camera to the edge of the landscape — where it should have been forever, frankly.
Ouch! And I have some fun personal news: I’m joining the TechCrunch Equity podcast as a co-host alongside the awesomely awesome (and awesomely awesome) Mary Ann Azevedo. You know, in case you wanted my crazy humor in your earholes in addition to your eyeholes.
The most interesting startup stories of the week
Take a wild ride as we delve into the saga of Newchip, an accelerator that promised startups a golden ticket to success, but instead led them straight to bankruptcy court. Lacey Hunter thought she’d hit the jackpot with AI-powered humanitarian aid startup TechAid when she joined Newchip’s program. Spoiler alert: He didn’t. Instead of accelerating to glory, Newchip filed for bankruptcy and auctioned off warrants from 1,000+ startups in a stock sale. And poor Hunter? He had no choice but to shut down TechAid in this hot mess.
In a spicy turn of events, Microsoft just hit CTRL + Z on US police departments using its Azure OpenAI service for facial recognition. This update to their T&Cs was as subtle as a rhinoceros in a china shop. In short: If you’ve got a badge, a handlebar mustache and a pair of mirror aviators, then no AI face game for you!
- The Rabbit R1 isn’t meant to be good (yet): The r1 rabbit is an artificial intelligence gadget that apparently came out of the oven faster than a batch of flawless cookies. Packed with more quirks than app integrations, this lil’ carrot muncher makes you wonder if it could have been just another app on your phone. But for now, that’s kind of the point, Devin argues.
- I have 99 problems, but technology is not one: Rappers Kendrick Lamar and Drake have taken their feud to new heights — or shall we say, to depths? It’s all fun and games until Tupac gets deep into your groove.
- On the bike: On today’s episode of “How to Tank a $50 Billion Company,” Peloton, the once-shining star of home fitness, continues to run down the sad path of misfortune. They’re eliminating 15% of their workforce (that’s about 400 people for those allergic to percentages), proving that math is indeed a harsh mistress.
Problem in the transport trenches
Henrik Fisker’s EV startup Fisker Inc. is facing a midlife crisis. After releasing two prototypes last August – the Pear and the Alaska – it has reportedly stiffed the engineering firm that helped develop them. The company, Bertrandt AG, filed a $13 million lawsuit alleging that Fisker stopped payments and held onto its intellectual property like a lover who refuses to return your favorite sweatshirt. It looks like it’s not just a one-off: It’s more like an episode of “Judge Judy” with more than 30 lawsuits alleging lemon law violations, claims for unpaid wages by former employees and suppliers suing over past due accounts. Although Fisker’s vice president of communications insists Bertrandt’s lawsuit is “baseless,” this slew of legal problems suggests there may be more cracks in the company than Humpty Dumpty after his wall mishap.
- Tesla’s flirtation with lidar: Ah, the delicious irony! Elon Musk once called lidar sensors a “crutch” for self-driving cars, but Tesla is now Luminar’s top customer. The company used so much of this supposedly redundant technology that it accounted for more than 10% of Luminar’s Q1 2024 revenue. Those are $2 million worth of crutches! However, Luminar itself is struggling and has just laid off 20% of its staff.
- Rivian on the ropes: Here I thought my financial skills were questionable, but despite their first quarter revenue reaching $1.2 billion, they managed to lose $1.45 billion! It seems their cost-cutting measures need a little more elbow grease before they can even begin to dream of profitability.
- Hyundai opens the piggy bank: Meanwhile, Hyundai, in an attempt to save us from the horror of our own driving skills, poured nearly $1 billion into Motional. This “generous” investment will give Hyundai a majority stake and keep this autonomous startup on track (pun intended). It’s like a Cinderella story, but instead of a pumpkin turning into a carriage, it’s your cash turning into autonomous vehicles.
The most interesting fundraisers this week
Iconiq Capital, the private equity firm that has been looking after the cash piles of Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey since 2011, just raised a whopping $5 billion across two funds for its seventh flagship fund. This huge fundraise puts them in the spotlight, while other big players like Tiger Global stumbled on their shoestrings with just $2.2 billion (the smallest since 2014, after attracting criticism that it was using its cash too quickly). .
- The cloud makes rain: Alternative clouds are the new cool kids on the block, folks! CoreWeave just raised a whopping $1.1 billion and is now valued at $19 billion. Why; Because GPUs (those expensive technological power units) are hot stuff for training AI models, but not everyone has deep enough pockets to buy their own.
- Let’s take a look inside: Remember when Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, boldly declared that radiologists would be obsolete in five years thanks to artificial intelligence? Yes… for that. Turns out we’re not quite there yet (shocker!). Now, after apparently realizing that robots aren’t ready to play doctor just yet, Khosla is investing $50 million in Rad AI — a startup that aims to make radiologists’ lives easier without trying to replace them with machines (yet).
- Appreciate the roof: Itai Ben-Zaken is living proof that a startup stumble is just a cha-cha move in the entrepreneurial dance: He’s back with Honeycomb Insurance, leveraging AI to turn rooftop aerial shots into property inspections for landlords, earning $36 million for the company’s Series B.
Other Unmissable TechCrunch Stories…
Each week, there are always a few stories I want to share with you that somehow don’t fit into the above categories. It would be a shame if you missed them, so here’s a random goodie bag for you:
- All deepfakes, all the time: While we’re used to seeing Katy Perry dressed as an enchanted chia pet, this year she wasn’t even there — but you wouldn’t know it from the 10 million views her fake moss picture received on social media.
- Younger saw the sun, shining so brightly: So it looks like Jack Dorsey came up with Bluesky faster than a Tinder date who just found out you have a tarantula. Mr. “I’m too cool for social media platforms” casually said in a chat on X that he has stepped down from the board of his pet project, Bluesky. He didn’t even bother to give any reason or tweet some cryptic haiku about change and evolution – he just replied with a plain old no when asked if he was still on the board.
- Apple’s new ad is disgusting: Apple’s latest ad broke our hearts as it literally crushed a stack of iPad-shaped creative tools and analog objects. Oh, we get it, Apple! You say that this impossible (who asked for this?) new iPad can replace all these things, but your vision of a future without physical instruments or paper books seems pretty dystopian and we don’t like it.
- A queue with a happy ending: In the latest episode of “Whale, Actually,” scientists eavesdrop on the whales with a little help from machine learning. It turns out that these mammoth mammals poop using their own secret language! With a series of clicks (called “codas,” if you’re feeling fancy), the whales seem to form words and sentences we’ve never understood before. How cool.
- LMGTFY: Stack Overflow decided to play nice with OpenAI. After initially giving ChatGPT the boot due to fear of spam responses, they changed their mind (or code?). They are now working together to improve AI responses to programming-related tasks.
