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Over the previous eight years, famed automobile designer Henrik Fisker has made many guarantees for his EV startup, however none of them have come true. Whereas Fisker seems for an unlikely rescue, workers informed TechCrunch that the blame rests largely on the shoulders of the husband-and-wife workforce working the corporate.
There was additionally a serious shake-up in fintech this week. After years of missteps and struggles, fintech banking-as-a-service Synapse is formally bankrupt. Based mostly on Synapse’s filings, round 100 fintech corporations and 10 million finish clients may very well be affected by the corporate’s collapse.
Elon Musk simply bought some huge cash for xAI. The synthetic intelligence startup has raised $6 billion at a earlier valuation of $18 billion because it seems to compete with OpenAI, Microsoft and Alphabet.
In different large money strikes, Google is investing practically $350 million in Flipkart. The brand new funding valued the Walmart-owned Indian e-commerce startup at $36 billion. Google, which reaches greater than half a billion folks in India, has recognized the South Asian nation as a key abroad market.
Information
Sam Altman fired from Y Combinator?: Paul Graham units data. In a sequence of posts on X, the Y Combinator co-founder disregarded claims that Sam Altman was beneath stress to step down in 2019 as a consequence of a possible battle of curiosity. Learn extra
Spotify refunds for Automobile Factor: Spotify is going through backlash over its resolution to finish help for its Automobile Factor in-car streaming machine. Spotify has now began the refund course of, however some customers are asking the corporate to not block their gadgets. Learn extra
Are headphones the way forward for AI {hardware}?: Not like generative AI devices like Humane’s Ai Pin and Rabbit’s R1, Iyo goals to deliver its expertise into an already profitable class: Bluetooth headphones. Learn extra
Firefly forges on: On the wave of private tragedy A Tel Aviv-based startup has raised $23 million for its infrastructure-as-code answer to the rising problem of cloud asset administration. Learn extra
Is Apple going to “Sherlock’s Arc”?: Apple is reportedly planning to launch a brand new expertise known as “sensible recaps” in iOS 18 that seems to carefully mimic Arc Search’s revolutionary “Browse for me” function. Learn extra
The disinformation got here again like this: A pair of latest research supply proof that misinformation on social media can change folks’s minds. Discover out who’s most chargeable for the overwhelming majority of “faux information” throughout the time durations studied. Learn extra
AI fashions even have favourite numbers: Gramener engineers performed an experiment through which they requested a number of giant LLM chatbots to choose a random quantity between 0 and 100 — and the outcomes have been fascinating. Learn extra
Mistral gives an encoding mannequin: A French AI startup has launched its first generative AI mannequin for coding, known as Codestral, designed to assist builders write and work together with code. Learn extra
Say hiya to the meme approach: Is it time to disrupt the meme business? With Meme Depot, founder Alex Taub goals to create a complete archive of each meme possible utilizing a crypto-centric enterprise mannequin. Learn extra
AI comes for academics: The emergence of synthetic intelligence bots poses a risk to long-established tutoring franchises {and professional} tutors, with the main applications originating from China. However do they actually assist college students study? Learn extra
Evaluation
What occurs to an organization when its founder dies?: Onyx Motorbikes was already in bother — after which its 37-year-old proprietor died unexpectedly and not using a will or succession plan, abandoning hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in debt. Rebecca Bellon talks about how the following battle for management left Onyx in authorized limbo. Learn extra
“Edgelords” in OpenAI: Meredith Whitaker has some candid ideas about OpenAI’s present management. Mike Butcher sat down with Sign’s president to debate what she describes because the disrespectful contingent of the tech business’s “fraternity” in a wide-ranging dialog. Learn extra
Do not count on an IPO from these startups: Whereas 2024 could also be the very best 12 months for tech startups to go public, there are nonetheless numerous big-name corporations keen to attend somewhat longer. From Plaid to Figma, Rebecca Shkutak picks up corporations that do not need to go public simply but. Learn extra