{"id":79879,"date":"2024-03-02T21:15:05","date_gmt":"2024-03-02T21:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/02\/apple-cancels-its-car-googles-ai-goes-awry-and-bumble-stumbles-techcrunch\/"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:15:05","modified_gmt":"2024-03-02T21:15:05","slug":"apple-cancels-its-car-googles-ai-goes-awry-and-bumble-stumbles-techcrunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/02\/apple-cancels-its-car-googles-ai-goes-awry-and-bumble-stumbles-techcrunch\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple cancels its car, Google’s AI goes awry and Bumble stumbles | TechCrunch"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

Hello, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch\u2019s newsletter covering noteworthy happenings in the tech industry.<\/p>\n

This week, investment firm KKR announced<\/a> that it would acquire VMware\u2019s end-user computing business from Broadcom for $4 billion. As Ron explains, that business included VMware Workspace One and VMware Horizon \u2014 two remote desktop apps that had been part of VMware\u2019s family of products.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, Mistral, the French AI startup, launched a new model to rival OpenAI\u2019s GPT-4 \u2014 and its own cheekily named chatbot dubbed Le Chat. The releases were timed<\/a> with a Microsoft partnership to provide Mistral models to Microsoft\u2019s Azure customers \u2014 and a minority investment<\/a> ($16 million) from Microsoft in Mistral.<\/p>\n

Lots else happened. We recap it all in this edition of WiR \u2014 but first, a reminder to sign up<\/a>\u00a0to receive the WiR newsletter in your inbox every Saturday.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
Also \u2014 TC was in Los Angeles just last night for our latest StrictlyVC<\/a>\u00a0event. Signal President\u00a0Meredith Whittaker<\/a>, Waymo Co-CEO\u00a0Tekedra Mawakana<\/a>, rabbit CEO and Co-Founder\u00a0Jesse Lyu<\/a>, Founders Fund Partner\u00a0Trae Stephens<\/a>\u00a0and Lightspeed Ventures partner\u00a0Faraz Fatemi<\/a>\u00a0joined us to discuss a wide range of topics, from the reasons AI could unseat entrenched companies, Waymo\u2019s ascent, what it\u2019s like for rabbit to ride the r1\u2019s hype following its CES 2024 reveal. Don\u2019t miss us next time for\u00a0StrictlyVC London<\/a> in May.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

News<\/h2>\n

Apple car canceled:<\/a><\/strong> Apple has scuttled its secretive, long-running effort to build an autonomous electric car. The company is likely cutting hundreds of employees from the team, and all work on the project has stopped. It joins a list of other projects Apple has scrapped in various stages<\/a>, including AirPower and a TV (not to be confused with Apple TV).<\/p>\n

Bumble stumbles:<\/b><\/a> Bumble posted weak Q4 results showing a $32 million net loss and $273.6 million in revenue \u2014 below Wall Street expectations. To right the ship, CEO Lidiane Jones announced that 30% of Bumble\u2019s workforce, or about 350 employees, would be let go and that Bumble would embark on an app overhaul targeted at reviving growth.<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s AI goes awry:<\/a> <\/strong>Google has apologized for an embarrassing AI blunder this week: An image-generating model that injected diversity into pictures with a farcical disregard<\/a> for historical context. While the underlying issue is perfectly understandable, Google blames the model for \u201cbecoming\u201d oversensitive.<\/p>\n

Bad look:<\/strong><\/a> Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Tumblr owner Automattic, is supposed to be on sabbatical. Instead, he argued with Tumblr users this week over a content moderation decision that sparked accusations of transphobia, Amanda reports.<\/p>\n

Founder forced out:<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>A group of Byju\u2019s investors last Friday voted to remove the edtech group\u2019s founder and chief executive, Byju Raveendran, and separately filed an oppression and management suit against the leadership at the firm to block the recently launched rights issue<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Funding<\/h2>\n

GenAI ebooks:<\/a> <\/strong>Inkitt, a self-publishing platform using AI to develop bestsellers, has raised $37 million. The startup\u2019s app lets people self-publish stories, and then, using AI and data science, selects what it believes are the most compelling of these to tweak and subsequently distribute and sell.<\/p>\n

Keeping it old school:<\/a> <\/strong>Lapse has raised $30 million for its smartphone app that has you wait for photos to be \u201cdeveloped\u201d \u2014 with no chance of editing and retaking \u2014 before sharing them with a select group of friends if you choose.<\/p>\n

Analysis<\/h2>\n

Techstars reckoning:<\/a><\/strong> Mary Ann interviewed Ma\u00eblle Gavet, CEO of the startup accelerator program Techstars<\/a>, in the wake of changes to its operations that have attracted biting criticism.<\/p>\n

Podcasts<\/h2>\n

On Equity<\/a><\/strong>, the crew talked through startup news from Microsoft and Mistral AI, Thrasio and Glean \u2014 and also covered happenings over at COTU Ventures and Zacua Ventures.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Found<\/a><\/strong> spotlighted\u00a0Ariel Kaye, the founder of Parachute, a direct-to-consumer bedding and home goods company. <\/span><\/p>\n

And for Chain Reaction<\/a><\/strong>, TC pulled from the archives to air an earlier conversation with Jack Lu, CEO and co-founder of Magic Eden, a \u201ccommunity-centric\u201d NFT marketplace.<\/p>\n

Bonus round<\/h2>\n

Steeply discounted Mirai:<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>Toyota is offering $40,000 off a 2023 Toyota Mirai Limited, a fuel-cell vehicle that retails for $66,000 \u2014 plus $15,000 in free hydrogen over six years. As Tim writes, there\u2019s only one catch: finding the hydrogen to power it.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch\u2019s newsletter covering noteworthy happenings in the tech industry. This week, investment firm KKR announced that it would acquire VMware\u2019s end-user computing business from Broadcom for $4 billion. As Ron explains, that business included VMware Workspace One and VMware Horizon \u2014 two remote desktop apps that had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":79880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-79879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}