Startups Weekly: Big shakeups in the AI ​​heavyweight division

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Not much news from me this week, but I’ve made a number of preparations for the early stages of TechCrunch on April 25 in Boston. This can be a implausible show and you continue to have time to get your tickets in advance – bird prices in case you hurry.

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 artificial intelligence, leaving the unicorn startup with no everlasting CEO. The company known for burning through money faster than a youngster with their first debit card is now in the hands of interim co-CEOs Shan Shan Wong and Christian Laforte. Mostaque, after a dramatic exit, went to X to announce that his departure was intended to fight “centralized AI”, because apparently the real problem with AI will not be rogue robots, but who can control them.

Microsoft orchestrated a heist value a Hollywood plot, in which it grabbed the co-founders and most of the staff of Inflection AI together with the rights to make use of their technology for $650 million. The deal, which in my opinion looks more like a ransom payment than an M&A deal, includes $620 million for the privilege of using Inflection’s technology and a further $30 million to be sure Inflection doesn’t sue the company for Microsoft’s daring talent appropriation. Reid Hoffman, Microsoft board member and co-founder of Inflection, took to LinkedIn to guarantee everyone that Inflection investors will sleep soundly tonight – early investors will receive a return of 1.5x, and later – a modest 1.1x, although the calculations are inconceivable to they finally agree. By the way, it’s quite daring to explain a 1.5x return as a “good plus” – most early stage funds could be quite dissatisfied.

• They said your data could be secure: Facebook (now Meta) was caught red-handed with its digital hands in Snapchat’s cookie jar. Facebook’s undercover operation, dubbed “Project Ghostbusters,” aimed to spy on Snapchat’s encrypted traffic in order to decrypt user behavior and gain a competitive advantage.
• New Robinhood Credit Card: Robinhood has unveiled its Gold Card, a bank card so jam-packed with features that Apple Card users might just stick around for some time. For the low, low price of being a Robinhood Gold member (because who doesn’t need to pay $5 a month for the privilege of spending extra money?), you can also earn 3% to five% money back on every thing.
• Could Nvidia be the next AWS?: Nvidia and Amazon Web Services (AWS) may be accidental heroes of the tech world, stumbling upon their core businesses like just a little child finding a hidden cache of cookies. AWS found it could sell its internal storage and compute services, while Nvidia found its gaming GPUs were unexpectedly perfect for AI workloads.

The CEO of AI Stability is leaving because “you can’t beat centralized AI with more centralized AI.” Image credits: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Trend of the week: Transport problems

The New York Stock Exchange gave electric vehicle startup Fisker a lift, citing “abnormally low” stock prices. Fisker’s financial runway appears to be teetering on the edge, with shares down greater than 28% in someday, a failed Nissan deal (not less than that is what the rumor mill suggests), and a triggered loan repayment clause that they can not afford – painting an image of an organization balancing on the fringe of a cliff. Of course, it doesn’t help that the electric vehicle maker has lost track of multimillion-dollar customer payments.

• Can the remnants of Arrival save Canoo?: Bankrupt Arrival is selling its remnants to Canoo, one other electric vehicle hope teetering on the brink of profitability, in a deal that’s less about innovation and more about Canoo desperately attempting to connect its production line with sales opportunities at Arrival’s yard.
• Sowwy, people: Steve Burns, the ousted founder, chairman and CEO of bankrupt EV startup Lordstown Motors, has reached a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for misleading investors about demand for the company’s flagship all-electric Endurance pickup truck.
• Letting your automotive drive independently for a month: Tesla will soon begin giving every U.S. customer a one-month trial of a $12,000 driver assistance system called Full Self-Driving Beta, provided they’ve a automotive with compatible hardware.

Canoo will deliver the light tactical vehicle in 2022. Image credits: Canoo

The most interesting collections this week

Super{set} is doubling down on its commitment to boring but abundant data and AI-based enterprise startups, having just added a cool $90 million to its war chest. The move comes on the heels of his departure from marketing company Habu to LiveRamp for $200 million. The company will not be your average enterprise studio. With a modest portfolio of 16 corporations and a penchant for transforming enterprise capital investment notes from art to science, super{set}’s mission is to develop practical applications. With latest digs across the entire floor of San Francisco’s 140 New Montgomery constructing, they are not just investing in startups; they’re buying the way forward for the city itself.

Tired of cramped hotel rooms and the owners’ reluctance towards IKEA, Alex Chatzieleftheriou decided to fill the gap himself. Fast forward to the pandemic-fueled nomadic boom, and Blueground is now gobbling up the competition faster than a tourist at a free breakfast buffet. With the acquisition of corporations reminiscent of Tabas and Travelers Haven, Blueground has expanded its empire to over 15,000 apartments in 17 countries, proving that there isn’t any higher place than a house which you can book by the month. Even though the proptech sector is feeling pressure from rising rates of interest, Blueground’s recent $45 million Series D financing round and significant debt facility suggest that investors are still willing to bet big on Chatzieleftheriou’s vision of a world where everyone can live in fully furnished apartment. not less than temporarily.

• $10 million for the microbe party: Wase has developed a compact system that processes mushy by-products from breweries and food processing plants on-site and converts them into biogas. This is not your grandma’s anaerobic digester; is a microbial party with electrically charged fins on which bacteria can play, producing about 30% more methane and leaving less residual waste.
• More money for diversity: New Summit Investments is on the verge of a major leap in its impact investing journey, eyeing a $100 million goal for its latest fund, eclipsing the previous $40 million fund closing in 2022.
• New battery chemistry: In order to acquire greater capability from electric vehicle batteries, automotive manufacturers are increasingly turning to silicon. Ionobell, a seed-stage startup that recently closed a $3.9 million extension round, says the silicon materials it produces can be cheaper than established competitors.

Image credits: Lyudinka/Getty Images (modified by TechCrunch)

Other stories you may’t miss on TechCrunch…

Every week there are all the time just a few stories I would like to share with you that in some way don’t fit into the above categories. It could be a shame to miss them, so here’s a random bag of goodies:

• Hmm, what?: Marissa Mayer’s startup, Sunshine, has gone from Silicon Valley’s next big thing to a pioneer in the disruptive world of… contact management and photo sharing, leaving the web collectively scratching its head and wondering, “Is that all?”
• Dude, where’s your data?: Three years after the hacker’s “soon” announcement, the personal data of 73 million AT&T customers has hit the Internet, and while AT&T plays the silent game, customers are left verifying their very own data leaks like a dystopian DIY project.
• Come on, Apple: In a move that’s less about innovation and more about playing a gatekeeper, Apple’s defeat of Beeper’s push to make iMessage available to Android users is now an illustration by the Department of Justice on find out how to stifle competition and maintain the exclusivity of the Blue Bubble club.
• Who needs privacy anyway: It appears that Glassdoor, a haven for anonymous business reviews, has was a privacy nightmare by secretly adding users’ real names to their profiles, making “anonymous” the most ironic word in their dictionary.
• Welcome to Spotify University: Not content with simply dominating your music, podcasts, and audiobooks, Spotify is now taking a more in-depth take a look at your brain cells in its latest e-learning enterprise, because apparently all of us need one more reason to never leave the Spotify ecosystem.