Lucid Motors is raising another $1 billion from its biggest financial backer, Saudi Arabia, as it looks to blunt the high costs associated with building and selling its luxury electric sedan.
The fresh funding comes just a few weeks after Lucid told investors that it only plans to build around 9,000 of its Air electric vehicles this year, a slight bump over last year’s output.
It lost $2.8 billion in 2023 and finished the year with just shy of $1.4 billion in cash and equivalents.
Lucid also plans to start building its electric Gravity SUV at the end of this year.
Lucid announced the investment less than three weeks after CEO Peter Rawlinson told the Financial Times that he was wary of relying too heavily on Saudi Arabia to keep shoveling money into its proverbial furnace.
The negotiations between Fisker and a large automaker — reported to be Nissan — over a potential investment and collaboration have been terminated, a development that puts a separate near-term rescue funding effort in danger.
Fisker revealed in a Monday morning regulatory filing that the automaker terminated the negotiations on March 22.
Fisker said in the filing that it will ask the unnamed investor to waive the closing condition.
In February, Fisker laid of 15% of its staff (around 200 people) and last week reported having just $121 million in the bank.
Fisker had held talks with other automakers, including Mazda, but only Nissan recently remained at the table.
There are only 5 days left to take advantage of the early-bird savings for TechCrunch Early Stage 2024.
Don’t let this opportunity slip through your fingers — secure your ticket now and save big before it’s too late!
Here’s a glimpse of what awaits you at TechCrunch Early Stage“Selecting the Right Accelerator or Incubator,” with Emily Knight, president of the Engine Accelerator: Learn how incubators and accelerators provide vital support structures for early-stage startups.
Secure your early-bird ticket to TechCrunch Early Stage 2024 today and position yourself for startup success.
Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024?
Americans spent more than $144.8 billion on fishing and hunting in 2022 alone, according to a survey by the U.S.
Guided hunting and fishing excursions are a substantial part of that industry, but they’ve largely remained offline.
Mallard Bay is also a vertical SaaS platform for the outfitters themselves to bring their back office online and provide additional services like marketing.
“The one thing that comes with hunting and fishing is being a conservationist,” Meaux said.
Mallard Bay’s bookings have grown 600% year over year, which is impressive for any category but notable in a category like hunting and fishing that seems relatively niche.
Stability AI founder and chief executive Emad Mostaque has stepped down from the top role and the unicorn startup‘s board, the buzzy firm said Friday night, making it the second hot AI startup to go through major changes this week.
Stability AI, which has lost more than half a dozen key talent in recent quarters, said Mostaque is stepping down to pursue decentralized AI.
In a series of posts on X, Mostaque opined that one can’t beat “centralized AI” with more “centralized AI,” referring to the ownership structure of top AI startups such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
“We should have more transparent & distributed governance in AI as it becomes more and more important.
“The payoffs on proper generative AI R&D are clearer and faster to market than just about anything we’ve seen.
Steve Burns, the ousted founder, chairman and CEO of bankrupt EV startup Lordstown Motors, has settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over misleading investors about demand for the company’s flagship all-electric Endurance pickup truck.
The SEC charged Lordstown Motors in February 2024 with misleading investors about the sales prospects of its Endurance electric pickup truck.
Lordstown Motors was founded in April 2019 as an offshoot of Burns’ other company, Workhorse Group.
During and after the merger, Lordstown received $780 million from investors, according to the SEC.
Lordstown Motors attracted the attention and investment of GM and even acquired the 6.2 million-square-foot assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio from the automaker.
Threads, the Twitter-like app from Instagram, is adding live scores for sports games.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Friday that Threads has started testing live scores for NBA games, and that the platform plans to add support for additional leagues in the future.
The launch of the feature comes as Threads continues to take on X, which has had live scores for sports games for around a decade now.
Threads isn’t just adding live scores — users will also be able to tap a team’s logo to be redirected to the conversation about that team, and connect with other users who follow them.
The addition of live scores marks Threads’ latest effort in building out a platform to rival X.
So, your partner could very well have an STI, but Calmara would tell you he’s in the clear.
That’s why actual STI tests use blood and urine samples to detect infection, as opposed to a visual exam.
It does not involve any medical conditions or discussions within its framework, and no medical doctors are involved with the current Calmara experience.
“The clear idea is to initiate a conversation regarding STI status and testing.”Calmara is part of HeHealth, which was founded in 2019.
Calmara and HeHealth use the same AI, which it says is 65-90% accurate.
Nsave, a fintech based in Geneva making banking in Switzerland accessible to people in countries at war or those with unstable banking sectors or facing high inflation, has raised $4 million seed funding.
Amer Baroudi and Abdallah AbuHashem co-founded nsave in 2021 from lived experiences.
“And then based on the risk scores, you might be prompted into different streams of questions or enhanced due-diligence mechanisms.
Also, in war-torn countries like Sudan, people with savings in local banks have a hard time accessing their money.
“Now nsave is live, there’s finally a trusted option to protect their users against the rampant inflation of distressed economies, providing safe, stable offshore accounts to people who need them the most.”
The complaint accuses Apple of moulding its privacy and security practices in ways that benefits the company financially.
One quote particularly jumps out where the DOJ calls Apple’s privacy and security justification an “elastic shield”:“Apple deploys privacy and security justifications as an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple’s financial and business interests,” it says.
“Apple wraps itself in a cloak of privacy, security, and consumer preferences to justify its anticompetitive conduct.
It also said that at the moment developers can’t offer a separate app store for children.
Essentially, the DOJ argues that Apple’s privacy and security practices are pretextual in nature and the company chooses “alternative courses” to protect its monopoly.
