Before Wazer came along, “water jet cutting” and “affordable” didn’t belong in the same sentence.
For existing Wazer Desktop users, the company says the transition to the Wazer Pro will be seamless.
Additionally, Wazer offers a trade-up program, enabling current customers to receive a significant discount on the Wazer Pro by trading in their old machines.
Priced at $18,999, the Wazer Pro remains significantly more affordable than traditional water jet cutters, costing upward of $100,000.
With the launch of the Wazer Pro, Wazer continues to make life interesting for the water-cutting incumbents.
Sources tell TechCrunch that employees at those companies received no information about the tender offer, but heard about their exclusion through the grapevine.
None of the former employees TechCrunch spoke to were surprised to hear one name on the list: Deel.
“Rippling put together a tender offer for the benefit of its employees, ex-employees, and early investors.
To be sure, as a private company, Rippling certainly has the freedom to place restrictions on participation in its stock sales.
In addition to the price of the stock, employees may face huge tax bills on options they exercise from the paper gains of the value of the stock.
Apple will kick off its weeklong Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2024) event with the customary keynote at 10 a.m. ET/7 a.m. PT on June 10.
There’s a stream on YouTube as well, but that has a tendency to lag a bit.
The latest reports have put a name to Apple’s AI efforts: Apple Intelligence, along with the caveat that not all recent Apple devices will be able to use the new system.
And you can bet that many of iOS 18’s AI features will make their way to macOS 15, as well.
TechCrunch will be reporting on the ground at Apple Park, bringing you the news as it happens.
Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje’s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups.
Image Credits: OdaHardware is hard, episode 234: We already knew that Humane’s Ai Pin launch was going anything but smoothly.
Image Credits: Sword Health / CompanyLive by the sword : Sword Health, an AI-powered virtual physical therapy startup, raised a $30 million primary funding round and a $130 million secondary funding round that brought its valuation to $3 billion.
: Sword Health, an AI-powered virtual physical therapy startup, raised a $30 million primary funding round and a $130 million secondary funding round that brought its valuation to $3 billion.
Where’s your head at: Austrian startup Storyblok raised $80 million to add more AI to its “headless” content management system (CMS) for non-technical people.
The subject has been a massive question mark looming over Cupertino for the last few years, as competitors like Google and Microsoft have embraced generative AI.
Apple’s near-term strategy is a deep integration between existing properties and generative AI, with Siri at the center.
Rather than replacing Assistant outright, Google has been integrating its generative AI platform into different applications.
Smart speakers have a broader bellwether for platforms like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant.
Other people do it well.”The company’s approach to generative AI is currently in the same place.
The big idea was to become the transfer agent, brokerage and clearinghouse for all private stock transactions in the world.
Roughly 15 months later, in late 2022, the company’s CEO, Henry Ward, told Axios that Carta was worth even more – $8.5 billion – following a separate secondary sale.
(He did not disclose how many shares were sold at this valuation or who bought them.)
Now, Carta is seemingly returning to its roots – and an earlier valuation that’s probably better suited to the business.
Over the years, Carta has raised roughly $1.2 billion from investors, according to the startups tracker Tracxn.
It created an electric pickup and an electric SUV while prepping a monster IPO.
It now plans to sell an even cheaper SUV that could make Rivian a dominant EV player for years to come.
These changes mean that, for the first time since the company broke stealth in 2018, Rivian’s immediate future is actually remarkably clear.
Fisker is on the brink of bankruptcy after dealing with underwhelming sales of its electric SUV and myriad quality and service problems.
If Rivian wants to survive long enough to ship its more affordable mass-market R2, it really needs these revamped vehicles to sell well.
Following the collapse of its electric car project, Apple reportedly shuffled a number of employees into its internal generative AI efforts.
iOS 18 with more AIImage Credits: Darrell EtheringtonAlong with that partnership, expect iOS 18 to be the centerpiece of the event.
Siri will be getting a long-awaited refresh, courtesy of Apple’s generative AI work.
Generative AI is even coming to emojis, allowing users to customize and create their own in Messages.
A lot of the iOS updates should also make their way to macOS, including those in Siri, Notes and Safari.
Today, Meta announced AI-powered features for WhatsApp Business apps, such as helping with the creation of click-to-WhatsApp ads and generating responses to frequent customer messages.
WhatsApp Business users will be able to leverage AI to create Facebook and Instagram ads that can start a WhatsApp chat with a business.
The company said it is testing AI-powered customer support, which will automatically answer customer queries related to catalog or frequently asked questions.
Meta noted that it plans to denote AI-generated messages clearly so customers know that they are not talking to a representative of a company.
While Meta is offering these tools without a cost, its primary driver for revenue on the WhatsApp Business platform is businesses having more conversations with customers.
Meta on Thursday said it is rolling out its Meta Verified program for WhatsApp Business users in Brazil, India, Indonesia and Colombia, and eventually to more countries.
The plan also lets businesses use their WhatsApp Business account from multiple devices.
Until now, WhatsApp Business users had to use their personal phone numbers to service customer calls.
With more than 200 million monthly users on WhatsApp Business, Meta is trying to build a full suite of solutions that businesses can tap for communicating with their customers.
The company said existing commerce and payment services only cater to the top 200 million users.
