Bay Area/Colombia-based delivery robotics firm Kiwibot this week announced that it has acquired Auto Mobility Solutions.
The Taipei firm produces chips specifically for the world of robotics and autonomous driving.
Kiwi founder and CEO Felipe Chávez Cortés does, however, tell TechCrunch that rising tensions between the U.S. and China are a key motivator for the purchase.
Prior to this, the U.S. government had set its sights on various Chinese tech giants, including Huawei and DJI.
Taiwan’s tenuous geopolitical situation, coupled with its vastly outsized share of the semiconductor market, has placed it at the center of the conflict.
News that Yahoo is buying Artifact stirred the technology watercooler yesterday.
Artifact was an interesting app, employing AI to help its users find and consume more, and more targeted news.
It had some devoted fans, but never reached the sort of scale that would have made it an attractive long-term project.
Regardless of whether or not you were an Artifact user — I was for a time — that Yahoo is still feeling acquisitive under its current ownership structure matters.
Artifact is hardly the only startup project in the market today that might be looking for a new home, after all.
Full Glass Wine, a brand acquisition management startup that specializes in acquiring wine marketplaces, has raised $14 million in a Series A round to continue acquiring DTC (direct-to-consumer) wine marketplaces, aiming to lead the DTC wine market.
The deal is Full Glass Wine’s third acquisition in a year and will enable the startup to expand its subscription-based model.
DTC wine brands sell wine directly to wine lovers, bypassing traditional distribution channels“By uniting Winc, Wine Insiders, and Bright Cellars, we offer a one-stop shop for all things wine, catering to a wider range of wine drinkers than most traditional retailers, grocers, or single-brand DTC companies,” Neha Kumar, co-founder and COO of Full Glass Wine, told TechCrunch.
“However, there are also some misconceptions consumers might have about DTC wine.
“We’re looking at a total of at least a few dozen employees now at Full Glass Wine,” Kumar said.
Autonomous vehicle technology startup Motional has secured a bridge loan that provides a temporary financial reprieve as the company searches for a longer-term source of funding, TechCrunch has learned.
Motional CEO Karl Iagnemma told staff in a companywide email viewed by TechCrunch that the company’s board of directors approved the bridge financing.
After a wave of consolidation and shutdowns in the nascent autonomous vehicle industry, Motional is one of the few companies left that’s still pursuing a commercial robotaxi service.
The company operates an autonomous vehicle taxi service in Las Vegas (still with human safety operators behind the wheel) on Uber, Lyft and Via platforms.
The autonomous vehicle company last had layoffs in December 2022, when it cut about 10% of its workforce.
Zscaler, a cloud security company with headquarters in San Jose, California, has acquired cybersecurity startup Avalor 26 months after its founding, reportedly for $310 million in cash and equity.
But what sets Avalor apart is the ability to handle data from virtually any source in any format, and its unique set of vulnerability risk management and prioritization tools.
Prior to the Zscaler acquisition, Avalor managed to secure $30 million from investors including TCV, Salesforce Ventures, Jibe Ventures and Cyberstarts.
And Raz sees Zscaler taking the business — and its ~80-person team spread across the U.S. and Israel — further.
As Crunchbase’s Chris Metinko noted earlier today, Zscaler’s acquisition — along with others in the cybersecurity space — could help spark activity in a slow-to-stagnant cyber M&A market.
The guy who founded that – Jim Jannard – became a billionaire after selling a lot of sunnies, then went on to found RED digital cinema, one of the first major digital cinema camera brands.
Today, Nikon announced that Nikon Corporation has announced its agreement to acquire the camera manufacturer, and turning into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Nikon Corporation.
This sensor’s physical size was comparable to analog film, bridging the gap between digital and traditional film production.
This short film convinced director Steven Soderbergh to shoot his film “Che” with Red technology, marking a significant milestone in digital cinema.
The company’s cameras were used to film over 25% of the top 100 grossing films filmed on digital video in the US shot on digital video by 2016.
The future of bankrupt electric motorbike startup Cake is still uncertain, but the majority of its U.S. inventory is going to a guy in Florida.
Joyce says he didn’t buy any of the remaining Cake Kalk electric motorcycles, as those have been recalled for battery fire risk and steering column problems.
Buying the inventory gives him “six to 12” months of runway, which will give him time to finish negotiating with other companies to sell electric motorbikes.
Joyce is confident he can sell the Cake inventory after spending most of the last year honing in on a good sales and marketing strategy.
Joyce hopes to find enough success to build Emoto into a brand that becomes a one-stop-showroom for electric motorbikes, similar to some of the country’s biggest powersports dealers.
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