Elsewhere, Mistral, the French AI startup, launched a new model to rival OpenAI’s GPT-4 — and its own cheekily named chatbot dubbed Le Chat.
NewsApple car canceled: Apple has scuttled its secretive, long-running effort to build an autonomous electric car.
Bumble stumbles: Bumble posted weak Q4 results showing a $32 million net loss and $273.6 million in revenue — below Wall Street expectations.
Google’s AI goes awry: Google has apologized for an embarrassing AI blunder this week: An image-generating model that injected diversity into pictures with a farcical disregard for historical context.
PodcastsOn Equity, the crew talked through startup news from Microsoft and Mistral AI, Thrasio and Glean — and also covered happenings over at COTU Ventures and Zacua Ventures.
The company did it with the iPod, iPhone, Apple Watch and, most recently, with its AirPods (the jury is still out on Vision Pro).
Prior to Project Titan, there have been several Apple efforts that failed to see the light of day.
Like Project Titan, Apple never publicly disclosed its existence before it was reportedly scrapped years back.
However, Apple scrapped it and delivered MessagePad, a smaller version of the MessageSlate prototype, later in the year.
Well before the iPhone, Apple tested a “telephone Mac” codenamed W.A.L.T.
The five finalists to emerge from the Four Years From Now 2024 pitch competitionLong ago Mobile World Congress, which we’ve been covering all week, absorbed a side event for startups, the idiosyncratically named “Four Years From Now”.
Thus, out of hundreds of startups that applied and pitched, five finalists were selected by a panel of industry experts and investors after pitching their projects on stage.
Here’s a quick run-down of the five finalists to emerge from the competition.
The company is from South Korea and has raised $21.3 million to date.
WHISPPThis “Assistive Voice Tech and Calling App” was covered by TechCrunch last January.
Apple is scuttling its secretive, long-running project to build an autonomous electric car, according to Bloomberg.
The company has already started laying off some people who worked on the project, TechCrunch has learned.
Many of the nearly 2,000 employees who were still working on the project will be shifted to Apple’s generative AI projects, Bloomberg reported.
The decision to kill the project comes at a time when major automakers are reevaluating their investments in electric vehicles, and amid increased scrutiny on autonomous vehicle projects.
Apple first started working on its car project, known internally as “Project Titan,” in 2014.
But the Ring Car Camera?
You do have to know who your customers are, though, and that’s where the Ring Car Camera found itself straddling multiple domains without a clear foothold in any.
Ring Car Camera did have some exciting innovations.
Moreover, discontinuing the Ring Car Camera may prompt a reassessment of consumer expectations regarding dash cams and automotive security devices.
The discontinuation of the Ring Car Camera is likely the final nail in the coffin of that project, too.
Alongside Xiaomi SU7 design, Xiaomi has developed the five core EV technologies: E-Motor, CTB Integrated Battery, Xiaomi Die-Casting, Xiaomi Pilot Autonomous Driving, and Smart Cabin.
Here’s what I can say: the SU7 is a car – and nice looking one at that.
It was parked inside Xiaomi’s MWC booth atop a rotating platform.
Here’s Xiaomi again,Xiaomi’s transition from “Smartphone x AIoT”, the “Human x Car x Home” smart ecosystem seamlessly merges personal devices, smart home products, and cars.
As the foundation of the “Human x Car x Home” smart ecosystem, it integrates over 200 product categories incorporating 600 million global devices, and covering more than 95% of user scenarios.
Vroom hits the brakes on its online used car business to go full throttle on auto financing and AIVroom is shutting down its online used car marketplace and shifting all of its resources and capital into two business units focused on auto financing and AI-powered analytics.
The company said it is suspending all used car transactions through vroom.com and plans to sell off its used vehicle inventory to wholesalers.
Vroom was part of a wave of U.S. startups that launched about a decade ago all aiming to disrupt used car sales and the traditional dealership model.
The drop in valuation continued into 2022, pushing Vroom shares to under $2.
Vroom shares closed at $0.53 on Monday and then dropped to $0.25 after the company announced its plans to shutter the e-commerce business.
That emphasis on sustainability is translating into a goal at Finn to have 80% of its car inventory electric by 2028, from 40% today.
Previous backers such as HV Capital, Korelya Capital, UVC Partners, White Star Capital and Picus Capital are also participating.
It’s been a very bumpy road for the car subscription market over the years.
The idea of car subscriptions is neat, but the execution is not.
And it’s brokered deals in advance with car retailers to buy up the vehicles when subscriptions are finished.
Vietnamese EV startup VinFast is trying to get into the electric pickup truck game, as it revealed a new concept called the VF Wild at CES 2024 in Las Vegas.
The company announced it also plans to start selling its smallest EV, the VF3, outside of Vietnam as previously hinted.
The VF3 is a plucky little EV that VinFast announced in Vietnam earlier this year.
Developing a truck and globally launching a compact EV aren’t even the biggest things on VinFast’s plate.
Globally, the overwhelming majority of VinFast’s EV sales have been to a taxi company owned by Vuong.
The new venture will launch this summer in Mercedes-Benz’s electric EQ models, will.i.am told TechCrunch during a press event.
That car had 16 Sound Drive tracks loaded, some familiar and others created especially for the experience.
Sound Drive is not quite a performance as such, Will.i.am likens being a conductor or DJ, but that’s just the beginning.
Down the road, Sound Drive will let you geotag samples, linking auditory cues with memories.
Mercedes-Benz is the first partner, where the technology will launch with 10 tracks this summer as MBUX Sound Drive.
