Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter recapping noteworthy happenings in tech over the past few days.
This week, TechCrunch viewed leaked documents out of SpaceX showing some questionable practices related to employee stock options.
X CEO Elon Musk announced that he would open source Grok, X’s AI-powered chatbot meant to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Grok — developed by Musk’s AI startup, xAI — was released last year, armed with features such as access to “real-time” information on X and views undeterred by “politically correct” norms.
On Found, Becca and Dom spoke with Rebecca Hu, the CEO and co-founder of Glacier, an AI robotics company that’s building robots to accurately sort recycling.
TipTop, the new app from Postmates’ founder and CEO, now lets you buy devices with trade-ins and cashTipTop, the startup that offers instant cash for electronics, is launching TipTop Shop: a way for users to purchase and trade in devices.
TipTop Shop builds on the success of TipTop Cash, which was released late last year.
It lets people get instant payouts for electronic devices like smartphones, iPads, cameras, game systems and more.
People can buy new, open-box and refurbished devices through cash and trade-ins.
Unlike on platforms like eBay and Facebook Marketplace, consumers aren’t buying products on TipTop from other consumers, as the devices are owned by the startup itself.
Uber CEO outlines plans for increasing driver EV access, reducing emissions at SXSW Dara Khosrowshahi explains his priorities for Uber now that it's achieved profitabilityUber’s future will be greener, more affordable, and able to challenge Amazon at its own rapid delivery game, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi predicted while on stage this week at SXSW.
To achieve that, Uber has to make it easier and cheaper for drivers to access electric vehicles.
Uber said emissions are calculated based on Uber Green and Uber Comfort Electric rides, and the amount of CO2 emissions avoided compared to UberX or Uber Comfort trips of the same distance.
Riders can go to their account section of the Uber app to access the “estimated CO2 saved” feature, which shows all the emissions saved by taking Uber Green and Uber Comfort electric rides.
Since then Uber has partnered with autonomous sidewalk delivery startups Cartken and Serve Robotics and robotaxi companies Waymo and Motional.
The loneliness of the robotic humanoid Humanoid robots are all the rage, but Agility’s Digit was a singular presence at this year’s Modex conferencePerhaps a few years from now, the halls of the Georgia World Congress Center will be peppered with humanoid robots the week of Modex.
A line of the bipedal robots were moving totes to a nearby conveyor belt at select times throughout the week.
This week in Atlanta, a rotating cast of eight Digits are working each day from show opening to close.
Agility is ramping up production volumes, with plans to hit “high double-digit” production of its bipedal robot by end of year.
This week at Modex, the company took the wraps off Agility Arc, deployment and fleet management software for Digit.
Slack’s new CEO looks to bring stability after a turbulent period Three chief executives in one year will do thatIt’s not often you see an established company burn through three CEOs in less than a year.
But through circumstances beyond its control, that’s what has happened at Slack, the company Salesforce acquired in 2020 for $28 billion.
Jones herself had replaced company co-founder Stewart Butterfield when he announced that he was leaving at the end of 2022.
“And then you think about Salesforce having this incredible set of customer data, some of the world’s most valued data.
Even though Harris brings a long history of building Salesforce, Slack is losing a person who has a deep understanding of Slack’s technical underpinnings.
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has a seat at the table — or board, rather — once again.
OpenAI today announced that Altman will be rejoining the company’s board of directors several months after losing his seat and being forced out as OpenAI’s CEO.
Joining alongside him are three members, former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former Sony Entertainment president Nicole Seligman and Instacard CEO Fidji Simo — bringing OpenAI’s board to seven people.
Seligman was Sony’s VC and general counsel before rising through the ranks to CEO of Sony Corporation and president of Sony Corporation of America.
Both OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and Ilya Sutskever, a former OpenAI board member and the startup’s chief scientist, approached members of OpenAI’s previous board to express concerns about Altman’s behavior prior to his ouster last year, according to The Times.
Turnitin laid off staff earlier this year, after CEO forecast AI would allow it to cut headcountPeople worry that advances in AI will lead to job losses, but rarely does a company’s CEO openly admit that AI will help to reduce their headcount.
TechCrunch learned that Turnitin laid off around 15 people earlier this year, as part of broader organizational changes.
Klarna recently announced that its AI Assistant can do the job of 700 workers, shocking the industry.
(Klarna later clarified that the customer service workers the AI was replacing were hired from outsourcing firms, not direct employees.)
Turnitin confirmed its layoffs in a statement to TechCrunch, but not the headcount:
Agility Robotics’ new CEO is ‘focused on the here and now’ The Digit-maker’s current and former CEOs discuss Amazon, Generative AI and last-mile deliveryThere was nothing else like Digit on the ProMat floor last year.
This week, Agility named Microsoft veteran Peggy Johnson its second-ever CEO.
They’re just focused on a handful of use cases that Digit can provide value for.”Perhaps the biggest difference between Agility and the growing army of humanoid robotics startups is its sizable head start.
The firm was founded in 2015 as a spinoff of Hurst’s work on legged robotics at Oregon State University.
While Agility isn’t explicitly looking to raise at the moment, the company says the possibility is always on the table.
Another day, another lawsuit involving Elon Musk.
Four former Twitter executives, including ex-CEO Parag Agrawal, sued Musk on Monday, alleging that they’re owed over $128 million in severance payments.
According to the lawsuit, Musk has a “special ire” toward these former executives, who worked hard to hold Musk to his $44 billion commitment when he tried to back out.
Musk has faced several lawsuits from former Twitter employees who are also waiting for a check.
According to the lawsuit, Musk claimed that these executives committed “gross negligence” and “willful misconduct” in their termination letters, but never was able to show evidence of his allegations.
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.
