Checkr, a 10-year-old startup that offers employee background checks and was last valued at $5 billion in April 2022, has laid off 382 employees as companies are not significantly hiring talent.
TechCrunch exclusively learned that Checkr conducted the layoffs across all departments and different levels on Tuesday.
“In response to economic conditions that have impacted companies’ hiring, we made the difficult and painful decision to reduce the size of our team.
This will allow us to operate more efficiently and ensure the long-term health of our business,” a Checkr spokesperson said in the statement.
The job cuts — which affected 32% of the company’s workforce — came nearly two years after Checkr announced the acquisition of Inflection, the startup behind GoodHire, a background-checking platform for small- and mid-sized businesses.
India will lower import taxes on certain electric vehicles for companies committing to invest at least $500 million and setting up a local manufacturing facility within three years, a move that could potentially bolster Tesla’s plans to enter the South Asian market.
Firms meeting these requirements will be allowed to import 8,000 EVs a year at a reduced import duty of 15% on cars costing $35,000 and above.
India currently levies a tax of 70% to 100% on imported cars depending on their value.
The decision could pave the way for Tesla to enter India, as the Elon Musk-led company has been in talks with the government to lower import duties on its electric cars for years.
The move also aligns with India’s goal to boost the adoption of EVs and reduce its dependence on oil imports, with the country setting a target of achieving 30% electric vehicle sales by 2030.
Tesla’s factory outside Berlin, Germany will likely be shut down for days and cost the automaker more than $100 million, after a suspected arson attack on the local power grid.
The fire didn’t spread to Tesla’s factory and nobody was harmed, though employees were evacuated.
A purported activist organization calling itself the “Volcano Group” took credit for the fire in a letter posted online Tuesday.
The same group took credit for a similar fire near the site in 2021.
Last month, Tesla’s plan to expand the factory was also voted down by the public.
I was in Los Angeles earlier this week where I interviewed Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana on stage at our StrictlyVC LA event.
The approval removes the last barrier for the Alphabet company to charge for rides in these expanded areas.
Yup, that’s right the Apple ended plans to build and sell an autonomous electric car.
Electric vehicles, batteries & chargingXiaomi showed off its first electric car, the SU7, at Mobile World Congress.
I’ve taken numerous rides in Waymo robotaxis, but never one in Los Angeles.
Motional, the autonomous vehicle company borne out of a joint venture between Hyundai Moor Group and Aptiv, told employees Wednesday it will cut about 5% of its workforce, TechCrunch has learned.
The autonomous vehicle company last had layoffs in December 2022, when it cut about 10% of its workforce.
Motional operates an autonomous vehicle taxi service in Las Vegas (still with human safety operators behind the wheel) on Uber, Lyft and Via platforms.
A production-ready autonomous vehicle, equipped with the kind of redundancies designed for safe operations without a human driver, is a critical milestone required for commercial operations.
During CES 2024, the company announced plans to work with Kia on a next-generation vehicle that will enter commercial operations later this decade.
Bumble, a once-powerful force in online dating, is facing a reckoning.
CEO Lidiane Jones announced that 37% of Bumble’s workforce, or about 350 employees, would be let go, and that Bumble would embark on an app overhaul targeted at reviving growth.
And many of the capabilities introduced in Bumble’s apps in the past 18 months haven’t resonated with the user base, Jones said during the call.
Jones, who joined from Slack in January, appointed four new C-suite executives at Bumble in the last week alone.
Dating apps generally — including Match Group’s — have seen declining revenue from users reluctant to fork over cash for premium add-ons.
Sony is laying off around 900 employees in its PlayStation division, the company announced on Tuesday.
The cuts will impact 8% of the division’s global workforce, as Sony becomes the latest company to announce major cuts in recent weeks and months.
The layoffs come two weeks after Sony cut its sales forecast for the PlayStation 5 after warning of decreasing demand.
Sony isn’t the only company in the gaming business to announce recent job cuts.
Last month, Microsoft laid off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees and Unity laid off 25% of its workforce.
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Of course, as he talked, I wondered if this was wishful thinking or an attempt to show the company was still part of the autonomous vehicle conversation?
Robotic Research Autonomous Industries (RRAI), an autonomous vehicle company with a history of working with the Department of Defense, changed its name to Forterra.
Byju’s cut the pre-money valuation ask in the rights issue to about $20 million to $25 million, TechCrunch earlier reported.
If they don’t participate in the rights issue, they risk losing nearly all their stake in Byju’s.
“Our rights issue is fully subscribed and my gratitude to my shareholders remains strong,” founder and chief executive Byju Raveendran wrote in a letter to shareholders Tuesday.
“But my benchmark of success is the participation of all shareholders in the rights issue.
“I understand that participating in this rights issue may seem like a Hobson’s choice.
Ford is cutting prices of its all-electric 2023 Mustang Mach-E by has much as $8,100 as the automaker attempts to rid itself of inventory and compete with Tesla and its increasingly cheaper EVs.
Total market share of new EV sales has grown, reaching nearly 8% in U.S. in 2023.
Ford confirmed with TechCrunch the price cuts, which are only for model year 2023 Mustang Mach-E vehicles and range between $3,100 and $8,100.
“The Mustang Mach-E is America’s No.2 EV SUV in 2023 and Ford is America’s No.2 EV brand,” Ford spokesperson Marty Günsberg wrote in an emailed statement.
Tesla shipped a record number of electric vehicles in the fourth quarter, which helped it reach 1.81 million deliveries in 2023.
