There has been a lot of recent chaos in the world of electric vehicles, and Ford has capitalized on it to build out its secretive low-cost EV team.
It also hired around 10 employees from Lucid Motors, and a handful from Apple’s recently disbanded EV team known as Project Titan.
The company declined to respond to specific questions about how it’s building out the team, which is known internally as Ford Advanced EV.
It also noted that some of the work being done by Ford Advanced EV could be applied to other efforts across the company, not necessarily just to the low-cost EV project.
“The Ford Advanced EV team is part of a global effort to build focused technology and product development teams local to the best talent centers.
As the Gulf region gains growing strategic importance for the tech war between the U.S. and China, Microsoft makes a big move into one of its richest oil countries.
The minority stake will give Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, a seat on G42’s board of directors.
The funding comes amid U.S. politicians’ escalating concerns over G42’s ties with China.
Given the two countries’ increasing economic ties, it’s no surprise that G42, the AI poster child of the UAE, has also forged ties with Chinese firms.
Under the agreement, the Emirati company’s data platform and other key technology infrastructure will migrate to Microsoft Azure, which will power G42’s AI product development.
And more AI companies are receiving investments than ever before, with 1,812 AI startups announcing funding in 2023, up 40.6% versus 2022, according to the Stanford HAI report.
“There’s been a more deliberate approach by investors in evaluating AI investments compared to a year ago.
According to a PitchBook report compiled for TechCrunch, VCs invested $25.87 billion globally in AI startups in Q1 2024, up from $21.69 billion in Q1 2023.
Despite the general malaise within AI investor circles, generative AI — AI that creates new content, such as text, images, music and videos — remains a bright spot.
“We’ll soon be evaluating whether generative AI delivers the promised efficiency gains at scale and drives top-line growth through AI-integrated products and services,” Kumar said.
Venture firm Maniv has grown by nearly every measure since it launched eight years ago in Israel — from its investor base and 40-startup portfolio to its geographic focus, footprint and fund size.
There are, however, some notable evolutions that hint at the Maniv’s investment strategy with its third and latest fund known as Maniv III, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
Maniv, once firmly focused on Israeli startups, continues to expand its geographic focus and now has active portfolio companies in nine countries.
The VC firm has also largely stopped using the once trendy umbrella term “mobility,” (often leaving it out of its original name Maniv Mobility) and has opted instead to talk about deep tech, decarbonization and digitization of the transportation sector.
“I thought the trajectory of that term (mobility) was going to continue to clarify overtime, but in fact, I think the opposite has happened for a bunch of reasons,” Granoff explained, adding that while the term mobility might not be used as often, it is still very much central to its mission.
The Reddit and Astera Labs IPOs last week ate up a lot of media oxygen.
And with good reason, the two tech IPOs priced well and traded with even more gusto.
After a long dearth for technology offerings, seeing two large, multi-billion dollar offerings in the same week was part of a much-needed win for private-market tech companies, and sigh of relief for the same.
But there was another offering last week that has a tech-angle to it: Trump Media and Technology Group, which is the company behind Truth Social.
More from TechCrunch here, but the gist is that after much back-and-forth, it merged with its chosen SPAC and started to trade.
Nvidia could be primed to be the next AWS There are a lot of parallels in the two companies' growth trajectoriesNvidia and Amazon Web Services, the lucrative cloud arm of Amazon, have a surprising amount in common.
But AWS growth has begun to slow down, even as Nvidia’s takes off.
The question is whether Nvidia can sustain that growth to become a long-term revenue powerhouse like AWS has become for Amazon.
The short-term financial outlookAs the above chart notes, Nvida’s revenue growth has been astronomical in recent quarters.
Much like AWS, Nvidia will face stiffer competition eventually, but it controls so much of the market right now, it can afford to cede some.
1991 Ventures is the brainchild of Ukrainian brothers Denis and Viktor Gursky, who are better known for running incubation and accelerator programs inside Ukraine.
The Gursky brothers previously backed over 200 startups between 2016 and 2024, via their incubator Social Boost and their 1991 Accelerator.
Startups backed to date include LegalTech startup AXDRAFT; European toll payment app eTolls; and cybersecurity company Osavul.
Finally, TA Ventures is perhaps the best known and most active Ukrainian VC internationally, headed up by the almost-ubiquitous Viktoriya Tigipko.
Of course, many of the tech companies Ukraine will produce in the forthcoming years are likely to be either ‘dual-use’ or related to defence.
Black Tech Nation Ventures launched in 2021 to address the funding gap for Black founders amid a wave of venture diversity initiatives after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
Three years later, amongst growing backlash against DEI and diversity-focused investments, the firm’s mission may be more important now than when it started.
The firm found initial fundraising success in 2021, and held a first close on $25 million that year, he explained.
“We have seen funding to diverse founders and Black-led venture funds decline rapidly.
The firm will also collaborate with Black Tech Nation, the nonprofit that is run by BTNV general partner Kelauni Jasmyn that created a digital network of Black tech professionals, when it can.
When Anomalo’s co-founders left Instacart in 2018, they thought they could put machine learning to work to solve data quality problems inherent in large data sets.
Five years later, the company’s idea is even more relevant as data quality takes center stage with large language models.
Today, the startup announced a $33 million Series B, equaling their 2021 Series A and bringing the total raised to $72 million, according to the company.
As companies store increasingly large amounts of data in cloud storage and data warehouses like Databricks and Snowflake, this need has only become more pronounced, he says.
SignalFire led the $33 million Series B investment with participation from strategic investor Databricks Ventures.
Lai made impassioned comments about Taiwan’s chip industry after his victory on Saturday that seem to make it clear that his administration’s main tech focus will be on semiconductors.
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry strengthens the global standing of the country, a small island with a population of 23 million.
Another barrier is that even though the semiconductor industry is important to Taiwan’s economy, most people don’t work in it.
“Most people in the nation are not employed in the semiconductor industry, even though it’s the lifeblood of the economy,” says Patel.
Despite the challenges faced by Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, Triolo notes that its international recognition has grown significantly since Tsai came into power eight years ago.
