Elon Musk’s decision to green light a robotaxi over an affordable EV might cost the company its lead.
Last week, Musk reportedly canned the effort in favor of a robotaxi, the sort of pie-in-the-sky project that defined his first decade at the helm.
Tesla was reportedly on the cusp of building a $25,000 EV.
Given flagging sales of the company’s existing product line, it would have been a welcome shot in the arm.
It also would have given the company a product to hold its ground against a predicted onslaught of inexpensive Chinese EVs.
Tesla is reportedly abandoning its plan to build a lower-cost EV thought to cost around $25,000, according to Reuters, despite that vehicle’s status as a pivotal product for the company’s overall growth.
The company will instead focus its efforts on a planned robotaxi that is being built on the same small EV platform that was also supposed to power the lower-cost vehicle.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed, without proof, that Reuters is “lying” in a post on his social media platform, X, and did not dispute any specific details.
He also responded with an eyes emoji to another post that effectively summed up the Reuters report in different words.
Tesla was reportedly targeting a price of around $25,000 for the next-generation EV.
Apple is looking to team up with Google for a mega-deal to leverage the Gemini AI model for features on iPhone, Bloomberg reported.
There is surmounting pressure on Apple to catch up with competitors in the AI field such as OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic, and even Google.
Later, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that Gemini’s responses were “completely unacceptable”.
Earlier this year, the company partnered with Samsung to introduce Gemini-powered AI features on the Galaxy S24 series of devices.
We have reached out to Apple and Google for a comment, and we will update the story if we hear back from them.
TechCrunch has learned that the program, known as the “Startup Qatar Investment Program,” is backed by a Qatar Development Bank (QDB)-managed $100 million fund.
Like most venture ecosystems, several of these requirements are mandated by limited partners, primarily sovereign wealth funds, in the Gulf upon these venture capital firms.
Just last week, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund unveiled a $1 billion venture capital fund of funds dedicated to international and regional venture capital funds.
For Qatar, launching its fund of funds and startup program signifies a crucial step toward developing its tech ecosystem to rival its neighbors, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Last year, the MENA region experienced a 23% decline in venture capital activity compared to the global average of 42%.
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.
Nvidia currently dominates the AI chip market with its GPU chips.
OpenAI chief Sam Altman is reportedly also in talks with investors in the United Arab Emirates to raise an eye-watering $5 trillion to $7 trillion for a new AI chip project.
Altman has reportedly met with a number of potential investors, chip industry experts and others across the globe, including SoftBank’s Son, for the new AI chip initiative.
Shift focus (from Alibaba) to AIA new chip project would be line with the company’s new focus on AI.
Shares of SoftBank closed 2.8% higher on Monday after Son’s AI chip project news broke on Saturday.
Despite record growth in the solar industry last year, software startup Aurora Solar has laid off 20% of its staff of about 500 people, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
The company, which provides software to help solar installers manage their sales, project design and installation process, has missed its growth targets for the past year, a source said.
It’s possible that Aurora Solar hit stiffer headwinds than expected in California, where changes in net metering led to homeowners getting paid about 75% less for power sold back to utilities.
With net metering rates slashed, the state has decided to offer richer incentives for solar installations that include batteries.
While Aurora Solar says its software is used by 90% of the top 100 solar installers, it also has more than 7,000 customers, many of which likely fall in the long tail of the distribution, those that say they’re under the most pressure.
Despite record growth in the solar industry last year, software startup Aurora Solar has laid off 20% of its staff of about 1,000 people, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
The company, which provides software to help solar installers manage their sales, project design and installation process, has missed its growth targets for the past year, a source said.
It’s possible that Aurora Solar hit stiffer headwinds than expected in California, where changes in net metering led to homeowners getting paid about 75% less for power sold back to utilities.
With net metering rates slashed, the state has decided to offer richer incentives for solar installations that include batteries.
While Aurora Solar says its software is used by 90% of the top 100 solar installers, it also has more than 7,000 customers, many of which likely fall in the long tail of the distribution, those that say they’re under the most pressure.
One of the longest-running hyperloop startups is reportedly shutting its doors.
Hyperloop One, once backed by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, will cease operations on December 31 according to Bloomberg News.
And it comes after Hyperloop One raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars since its founding in 2014.
It took on the name Virgin Hyperloop One after Branson invested in 2017.
DP World will wind up with Hyperloop One’s intellectual property, Bloomberg reports, while the rest of its hard assets — including a test track outside Las Vegas and other machinery — will be sold off.
Okta, the identity and access management company, is acquiring security firm Spera.
Spera — which my colleague Frederic has covered previously — was co-founded several years ago by entrepreneurs Dor Fledel and Ariel Kadyshevitch.
Spera, which has about 25 employees, had raised $10 million prior to the Okta acquisition.
Okta sees Spera enabling its customers to better assess the security posture of their identity infrastructure as well as their apps and services — and attracting new customers to the Okta platform.
“With Spera, we’ll equip our customers with richer insights and technology to elevate their identity security posture management and quickly identify, detect and remediate risks,” the blog post continues.
