vroom

Enterprise, Transportation, Venture

Mishaps at Cruise, Transitions at Vroom, and Tesla’s Dojo Supercomputer Headquarters

What went wrong at Cruise, a pivot at Vroom and a home for Tesla’s Dojo supercomputerTechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Autonomous vehicle and EV startups — even those that have since gone public — are trying to cut costs in hopes of extending their capital runway. Now, a few little birds are telling us that Canoo and Faraday Future — both EV startups that went public via mergers with special purpose acquisition companies — are either reducing salaries or furloughing employees. So what went wrong at Cruise? Cruise also revealed that the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission have also opened investigations into the company.

Max Chen
January 28, 2024
2 Comments

Enterprise, Fintech

The Plight of Brex: A Wealthy Affliction

Brex and the curse of having too much moneyListen here or wherever you get your podcasts. From there we turned to fintech (generally) and Brex (more specifically). In short, Brex is a big company today but not one that is having a lot of fun at the moment, it appears. (generally) and Brex (more specifically). In short, Brex is a big company today but not one that is having a lot of fun at the moment, it appears.

Max Chen
January 26, 2024

Enterprise, Transportation

“Vroom Slows Down Online Used Car Sales to Accelerate Auto Financing and AI Expansion”

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.