Hello, everyone, and welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter covering noteworthy happenings in the tech industry.
This week, investment firm KKR announced it would acquire VMware’s end-user computing business from Broadcom for $4 billion. Ron explained that the business includes VMware Workspace One and VMware Horizon – two remote desktop applications that were once part of the VMware product line.
Elsewhere, French AI startup Mistral launched a new model to compete with OpenAI’s GPT-4, with its own chatbot cheekily named Le Chat. The launches are arranged with a Microsoft partnership to make the Mistral model available to Microsoft’s Azure customers, and Microsoft has made a minority investment ($16 million) in Mistral.
A lot of other things happened. We recap it all in this issue of WiR – but first, a reminder to sign up to receive the WiR newsletter in your inbox every Saturday.
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Apple Car Canceled: Apple has abandoned its secretive and long-standing effort to build a self-driving electric car. The company is likely to cut hundreds of employees from its team, and all work on the project has been halted. It joins a list of other projects that Apple has scrapped at various stages, including AirPower and TV (not to be confused with Apple TV).
Bumble stumbles: Bumble reported weak fourth-quarter results, with a net loss of $32 million on revenue of $273.6 million, below Wall Street expectations. In an effort to turn things around, CEO Lidiane Jones announced that 30% of Bumble’s employees (about 350 employees) would be laid off, and Bumble would embark on an app overhaul aimed at reviving growth.
Something’s wrong with Google’s artificial intelligence: Google apologized this week for an embarrassing artificial intelligence blunder: an image-generating model that injected diversity into images while comically ignoring historical context. While the underlying problem is completely understandable, Google accuses the model of “becoming” too sensitive.
Bad appearance: Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Tumblr owner Automattic, is supposedly on leave. As Amanda reports, he argued with Tumblr users this week over a content moderation decision that prompted accusations of transphobia.
Founder forced to exit: A group of Byju investors on Friday voted to oust Byju Raveendran, the edtech group’s founder and CEO, and filed separate oppression and management lawsuits against the company’s leadership to block a recently launched rights issue.
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GenAI e-book: Inkitt, a self-publishing platform that uses artificial intelligence to develop best-selling books, has raised $37 million. The startup’s app allows people to self-post stories, then uses artificial intelligence and data science to select and tweak the content it thinks is most compelling, then distribute and sell it.
Keep it old school: Lapse has raised $30 million for its smartphone app, which lets you wait for photos to “develop”—without the chance to edit and retake—before sharing them with a select group of friends, if you so choose.
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Techstar estimates: Marianne interviews Maëlle Gavet, CEO of startup accelerator program Techstars, after her operational changes drew harsh criticism.
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exist fairDuring the show, the staff discussed entrepreneurial news from Microsoft and Mistral AI, Thrasio and Glean, and also reported on what happened at COTU Ventures and Zacua Ventures.
at the same time, established under the spotlight Ariel Kaye, founder of Parachute, a direct-to-consumer bedding and home products company.
And for chain reactionTC retrieved an earlier conversation from the archives with Jack Lu, CEO and co-founder of Magic Eden, a “community-focused” NFT marketplace.
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Mirai heavily discounted: Toyota is offering $40,000 off the 2023 Toyota Mirai Limited, a fuel cell vehicle that retails for $66,000, plus $15,000 in free hydrogen over six years. As Tim writes, there’s just one problem: finding the hydrogen to power it.
