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Week in Review: Jeff Bezos’ secret EV startup
Welcome back to Week in Review! We’ve got tons of cool stuff for your reading pleasure this week: Jeff Bezos backs EV startup Slate; a Meta whistleblower accuses the company of collusion; Waymo may use interior camera data; and much more. Let’s get to it! I want this: Slate, an EV startup, has the ambitious…
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The xAI–X merger is a good deal — if you’re betting on Musk’s empire
When Elon Musk announced that his AI startup, xAI, had acquired his social media company, X (formerly known as Twitter), in an all-stock deal, it raised some eyebrows. But in many ways, the deal made sense. xAI’s chatbot, Grok, was already deeply integrated with X, X was floundering financially, and Musk needed a way to…
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Forerunner’s long game: As startups stall before IPO, all options are on the table
Thirteen years ago, Forerunner Ventures began helping to usher in a new era of consumer startups, including Warby Parker, Bonobos, and Glossier. None has gone through a traditional IPO process. Warby Parker was taken public through a special purpose acquisition vehicle. Bonobos was acquired by Walmart. Glossier is still privately held, along with many other…
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Meta’s vanilla Maverick AI model ranks below rivals on a popular chat benchmark
Earlier this week, Meta landed in hot water for using an experimental, unreleased version of its Llama 4 Maverick model to achieve a high score on a crowdsourced benchmark, LM Arena. The incident prompted the maintainers of LM Arena to apologize, change their policies, and score the unmodified, vanilla Maverick. Turns out, it’s not very…
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The most interesting startups showcased at Google Cloud Next
Google Cloud announced a long list of impressive AI startups as customers during its Cloud Next conference this week
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Meta adds Stripe CEO Patrick Collison and Dina Powell McCormick to its board
Banking executive and former presidential advisor Dina Powell McCormick and Stripe co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison are joining the board of Meta, according to a report from Axios. Powell McCormick spent 16 years in several leadership roles at Goldman Sachs. She also served as Deputy National Security Advisor to President Donald J. Trump during his…
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Law professors side with authors battling Meta in AI copyright case
A group of professors specializing in copyright law has filed an amicus brief in support of authors suing Meta for allegedly training its Llama AI models on e-books without permission. The brief, filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, calls Meta’s fair use defense “a…
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38 consumer startup founders lobby over Trump tariffs: One faces a surprise $200K bill
Small businesses could be crushed under President Trump’s increased tariffs, according to an open letter by 38 female consumer product founders. While Trump paused his tariff increases for 90 days for various countries — setting the rate at 10% for now — China’s was raised to 145%, which includes the previous 20% levy. In the letter,…
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TechCrunch Mobility: Jeff Bezos backs a secretive EV startup and Lucid snaps up Nikola’s assets
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Tariffs, tariffs, tariffs. If there is one certainty in this uncertain moment, it’s this: U.S. tariff policy is likely to change again. As of Friday morning, there…
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Nikola founder Trevor Milton accused of trying to derail bankruptcy case
A court hearing on the sale of bankrupt electric truck startup Nikola’s assets to Lucid Motors was going smoothly on Friday. No objections had been filed to the transaction, and Delaware bankruptcy Judge Thomas Horan verbally approved it without hesitation. Until, that is, a lawyer piped up on the Zoom call towards the end of…