Hey, of us, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s e-newsletter recapping the notable happenings in tech over the previous few days.
This week, TC’s auto reporter Sean O’Kane revealed how EV startup Fisker briefly misplaced monitor of tens of millions of {dollars} in buyer funds because it scaled up deliveries, resulting in an inner audit that began in December and took months to finish.
Elsewhere, Lorenzo reported how Facebook snooped on customers’ Snapchat site visitors in a secret venture identified internally at Meta as “Project Ghostbusters.” According to court docket paperwork, the aim was to intercept and decrypt the community site visitors between folks utilizing Snapchat’s app and its servers.
And Manish wrote in regards to the resignation of Stability AI founder and CEO Emad Mostaque late final week. Mostaque’s departure from Stability AI — the startup identified for its common picture era software Stable Diffusion — comes amid an ongoing battle for stability (pun meant) on the firm, which was reportedly spending ~$eight million a month as of October 2023 with little income to point out for it.
Lots else occurred. We recap all of it on this version of WiR — however first, a reminder to enroll to obtain the WiR e-newsletter in your inbox each Saturday.
News
Fisker suspended: Fisker’s unhealthy week continued with a halt within the startup’s inventory buying and selling. The New York Stock Exchange moved to take Fisker off the trade, citing its “abnormally low” inventory ranges.
AI-powered itineraries: In an improve to its Search Generative Experience, Google has added the flexibility for customers to ask Google Search to plan a journey itinerary. Using AI, Search will draw on concepts from web sites across the internet together with opinions, pictures and different particulars.
Robinhood’s new card: Nine months after buying bank card startup X1 for $95 million, Robinhood on Wednesday introduced the launch of its new Gold Card, powered by X1’s expertise, with an inventory of options that would make Apple Card customers envious.
At AT&T, mum’s the phrase: The private info of some 73 million AT&T clients spilled on-line this week. But AT&T gained’t say how — regardless of the hack accountable having occurred over three years in the past.
Funding
Booming Copilot: Copilot, the budgeting app, has raised $6 million in a Series A spherical led by Nico Wittenborn’s Adjacent. The app is benefiting partly from the dying of Mint, Intuit’s monetary administration product.
Liquid property: In a bit wanting on the wider VC-backed beverage business, Rebecca and Christine word canned water startup Liquid Death’s current $67 million fundraise, which introduced the corporate’s whole raised to greater than $267 million. Talk about liquidity.
HVAC enterprise: Dan Laufer, a former Nextdoor exec, has raised $25 million from Canvas Ventures and others for PipeDreams, a startup that acquires mom-and-pop HVAC and plumbing firms and scales them utilizing its software program that helps with scheduling and advertising and marketing.
Analysis
Is Nvidia the following AWS?: Ron writes about how there’s a number of parallels in Nvidia’s and AWS’ development trajectories.
Podcasts
This week on Equity, the crew dug into Robinhood’s new bank card, Fisker’s newest woes and even Databricks’ new AI mannequin that it spent $10 million to spin up. They additionally spotlit two firms constructing startups targeted round youngsters, and, to wrap up, checked out a brand new $100 million fund that seeks to again revolutionary local weather tech.
Meanwhile, on Found, Allison Wolff, the co-founder and CEO of Vibrant Planet, a cloud-based planning and monitoring software for adaptive land administration, mentioned why the wildfires we’re seeing immediately are hotter and spreading extra shortly than we are able to include and the way correct land administration can assist foster decrease, slower-burning fires.
And on Chain Reaction, Jacquelyn interviewed Scott Dykstra, CTO and co-founder of Space and Time. Space and Time goals to be a verifiable compute layer for web3 that scales zero-knowledge proofs, a cryptographic…
