Hey, people, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), Ztoog’s publication 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 quickly misplaced monitor of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in buyer funds because it scaled up deliveries, resulting in an inside audit that began in December and took months to finish.
Elsewhere, Lorenzo reported how Facebook snooped on customers’ Snapchat site visitors in a secret challenge identified internally at Meta as “Project Ghostbusters.” According to court docket paperwork, the objective was to intercept and decrypt the community site visitors between individuals 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 supposed) on the firm, which was reportedly spending ~$8 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 join to obtain the WiR publication in your inbox each Saturday.
News
Fisker suspended: Fisker’s dangerous week continued with a halt within the startup’s inventory buying and selling. The New York Stock Exchange moved to take Fisker off the change, 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 travel itinerary. Using AI, Search will draw on concepts from web sites across the internet together with evaluations, images and different particulars.
Robinhood’s new card: Nine months after buying credit card startup X1 for $95 million, Robinhood on Wednesday introduced the launch of its new Gold Card, powered by X1’s know-how, with a record of options that might make Apple Card customers envious.
At AT&T, mum’s the phrase: The private data 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 piece wanting on the wider VC-backed beverage business, Rebecca and Christine be aware canned water startup Liquid Death’s latest $67 million fundraise, which introduced the corporate’s complete 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 corporations and scales them utilizing its software program that helps with scheduling and advertising and marketing.
Analysis
Is Nvidia the subsequent AWS?: Ron writes about how there’s a number of parallels in Nvidia’s and AWS’ progress trajectories.
Podcasts
This week on Equity, the crew dug into Robinhood’s new credit card, Fisker’s newest woes and even Databricks’ new AI mannequin that it spent $10 million to spin up. They additionally spotlit two corporations constructing startups centered round youngsters, and, to wrap up, checked out a new $100 million fund that seeks to again modern 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 as we speak are hotter and spreading extra shortly than we are able to comprise and how correct land administration may help 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 motion used to show one thing about a piece of information with out revealing the origin knowledge itself.
Bonus spherical
Spotify checks on-line studying: In its ongoing efforts to get its 600 million+ customers to spend extra time and cash on its platform, Spotify is spinning up a new line of content material: e-learning. Beginning with a rollout within the U.Ok., the (historically audio) streaming platform is testing the waters for a web based schooling providing of freemium video programs.