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Rivian launched with the promise of revolutionizing the way we think about trucks and SUVs, but now it's slowing down a bit. In a move that screams, “Whoa, we might have gotten a little ahead of ourselves,” the company announced it would lay off 10% of its workforce. Why do you ask? Well, the EV market is looking a little tougher than expected, with pricing pressures building like the suspense of a sordid thriller. Rivian now faces the harsh reality that cars are hard to make and even harder to turn a profit. The layoffs follow the company laying off 6% of its workforce a year ago and another 6% about 18 months ago.
The manufacturer is reportedly planning to launch its R2 series vehicles early next month, which is expected to improve the company's profit margins somewhat.
As Rivian navigates these turbulent waters, you can't help but wonder if this is just a bump in the road or a sign of more ominous clouds on the horizon. Who needs melodrama when there's an EV market?
This week's most interesting startup stories
Image credits: hive mapper
Staying within the automotive world, there is a lot of movement from avant-garde EV manufacturers.
Lucid Motors has decided to lower prices across its electric sedan lineup as part of a valiant effort to make lemonade out of lemons worth 2023 sales. The movement screams “Please notice us!” In this market, being a newcomer (Lucid he founded in 2007) is as advantageous as skateboarding in an F1 race. The base model Lucid Air Pure used to sell in his $80,000 range, but now he's hitting the road hard against potential suitors at his more affordable $69,900. This follows the company's rather humble admission that it only delivered 6,001 units in all of 2023. At one point, the company predicted it would ship 90,000 cars in 2024, but the actual number appears to be one-tenth that number.
It's not just the new kids on the block who are struggling. Ford, which had a solid start 104 years before Lucid, is responding to slowing demand for cars by launching an electric Mustang like its Mach-E, in a move that reflects its “If they can do it, we can do it” strategy. decided to lower the price. Premium EV. The electric vehicle market appears to be experiencing a reality check as consumers suddenly remember that even if driving an electric car saves a tree, money doesn't grow on that tree.
These price adjustments by Ford and Lucid come on the heels of price cuts by EV industry leader Tesla, suggesting the EV market is maturing and customers are becoming more price-conscious.
Sale of electric bikes: A Florida retail store owner has scraped most of the U.S. stock of Swedish electric motorcycle brand Cake. This includes all Macca and Osa bikes, accessories and spare parts distributed in the United States. The cake itself is heading towards bankruptcy.
Despite all this rage, they are still just rats in a Faraday cage. Struggling EV startup Faraday Future owes the landlord of its Los Angeles headquarters nearly $1 million after failing to pay the past two months' worth of rent.
Keep your eyes on the road: Hivemapper, the company making waves on the tech scene with its innovative mapping technology to take on Google Maps, has announced its latest creation, the Bee dashcam. This is no ordinary drive recorder. Designed to collect and share street-level imagery and contribute to Hivemapper's world map.
This week's most interesting funding trends
Image credits: Carol Yepes/Getty Images
Global investment firm Partech recently closed its second fund in Africa for a whopping $300 million, doubling down on its commitment to Africa's burgeoning technology ecosystem. This new fund aims to bridge the gap from seed to Series C funding rounds, providing much-needed ongoing financial support to African startups. The fund's strategy is to not only inject capital, but also provide strategic guidance and access to a global network, enabling startups to scale in Africa and beyond.
Om Nom Nom: Chicago-based early-stage venture capital firm Bluestein Ventures recently closed its third fund with $45 million in capital commitments. Founded in 2014, the company focuses on investing in consumer technology across the food supply chain, including health and wellness, proprietary food technology, commerce, and digital technology.
Ready Player 2: The global video game industry faced a difficult year in 2023 with significant layoffs and the lowest venture funding in five years, despite huge revenues exceeding movies and music combined. However, there is still high optimism among VCs for a turnaround in 2024.
That's a big bag of moolah, guys. Moonshot AI, a fast-growing artificial intelligence startup from China, has secured over $1 billion in Series B funding round, marking the largest single funding round for a large-scale language model (LLM) developer in China. It is said that a new record has been set. This financial boost brought Moonshot AI's valuation to his staggering $2.5 billion.
This week's big trend: The AI train continues to rumble
Image credits: OpenAI
OpenAI has introduced a new generative AI model named Sora that can create videos from text descriptions and still images. Sora stands out by producing high-resolution, cinematic scenes with multiple characters, varied motion, and detailed backgrounds. The model can also augment existing video clips by filling in missing details and demonstrate a deep understanding of language and the physical world.
Sora's capabilities allow you to generate videos up to one minute long in a variety of styles, including photorealistic, animated, and black and white. This is significantly longer than most existing text-to-video models. Despite some limitations, such as occasional inaccuracies when simulating complex physics and certain causal scenarios, Sora's output maintains a high level of consistency, making it easy to ” avoid the common pitfalls. This model will probably not be released to the public.
In other OpenAI news, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected the company's attempt to trademark “GPT,” ruling that the term is “merely descriptive” and cannot be registered.
Yes, you can see this: Dili, a platform designed to use AI to automate key investment due diligence and portfolio management steps for private equity and VC firms, has raised $3.6 million in venture funding. The company aims to ease the burden of due diligence tasks by leveraging generative AI, particularly large-scale language models, to streamline investors' workflows.
What else can AI help with today?: Sierra's approach to customer service AI focuses on augmenting human agents rather than replacing them. The company believes that AI will be able to handle routine and repetitive inquiries, freeing up human agents to focus on more complex and nuanced customer interactions. The company has raised $110 million to date.
Focus on XX: In a New York Times article late last year, Gray Lady explained how the current AI boom was born. The article went viral not because of what was reported, but because it failed to mention women. We took a look at women who are making waves in the AI field.
Other must-see TechCrunch articles…
Every week I have a few stories that I want to share with you, but they somehow don't fit into the categories above. It would be a shame if you missed it, so I'd like to introduce you to a bag containing random goods.
Onshoring: Don't miss Aria's great profile on Chris Power, founder and CEO of industrial automation startup Hadrian. He is on a mission to counter historical patterns of imperial decline through innovation in American manufacturing. Mr. Power embarked on a journey from Australia to the United States in 2019 with the hypothesis that the United States' industrial base was in significant decline, based on observations of historical cycles in which empires crumbled due to outsourcing of key industries. Ta. In that decline, he saw an opportunity.
Give me all your money: Ransomware has become a lucrative business model for cybercriminals, generating billions of dollars in revenue each year. This malicious software encrypts the victim's data making it inaccessible and demands a ransom for the decryption key. Carly delves into how it became such a lucrative criminal enterprise.
Hello, this is I. Y Combinator's latest Request for Startups (RFS) is worth reading. It's not just because it's been a while since the incubator shared an idea or category that its partners “want more people to work on.” It also includes calls for an increase in the number of start-up companies working on cancer treatment.
Thank you very much, Bricker Robot: Bricklaying robots aren't exactly an untapped concept, but Amsterdam-based Monumental, which specializes in the more familiar red clay variety, caught the attention of reporters.
Control of the means of production: Amazon, SpaceX, and Trader Joe's have recently taken legal action challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), potentially threatening protections for domestic workers that have been in place for nearly a century. There is sex.