Startups Weekly: EVs are troubling the Earth and Peloton is circling the drain.

Welcome to Startups Weekly — he cameA weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up Here to receive in your inbox every Friday.

Look, I know this is our Startup Weekly newsletter, and as the most valuable company in the world, Apple is kind of the ultimate “not a startup,” but judging by the traffic to the site, you all know this. So eager are fans that it would be rude not to do a quick roundup: Apple held a brief 40-minute event this week, where it announced the new iPad Airs, the new iPad Pro (with a fancy new stacked screen technology), A new Magic Keyboard, a new Pencil Pro, brand new M4 chips, and more. Oh, and they finally “admitted” that iPads are more like small laptops than big iPhones, so the company moved the camera to the edge of the landscape — where it honestly should all be. .

Oh! And I have some fun personal news: I’m joining the TechCrunch Equity Podcast as a co-host, alongside the absolutely wonderful (and amazingly awesome) Mary Ann Azevedo. You know, just in case you wanted my goofy humor in your earholes in addition to your eyeholes.

The most interesting startup stories of the week

Get ready for a wild ride as we delve into the story of NewChip, an accelerator that promised startups a golden ticket to success, but instead led them straight to bankruptcy court. Lacey Hunter thought she’d hit the jackpot with her AI humanitarian aid startup TechAid when she joined Newchip’s program. Spoiler alert: He didn’t. Instead of basking in glory, NewChip filed for bankruptcy and auctioned off the warrants of 1,000+ startups in an equity yard sale. And poor Hunter? In the midst of this hot mess, he had no choice but to shut down TechAid.

In a spicy turn of events, Microsoft just hit CTRL + Z on US police departments using its Azure OpenAI service for facial recognition. This update to their T&Cs was as subtle as a rhinoceros in a china shop. In short: If you’ve got a badge, a handlebar mustache and a pair of mirror aviators, No AI face games for you.!

• Rabbit R1 doesn’t actually have to be good (yet).: Rabbit r1 is an AI gadget that apparently comes out of the oven faster than a batch of underbaked cookies. Quirkier than app integration, this lil’ carrot muncher makes you question if it could have been any other app on your phone. But for now, that’s kind of the point, says Dion.
• I got 99 problems, but the tech is not one.: Rappers Kendrick Lamar and Drake have taken their feud to new heights — or should we say deeper? It’s all fun and games until Tupac gets deep into your track.
• On your bike: In today’s episode of “How to Tonic a $50 Billion Company,” Peloton, once the shining star of home fitness, continues to hit the sad treadmill of misfortune. They’re taking 15% of their workforce (that’s about 400 people allergic to the percentage), proving that math really is a cruel mistress.

Trouble in the transport trenches

Henrik Fisker’s EV startup, Fisker Inc., is having a bit of a mid-life crisis. After launching two prototypes — the Pear and the Alaska — last August, it has reportedly stiffed the engineering firm that helped develop them. The firm, Bertrandt AG, filed a $13 million lawsuit claiming Fisker withheld payments and retained their intellectual property like some scalded lover refusing to return your favorite sweatshirt. It looks like it’s not just a one-off: It’s like an episode of “Judge Judy” with more than 30 lawsuits alleging lemon law violations, from former employees and suppliers. Unpaid wage claims are those filing lawsuits for overdue bills. Although Fisker’s VP Communications insists Bertrand’s lawsuit is “without merit,” this smorgasbord of legal woes suggests the company may have more cracks than Humpty Dumpty after this unfortunate wall incident.

• Tesla’s flirtation with leather: Oh, delicious irony! Elon Musk once called lidar sensors a “blessing” for self-driving cars, but Tesla is now Luminar’s biggest customer. The company spread this supposedly redundant tech so much that it accounted for more than 10% of Luminar’s Q1 2024 revenue. These crutches cost $2 million! Luminar itself is struggling, though, and has laid off only 20% of its staff.
• Raven on the ropes: Here I was thinking my financial skills were questionable, but despite $1.2 billion in Q1 revenue, they still managed to lose $1.45 billion! It looks like their cost-cutting initiatives need a little more elbow grease before they can start dreaming of a profit.
• Hyundai opens piggy bank: Meanwhile, Hyundai, in an effort to save us from fearing its own driving skills, has spent nearly $1 billion on Motional. This “generous” investment will give Hyundai a majority stake and keep the self-driving startup rolling (pun intended). It’s like a Cinderella story but instead of turning into a pumpkin carriage, it’s turning your cash into autonomous vehicles.

This week’s most interesting fundraisers

Iconiq Capital, the private equity firm that has managed the cash piles of Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey since 2011, just raised $5 billion across two funds for its seventh flagship fund. This huge fund raising puts them in the spotlight while other big players like Tiger Global, with just $2.2 billion (their smallest since 2014), drew criticism for deploying their cash too quickly. has been) stuck on their shoelaces with

• The cloud is raining.: Alternative clouds are the new cool kids on the block, folks! CoreWeave just raised a whopping $1.1 billion and is now valued at $19 billion. Why? Because GPUs (those pricey tech powerhouses) are hot stuff for training AI models, not everyone has the deep pockets to buy one themselves.
• Let’s take a look inside.: Remember when Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, boldly announced that radiologists would be obsolete in five years thanks to AI? Yeah… about that. Turns out, we’re not there yet (amazing!) Now, presumably realizing that robots aren’t ready to play the role of doctor just yet, Khosla is investing $50 million in Rad AI – a startup that aims to make radiologists’ lives easier without trying to replace them with machines (yet).
• Appreciate the ceiling.: Itai Ben-Zaken is living proof that startup stumbling is just an uncle move in the entrepreneurial dance: He’s back with Honeycomb Insurance, turning aerial shots of roofs into property inspections for landlords. is leveraging AI, scoring $36 million for the company. Series B.

Other unforgettable stories from TechCrunch…

Every week, there are always some stories I want to share with you that somehow don’t fit into the above categories. It would be a shame if you missed them, so here’s a random grab bag of goodies for you:

• All deepfakes, all the time: While we’re used to seeing Katy Perry dressed as a magical chia pet, she wasn’t even there this year — but you wouldn’t know it from her 10 million views on social media.
• The new saw the sun, so bright: So it looks like Jack Dorsey got Blusky faster than a Tinder date who just discovered you have a tarantula. Mr. “I’m too cool for social media platforms” casually dropped in a conversation on X that he’s left the board of his pet project Bluesky. He didn’t even bother to give a reason or tweet some cryptic haiku about the change and evolution — just responding with an old number when asked if he was still on board.
• Apple’s new ad is disgusting.: Apple’s latest ad broke our hearts as it literally crammed a pile of creative tools and analog items into the shape of an iPad. Oh, we understand, Apple! You’re saying that this slim (who said that?) new iPad could replace all of those things, but your vision of a future without physical devices or paper books seems pretty dystopian, and We don’t like it.
• One with a happy ending: In the latest episode of “Whales, Actually,” scientists sneak up on sperm whales with a little help from machine learning. Turns out, these giant mammals are chatting using their own secret language! With a series of clicks (called “codas,” if you’re feeling fancy), the whales seem to be making words and phrases we’ve never understood before. How cold it is getting.
• LMGTFY: Stack Overflow has decided to play nice with OpenAI. After initially giving ChatGPT the boot due to fear of spammy responses, they had a change of heart (or code?) and are now teaming up to improve AI responses to programming tasks.