Hey folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch's newsletter covering noteworthy events in the tech industry.
Investment firm KKR announced this week that it will acquire VMware's end-user computing business from Broadcom for $4 billion. As Ron explains, these businesses included VMware Workspace One and VMware Horizon – two remote desktop applications that were part of the VMware product suite.
Elsewhere, Mistral, the French AI startup, has launched a new model to rival OpenAI's GPT-4 – and its own chatbot called Le Chat. The releases are timed by Microsoft's partnership to make Mistral models available to Microsoft Azure customers – and a minority investment ($16 million) from Microsoft in Mistral.
A lot happened. We recap it all in this edition of WiR – but first, a reminder to sign up to receive the WiR newsletter in your inbox every Saturday.
News
Apple Car canceled: Apple has thwarted its long-running secret effort to build a self-driving electric car. The company will likely dismiss hundreds of employees from the team, and stop all work on the project. It joins a list of other projects that Apple has canceled at various stages, including AirPower and TV (not to be confused with Apple TV).
Bumble falters: Bumble posted weak fourth-quarter results showing a net loss of $32 million and revenue of $273.6 million — below Wall Street expectations. To set the record straight, CEO Lidiane Jones announced that 30% of Bumble's workforce, or about 350 employees, will be laid off, and that Bumble will embark on an overhaul of the app aimed at reviving growth.
Google's AI goes awry: Google apologized for an embarrassing AI flaw this week: an image-generating model that injects diversity into images with a comical disregard for historical context. Although the underlying problem is well understood, Google blames the model for becoming overly sensitive.
Bad look: Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Tumblr owner Automattic, is supposedly on sabbatical. Instead, he sparred with Tumblr users this week over a content moderation decision that sparked accusations of transphobia, Amanda reported.
Founder forced to resign: A group of Byju's investors last Friday voted to oust the founder and CEO of the edtech group, Byju Raveendran, and separately filed a suppression and management suit against the leadership at the company to block the recently launched rights issue.
Finance
GenAI eBooks: Inkitt, a self-publishing platform that uses artificial intelligence to develop best-selling books, raised $37 million. The startup's app allows people to post stories themselves, and then, using artificial intelligence and data science, selects what it believes are the most compelling from these stories to later edit, distribute and sell.
Keeping it old school: Lapse has raised $30 million for its smartphone app that makes you wait for photos to “develop” — with no chance to edit and retake them — before sharing them with a select group of friends if you so choose.
analysis
Techstars Accounts: Mary Ann interviews Maëlle Gavet, CEO of the Techstars startup accelerator program, in the wake of changes to its operations that have drawn harsh criticism.
Podcasts
On Equity, the crew talked through startup news from Microsoft, Mistral AI, Thrasio, and Glean — and also covered events at COTU Ventures and Zacua Ventures.
Meanwhile, a highlight was found Ariel Kaye, founder of Parachute, a direct-to-consumer bedding and home goods company.
And for Chain Reaction, TC pulled out of the archives to broadcast a previous conversation with Jack Lu, CEO and co-founder of Magic Eden, a “community-centric” NFT marketplace.
Bonus round
Big Mirai discount: Toyota is offering a $40,000 discount on the 2023 Toyota Mirai Limited, a fuel cell car that retails for $66,000 — plus $15,000 in free hydrogen over six years. As Tim wrote, there's only one problem: finding the hydrogen to power it.
