Luminar cuts 20% of staff and outsources lidar production

Lidar company Luminar is slashing its workforce by 20% and will lean harder on its contract manufacturing partner as part of a restructuring that will shift the company to a more “asset-light” business model, as it aims to scale production. The cuts will affect around 140 employees, and are starting …...Read More

X launches Stories on X delivering news summarized by Grok AI

X, formerly Twitter, is now using Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok to power a feature that summarizes the personalized trending stories in the app’s Explore section. According to an announcement and screenshots posted by the X Engineering team on Friday, X’s Premium subscribers will be able to read a summary …...Read More

Match-owned Archer hits over half a million installs amid dating app slump

It’s been almost one year since Match Group announced the launch of Archer, the online dating giant’s first app for gay, bi, and queer men. Since rolling out to New York last June, Archer has been downloaded more than 685,000 times, according to estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. …...Read More

Musk raises $6B for AI startup. Also, is TikTok dodging Apple's commissions?

Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje’s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Musk’s 10-month-old baby, xAI, is closing in on a whoppin’ $6 billion funding round. The social network X, née Twitter — …...Read More

Three things we learned about Apple's AI plans from its earnings

Apple CEO Tim Cook didn’t give much away about the company’s AI plans on Thursday’s Q2 earnings call with investors, but he did confirm a few tidbits about how the tech giant plans to move forward with artificial intelligence. Notably, his comments suggested that despite spending more than $100 billion …...Read More

Fisker stiffed the engineering firm developing its low-cost EV and pickup truck, lawsuit claims

Henrik Fisker stood on a stage last August and proudly debuted two prototypes designed to catapult his eponymous EV startup Fisker into the mainstream. There was the Pear, a low-cost EV meant for the masses, and the Alaska, Fisker’s entry into the red-hot pickup truck market. In the weeks that …...Read More

Instagram now lets you post a secret Story that viewers can uncover with a DM

Instagram is adding a handful of new features for Stories to give users more creative ways to share content and engage with each other, the company announced on Friday. Most notably, the social network is introducing a new “Reveal” feature that lets you post a hidden Story for your followers …...Read More

Sprinklr lays off more than 100 employees

Sprinklr, a U.S. firm offering a customer experience management platform to global brands, has laid off about 3% of its workforce — around 116 people — to realign its customer operations team, the company confirmed to TechCrunch in a statement. The new job cuts come over a year after the …...Read More

Despite recent successes, IPO market still won't fully open until 2025

This year already proved that startups are willing to go public in a less-than-ideal market — and get rewarded for it, too. But bankers, lawyers and investors said the recent IPO successes aren’t enough to foster more than a dozen tech IPOs this year. “I don’t think we will have …...Read More

EQT snaps up API and identity management software company WSO2 for more than $600M

WSO2, a company that provides API management and identity and access management (IAM) services for enterprises, has been acquired by Swedish investment giant EQT. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but TechCrunch has learned via sources that the deal values WSO2 at “more than” $600 million, with EQT attaining …...Read More