Others

Foundry Group is shutting down and won’t raise another fund

February 14, 2024

Foundry Group, an 18-year-old venture firm with nearly $3.5 billion in assets under management, has quietly decided to shut down and not raise any more funds. The move was unexpected considering that the firm announced a $500 million fund last year. Boulder, Colorado-based Foundry first announced that its current fund would be its last on […]

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Intuitive Machines to take its shot at reaching the moon with first private lunar lander

February 13, 2024

Intuitive Machines is looking to succeed where past ventures have failed with its inaugural lunar lander mission, which would mark the first time a private company has landed a spacecraft on the moon — ever. The mission is poised to lift off on a SpaceX rocket just at 12:57 AM EST tomorrow from the launch […]

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Airbnb plans to use AI, including its GamePlanner acquisition, to create the ‘ultimate concierge’

February 13, 2024

In November, Airbnb acquired a stealth AI firm launched by Siri’s co-founder, called GamePlanner.AI. The deal valued the secretive startup at around $200 million, according to reports. Though the hosting company didn’t telegraph its plans for GamePlanner at the time, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky today shared a high-level overview of Airbnb’s larger plans […]

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Waymo recalls and updates robotaxi software after two cars crashed into the same towed truck

February 13, 2024

Waymo is recalling the software that powers its robotaxi fleet after two vehicles crashed into the same towed pickup truck in Phoenix, Arizona, in December. It’s the company’s first recall. Waymo chief safety officer Mauricio Peña described the crashes as “minor” in a blog post, and said neither vehicle was carrying passengers at the time. […]

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Airbnb is making progress to get rid of those hated cleaning fees

February 13, 2024

Airbnb is slowly killing the cleaning fee as it aims for more transparent pricing. Since early last year, when the company started showing guests all-inclusive pricing when booking a property, almost 300,000 listings have removed or lowered cleaning fees, Airbnb said in its earnings report today. Now, nearly 40% of active listings no longer charge […]

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Instacart lays off 250 employees, or 7% of its workforce, to ‘reshape’ company

February 13, 2024

Grocery-delivery giant Instacart announced today that it’s laying off around 250 employees, or roughly 7% of its global workforce, as part of a restructuring. Instacart CEO Fidji Simo said in a letter to investors that the layoffs will allow the company to streamline how it operates. The company announced the layoffs alongside the release of […]

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Antithesis raises $47M to launch an automated testing platform for software

February 13, 2024

Software testing is hard. Even with the right talent in place, it doesn’t always go as planned — particularly when executed at scale. In a 2020 survey from Electric Cloud, 58% of developers blamed software bugs on test infrastructure and process issues — not design defects. The market for software testing solutions is quite massive, […]

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