Noname Security, a cybersecurity startup that protects APIs, is in advanced talks with Akamai Technologies to sell itself for $500 million, according to a person familiar with the deal.

Noname was co-founded in 2020 by Oz Golan and Shay Levi and is headquartered in Palo Alto but has Israeli roots. The startup raised $220 million from venture investors and was last valued at $1 billion in December 2021 when it raised $135 million in a Series C led by Georgian and Lightspeed. While the sale price is a significant discount from that valuation, the deal as it currently stands would be for cash, the person said. The deal is not final and could change or not happen at all.

Other investors who have backed Noname include Insight Partners, ForgePoint, Cyberstarts, Next47 and The Syndicate Group.

While the potential deal price is half the valuation than Noname’s last private valuation, those who invested at the early stage will receive a meaningful return from the sale. Meanwhile, the deal should allow the later-stage investors, particularly those who invested in the last round, to get a full return on the capital they put in, if not the profit that they hoped for during those heady days of 2021 when money was flowing and valuations were optimistic.

The deal values the company at about 15X annual recurring revenue, the person said. Noname’s approximately 200 employees are expected to transition to Akamai if the sale closes. 

Akamai declined comment. A Noname Security spokesperson told TechCrunch, “As a policy, we refrain from commenting on rumors or speculation.”

The Information reported in January that Noname was trying to raise another financing round at a substantially lower valuation. In February, Israeli news outlet Calcalist reported that Noname was in negotiations with several potential buyers, including Akamai.

Many VC-backed companies that raised capital at the height of the tech boom saw their valuations crater after the U.S. Fed raised interest rates. Many are now simultaneously looking for buyers and a new round of funding, known in the finance world as a dual-track process. Meanwhile, many later-stage VCs are looking for liquidity after more than a year of a frozen IPO market. So, the general mood in the venture industry is that, if robust IPOs don’t return soon, it will be bargain shopping time for M&A activity.

Hinge Health, a 9-year-old company that offers a digital solution to treat chronic musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions, has cut approximately 10% of its workforce on Thursday, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.

The company said people who were laid off worked across various functions; according to employees posting on LinkedIn, some were engineers. Before the layoffs, Hinge had over 1,700 employees, according to a LinkedIn estimate.

“As we continue to reimagine musculoskeletal care, we are also committed to building a long-term sustainable business,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “To accelerate our path to profitability, speed up decision making, and better focus our investments, we have made the decision to realign our organization. We are incredibly grateful for all our departing team members’ contributions and are focused on supporting them through this transition.”

The layoff comes as the company prepares for an IPO and aims to reach profitability.

The company didn’t comment on the timing for its IPO, but Hinge has said previously that it is not under pressure to hit the public markets this year since it still has $400 million of cash on its balance sheet.

Hinge was last valued at $6.2 billion in October 2021 when it raised a $400 Series E from Tiger Global and Coatue Management. The company has raised a total of $828 million, according to PitchBook data.

The company’s main competitor is General Catalyst and Khosla Ventures-backed Sword Health, which was last valued at $2 billion in November 2021.

A flagship European Union digital market regulation appears to be shaking up competition in the mobile browser market.

It’s been a little over a month since the Digital Markets Act (DMA) came into application and there are early signs it’s having an impact by forcing phone makers to show browser choice screens to users.

On Wednesday, Reuters reported growth data shared by Cyprus-based web browser Aloha and others that it said suggests the new law is stirring the competitive pot and helping smaller browser makers gain share or at least grab more attention than they were.

But it’s early days for DMA implementation, with choice screen rollouts still a work in progress, and many EU users haven’t even seen one yet. While Aloha is not the only other browser reporting a boost in interest since the DMA compliance deadline kicked in on March 7 — Brave, Opera and Vivaldi also shared positive stories of increased interest — several others, including DuckDuckGo and Firefox, told us it’s too soon for them to be able to assess the regulation’s effect.

TechCrunch reached out to 16 alternative browser makers with questions, as well as Apple and Google, to inform our reporting. We also contacted the European Commission to ask about its own tracking of the DMA’s impact in this area — but it declined to share any data.

Neither Apple nor Google responded to questions asking about any changes in regional usage of their own browsers since the choice screens began being shown to mobile users.

Opting for choice screens

The EU’s goal for the DMA is to boost competition against internet “gatekeepers” whose control of dominant platforms gives them many operational advantages over smaller rivals. The regulation does this through a list of “dos and don’ts” that tech giants must comply with. In the case of browsers, it obliges the likes of iOS maker Apple and Google’s Android to display browser choice screens — forcing them to point users to alternatives to Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome.

Choice screens are intended to work against platform dominance and self-serving defaults by alerting consumers there are other options. But users do still need to decide to switch to an alternative app in order for choice screens to boost competition. The design of screens is also important.

Some alternative browser makers remain concerned the design of choice screens isn’t where it needs to be. We suspect this is leading to reluctance by some underdogs to share data on early impact, especially as the EU is currently investigating Apple’s choice screen design for suspected noncompliance.

In other words, some browser makers may be playing a waiting game in the hopes of encouraging Commission enforcers to push for a stronger implementation. At the same time, some really small browser players may see more gains to be had from good old-fashioned publicity — for example, sending out a press release trumpeting early interest — as a tactic to raise their profile to try to drive more downloads through increased awareness.

Overall, it’s still very early. Many regional mobile users may not have even seen a choice screen appear on their handset yet. Google, for instance, says screens are being displayed on newly launched Android devices but for existing Android handsets it’s up to the makers of the devices to push out the choice screens to their users. So there isn’t a clear implementation timeline on Android.

While in the case of iOS, Apple says it’s been displaying choice screens to users of iOS since iOS 17.4. But users who haven’t updated to this version also won’t have seen any yet.

Mozilla, maker of the Firefox browser, told us it estimates that less than a fifth of iOS users have been shown a choice screen so far. It reckons even fewer Android users have seen one in the wild as yet.

With this patchy Android rollout picture in mind, it seems likely that more iOS users will have seen choice screens than Android users so far — even though Google’s platform has a larger regional market share.

Measuring the impact of the DMA on alternative browsers’ market share is further complicated by variations in the apps that mobile users see in different EU countries. Some alternatives, such as Firefox, can appear on the iOS choice screen in every EU market. Whereas others are far more limited: Vivaldi, for example, can only appear in eight countries. So exposure to potential users can vary substantially depending on the browser. (Apple lists the options it’s currently showing in each market here.)

Alt browsers on the up?

Aloha, a browser that focuses on privacy and claims not to track users, told us it’s seen 250% growth in new users (i.e., app downloads) since the DMA came into effect last month. It reports having approximately 10 million active monthly users globally — and estimates that around 1 million of those are located in the EU. So it remains a very small player. 

However, since Aloha says it does not collect any personal data, including location data, it told us it cannot be precise about where its users are located. Yet it told Reuters the EU had moved up from being its fourth largest market to its second largest since the DMA compliance deadline kicked in. 

Aloha also claimed to have seen an uptick in users in the U.S. since the DMA came into effect — yet the regulation does not apply in the U.S. market so U.S. users aren’t encountering it via browser choice screens. Aloha told TechCrunch it believes privacy awareness is rising generally, but also suggested growth in new installs in the EU may be helping to raise its position in the U.S. App Store.

Norway-based Opera, meanwhile, is also claiming market share gains since the DMA started to bite on March 7. Per new metrics shared with TechCrunch Wednesday, Opera said new user growth from February to the end of March was 63% — so it’s reporting a substantial uptick in people downloading Opera and giving it a try.

It is also reporting a 39% growth in users on iOS selecting its browser as their default specifically, from March 3 until April 4.

Previously (as of March 18), Opera reported 164% growth in the inflow of new EU users on iOS after the deadline for Apple to implement the DMA-enforced choice screen. So there actually appears to have been a drop in the growth rate it’s seen over this period — that is, after a bigger initial spike of interest. 

Regardless, Opera is sounding very happy with the extra level of interest it’s seeing. In a statement, Jørgen Arnesen, its EVP of mobile, said the DMA “is working to even the playing field,” adding: “We’re excited to see that it has become easier for users to express their browser choice and for that choice to be respected.”

Another browser maker with a positive experience since DMA compliance day is Vivaldi, which is also developed out of Norway.

It told TechCrunch it’s seen an increase of 36.7% in downloads in the EU (in total) since the iOS choice screen came into effect. But the boost in downloads is even bigger when you look at the eight markets where Vivaldi is actually being shown on iOS choice screens. In those markets it said downloads have increased 69.6% since the choice screen started being pushed at users. 

Despite this uptick in downloads, Vivaldi is unhappy with the current design of Apple’s choice screen.

“There are significant flaws with its implementation, including when it is shown and what is shown,” a company spokesperson told us. “Users can only see the choice screen when they click Safari. The list of browsers does not show additional information and that does not help users to make a meaningful choice. If the user has already selected a browser of their own choice, the choice screen can actively try to push them away from it, and may not even include it in the list that it presents to the user.”

“We think the priority should be given to cross-platform browsers, so that the same browser can be used on all of the user’s devices,” she added. “Apple looks at it very narrowly, per platform and country. We believe the main browser choices should be visible and we are not. And we should be on the list for all countries.”

We also heard positive things from Brave. The U.S.-based privacy-focused browser said it’s seen “a significant uptick” in installs since the DMA came into effect. (Although it does not report users per region so declined to break out total usage figures for the EU.)

“The daily installs for Brave on iOS in the EU went from around 7,500 to 11,000 with the new browser panel this past March,” per a company spokesperson. “In the past few days, we have seen a new all time high spike of 14,000 daily installs, nearly doubling our pre-choice screen numbers.”

“Regarding retention, users who are choosing Brave from the DMA screen are being retained equally to or better than our average,” she added, arguing that, overall, the uptick in interest it’s seeing “confirms that users want choice.”

On the flip side, three other alternative browsers that we contacted — DuckDuckGo, Ecosia and Firefox — suggested it’s too early to tell whether the DMA is helping them.

Veteran privacy-focused browser maker DuckDuckGo declined to share any data, saying it’s too soon to draw meaningful conclusions.

“While we’ve seen some positive signs, the choice screen rollout is ongoing and for a competitor like us that sees billions of searches and millions of downloads a month, we need more time to make an accurate impact assessment at scale,” it said in a statement.  

DuckDuckGo also told us it lacks access to “key information” to be able to assess the DMA’s impact, saying, for example, that it has no way of knowing how many people have seen a search engine or browser choice screen.

“This is key because it would help us understand our selection rate on a choice screen and how widespread the rollout has been,” it noted, adding: “We’re at the beginning of this journey, not the end.”

Another alt player, the not-for-profit, tree-planting and eco-action focused Ecosia, also told us it doesn’t have enough data to make an accurate assessment of the regulation’s impact. “We have not received selection rates or any other meaningful datasets, so it is hard for us to solidly report on the effectiveness of the choice screen at this stage,” said Sophie Dembinski, its head of public policy and climate action. 

She emphasized Ecosia isn’t happy with the current iOS choice screen, which it believes is hampering potential growth — also pointing to the Commission’s open case investigating Apple’s implementation.

“While Ecosia has jumped to second and third position in some European markets for utility apps in the Apple App Store, our search numbers have barely changed,” she said. “This is due to several design issues within Apple’s choice screen — such as showing the choice screen to users who have already selected an alternative choice to Safari; an overly complex installation process which loses a large number of users; and keeping the Safari browser app in the best position on the home screen.”

Another veteran browser player, Firefox, is also keeping its powder dry when it comes to assessing early impact.

“We are not currently sharing absolute numbers, both because we have some serious concerns about the current choice screens and because we estimate that less than 20% of users on iOS and likely less on Google have been exposed to them thus far,” said Mozilla’s Kush Amlani, global competition and regulatory counsel. 

“The DMA represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create competition and choice for EU consumers. Whether that potential is realized depends on the gatekeepers’ compliance and the European Commission’s enforcement,” he emphasized, also referencing the Commission’s probes into suspected gatekeeper non-compliance.

“While we’re seeing many thousands of people select Firefox on the choice screens, we don’t think this should distract from the fact that the iOS choice screen has significant flaws that block people from making genuine choices,” Amlani added. “The critical challenge is that powerful and deep-pocketed gatekeepers are incentivized to protect their existing closed ecosystems and fight the implementation of the DMA, which will open them up to competition.”

TechCrunch’s outreach to browser makers that may benefit from the DMA choice screens also yielded one report of no meaningful impact since the requirement kicked in: Yandex, a Russia-based browser that can appear on the iOS choice screen anywhere in the EU, told us it hasn’t seen “any meaningful changes in the user metrics in the region so far.”

In Yandex’s case, its possible disinterest in switching could be linked to consumer concerns about using or supporting software that’s developed in Russia in light of the Ukraine war. 

Venture capitalists’ appetite for fusion startups has been up and down in the last few years. For instance, the Fusion Industry Association found that while nuclear fusion companies had attracted over $6 billion in investment in 2023, $1.4 billion more than in 2022, the 27% growth proved slower than in ’22, as investors battled external fears such as inflation rises.

However, numbers don’t tell the full story: venture interest in the field has remained strong as startups begin to find novel ways to potentially capture the power of the Sun to produce safe, limitless energy.

The field reached a significant milestone in 2022 when the Department of Energy’s National Ignition Facility managed to bring about a fusion reaction that produced more power than was required to spark the fuel pellet. And then in August last year, the team confirmed that their first test wasn’t just good fortune. The road to true fusion power remains long, but the kicker is that it’s no longer theoretical.

The latest company looking to make a name for itself in the space is Proxima Fusion, the first spin-out from the lauded Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP). Munich-based Proxima has raised €20 million ($21.7M) in a seed round to begin building its first generation of fusion power plants.

The company bases its technology on “quasi-isodynamic (QI) stellarators” with high-temperature superconductors. In plain English, a stellarator is a doughnut-shaped ring of precisely positioned magnets that can contain the plasma from which fusion energy is born. However, stellarators are  extremely hard to make, as they position the magnets in rather odd shapes, and require extremely precise engineering.

Proxima Fusion claims it came up with a way to address these issues using both engineering solutions and advanced computing in 2022, and as a spin-out, the company has now built on research from the Max Planck IPP, which built the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) experiment, the world’s largest stellarator.

The new approach to fusion is only possible because of the ability to use AI to simulate the behavior of the plasma, thus bringing the prospect of viable nuclear fusion nearer, Dr. Francesco Sciortino, co-founder and CEO of Proxima Fusion, told TechCrunch over a call.

German startup Marvel Fusion, which has been funded by German VC Earlybird, uses laser containment to spark the reaction, and when I asked Sciortino why Proxima uses stellarators, he said, “With lasers, you take a small pellet and blast heat at it with many very powerful lasers. That releases energy via fusion, but you’re compressing something and letting it explode. Whereas what we are working on is that actual confinement. So it’s not an explosion, but in a steady state; it’s continuous in operation.”

Sciortino, who completed his PhD at MIT on tokamak nuclear projects, said Proxima will leverage what has been learned from the W7-X device, which has had over €1 billion in public investment. He added the timeline was to be able to get to fusion energy by the mid-2030s. “We’re looking at, give or take, 15 years. Building an intermediate device in Munich most likely by 2031 is our objective. If we manage to get to that then the middle of the 2030s is possible.”

The startup’s investors are equally convinced.

Ian Hogarth, a partner at one of Proxima’s investors, Plural, told me, “There are two big things that I think are really compelling about what Proxima are doing. First, their stellarator has benefited from two big, big trends in high-temperature superconductors and progress in computer-aided simulation of complex, multi-physics systems. And secondly, the world’s most advanced stellarator in the whole world is in North Germany.”

He thinks that Proxima being the first spin out from that ambitious government project will give it the edge it needs to succeed: “It’s a classic example of the ‘entrepreneurial state,’ where a startup can build on top of this incredible public investment.”

That said, Proxima is not the only player in the race for fusion. Helion Energy raised a $500 million Series E two years ago, led by tech entrepreneur and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, for instance. And there are at least 43 other companies developing nuclear fusion technologies.

Proxima’s seed round was led by Redalpine, with participation from the Bavarian government-backed Bayern Kapital, German government-backed DeepTech & Climate Fonds, and the Max Planck Foundation. Plural and existing investors High-Tech Gründerfonds, Wilbe, UVC Partners, and Tomorrow of Visionaries Club also participated in the round.

Mobile gadget and bag maker Targus says it is experiencing a “temporary interruption” to its business operations following a cyberattack on Friday.

In a notice with regulators on Monday, Targus’ parent company, B. Riley Financial, said it discovered “a threat actor gained unauthorized access to certain of Targus’ file systems,” and shut down much of its network to isolate the incident.

“The incident has been contained and Targus systems recovery efforts are in process,” the statement said.

Details of the cyberattack at Targus are now public thanks to a new rule by the U.S. securities regulator that requires public companies disclose cyberattacks — including on their subsidiaries — that could have a material impact on investors within 96 hours of their discovery.

Targus did not say what kind of interruption to its operations it was experiencing. It’s not uncommon for companies to shut down their networks in an effort to prevent intruders from accessing other systems or sensitive data. The company did not give a timeframe for when its operations would return to normal.

It’s not known if any Targus customer data was stolen in the intrusion, but the company said it will “work with law enforcement with respect to the unauthorized access to information.”

Founded in 1983, Targus is a popular mobile electronics brand and accessory maker. B. Riley acquired Targus in a 2022 deal worth approximately $250 million.

When reached by email, a spokesperson for B. Riley did not immediately comment.

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free.

Automakers reported auto sales for Q1 and, welp, turns out that pricing sure does matter if you want to sell EVs. Who would have thought? A recent survey by Edmunds comes to a similar conclusion (at least for American buyers), finding a big gap between what consumers want and what is actually available on the market.

Here’s the crux. According to the Edmunds survey, 47% say they are seeking an EV purchase below $40,000, and 22% are interested in EVs priced below the $30,000 threshold. Today, there are no new EVs priced below $30,000 and only four below the $40,000 mark. The average price of an EV in 2023 was $61,702, while all other vehicles stood at $47,450.

This mismatch of realities is squeezing automakers as they try to move inventory by slashing prices. This downward pressure has forced automakers like Ford to delay future EV launches and put more resources toward hybrids. Even Tesla, a bellwether in the EV world, fell well below analysts’ expectations with deliveries down 20% from Q4 2023. Meanwhile, EV upstart Rivian posted tepid results.

What’s the answer? Well, over at Tesla, it seems the solution is twofold: slash prices again and try to capture revenue through sales of its Full Self-Driving software that costs $12,000 and is currently being offered in a free one-month trial to all customers.

OK, folks, let’s jump into the rest of the news!

A little bird

Founders, investors, engineers, policy wonks and others tell us things. And we’re here to pass along the verifiable information that those little birds have shared with us.

This week, a little bird tipped us on the closure of Ghost Autonomy, which had raised upward of $220 million and recently partnered with OpenAI. A couple of calls, emails and a fresh posting on the company’s website confirmed the tip. About 100 people were affected.

As I noted in my article, Ghost has pivoted a few times since it was founded in 2017. When I asked founder and CEO John Hayes what happened, he said the company had completed a highway driving product and was moving in urban environments through what he described as “last-mile delivery.”

“Ultimately, the years required to bring the product to market could not be financed,” he wrote to me in an email.

Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or Sean O’Kane sean.okane@techcrunch.com. If you prefer to remain anonymous, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps.

Deal of the week

Startup founders, listen up — a new fund just closed. Get your slide decks ready.

Maniv, the Israel and now NYC-based VC firm, raised a $140 million fund with plans to stick to its early-stage investment strategy of backing startups at the intersection between mobility, transportation and energy.

As I noted in my longer feature, the firm’s approach has evolved a bit by expanding geographically and diversifying its investor base. The firm has also largely stopped using the once trendy umbrella term “mobility” (often leaving it out of its original name Maniv Mobility) and has opted instead to talk about deep tech, decarbonization and digitization of the transportation sector.

Investors in the fund are no longer dominated by automakers and Tier 1 suppliers. Instead, Maniv has opened up to a broader swath of strategic and institutional financial investors, including BNP Paribas Personal Finance and the venture arms of Shell and Enterprise Mobility.

The Maniv III fund also includes return investors Valeo and Jaguar Land Rover venture arm InMotion Ventures. Toyota Motor Corp.’s Woven Capital, vehicle leasing company Arval, transportation infrastructure giant Ferrovial, the industrial manufacturing firm ITT Inc., fleet payments business WEX and an unnamed European insurance company also participated in the fund.

Other deals that got my attention …

Alsym Energy, a Massachusetts-based startup developing nonflammable battery chemistry, raised $78 million in a Series C round led by General Catalyst and Tata, the Indian conglomerate, with participation from Drads Capital, Thomvest and Thrive Capital.

BlaBlaCar, the French carpooling and bus ticketing company, secured a €100 million revolving credit facility ($108 million at today’s exchange rate).

Notable reads and other tidbits

Autonomous vehicles

Waymo and Uber expanded on an ongoing partnership that will affect Uber Eats’ customers in the metro Phoenix area. Now when folks order a burrito or a pizza or some other treat through Uber Eats, they may have their meals delivered by a Waymo vehicle. The tie-up will begin with select merchants in Chandler, Tempe and Mesa, including restaurants like Princess Pita, Filiberto’s and BoSa Donuts.

Electric vehicles, charging & batteries

Apple is laying off 614 employees in California after abandoning its electric car project. According to the WARN notice posted by the California EDD, most of the affected employees were working at buildings related to its canceled car project, while others were working at a facility for its next-generation screen development, Bloomberg reported.

Canoo finally reported its Q4 and full-year earnings. Tucked inside the regulatory filing is a nugget regarding the use of CEO Tony Aquila’s private jet — just one of many expenses that illustrates the gap between spending and revenue at the EV startup. Tl;dr: Canoo spent double its annual revenue on the CEO’s private jet in 2023.

Faraday Future narrowly avoided an eviction from its Los Angeles headquarters. The company reached an agreement with the owner of the building, Rexford Industrial, to stay at the facility as long as it meets a few conditions. If Faraday violates any of the terms, Rexford has the right to trigger a 48-hour demand for payment and can boot the startup if it doesn’t pay up. If Faraday Future makes its payments, it can stay in the building until September 2025 when the lease expires.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a third investigation into Fisker’s Ocean SUV, this time centered on problems getting the doors to open.

Tesla is reportedly abandoning its plan to build a lower-cost EV thought to cost around $25,000, according to Reuters, despite that vehicle’s status as a pivotal product for the company’s overall growth. Apparently, Tesla will instead focus on a planned robotaxi that is being built on the same small EV platform that was also supposed to power the lower-cost vehicle. This is where it gets a bit silly. Just hours after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Reuters was lying, he posted on X that the Tesla robotaxi would be revealed August 8. Go figure.

This week’s wheels

This week’s wheels is taking a one-week hiatus while I enjoy a bit of vacation time. But don’t worry, it’s back next week and I have a few vehicles lined up, including the Mercedes-Benz EQE 350 4Matic sedan, a Lexus LC500 hybrid and a Mercedes eSprinter. Plus, some e-bikes will soon be in the mix.

What vehicles — including the two-wheeled variety — are you interested in reading about? I’ll put them on my list.

Heya, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the noteworthy happenings in tech over the past several days (and change).

Famed startup accelerator Y Combinator had its Demo Days, and the venture desk took it all in with an appropriately skeptical eye. You can read their day one and day two coverage, along with an AI roundup from yours truly and analysis pieces from the rest of the dogged edit team.

But the world didn’t stop turning for YC. Also this week, Microsoft and Quantinuum, a quantum computing startup, made a scientific breakthrough — or so they claim. The companies say that they were able to run thousands of experiments on a quantum computer without a single error, a feat that’s long eluded the industry.

Elsewhere, Apple could be getting into home robots. Reportedly, the company — fresh off its decision to cancel its long-in-the-works autonomous EV — has put Apple Home and AI execs on some form of robotics project for households, although many of the details have yet to be finalized.

Lots else 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

Canoo paid for its CEO’s jet: Kirsten reports that EV startup Canoo paid the rent for the CEO’s private jet — $1.7 million— in 2023. That’s double the amount of revenue the company generated that year.

AT&T leak: Phone giant AT&T has reset millions of account passcodes after a huge cache of data containing customer records was dumped online earlier this month, Zack reports.

No ChatGPT account required: OpenAI is making its flagship conversational AI, ChatGPT, accessible to everyone — even people who haven’t bothered making an account. But it won’t be quite the same experience. Devin has the story.

Microsoft unbundles: Microsoft has introduced new versions of its Microsoft 365 and Office 365 subscription services that exclude Teams, its business collaboration chat offering, following scrutiny from European Union regulators and complaints from rival Slack.

Funding

Ghost ghosts: Ghost Autonomy, a startup working on autonomous driving software for automaker partners, has shut down after raising nearly $220 million.

Analysis

Alphabet and HubSpot: Reuters reported on Thursday that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is exploring the possibility of buying Boston-based HubSpot, a CRM and marketing automation company with a market cap of over $33 billion. Ron explains why that’d make for strange bedfellows.

Podcasts

This week on Equity, Alex chatted about BlaBlaCar’s new credit facility (and how it managed to land it), and he discusses how PipeDreams could be onto a clever model of startup construction, GoStudent’s rebound and profitability, Hailo’s chip business and the two new brands that GGV calls home as it divvies up its operations on opposite sides of the Pacific.

And over on Found, Nick Green, the co-founder and CEO of Thrive Market, was the featured guest. Thrive is a membership-based online grocery store that focuses on natural and organic food and household products. Green spoke about how Thrive isn’t just focused on offering healthy options, but also wants to ensure that everyone has access to them — including those with SNAP and EBT benefits. 

Bonus round

NSFW on X: The social media company has confirmed that authorized users on the platform can create NSFW communities, ahead of a change that’ll see all NSFW content on X filtered by default.

Just hours after Elon Musk claimed Reuters was “lying” about plans to ditch its $25,000 low cost EV and instead focus all its efforts on a robotaxi, the Tesla CEO announced on X that he would reveal said robotaxi in an event on August 8.

The announcement comes as Tesla EV sales have lagged and profits have fallen, leaving the company and its CEO on a search for another product to boost sales — or at least the stock price.

Earlier Friday, a Reuters report citing three anonymous sources and internal documents said that Tesla was abandoning its plan to build a lower-cost EV and would instead focus resources on a planned robotaxi that is being built on the same small EV platform that was also supposed to power the lower-cost vehicle.

Musk took to X, the social network he owns, and claimed without proof, that Reuters is “lying.” He did not dispute any specific details.

Hours later, Musk posted on X that a “Tesla Robotaxi” will be unveiled August 8.

Reports have swirled for years that Tesla was working on these two vehicles. But Musk has wavered on whether to prioritize a typical car or one with no steering wheel or pedals, despite not having yet produced a fully autonomous car, according to descriptions in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk.

The CEO  pushed back in mid-2022 against his engineers’ insistence on referencing a car with a steering wheel and pedals. And even as he pressed ahead, lead designer Franz von Holzhausen and engineering VP Lars Moravy kept the more traditional car version alive as a “shadow project,” Isaacson wrote at the time.

Musk has been promising autonomous capabilities in Tesla vehicles for years. In 2016, he said Tesla would drive itself cross-country by the end of 2017 (it didn’t happen).  In 2019, he promised to launch the company’s first robotaxis as part of broader vision for an autonomous ride-sharing network in 2020 (that also did not happen). A few years later, he said a dedicated robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals would come to market by 2024.

Tesla vehicles come standard with a driver-assistance system branded as Autopilot. For an additional $12,000, owners can buy “full self-driving,” or FSD — a feature that CEO Elon Musk has promised for years will one day deliver full autonomous driving capabilities. Tesla vehicles are not self-driving. Instead, FSD includes a number of automated driving features that still require the driver to be ready to take control at all times, including the parking feature Summon, as well as Navigate on Autopilot, an active guidance system that navigates a car from a highway on-ramp to off-ramp, including interchanges and making lane changes. The system is also supposed to handle steering on city streets.

Reuters reported on Thursday that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is exploring the possibility of buying Boston-based HubSpot, a CRM and marketing automation company with a market cap of over $33 billion – a number that has been climbing on those reports.

If such a deal were to happen, the cost would likely be pretty substantial, involving some significant premium over the current value. It would have to be to motivate the company to sell and become part of the search giant. It’s worth noting that the two companies have a relationship already, a partnership to use Google ads to drive sales in HubSpot, which can sometimes be the start of an acquisition discussion like this.

While Google/Alphabet has been extremely acquisitive over the years, the largest deal that it’s ever made was spending $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility in 2011. It later sold it to Lenovo for just $2.91 billion, so it would have reason to be gun shy on a much larger price tag. More recently the largest deal involved spending $5.4 billion for security intelligence platform Mandiant in 2022. Google usually stays under $3 billion, so a deal of this scope would be very much out of character for the company.

When you combine that with the austerity program that most tech companies have been on in recent years, and a warning from Google CEO Sundar Pichai in January that more job cuts were coming, it’s not the type of deal that seems likely in a belt tightening climate, and certainly one that might be tough to justify to employees if those kind of optics actually matter. Yet with a huge cash horde of $110 billion on hand as of the end of last year, it certainly has the cash to make the move if it wants to.

Another issue the company could face in trying to buy HubSpot is a hostile regulatory environment for large deals. The U.S., the U.K and the EU have been monitoring large deals closely these days. Some, like Adobe’s attempt to buy Figma for $20 billion didn’t make it to the finish line because of competitive concerns. It’s not clear that Alphabet would face those same concerns with a CRM tool. HubSpot faces pretty powerful competition from Adobe and Salesforce, two well-capitalized firms, so this wouldn’t give Google a lock on that market by any means, but if there’s a risk, there’s sure to be a termination fee involved to hedge against that, another factor the company would need to take into consideration.

The question is what is the likelihood of such a deal coming to fruition and what would it give the companies that they can’t get from the existing partnership. As one analyst said to me, it doesn’t feel likely, but you never know.

NASA has given three space companies the chance to design the next generation moon buggy — but only one design will go to space. Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, and Venturi Astrolab are developing rugged vehicles intended for astronauts to drive around on the lunar surface, from which NASA may choose as early as next year.

The three teams will now enter into a 12-month “feasibility phase” that will culminate in a preliminary design review. At that point, there will be a subsequent competitive request for proposals, where the trio of companies will compete for a demonstration task order, NASA officials explained during a press conference on Wednesday.

At that point, a final awardee will be selected. The chosen company will be responsible not only for designing the LTV but for launching and landing it on the moon prior to the Artemis V mission, which is currently slated for no earlier than 2029.

NASA declined to specify the dollar value of the awards, though Intuitive Machines said in a statement that it was awarded a $30 million contract. The total potential value of all the task orders over the next 13 years is $4.6 billion.

The three teams are also keeping specifications, like range or battery technology, close to the chest, though NASA specified that the rover would have to have an incredible 10-year lifespan and be capable of carrying two suited astronauts.

Intuitive Machines is leading a team that includes AVL, Boeing, Michelin, and Northrop Grumman; Lunar Outpost is leading the “Lunar Dawn” team that includes Lockheed Martin, General Motors, Goodyear and MDA Space; and Astrolab is joined by Axiom Space and Odyssey Space Research.

The awards are the latest to be doled out to private industry under the agency’s ambitious Artemis program, which seeks to eventually establish a permanent human presence on the moon. But in order to truly explore the surface, astronauts will need something to get around — and it will need to withstand the harsh environment of the lunar south pole, which is known for temperature extreme swings and very long nights.

“Think of it as a hybrid of the Apollo-style lunar rover that was driven by our astronauts and an uncrewed mobile science platform,” NASA’s Johnson Space Center director Vanessa Wyche said.

With the vehicles, astronauts will be able to transport scientific equipment, collect samples from the surface and travel farther than on foot, Jacob Bleacher, NASA’s chief exploration scientist, said. When astronauts are not on the moon, humans will be able to remotely operate the LTV, so it can continue to explore the region and even meet new astronaut crews when they arrive on the surface.

“With NASA’s Artemis campaign, we are building up the capabilities needed to establish a longer-term exploration and presence of the moon,” he said. “Where it will go, there are no roads. Its mobility will fundamentally change our view of the moon.”