Tesla's Cybertruck is Here... Worth The Wait?

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∆ Tech in the News

Open Doors - Sam Altman rejoins as OpenAI CEO and Microsoft joins the board as a non-voting observer, along with ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. Altman plans to reform governance to remove the non-profit charter.

Sunak: "A Turning Point" - Microsoft invests $3.2B in the U.K. to expand next-gen AI data center capabilities with 20k advanced GPUs by 2026.

Deep Tech - A Google DeepMind AI system predicted the structures of over 2M new materials, in a breakthrough for energy, solar, and superconductor tech.

In-Stability - Pioneering AI image startup Stability AI's CEO faces pressure to step down from investors, including Coatue, and are reportedly eyeing a sale.

AI-mazon - Amazon unveiled its ChatGPT-rival "Q" for $20/m and launched its own AI-powered image generator.

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˚The hottest thing in tech this week

Tesla Cybertruck, CyberBeast or CyberFlop?

Elon Musk announced today the first shipments of Tesla’s future-proof Cybertruck. The launch event featured the usual hype with videos repping the truck’s apocalypse-ready bulletproof body by firing .45” & 9mm rounds at it from a Tommy Gun, Glock, and MP5-SD. Tesla showed the truck’s epic towing capacity with a video of it beating a Porsche 911 in a drag race while towing a 911 and beating an F-350 Diesel in a truck pull. Its off-road capacity was shown in an offroad test where it left the Ford F-150 in the dust.

The two-year production delay means the $61k cybertruck arrives competes with EV pickups from major automakers, leading critics like the NYT to question who Tesla’s customers will be. They also raise issues such as the “odd design” and suggest it’s not a “serious working vehicle” as there isn’t a market for commercial add-ons. However, Tesla is more of an open-source ecosystem than most car brands, making it easy for startups to launch add-ons like the viral Space Camper. The list of features other trucks don’t have is insane: bi-directional charging, multiple engines optional, Full Self Drive capacity, corrosion and chip proof, up to 440-mile range in the premium “Cyberbeast” mode - how’s that for a serious work vehicle? The list goes on, but it’s truly a beast and will be a game-changer in the auto industry regardless of sales.

News Bytes

• Largest Amazon aggregator Thrasio to file for bankruptcy

• Korea to launch 100k-citizen digital currency pilot in 2024

• “Go F@<$ yourself”: Elon Musk to “woke advertisers” leaving X

• GM to ‘substantially’ reduce Cruise investment after S.F. crash

Deals We’re Watching

Founders to Watch and Opportunities to Catch

Open Deals:

Flagship Pioneering - The Moderna creator and incubator of 100+ startups seeks to raise a $3B fund and expand to the UK and Asia-Pacific.

Stability AI - the startup behind Stable Diffusion AI image app is exploring a possible sale amid heightened pressure from investors over finances.

Kindbody - The New York-based fertility startup is looking to raise $50M by the end of this year aiming to retain its previous $1.8B valuation.

Closed Deals:

Ursa Major - Backers boost the rocket propulsion startup’s Series D-1 funding to $138M to develop hypersonic weapons.

Stensul - A $34.5M Series C will enhance the no-code AI marketing creation platform and strengthen its enterprise adoption.

HeyGen - AI video startup can now generate avatars from smartphone clips in 5 minutes and raised $5.6M at $75M valuation.

Retrocausal - A startup founded by an ex-MS deep learning scientist raised $5.3M for its AI-assisted manufacturing software.

Maverix Medical - New startup funded by Ajax Health, KKR and Hologic to build diagnostics and medical devices for lung cancer raised an undisclosed sum.

Companies to Watch:

Wormhole - Coinbase and Multicoin Capital backed the Jump Trading spinoff blockchain messaging app’s $225M raise at a $2.5B value.

Imbue - Dell agreed to provide $150M of computing hardware to the Nvidia-backed AI startup to develop models with advanced reasoning capabilities.

Together - Nvidia backs the startup’s $102.5M Series A to grow its cheap, lock-in-free, scalable cloud for building on open and custom AI models.

Squint - Sequoia led a $13M Series A for AR business interactions platform used by top-tier clients like Volvo and Siemens.

Voltage Park - Launched its H100 Mega Cluster powering workflows for Character AI and Imbue at industry-leading <$2/hour per GPU.

The Funding Buzz

Tola Capital - The VC firm investing in AI-enabled enterprise software, just raised $230M for its third fund.

5Y Capital - The early Xiaomi backer targets $700M for its new U.S. Dollar fund investing in late-stage startups.

FEBE Ventures - Secured 90% of the $75M target for its second fund to invest in pre-seed and seed-stage startups “For Entrepreneurs By Entrepreneurs”.

Tools

Amazon - Unveils Chatbot "Q" for $20/m and its own AI-powered image generator.

Apple - Released Type, a new Mac app for quick note-taking.

Perplexity - Announced two internet-&-API-connected LLMs that outperform GPT-3.5

Notion Expert GPT - AI assistant to help you master Notion

Jasper - A marketing specialist AI copywriter assistant

Voicemod - New features let users create and share their own AI voices

If you have a deal or company that you would like to host on our next issue, drop us a line: [email protected].

Thanks for connecting with us.

The Tech Buzz Team

Tesla's Cybertruck is Here... Worth The Wait?