In funding news, self-publishing platform Inkitt raised $37 million and Lapse raised $30 million for its photo app. Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet was interviewed following criticism of operational changes. On the podcast front, Equity discussed startup news, Found spotlighted Parachute founder Ariel Kaye, and Chain Reaction featured Magic Eden CEO Jack Lu. Lastly, Toyota is offering a $40,000 discount on a 2023 Toyota Mirai Limited, plus $15,000 in free hydrogen over six years.
Key takeaways:
- Investment firm KKR is set to acquire VMware’s end-user computing business from Broadcom for $4 billion, which includes VMware Workspace One and VMware Horizon.
- French AI startup, Mistral, launched a new model to compete with OpenAI’s GPT-4 and a chatbot named Le Chat, in partnership with Microsoft who also invested $16 million in the startup.
- Apple has canceled its project to build an autonomous electric car, resulting in likely job cuts and cessation of all work on the project.
- Bumble announced a workforce cut of 30% and an app overhaul after posting weak Q4 results with a $32 million net loss and $273.6 million in revenue.