WeWork has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with over $18.6 billion of debt. Bumble has replaced its founder CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd with Slack CEO Lidiane Jones, leaving Slack in a difficult position. Arrival, an electric vehicle production company, has failed to meet production targets and is facing financial difficulties. The newsletter also covers podcasts and articles for TechCrunch+ subscribers, including discussions on superconductors, Klarna's potential IPO, and the legacy of unicorns in the startup world.
Key takeaways:
- OpenAI hosted its first-ever developer conference, announcing new products including tools to create custom “GPTs”, new text-to-speech models, an API for the text-to-image model DALL-E 3, and an improved version of OpenAI’s flagship model, GPT-4, called GPT-4 Turbo.
- Ford has shut down VIIZR, a software-as-a-service company that built an app to help tradespeople schedule field appointments, send invoices and manage customers.
- Apple CEO Tim Cook highlighted the company's advancements in AI and revealed that Apple is working on generative AI technologies, with reports suggesting the company is on track to spend $1 billion per year on developing generative AI products.
- WeWork has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, listing over $18.6 billion of debt, marking a significant collapse for the once high-flying startup.