Autonomous vehicle company Motional has laid off around 550 employees, or 40% of its workforce, as part of a restructuring effort. The company is also delaying its plans to launch a robotaxi service with its next-gen Hyundai Ioniq 5 robotaxis until 2026.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/

Cloudsmith, a Northern Ireland-based company, raised $15 million in Series A funding for its cloud platform managing software supply chains. This was the largest Series A round for a Northern Ireland company since 2005.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/

Anthropic launched its Claude 3 model on iOS, offering a mobile app with free and paid access. Despite similar functionality to its web version, the app garnered 157,000 global downloads in its first week, compared to ChatGPT's 480,000 installs in its first five days.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/

Apple held a 40-minute event to showcase new iPad Airs. The company did not provide specific details about the new devices, but the event generated significant traffic on the site, indicating strong interest from fans.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/

Layup Parts, a hard tech startup, received $9 million in funding from Founders Fund, Lux Capital, and Haystack, just five months after its founding. The funding will be used to transform composites manufacturing.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/

Anthropic, an AI startup, is updating its policy to allow minors to use third-party apps powered by its generative AI systems, provided the apps implement specific safety features and disclose the use of Anthropic's technologies. This change aims to balance innovation with user safety.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/

Zeekr, a Chinese luxury electric vehicle brand owned by Geely, made its US debut on the New York Stock Exchange, raising $7 billion in valuation. The company's stock price surged 38% in the first few minutes of trading, marking the first major US listing by a Chinese company since 2021.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/

The San Francisco Employees' Retirement System (SFERS) reported a -0.9% internal rate of return for its venture portfolio through the third quarter. The data highlights the impact of macroeconomic conditions on venture capital fund performance.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/

Dell has confirmed a data breach, with an alleged 49 million customer records compromised. The breach occurred when an individual brute-forced an online company portal and scraped customer data, including physical addresses and order information, directly from Dell's servers.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/

Tinder's paid user base declined for the sixth quarter in a row, while Hinge, also owned by Match Group, saw a 50% year-over-year revenue growth to $124 million. Tinder still has 50 million monthly active users and 10 million paying users, but Hinge's growth outpaced Tinder's.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/