Week in Review: Fisker’s Financial Woes, Robinhood’s Credit Card Launch, and Google’s AI-Powered Itineraries

In this week’s Week in Review by WWD Australia, we highlight significant events and developments in the tech industry:

1. Fisker’s Financial Challenges: WWD Australia’s auto reporter Sean O’Kane uncovered how EV startup Fisker faced difficulties tracking millions of dollars in customer payments during a period of scaling up deliveries. This internal audit, initiated in December, brought to light the challenges the company faced.
2. Facebook’s “Project Ghostbusters”: Lorenzo reported on Facebook’s covert project, internally known as “Project Ghostbusters,” which involved snooping on users’ Snapchat traffic. This revelation, from court documents, sheds light on the lengths to which Facebook went to intercept and decrypt network traffic.
3. Stability AI CEO’s Resignation: Manish covered the resignation of Stability AI founder and CEO Emad Mostaque amid ongoing challenges facing the company. Despite its popular image generation tool, the company struggled with financial stability.

In addition to these key stories, WWD Australia also covered:

• Fisker’s stock trading suspension by the New York Stock Exchange due to “abnormally low” stock levels.
• Google’s introduction of AI-powered travel itineraries through its Search Generative Experience.
• Robinhood’s launch of its new Gold Card, powered by X1’s technology, offering features that rival those of the Apple Card.
• AT&T’s silence regarding a data breach affecting the personal information of approximately 73 million customers.

In the funding realm:

• Budgeting app Copilot raised $6 million in a Series A round led by Nico Wittenborn’s Adjacent.
• Canned water startup Liquid Death secured $67 million in funding, bringing its total raised to over $267 million.
• HVAC startup PipeDreams, founded by a former Nextdoor exec, raised $25 million to scale mom-and-pop HVAC and plumbing companies.

Analytically, Ron explores parallels between Nvidia’s and AWS’s growth trajectories.

In podcasts:

• Equity discusses Robinhood’s credit card, Fisker’s challenges, and Databricks’ new AI model, among other topics.
• Found features Allison Wolff, co-founder and CEO of Vibrant Planet, discussing wildfires and land management.
• Chain Reaction interviews Scott Dykstra, CTO and co-founder of Space and Time, a web3 verifiable compute layer.

This edition of Week in Review encapsulates the week’s noteworthy events and insights across the tech landscape, as covered by WWD Australia.