TechCrunch+

Well, we knew it was coming. Self-driving trucking technology company TuSimple confirmed Wednesday it plans to lay off 25% of its total workforce as part of a broader restructuring plan designed to keep the company running.

The layoffs come a couple of weeks after TuSimple and Navistar ended their deal to co-develop purpose-built autonomous semi trucks. The staff reductions, which we estimate to affect around 350 workers, also follow a rough year for the company, including a series of executive shakeups, multiple federal investigations, a truck crash and a plummeting stock price. Like many other companies exploring pioneer technology, TuSimple has struggled to make up enough revenue to cover its cash burn.

“It’s no secret that the current economic environment is difficult. We must be prudent with our capital and operate as efficiently as possible,” said Cheng Lu, TuSimple’s president and CEO, in a statement. Lu recently re-joined the company as CEO after he was ousted earlier this year. His predecessor and TuSimple’s founder Xiaodi Hou was firedfollowing an internal probe that showed certain employees having ties and sharing confidential information with Hydron, a China-backed hydrogen-powered trucking company.

“While I deeply regret the impact this has on those affected, I believe it is a necessary step as TuSimple continues down our path to commercialization. This is part of our overall strategy to prioritize investments that bring the most value to shareholders, and position TuSimple as a customer-focused, product-driven organization.”

TuSimple is in the process of selling off its Asia-focused business, so the layoffs are only affecting staff in the U.S. TuSimple has workers in San Diego, Arizona and Texas. It’s not yet clear which teams were affected or if the layoffs will hit a specific region, although one deep perception engineer in Los Angeles has already posted on LinkedIn about being cut. About 80% of the remaining staff are in research and development and are responsible for working in hardware and software resilience, reliability, safety and information security, TuSimple said in a statement.

The company is scaling back freight expansion, including unprofitable freight lanes and respective trucking operations that still rely on previous generations of autonomous software, which TuSimple says provides limited value to its ongoing technology development.

The focus now is on validating and commercializing its autonomous trucking technology by working with shipping partners, the company said. TuSimple had previously received around 7,000 reservations for its Navistar trucks with customers like DHL Supply Chain, Schneider and U.S. Xpress. It’s not clear if any of those partnerships remain, or if TuSimple will have to shop around again. A source familiar with the matter recently told TechCrunch TuSimple would find another truck-maker to work with in the future.

The restructure will cost TuSimple about $10 million to $11 million, a line item that’ll show up on Q4’s balance sheet and be paid in the first quarter of 2023. TuSimple estimates it’ll save $55 million to $65 million on an annual basis as a result of the layoffs and restructuring.

At the time of publishing, TuSimple is trading at $1.42, which is down nearly 6% today and 96% year-to-date. TuSimple did not respond in time to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

Self-driving truck company TuSimple to lay off 25% of workforce by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch

Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter sent Tesla’s stock price on a roller coaster this year as its value correlated — largely negatively — with each development at the social media company. But SpaceX’s support from investors seems immune to the drama.

Back in April, when Musk first announced his intention to acquire Twitter, it was just weeks after Tesla stock hit its 2022 price peak, $381.82 on April 4, according to Yahoo Finance data. Since then, it has declined fairly consistently — other than the few bursts when it looked like the Twitter transaction might not go through after all or that Musk was stepping down as Twitter CEO — and opened today at $139.34 a share, a 63.5% haircut from this year’s high.

The chatter around Tesla stock has been getting louder lately, too, as Wall Street analysts wrote down the investment amid predictions that Musk will sell more Tesla shares to keep Twitter afloat, making them less confident it is a good buy.

But while all this drama continues to unfold, SpaceX, one of Musk’s other companies, not only seems shielded from the Twitter noise, but largely undeterred.

Investor interest in SpaceX appears immune to Musk’s meddling by Rebecca Szkutak originally published on TechCrunch

The group trying to monetize AI porn generation, Unstable Diffusion, raised more than $56,000 on Kickstarter from 867 backers. Now, as Kickstarter changes its thinking about what kind of AI-based projects it will allow, the crowdfunding platform has shut down Unstable Diffusion’s campaign. Since Kickstarter runs an all-or-nothing model and the campaign had not yet concluded, any money that Unstable Diffusion raised will be returned to the funders. In other words, Unstable Diffusion won’t see that $56,000, which more than doubled its initial $25,000 goal.

“Over the last several days, we’ve engaged our Community Advisory Council and we’ve read your feedback to us via our team and social media,” CEO Everette Taylor in a blog post. “And one thing is clear: Kickstarter must, and will always be, on the side of creative work and the humans behind that work. We’re here to help creative work thrive.”

Kickstarter’s new approach to hosting AI projects is intentionally vague.

“This tech is really new, and we don’t have all the answers,” Taylor wrote. “The decisions we make now might not be the ones we make in the future, so we want this to be an ongoing conversation with all of you.”

Right now, the platform says it is considering how projects interface with copyrighted material, especially when artists’ work appears in an algorithm’s training data without consent. Kickstarter will also consider whether the project will “exploit a particular community or put anyone at risk of harm.”

In recent months, tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion have been met with mainstream success, bringing conversations about the ethics of AI artwork into the forefront of public debate. If apps like Lensa AI can leverage the open source Stable Diffusion to instantly create artistic avatars that look like a professional artist’s work, how does that impact those same working artists?

Some artists took to Twitter to pressure Kickstarter into dropping the Unstable Diffusion project, citing concerns about how AI art generators can threaten artists’ careers.

Many cite the fate of Greg Rutkowski’s work as an example of what can go wrong. A living illustrator who has crafted detailed, high fantasy artwork for franchises like “Dungeons & Dragons,” Rutkowski’s name was one of Stable Diffusion‘s most popular search terms when it launched in September, allowing users to easily replicate his distinctive style. Rutkowski never consented to his artwork being used to train the algorithm, leading him to become a vocal advocate about how AI art generators impact working artists.

“With $25,000 in funding, we can afford to train the new model with 75 million high quality images consisting of ~25 million anime and cosplay images, ~25 million artistic images from Artstation/DeviantArt/Behance, and ~25 million photographic pictures,” Unstable Diffusion wrote in its Kickstarter.

Spawning, a set of AI tools designed to support artists, developed a website called Have I Been Trained, which lets artists see if their work appears in popular datasets and opt out. Per an April court case, there is legal precedent to defend the scraping of publicly accessible data.

Inherent problems in AI porn generation

Ethical questions about AI artwork get even murkier when considering projects like Unstable Diffusion, which center around the development of NSFW content.

Stable Diffusion uses a dataset of 2.3 billion images to train its text-to-image generator. But only an estimated 2.9% of the dataset contains NSFW material, giving the model little to go on when it comes to explicit content. That’s where Unstable Diffusion comes in. The project, which is part of Equilibrium AI, recruited volunteers from its Discord server to develop more robust porn datasets to fine-tune their algorithm, the same way you would upload more pictures of couches and chairs to a dataset if you wanted to make a furniture generation AI.

But any AI generator is prone to fall victim to whatever biases the humans behind the algorithm have. Much of the porn that’s free and easily accessible online is developed for the male gaze, which means that’s likely what the AI will spit out, especially if those are the kinds of images that users are inputting into the dataset.

In its now-suspended Kickstarter, Unstable Diffusion said that it would work toward making an AI art model that can “better handle human anatomy, generate in diverse and controllable artistic styles, represent under-trained concepts like LGBTQ and races and genders more fairly.”

Plus, there’s no way of verifying whether much of the porn that’s freely available on the internet was made consensually (however, adult creators who use paid platforms like OnlyFans and ManyVids must verify their age and identity before using these services). Even then, if a model consents to appearing in porn, that doesn’t mean that they consent to their images being used to train an AI. While this technology can create stunningly realistic images, that also means that it can be weaponized to make nonconsensual deepfake pornography.

Currently, few laws around the world pertain to nonconsensual deepfakedporn. In the U.S., only Virginia and California have regulations restricting certain uses of faked and deepfaked pornographic media.

“One aspect that I’m particularly worried about is the disparate impact AI-generated porn has on women,” Ravit Dotan, VP of responsible AI at Mission Control, told TechCrunch last month. “For example, a previous AI-based app that can ‘undress’ people works only on women.”

Unstable Diffusion did not respond to request for comment at the time of publication.

Kickstarter shut down the campaign for AI porn group Unstable Diffusion amid changing guidelines by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park and various other media over the years, have raised $20 million to continue work on their professional deepfake studio for creators, Deep Voodoo.

The company got its start during the media shutdown of 2020, when the pandemic prevented most travel and on-set productions. Parker and Stone had already begun assembling an AI artist team for a film they were developing, and when COVID intervened they focused on creating the tools for use later.

“We stumbled upon this amazing technology and ended up recruiting the best deepfake artists in the world,” Stone said in an announcement on Deep Voodoo’s site. I’ve reached out for more info and will update this post if I hear back.

The Parker/Stone cachet showed when the company made its public debut alongside no lesser a personage than Kendrick Lamar. The video for “The Heart Part 5” has the musician delivering his lyrics in seemingly one take, but when he addresses the camera directly his face takes on the aspects of others: OJ Simpson, Nipsey Hussle, Kobe Bryant and Kanye West:

Of course it’s obvious that deepfake tech was used for this — just as it’s obvious that the dragons in Game of Thrones aren’t real. It is still effective dramatically, even if the substitution is by no means perfect.

Since then, and with the help of the $20 million from Connect Ventures, Deep Voodoo “has begun offering” its tech to others in the business.

It’s not the only one doing so by a long shot, naturally. Digital de-aging and “re-facing” as it is sometimes called has become a staple of Disney media, though early attempts (a waxen Grand Moff Tarkin and unconvincing young Luke Skywalker) were poorly received by audiences.

The technology is clearly here to stay, but how it will be used creatively — and ethically — is still an open question. Stone and Parker, despite their notoriety for off-color humor and courting controversy, seem to be sound thinkers when it comes to fundamental questions of fairness and storytelling. That’s a start.

South Park creators’ deepfake video startup Deep Voodoo conjures $20M in new funding by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch

Signaling its interest in text-generating AI systems like ChatGPT, Quora this week launched a platform called Poe that lets people ask questions, get instant answers and have a back-and-forth dialogue with AI chatbots.

Short for “Platform for Open Exploration,” Poe — which is invite-only and currently only available on iOS — is “designed to be a place where people can easily interact with a number of different AI agents,” a Quora spokesperson told TechCrunch via text message.

“We have learned a lot about building consumer internet products over the last 12 years building and operating Quora. And we are specifically experienced in serving people who are looking for knowledge,” the spokesperson said. “We believe much of what we’ve learned can be applied to this new domain where people are interfacing with large language models.”

Poe, then, isn’t an attempt to build a ChatGPT-like AI model from scratch. ChatGPT — which has an aptitude for answering questions on topics ranging from poetry to coding — has been the subject of controversy for its ability to sometimes give answers that sound convincing but aren’t factually true. Earlier this month, Q&A coding site Stack Overflow temporarily banned users from sharing content generated by ChatGPT, saying the AI made it too easy for users to generate responses and flood the site with dubious answers.

Quora might’ve found itself in hot water if, for instance, it trained a chatbot on its platform’s vast collection of crowdsourced questions and answers. Users might’ve taken issue with their content being used that way — particularly given that some AI systems have been shown to regurgitate parts of the data on which they were trained (e.g. code). Some parties have protested against generative art systems like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2 and code-generating systems such as GitHub’s Copilot, which they see as stealing and profiting from their work.

To wit, Microsoft, GitHub and OpenAI are being sued in a class action lawsuit that accuses them of violating copyright law by allowing Copilot to regurgitate sections of licensed code without providing credit. And on the art community portal Artstation, which earlier this year began allowing AI-generated art on its platform, members began widely protesting by placing “No AI Art” images in their portfolios.

At launch, Poe provides access to several text-generating AI models including ChatGPT. (OpenAI doesn’t presently offer a public API for ChatGPT; the Quora spokesperson refused to say whether Quora has a partnership with OpenAI for Poe or another form of early access.) Poe’s like a text messaging app, but for AI models — users can chat with the models separately. Within the chat interface, Poe provides a range of different suggestions for conversation topics and use cases, like “writing help,” “cooking,” “problem solving” and “nature.”

Poe ships with only a handful of models at launch, but Quora plans to provide a way for model providers — e.g. companies — to submit their models for inclusion in the near future.

“We think this will be a fun way for people to interact with and explore different language models. Poe is designed to be the best way for someone to get an instant answer to any question they have, using natural conversation,” the spokesperson said. “There is an incredible amount of research and development going into advancing the capabilities of these models, but in order to bring all that value to people around the world, there is a need for good interfaces that are easy to use. We hope we can provide that interface so that as all of this development happens over the years ahead, everyone around the world can share as much as possible in the benefits.”

It’s pretty well-established that AI chatbots including ChatGPT can generate biased, racist and otherwise toxic content — not to mention malicious code. Quora’s not taking steps itself to combat this, instead relying on the providers of the models in Poe to moderate and filter the content themselves.

“The model providers have put in a lot of effort to prevent the bots from generating unsafe responses,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson was quite clear that Poe isn’t a part of Quora for now — nor will it be in the future necessarily. Quora sees it as a separate, independent project, much like Google’s AI Test Kitchen, it plans to iterate and refine over time.

When asked about the business motivations behind Poe, the spokesperson demurred, saying that it’s early days. But it isn’t tough to conceive how Quora, which makes most of its money through paywalls and advertising, might build premium features into Poe if it grows.

For now, though, Quora says it’s focused on working out scalability, getting feedback from beta testers and addressing issues that come up.

“The whole field is moving very rapidly now and we’re more interested in figuring out what problems we can solve for people with Poe,” the spokesperson said.

Quora launches Poe, a way to talk to AI chatbots like ChatGPT by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Tesla is battening down the hatches against feature oil a worsening economy, according to a new report from Electrek. The automaker will conduct a new round of layoffs in the first quarter of 2023, per the blog’s source, and will also freeze hiring across the board – after having just resumed hiring during the latter half of 2022 following a prior freeze and first round of layoffs in June.

Of course, macroeconomic conditions don’t look like they’re going to improve anytime soon, so that could definitely be a reason for Tesla to implement measures to slow or reduce spending on headcount. But the EV company is also facing additional pressures from its recent steep stock price drop, which began in late September/early October and worsened again towards the end of October when Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter.

Musk has recently said that the problem is a general one regarding the stock market itself that results from rising bank account interest rates and general market volatility rather than any specific challenge facing Tesla. But critics still point to Musk’s general distraction as a contributor to the company’s poor performance with investors of late.

Tesla said to be conducting a fresh round of layoffs next quarter by Darrell Etherington originally published on TechCrunch

For founders winding down from a challenging year and planning for the new year, this is an excellent time to reevaluate your relationships with the investors you work with.

I am fortunate to be able to work with almost a dozen early-stage startups directly and get to observe the interactions between several dozen investors and founders. From all this, I have seen some founders do a better job than others tapping their investors’ strengths and wisdom while watching out for trouble.

What can founders do to revitalize their relationships with investors? Here’s a short list of dos and don’ts gleaned from what I’ve learned over the years:

Know your investor

As in any long-term relationship, knowing who you have chosen to work with is vital.

Investors, like all people, have distinct personality traits and sometimes associated shortcomings. This can be hard to gauge initially, but make sure you don’t ignore it.

Here are some examples of personality traits I have seen and how founders can learn to work with them:

Some investors could improve at follow-through. Maybe they have made too many investments and need more time, or they are just scatterbrained. No matter the reason, if you need something from them, it is your job to be organized about your requests and then regularly follow up.
Some investors react too sharply and unproductively at the first sign of weak business performance. They may see doom and gloom everywhere and echo every negative market sentiment. It is tough to have a balanced and open conversation with such people. It is best to have a few well-thought-out options written down before engaging with them.
Some investors may have a huge ego that will surface when you disagree with them. This trait is the toughest one to deal with, because any discussion is not based on substance but on power dynamics. If you have such an investor, make sure to have fact-based talks and draw the line (often and early) about whose decision this will be.

Tap investors for breadth over depth, but be careful how you do it

If you have an investor actively investing and engaged with their portfolio, they will be well versed in market and industry trends.

They can be a valuable source of information for questions such as:

How are other companies at my stage growing annually?
Who is the best sales recruiter for a B2B software company?
What valuations are companies at my stage getting?
What is the sentiment about investing in my space these days?

However, founders may want to have deeper conversations with their investors. Here is a typical example of a deep topic and some practical dos and don’ts:

How to make the most of your investor relationships in 2023 by Ram Iyer originally published on TechCrunch

Nine days after being arrested in the Bahamas on a handful of criminal charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is heading back to the United States to face them.

Bankman-Fried was being held in the Bahamas Department of Correctional Services’ Fox Hill jail after being denied bail and was supposed to remain there until his next hearing on February 8, 2023. But he could now arrive in New York as soon as Wednesday afternoon to be arraigned in the Federal District Court in Manhattan, according to numerous reports.

The charges came after Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange, which was once one of the largest globally, collapsed last month as a liquidity crisis unfolded and the company withheld withdrawals. The allegations include wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering.

Bankman-Fried signed documents on Tuesday surrendering himself to the U.S., according to Bahamas Acting Commissioner of Corrections Doan Cleare. He’s expected to sign a separate group of documents finalizing his waiver of rights to fight extradition to the U.S. at Nassau’s Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday.

According to Bloomberg News, Bankman-Fried will be brought back to the U.S. on a private plane alongside FBI agents. Plans call for him to go from the prison to court Wednesday morning.

His arrival in the U.S. could expedite both prosecutors and legislators alike to dive deeper into the FTX collapse and uncover what truly happened to the once-valued $32 billion company.

Last week, when asked whether the entities will bring charges against other individuals allegedly involved in the FTX collapse, Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said during the event, “I can only say this: Clearly, we are not done.” There haven’t been any new charges announced since.

On December 13, the U.S. House Financial Services Committee held a hearing on the FTX collapse with one witness: new FTX CEO John J. Ray III. During the four-hour hearing, Ray answered a number of questions from government officials and shared some new information around the situation, which you could read about here.

SBF is headed back to the U.S. to face a number of criminal charges by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.

“Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says Sophie Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. “Whether you’re in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to answer your questions in my next column.”

TechCrunch+ members receive access to weekly “Dear Sophie” columns; use promo code ALCORN to purchase a one- or two-year subscription for 50% off.

Dear Sophie,

We co-founded a startup in Colombia, and we’re thinking about opening a sales office in the U.S.! I would be moving, and my co-founder will continue to run our engineering team from Colombia.

I’m currently considering both the E-2 investor and L-1A executive visas. What are the pros and cons of each?

— Courageous Colombian

Dear Courageous,

What an exciting time and opportunity for you and your team! Congratulations on your U.S. expansion and for all the growth that got you to this stage. These visas are two great options for startup founders to move to the United States to expand their businesses.

Let me start by giving an overview of both the E-2 visa for treaty investors and the L-1A visa for intracompany transferee executives and managers. The visa applications for both are heavily scrutinized by immigration officials, so I recommend working with an immigration attorney to present a strong case.

E-2 visa

The E-2 visa provides a great option for international founders whose home country has a trade and commerce treaty with the U.S. The U.S. Department of State maintains a list of treaty countries. Colombia and more than 75 countries, including Pakistan and Taiwan, are on the list, but other countries such as China and India do not currently have the requisite treaties in place. The E-2 enables international founders to live and work in the United States while investing substantial capital to build a business here.

For a founder to qualify for an E-2 visa as an investor or essential employee, at least half of the U.S. business must be owned by people or companies from your country of citizenship. This can get complicated for startups after several rounds of dilution from U.S. investors. However, if you are forming a subsidiary of an already-profitable Colombian business and not planning to raise VC capital in the U.S., that might not be a big deal for you. Talk to a lawyer about your global corporate structure and your fundraising plans to confirm.

Although the E-2 requirements don’t specify a particular minimum amount of capital that must be invested into the U.S. entity, immigration officers look for large, upfront investments in office space, equipment and inventory, usually in the $100,000 range. Receiving a pre-seed or Series A round in the U.S. or another country can help streamline this portion of your case, but it’s not absolutely necessary. Some founders have succeeded in qualifying for an E-2 with even a transfer of valued intellectual property to their U.S. company.

While the E-2 does not require a U.S. business to create jobs in the future, immigration officials may consider it to be marginal without job creation, which would not bode well for E-2 approval. Already having U.S. employees or having a business plan that includes hiring in the U.S. can aid in the approval of your E-2.

Dear Sophie: What are the pros and cons of the E-2 and L-1A visas? by Ram Iyer originally published on TechCrunch

Whether you’re singing “Take This Job and Shove It” while workin’ “9 to 5”or you’re a fledgling startup founder, TechCrunch Early Stage 2023 is the bootstrapping bootcamp designed just for you. The daylong founder-focused summit — on April 20 in Boston, Massachusetts — covers the essential building blocks you need to build a solid foundation for startup success.

Early action equals super savings: We have a limited number of passes for a special launch price of $149. Buy one before they’re gone, and you’ll save $300!

TC Early Stage features a mix of panel discussions, workshops and small-group roundtable discussions that provide plenty of time for Q&A. You’ll engage with and learn from successful founders and industry experts across a range of core entrepreneurial skills.

Topics in previous years have included:

Understanding product-market fit — and how to find it
Building your brand
Attracting media attention
Scaling your customer base
Funding — from unconventional ways to Series A

This conference is all about you. We call it Early Stage, but that also includes folks who just have an idea they want to grow into a startup. Of our past attendees, 50% were bootstrapping, 65% worked at a startup and 49% were newly minted founders. Wherever you fall on the early-stage continuum, this is where you need to be to take your business to the next level.

TC Early Stage also focuses on networking — crucial for building a startup, and even more so at this stage. Don’t underestimate the reassurance that comes from connecting with a like-minded community and knowing you’re not alone. Plus, you just might meet the perfect co-founder or an engineer who can help you turn your idea into a viable product.

Don’t just take our word for it. Here’s what one attendee told us about her experience:

“What you learn at Early Stage is so much better than the random information you find on YouTube. You get to interact with industry experts and ask them specific questions. It’s like a mini bootcamp, and you’re going to walk away with a lot of knowledge.” — Chloe Leaaetoa, founder, Socicraft.

TC Early Stage 2023, which takes place on April 20, 2023, in Boston, Massachusetts, provides access to essential information, resources and community connection to help nascent entrepreneurs and fledgling founders reach their potential. Buy a pass now — just $149 while supplies last — and join us in Boston!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Early Stage 2023? Contact our sponsorship sales team byfilling out this form.

TechCrunch Early Stage focuses on fledgling founders by Lauren Simonds originally published on TechCrunch