The blockbuster $ 5 billion deal between Volkswagen Group and Rivian is just days old. But it turns out, VW Group was tapping into Rivian’s software expertise months before the partnership was announced. VW Group’s struggling software arm Cariad has hired at least 23 of the startup’s top employees over the past several months, a […]
DEI? More like ‘common decency’ — and Silicon Valley is saying ‘no thanks’
Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje‘s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. I just came off recording an episode of Equity, where I learned about the newest wave of stupidity. The tech industry’s DEI allergy has hit a […]
Silicon Valley leaders are once again declaring ‘DEI’ bad and ‘meritocracy’ good — but they’re wrong
Who’s afraid of the Big Bad DEI? The acronym is near-poisonous now — a word that creates almost instant tension between those who embrace it and those who want it dead. A prime example of this divide was the response to startup Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang’s post on X last week. He wrote about […]
With AI startups booming, nap pods and Silicon Valley hustle culture are back
When Jeffrey Wang posted Monday to X asking if anyone wanted to go in on an order of fancy-but-affordable office nap pods, he didn’t expect the post to go viral. He said so many others wanted in, he could have ordered over 100 units. “I had way too many people that I could handle,” Wang, […]
The ‘valley of death’ for climate lies between early-stage funding and scaling up
Jonathan Strimling faced a dilemma. His company had spent nine years working on chemical processes that could turn old cardboard boxes into high-quality building insulation. The good news was the team had finally cracked it: CleanFiber’s technology pumped out insulation — really good insulation. It had fewer contaminants and produced less dust than other cellulose […]