Though Spotify never shared official numbers, it’s likely that Car Thing underperformed or was just not worth continued investment in today’s tighter economic market.
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The United States Department of Justice and 30 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster, for alleged monopolistic practices. Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged in 2010, creating a dominant entertainment machine that controls the majority of ticket sales and venue bookings in the country. But Taylor Swift […]
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The investor lawsuit is related to Bolt securing a $30 million personal loan to Ryan Breslow, which was later defaulted on.
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Henrik Fisker stood on a stage last August and proudly debuted two prototypes designed to catapult his eponymous EV startup Fisker into the mainstream. There was the Pear, a low-cost EV meant for the masses, and the Alaska, Fisker’s entry into the red-hot pickup truck market.
In the weeks that followed, Fisker stopped paying the engineering firm that helped develop those vehicles, according to a previously-unreported lawsuit filed in federal court this week. The firm, a U.S. subsidiary of German engineering giant Bertrandt AG, also accuses Fisker of wrongfully holding onto IP associated with those vehicles. It’s asking for around $13 million in damages.
The lawsuit adds to a pile of legal trouble facing Fisker, which is on the brink of bankruptcy. At least 30 lawsuits alleging lemon law violations have been filed, a handful of which Fisker has already settled. A former director has filed a proposed class action claiming unpaid wages. A textile supplier has also sued Fisker for more than $1 million that it alleges the EV startup never paid.
The engineering lawsuit stands out amid the legal trouble because it suggests that financial cracks were already forming inside Fisker last August despite the bold claims its CEO made on that stage.
“The lawsuit filed by Bertrandt is without merit,” Matthew DeBord, Fisker’s vice president of communications, said in an email to TechCrunch. “It is a legally baseless and disappointing attempt by what has been a valued partner to extract from Fisker payments and intellectual property to which Bertrandt has no right to under the relevant agreements or otherwise.” He declined to comment on the other cases.
Bertrandt says in the complaint filed in Michigan Eastern District Court that it entered into a “design and development agreement” with Fisker in May 2022 to perform “engineering, design, and development services” on the Pear – a contract worth north of $35 million, according to a copy of the design and development agreement attached to the lawsuit. (The agreement also shows that Fisker had previously hired Bertrandt to perform a feasibility study, cost analysis, timing proposal and other items for the Pear EV.)
At some point after entering into the agreement, Bertrandt says Fisker asked it to do similar work in connection with the Alaska pickup truck. Bertrandt says in the complaint that a formal written agreement was never executed with Fisker for the Alaska, but that it provided a quote of $1.66 million that Fisker agreed to pay.
Fisker stopped paying Bertrandt at the end of August 2023, according to the complaint. The company continued to fail to pay invoices through January 31, 2024, bringing the total unpaid to $7,061,443. The engineering firm also claims that Fisker’s decision to put the development work on the Pear and Alaska EVs on “pause” is an additional breach of the contract as it caused Bertrandt to suffer delay costs.
Bertrandt says it had a meeting with Fisker on February 6, 2024 where the EV startup “acknowledged its liability for payment of these invoices and agreed to promptly pay $3,685,000 as a partial payment” – but then never made that payment.
Breaching the contract, according to Bertrandt, has cost the engineering firm an additional $5,858,000 in “lost profits, delay costs, and incidental damages,” which is why it’s seeking $12,919,443 in total damages.
What’s more, the firm says it demanded on April 22 that Fisker “return all of Bertrandt’s intellectual property” and “certify in writing that Fisker had not retained any hard copies or electronic copies,” and claims the EV startup has “failed to do either.”
“Fisker has been unjustly enriched at the expense of Bertrandt,” lawyers for the firm write in the complaint.
Bertrandt isn’t the only supplier to sue Fisker so far.
Georgia-based Corinthian Textiles sued Fisker in Los Angeles Superior Court in early April. The supplier claims it entered into an agreement with the EV startup in early 2023 to provide it with “customized products for use in Fisker’s automobiles.” It doesn’t specify what products it made for Fisker, but the company’s website says its automotive division specializes in floor, trunk and cargo mats, as well as “automotive carpet.”
Corinthian says Fisker “refused, and continue[s] to refuse” to pay invoices and other fees in the amount of $1,077,571.75.
Days before Bertrandt sued in federal court, Robert Lee, an employee who worked for Fisker from October 2023 to March 5, 2024, filed a proposed class action in Los Angeles Superior Court alleging a pattern of overworking employees and not properly compensating them. The suit also claims Fisker failed to reimburse expenses and pay out wages owed when employees separated from the company.
Lee claims that he and other hourly employees worked “well over” eight hours a day and 40 hours per week, and instead often worked over 12 hours per day. He claims they were “frequently compelled” to work weekends. Fisker did not compensate employees for that additional time, according to the complaint. Lee also claims Fisker failed to properly track hours worked, and even deducted commissions from their hourly pay.
He claims employees were “regularly compelled to work off the clock and [Fisker Inc] created a policy to account for less hours than the total amount of hours actually worked” in order to “meet certain goals, to generate more sales.”
Lee also claims Fisker “effectively coerced and pressured its non-exempt employees to work of-the-clock, have their wages deducted, have their wages miscalculated, to shorten (tantamount to a missed meal period) or forego meal and rest periods (or not be paid for their rest breaks).”
Fisker started getting peppered with lawsuits in California alleging that it was violating the state’s lemon law as early as last November, which TechCrunch previously reported. The company has started to settle some of those earlier lawsuits in what roughly amounts to buying back the vehicles, according to court filings and a person familiar with the settlements.
More lemon law lawsuits have continued to pour in across state, where Fisker has delivered the bulk of its cars in the United States.
Customers may have taken action in other states where Fisker has delivered cars, like New York, Florida and Massachusetts. Those states require that lemon law disputes run through arbitration, making it difficult to know just how many actions may be pending against the company.
In its recent annual filing for 2023, Fisker noted that it is still defending against a proposed class action lawsuit from shareholders alleging violations of securities laws. Fisker then goes on to vaguely say that “[v]arious other legal actions, claims, and proceedings are pending against the Company, including, but not limited to, matters arising out of alleged product defects; employment-related matters; product warranties; and consumer protection laws.”
It also implied that it has been contacted by unnamed government agencies for information about its business, including subpoenas, in a new line of text that it had never included in any of its prior SEC filings.
“The Company also from time to time receives subpoenas and other inquiries or requests for information from agencies or other representatives of U.S. federal, state, and foreign governments,” the company wrote. DeBord, the communications VP, told TechCrunch that Fisker “currently [has] no pending subpoenas from governments.”
Correction: The article incorrectly identified Robert Lee as Fisker’s former director of technical services. The Lee who filed the lawsuit is an employee who worked for Fisker from October 2023 to March 5, 2024. The article has been corrected.
CesiumAstro alleges in a newly filed lawsuit that a former executive disclosed trade secrets and confidential information about sensitive tech, investors, and customers to a competing startup.
Austin-based Cesium develops active phased array and software-defined radio systems for spacecraft, missiles, and drones. While phased array antenna systems have been used on satellites for decades, Cesium has considerably advanced and productized the tech over its seven years in operation. The startup has landed over $100 million in venture and government funding, which it has used to develop a suite of products for commercial and defense customers.
The technology is niche: only a handful of companies work at the cutting edge of space-based radio technology, and Cesium no doubt pays close attention to any new entrant in this field. AnySignal, a startup that came out of stealth last October but was formally incorporated in 2022, certainly caught the company’s eye, not least because it edged out Cesium in a sales bid to a major customer and by attempting to solicit the interest of one of Cesium’s early investors — both facts stated in the lawsuit.
According to the suit, filed on March 25, these facts are directly related to former VP of Product Erik Luther’s misappropriation of trade secrets and confidential information on investors and customers, which Cesium alleges he subsequently disclosed to AnySignal. Notably, Luther did not leave Cesium to work for AnySignal, instead taking a role as head of marketing at a company that operates in a different sector entirely. But the suit says that Luther maintained “personal connections” with AnySignal’s cofounders, having worked with AnySignal CEO John Malsbury previously at a different company.
This resulted in AnySignal “recruiting and inducing Luther … to improperly disclose” the confidential and trade secret information, the suit says. AnySignal’s CEO and CesiumAstro did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment; a lawyer representing Luther referred TechCrunch to the March 29 legal filings cited below.
Cesium is clear on its position in the lawsuit: it does not believe that AnySignal could have developed its complex radio technology on its timeline and with its existing resources — “absent CesiumAstro’s technical diagrams and specifications (to which Luther had access).”
“With only a few employees and $5 million dollars in investor funding, [AnySignal] would not even be in the same orbit as CesiumAstro, which has spent tens of millions of dollars working with (now) 170 employees for seven years to develop its technologies,” the suit says. “But with Luther’s help, AnySignal has launched to directly compete with CesiumAstro in the specialized space for software-defined radios.”
Luther strongly denied all the allegations in two separate documents filed with the court on March 29; regarding the claim that he worked in concert with AnySignal, he says the allegation is “not only false…but invented out of whole cloth.” (The response also denies Cesium’s claim that it is an “industry leader.”)
Cesium “does not cite any facts or evidence whatsoever linking Luther and any of AnySignal’s business efforts and the alleged evidence that [Cesium] does cite do not support [its] contentions,” Luther’s lawyer claims in the filing. He goes on to say that Cesium takes a “Grand Canyon-sized leap from the paltry, easily explainable evidence it cites to the remarkable allegation that Luther has been secretly assisting AnySignal and feeding them [Cesium’s] trade secrets without citing any evidence whatsoever.”
El Segundo-based AnySignal was founded in May 2022 by Malsbury and COO Jeffrey Osborne, and emerged from stealth touting $5 million in seed funding last year. The company is developing a software-defined radio platform; Cesium’s lawsuit names it as a “direct competitor.” In February, a month before the suit was filed, AnySignal announced it had landed a partnership with private space station developer Vast for an advanced communication system for Vast’s flagship station, Haven-1.
The suit was filed in Western District of Texas under no. 1:24-cv-314.
Rivos made headlines in 2022 after Apple filed a trade secrets suit against it, which accused Rivos of hiring away dozens of Apple engineers and using confidential info to develop chips to rival the iPhone maker’s own.
Rivos denied the allegations and countersued Apple for unfair competition. Apple ended up settling its lawsuit in February. Around the same time, it ended separate litigation with several of the Apple engineers Rivos had hired.
Now, with the courtroom drama behind it, Rivos is redoubling its efforts to bring its chipset tech to market, CEO Puneet Kumar told TechCrunch.
“Rivos was founded with the mission of building industry-leading power-efficient, high-performance chips,” Kumar said. “We’re excited to be targeting customers who are building data driven solutions.”
A substantial new funding tranche will help to finance those efforts.
Rivos on Tuesday announced that it raised over $250 million in an oversubscribed, extended Series A led by Matrix Capital Management with participation from chip giants including Intel (via its corporate VC division) and MediaTek. Other backers included Cambium Capital, Hotung Venture Group, Walden Catalyst, Dell Technologies Capital and Koch Disruptive Technologies.
It’s quite the turnaround for Rivos, which was founded in 2021 and roughly a year ago was struggling to raise funds from investors and recruit employees under the shadow of the Apple suit. In August, Rivos laid off nearly two dozen employees, or 6% of its workforce at the time, and was forced to delay a planned $400 billion Series A fundraising round, The Information reported at the time.
The long-term goal with Rivos, Kumar said, is to build chips primarily for servers that can handle intensive data analytics and AI workloads, including generative AI workloads.
“We’re targeting customers building data-driven solutions, e.g., those utilizing generative AI and data analytics to drive decisions,” Kumar said. “There’re many companies targeting such markets; Rivos supports the intense hardware requirements of the AI models and analytics that will remake the enterprise.”
Rivos’ first chipset is built on RISC-V, the open standard instruction set architecture (ISA).
ISAs are a technical spec at the foundation of every chip, describing how software controls the chip’s hardware. For general-purpose computing, chip design teams typically license an existing ISA from an incumbent (e.g. Arm or Intel). But RISC-V presents an open, no-royalties-attached alternative.
Rivos’ chip features what Kumar describes as a “data parallel accelerator” to speed up AI- and big data-related computations, essentially a GPU designed for purposes beyond graphics processing. It was made using TSMC’s 3nm fabrication process. In chip manufacturing, “process” refers to the size of the smallest component that can be embedded on a chip.
That 3nm is considered close to the cutting edge. While Qualcomm, MediaTek, Nvidia and AMD among others are expected to employ TSMC’s process for their upcoming chip families, Apple was the only company to use it in 2024 in its M3 chipset series.
In addition to building the chip, Rivos is working on self-contained data center hardware based on the Open Compute Project modular standard, which will effectively serve as plug-and-play chip housing. And it’s creating a “firmware-to-app” software stack for programming the chip, Kumar said.
“Customer workloads can be easily deployed on our more efficient hardware, but still using their existing models and databases, giving them an immediate benefit,” Kumar added.
Rivos, which is pre-revenue at the moment, plans to make money by charging customers — chiefly large data center operators — for its hardware and complementary software solutions. David Goel, an early investor, said that Rivos’ “low-friction” adoption pipeline is a key differentiator in the cutthroat chip market.
“The Rivos team has adeptly integrated the groundbreaking new RISC-V architecture with an inventive accelerator, effectively bringing this vision to life,” Goel told TechCrunch. “Their prototype chip serves as a compelling demonstration of their unique capability.”
But is it differentiating enough?
One of Rivos’ potential customer segments, big tech firms, are racing to develop their own in-house chips for AI and big data analytics as the generative AI boom continues.
Google’s on its fifth-gen TPU and recently revealed Axion, its first dedicated chip for running models. Amazon has several custom chip families under its belt. Microsoft last year jumped into the fray with the Azure Maia AI Accelerator and the Azure Cobalt 100 CPU. And Meta’s inching along with its own designs.
Startups by the dozens, meanwhile, are angling for a slice of a custom data center chip market that could reach $10 billion this year and double by 2025.
Groq, a company developing chips to run AI models faster than conventional hardware, recently formed a new business unit geared toward enterprise applications and use cases. AI hardware startup Tenstorrent, helmed by engineering luminary Jim Keller, is looking to build its chipsets into data centers. And Rebellions, a South Korean fabless AI chip firm, has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in capital to ramp up production of its data center-focused chip, Atom.
But Nvidia, the dominant force in chips right now, is proving to be a tough one to topple.
Nvidia briefly became a $2 trillion company this year, riding high on the demand for its GPUs for AI training. Wells Fargo Equity Research estimates that Nvidia has a 98% market share in data center GPUs, and the company’s data center business was up more than 400% in Q4 2023 as Nvidia builds a new unit to design bespoke chips for cloud computing firms and others.
Given the fierceness of the competition — and the chilling effect Nvidia’s supremacy has had on funding for would-be rivals — it’s been rough going for some custom server chip upstarts.
Graphcore, which reportedly had its valuation slashed by $1 billion after a deal with Microsoft fell through, a few months ago said that it was planning job cuts due to the “extremely challenging” macroeconomic environment. Habana Labs, the Intel-owned AI chip company, laid off an estimated 10% of its workforce last year. Also last year, SiFive — like Rivos, a RISC-V startup — let go 20% of its workforce and discontinued its core product line.
So will Rivos fare better? Maybe.
Kumar wouldn’t talk about customers, and Rivos’ chip isn’t anticipated to reach mass production until sometime next year. But with 375 employees and hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank, Kumar said that Rivos is well-positioned to expand manufacturing and double down on platform and software engineering.
“The rapid changes in generative AI and the merger with the data analytics stack makes it vital that accelerators be easy to program and debug, and that data can seamlessly move between CPU and accelerator,” Kumar said. “Rivos addresses this need through our ‘recompile-not-redesign’ approach.”
Founded in 2017, Atoms Lanka Solutions is a provider of IT consulting and software development services. Throughout the company’s history, we have worked with over 160 customers from 5+ countries..
