Technology
Faraday Future on track to start production of FF 91 this month if funds come through


Faraday Future said Wednesday it plans to start production of its all-electric FF 91 Futurist SUV at the end of March after years of delay, lack of capital and internal drama that threatened the company’s existence.
Faraday Future had previously indicated that production would start in March, but had yet to select a date.
There are two caveats to this milestone, however. The company said in its full-year and fourth-quarter earnings report that start of production will begin March 30 if it receives the remaining funds expected from investors and if suppliers are able to meet its requirements. Faraday Future said in February that it had reached financial commitments of $135 million in convertible secured notes, capital that the company said would allow it to start production. About $111.6 million of funds have been received. The company is expecting to more incremental payments of $38.4 and $58.4 million.
CEO Xuefeng Chen said Wednesday during the company’s earnings that he was confident the funds would be received.
The FF 91 will be assembled at its Hanford, California facility. The first vehicles are set to come off the assembly line in early April with customer deliveries occurring before the end of that month, the company said. Chen said the company is initially targeting sales in the Los Angeles area followed San Francisco Bay Area, and the New York metro region. In China, the company’s initial sales efforts will begin with Shanghai and Beijing, he said.
Faraday Future shares fell 8% to $0.51 a share prior to the earnings report being released. The production update helped push shares up in after-hours trading about 0.44% despite a rather dismal earnings report.
Faraday Future didn’t generate any revenue in the fourth quarter or 2022 for that matter. Its operating expenses were $451 million in 2022 compared to $354.1 million in the previous year. Faraday said the bulk of operating expenses were in the first nine months of the year due to an uptick in engineering, design and testing costs.
The company reported a net loss of $552.1 million for 2022, about 7% higher than the $516.5 million it lost in the prior-year period. The net loss in the fourth quarter was $153.9 million compared to $84.3 million in the same year-ago period.
Faraday Future reported it ended the fourth quarter with $18.5 million in cash and restricted cash. The company’s cash position has improved and is now $37.5 million, including restricted cash of $2.1 million as of March 3, 2023.
While there are conditions to that start-of-production date it still marks a turnaround for a company that just four months ago had substantial doubt as to whether it would be able to continue operating over the next year.
At the time, Faraday cited a number of conditions that were delaying deliveries of its FF 91, including whether suppliers could meet their deliverables, the timing and success of certification testing and the implementation and effectiveness of the company’s headcount reductions. Top of the list of concerns was whether Faraday would be able to secure the funds it needed to make it through the year, much less make it to first deliveries.
The company board ousted CEO Carsten Breitfeld a week later and appointed Xuefeng Chen, a former and longtime Chery Jaguar Land Rover executive who most recently led Faraday Future’s China division, as its new leader.
Faraday Future has grappled with delays and drama for years, which escalated after going public in July 2021 via a merger with special purpose acquisitions company Property Solutions Acquisition Corp. In July 2022, the company pushed its start of production and first deliveries to the third and fourth quarter, citing supply chain issues and a lack of money.
Technology
Tesla more than tripled its Austin gigafactory workforce in 2022


Tesla’s 2,500-acre manufacturing hub in Austin, Texas tripled its workforce last year, according to the company’s annual compliance report filed with county officials. Bloomberg first reported on the news.
The report filed with Travis County’s Economic Development Program shows that Tesla increased its Austin workforce from just 3,523 contingent and permanent employees in 2021 to 12,277 by the end of 2022. Bloomberg reports that just over half of Tesla’s workers reside in the county, with the average full-time employee earning a salary of at least $47,147. Outside of Tesla’s factory, the average salary of an Austin worker is $68,060, according to data from ZipRecruiter.
TechCrunch was unable to acquire a copy of the report, so it’s not clear if those workers are all full-time. If they are, Tesla has hired a far cry more full-time employees than it is contracted to do. According to the agreement between Tesla and Travis County, the company is obligated to create 5,001 new full-time jobs over the next four years.
The contract also states that Tesla must invest about $1.1 billion in the county over the next five years. Tesla’s compliance report shows that the automaker last year invested $5.81 billion in Gigafactory Texas, which officially launched a year ago at a “Cyber Rodeo” event. In January, Tesla notified regulators that it plans to invest another $770 million into an expansion of the factory to include a battery cell testing site and cathode and drive unit manufacturing site. With that investment will come more jobs.
Tesla’s choice to move its headquarters to Texas and build a gigafactory there has helped the state lead the nation in job growth. The automaker builds its Model Y crossover there and plans to build its Cybertruck in Texas, as well. Giga Texas will also be a model for sustainable manufacturing, CEO Elon Musk has said. Last year, Tesla completed the first phase of what will become “the largest rooftop solar installation in the world,” according to the report, per Bloomberg. Tesla has begun on the second phase of installation, but already there are reports of being able to see the rooftop from space. The goal is to generate 27 megawatts of power.
Musk has also promised to turn the site into an “ecological paradise,” complete with a boardwalk and a hiking/biking trail that will open to the public. There haven’t been many updates on that front, and locals have been concerned that the site is actually more of an environmental nightmare that has led to noise and water pollution. The site, located at the intersection of State Highway 130 and Harold Green Road, east of Austin, is along the Colorado River and could create a climate catastrophe if the river overflows.
The site of Tesla’s gigafactory has also historically been the home of low-income households and has a large population of Spanish-speaking residents. It’s not clear if the jobs at the factory reflect the demographic population of the community in which it resides.
Technology
Launch startup Stoke Space rolls out software tool for complex hardware development

Stoke Space, a company that’s developing a fully reusable rocket, has unveiled a new tool to let hardware companies track the design, testing and integration of parts. The new tool, Fusion, is targeting an unsexy but essential aspect of the hardware workflow.
It’s a solution born out of “ubiquitous pain in the industry,” Stoke CEO Andy Lapsa said in a recent interview. The current parts tracking status quo is marked by cumbersome, balkanized solutions built on piles of paperwork and spreadsheets. Many of the existing tools are not optimized “for boots on the ground,” but for finance or procurement teams, or even the C-suite, Lapsa explained.
In contrast, Fusion is designed to optimize simple inventory transactions and parts organization, and it will continue to track parts through their lifespan: as they are built into larger assemblies and go through testing. In an extreme example, such as hardware failures, Fusion will help teams connect anomalous data to the exact serial numbers of the parts involved.

Image credit: Stoke Space
“If you think about aerospace in general, there’s a need and a desire to be able to understand the part pedigree of every single part number and serial number that’s in an assembly,” Lapsa said. “So not only do you understand the configuration, you understand the history of all of those parts dating back to forever.”
While Lapsa clarified that Fusion is the result of an organic in-house need for better parts management – designing a fully reusable rocket is complicated, after all – turning it into a sell-able product was a decision that the Stoke team made early on. It’s a notable example of a rocket startup generating pathways for revenue while their vehicle is still under development.
Fusion offers particular relevance to startups. Many existing tools are designed for production runs – not the fast-moving research and development environment that many hardware startups find themselves, Lapsa added. In these environments, speed and accuracy are paramount.
Brent Bradbury, Stoke’s head of software, echoed these comments.
“The parts are changing, the people are changing, the processes are changing,” he said. “This lets us capture all that as it happens without a whole lot of extra work.”
Technology
Amid a boom in AI accelerators, a UC Berkeley-focused outfit, House Fund, swings open its doors


Companies at the forefront of AI would naturally like to stay at the forefront, so it’s no surprise they want to stay close to smaller startups that are putting some of their newest advancements to work.
Last month, for example, Neo, a startup accelerator founded by Silicon Valley investor Ali Partovi, announced that OpenAI and Microsoft have offered to provide free software and advice to companies in a new track focused on artificial intelligence.
Now, another Bay Area outfit — House Fund, which invests in startups with ties to UC Berkeley — says it is launching an AI accelerator and that, similarly, OpenAI, Microsoft, Databricks, and Google’s Gradient Ventures are offering participating startups free and early access to tech from their companies, along with mentorship from top AI founders and executives at these companies.
We talked with House Fund founder Jeremy Fiance over the weekend to get a bit more color about the program, which will replace a broader-based accelerator program House Fund has run and whose alums include an additive manufacturing software company, Dyndrite, and the managed app development platform Chowbotics, whose most recent round in January brought the company’s total funding to more than $60 million.
For founders interested in learning more, the new AI accelerator program runs for two months, kicking off in early July and ending in early September. Six or so companies will be accepted, with the early application deadline coming up next week on April 13th. (The final application deadline is on June 1.) As for the time commitment involved across those two months, every startup could have a different experience, says Fiance. “We’re there when you need us, and we’re good at staying out of the way.”
There will be the requisite kickoff retreat to spark the program and founders to get to know one another. Candidates who are accepted will also have access to some of UC Berkeley’s renowned AI professors, including Michael Jordan, Ion Stoica, and Trevor Darrell. And they can opt into dinners and events in collaboration with these various constituents.
As for some of the financial dynamics, every startup that goes through the program will receive a $1 million investment on a $10 million post-money SAFE note. Importantly, too, as with the House Fund’s venture dollars, its AI accelerator is seeking startups that have at least one Berkeley-affiliated founder on the co-founding team. That includes alumni, faculty, PhDs, postdocs, staff, students, dropouts, and other affiliates.
There is no demo day. Instead, says Fiance, founders will receive “directed, personal introductions” to the VCs who best fit with their startups.
Given the buzz over AI, the new program could supercharge House Fund, the venture organization, which is already growing fast. Fiance launched it in 2016 with just $6 million and it now manages $300 million in assets, including on behalf of Berkeley Endowment Management Company and the University of California.
At the same time, the competition out there is fierce and growing more so by the day.
Though OpenAI has offered to partner with House Fund, for example, the San Francisco-based company announced its own accelerator back in November. Called Converge, the cohort was to be made up of 10 or so founders who received $1 million each and admission to five weeks of office hours, workshops and other events that ended and that received their funding from the OpenAI Startup Fund.
Y Combinator, the biggest accelerator in the world, is also oozing with AI startups right now, all of them part of a winter class that will be talking directly with investors this week via demo days that are taking place tomorrow, April 5th, and on Thursday.
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