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OpenAI launches an API for ChatGPT, a startup attempts a humanoid robot, and Salesforce turns it around

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TGIF, my TechCrunch homies. It’s that time of week again — the time for Week in Review, where we recap the past five days in tech news. As always, lots happened, so let’s dig in sans delay.

Well, perhaps with a slight delay. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that TechCrunch Early Stage, TechCrunch’s annual founder summit, is around the corner — on April 20, to be exact. Set in Boston this year, Early Stage will host sessions with advice and takeaways from top experts and provide opportunities to meet entrepreneurs taking incredible journeys. Trust me, it’ll be worth the trek.

Disrupt, TechCrunch’s flagship conference, will also be well worth the trek. (And I’m not just saying that because yours truly will be participating — I swear it!) This year, Disrupt will feature six new stages with industry-specific programming tracks, inspired by our popular TC Sessions series. Experts across climate, mobility, fintech, AI and machine learning, enterprise, privacy and security, and hardware and robotics will be in attendance and will have fascinating insights to share.

So, signed up for both events? Great. Now, here’s the Week in Review!

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ChatGPT in API form: OpenAI introduced an API that’ll allow any business to build ChatGPT tech into their apps, websites, products and services. (As a refresher, ChatGPT is the free text-generating AI that can write human-like code, emails, essays and more.) Snap, Quizlet, Instacart and Shopify are among the early adopters.

Becoming human: A startup, Figure, emerged from stealth this week promising a general-purpose bipedal humanoid robot. (Brian broke the news of the startup’s existence in September, in case you missed it.) The Figure robot’s alpha build, which the company completed in December, is currently being tested in its Sunnyvale offices. It’s focused on a wide range of manual labor tasks for now.

Warrantless surveillance: Zack reports that the Secret Service and ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit repeatedly failed to obtain the correct legal paperwork when carrying out invasive cell phone surveillance. The findings were published last week by Homeland Security’s inspector general, tasked with oversight of the U.S. federal department and its many law enforcement units, which said that the agencies often used cell-site simulators without obtaining the appropriate search warrants.

Salesforce turns it around: This week, Salesforce reported its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings, including revenue that topped expectations and guidance that came in ahead of street estimates. It was a much-needed win for the company, which was facing increasing pressure from activist investors, including Elliott Management.

Hydrogen powered: Startup Universal Hydrogen took to the air this week with the largest hydrogen fuel cell ever to fly. The 15-minute test flight of a modified Dash-8 aircraft was short, but — as Mark writes — it showed that hydrogen could be viable as fuel for short-hop passenger aircraft. (Many technical and regulatory barriers stand in the way, however.)

Pause your streak: Ivan reports that Snapchat will allow users to pause their Snap streaks — where you send a snap to your friend once every 24 hours — so they don’t have to worry about breaking them if they decide to not access the app for a while.

New nonprofit for AI: A community-driven AI research group, EleutherAI, is forming a nonprofit foundation. Funded by donations and grants from backers, including AI startups Hugging Face and Stability AI, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Lambda Labs and Canva, the nonprofit plans to research issues around large language models along the lines of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Ceasing “Succession”: The official trailer for the final season of “Succession” premiered this week, and it appears that the series is ending with an epic mic drop. As Lauren writes, the HBO series was not only hugely successful, with its 13 Emmy wins and five Golden Globe awards, but it was also an interesting commentary on the media industry. Creator and showrunner Jesse Armstrong has admitted to taking inspiration from lots of places, including the Rupert Murdoch playbook.

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Like Elon Musk’s meddling with Twitter, the TechCrunch podcast machine never stops. This week on Equity, Mary Ann, Becca and Alex gathered to riff through the week’s biggest startup and venture news, including what’s happening in the land of NFTs, AI versus crypto in venture hype cycles and Amazon’s unlikely partnership. And on The TechCrunch Live Podcast, Matt Burns spoke with Sagi Eliyahu, CEO and co-founder of Tonkean, and Foundation Capital partner Joanne Chen, all about addressing blind spots in leadership and the best ways for founders to work with their board of directors.

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TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys — which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If you’re not, consider signing up. Here are a few highlights from this week:

The “branding” issue for female VCs: The goal of being a VC is to generate returns for limited partners, and there’s an understanding that a diverse startup ecosystem will lead to better outcomes for all. But Natasha and Rebecca write about how balancing those two, for female VCs, has often manifested in different, often frustrating ways.

Jumping on the AI bandwagon: Camilla Tenn, a PR consultant for Eleven International, writes on whether tech startups should shift their messaging toward AI-related topics. If AI-related coverage can get a new, unknown brand into its target publications today, she argues, it could help get the brand’s pitch deck in front of potential investors tomorrow.

Turning open source into a business: Despite the premise of open source software distribution being “free,” multibillion-dollar companies like Red Hat, MongoDB, GitLab and Elastic have already broken ground building profitable businesses with open source at their core. But is it possible for a smaller open source project to find its way into this land of commercial opportunity? Victoria Melnikova investigates.

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Tesla more than tripled its Austin gigafactory workforce in 2022

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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.

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Launch startup Stoke Space rolls out software tool for complex hardware development

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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.”

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Amid a boom in AI accelerators, a UC Berkeley-focused outfit, House Fund, swings open its doors

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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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