Hi guys! Welcome back to the Week in Reviews, news where we recap some of the top TechCrunch stories from the past 7 days. If you want it in your inbox every Saturday, sign up here.
The Most read This week’s story is about, get this: a DeLorean. As in the Back to the Future car. You then. Short version: the newly revived brand recently released images of the Alpha 5, an electric car built in homage to last year’s DeLorean, complete with signature gull-shaped doors. Details like pricing/stocking aren’t over yet, but for those curious: the company says it’ll do 0 to 60 in 2.99 seconds – and, perhaps, more important0 to 88 in 4.35 seconds.
different things
What else happened this week? Here are some of the things people read the most:
WWDC rumbling: Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference opens on Monday, June 6, and rumors of what could be announced have spread rapidly. Brian Heater has a cover roundup what he expects to see at the eventand Sarah Perez was dive into what’s likely to change in iOS.
Sheryl Sandberg walks down Meta: After 14 years in this role, Sheryl Sandberg will no longer be COO of the company formerly known as Facebook. Meta’s Chief Growth Officer Javier Olivan will move into the COO role; Sandberg will remain on Meta’s board of directors.
Amazon kills Cloud Cam: Back in 2017, Amazon launched a small smart home camera called the Cloud Cam. It then immediately bought two smart camera makers – Blink and Ring. Half a decade later, Amazon abandoned Cloud Cam to replace the following two software. Cloud Cams will be shutting down later this year; Existing Cloud Cam users will receive a free Blink Mini camera as a replacement, along with a free year of the Blink Plus plan. If you’re using Cloud Cam, make sure you back up your saved videos before they disappear in December.
Amazon experimenting with “invitation-based” ordering to fend off expanders: If you’re the average person just trying to casually buy something like a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X on Amazon, you’ve probably felt the frustration of being defeated by billions of bots. This week, Amazon announced that it will be rolling out “invitation-based” orders for a number of high-demand items; you will “request an invitation” and then Amazon will check things like purchase history/account creation date to determine who got it the first time.
More layoffs: It’s not yet again brutal tech layoff week – 8% of Carbon Health; 14% looms; 10% of Winklevoss Twins’ Gemini cryptocurrency platform; 25% of social app IRL; 10% TomTom and more.
And so is Tesla: The first is that Elon Musk will require “everyone at Tesla” to be in the office (rather than remotely) for “a minimum of 40 hours” per week. Then came news of a company-wide hiring freeze and plans to cut up to 10% of Tesla’s salaried workforce.
audio content
You love TechCrunch for your eyes – what about TechCrunch? for your ears? We have a great series of podcasts, the latest of which is Matt Burns summed up here.
Example A: TechCrunch Live podcast, where this week Burnsy spoke with the CEO and top investor of Olive — a company in Columbus, Ohio that has pivoted 27 times and is now worth billions of dollars.
things added
We have a fee wall section on our website called TechCrunch+. It only costs a few dollars a month and is full of very good stuff! From this week, for example:
VC on crypto state: Pretty much every major cryptocurrency has spent the past 6 months in a downward spiral. How do investors feel about the space as a whole? Jacquelyn Melinek signed up with several VCs to get their thoughts.
How Biden admin can power solar/wind projects: “There is an idea floating in the ether (or at least in my ether) that there is enough sunny federal land in Nevada to power the entire United States of America with solar energy,” writes Tim De Chant. “So why don’t we have more solar and wind power on public lands?”
Even Stripe is not immune to the changing market: Fintech companies are being hit hard by the economic downturn; Alex Wilhelm examines how/why “even the biggest and best-known private fintech companies are suffering embarrassing reassessments”.
