DoorDash's startup shopping spree

Top News

• DoorDash making deals: Within a matter of just a few hours on Tuesday, the burrito limousine service announced not one but two big acquisitions. They’re picking up UK-based delivery platform Deliveroo for around $3.9 billion as part of an overall effort to expand into more international markets. As well, they’re grabbing restaurant and hospitality tech developers SevenRooms in a $1.2 billion all cash deal. (They make tools that help service businesses like restaurants and hotels manage bookings and collect guest information.)

• Zoox software recall: Amazon’s autonomous driving subsidiary has issued recalls for 270 of its robotaxis following an April 8 incident in Las Vegas, during which an unoccupied Zoox collided with a passenger vehicle. Both vehicles only suffered minor damage and there were no human injuries, but the company nevertheless paused its entire fleet until the problem was isolated and contained. According to Zoox staffers, they have now identified the root cause and updated software for all robotaxis still on the roads.

• Particle.news is here: While a lot of AI companies are hoping to hoover up as much journalism and writing samples as they can for training, before turning around and putting the original writers out of business, Particle hopes to develop AI tools along with publishers, benefitting everybody. The company’s new site, Particle.news, posts headlines and AI summaries of article from around the web, allowing users to dig deeper into the top stories of the day and ask thoughtful questions, while also clicking through and visiting the original sites that produced said journalism in the first place. So far, Particle’s collaborating on the project with Reuters, Fortune, and AFP.

TWiST500

One of our resident TWiST 500 unicorns is Databricks, a cloud-based platform originally founded in 2013, which today helps companies store, manage, and build on their AI data.

This week, Upstarts Media and others around the Web are reporting that the company is nearing a deal (or has already closed the deal, depending on who you believe) with San Francisco’s Neon.

Of particular interest to Databricks, we understand, is Neon’s commercial version of the open-source PostgreSQL database. Without getting TOO technical (I am a writer by trade, after all), Neon’s software allows companies to add or remove hardware resources from their data environments with greater ease and efficiency. In many cases, legacy companies are forced to upgrade both their data storage capacity and their processing power simultaneously, which can prove very costly. Neon’s gives networking specialists and IT departments more discrete control over their architecture.

Silicon Angle suggests that Databricks’ interest likely centers around AI specifically, and using this tech to improve the performance and speed of coding assistants and agents. It wouldn’t be their first acquisition designed to upgrade AI tools and performance. Just last month, Databricks purchased Fennel AI, which creates refined “data pipelines” that supply AI apps with information to process, and they scooped up dataset managers Lilac AI and OpenAI rivals MosaicML back in March. – Lon

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This Week in Startups

E2121: On a Monday TWiST, Jason, Lon and Alex welcome Magical Toys chief Fateen Anam Raffid to talk about building next-generation AI toys and his company’s mega-growth ahead of the holiday season. PLUS the latest on Cursor’s explosive growth and massive $9B valuation, Uber’s latest autonomous vehicle partnerships, and Jason shares some anecdotes from F1 in Miami.

E2120: It’s a brand new This Week in Startups, featuring Beehiiv founder Tyler Denk’s thoughts on building in public, rapid product iteration, and the perils of innovating TOO FAST. Plus Jason, Lon, and Alex break down all the week’s biggest news, including a judge striking down Apple’s 27% link-out fee, and the controversy striking Reddit’s r/ChangeMyView community.

E2119: Jason, Alex, and Lon are joined for today’s full episode by crypto insider and “Hash Rate” host (and long-time friend of the pod) Mark Jeffrey. He’s here to walk us through Bittensor and TAO, which some are calling the third “great coin” after Bitcoin and Ethereum. Plus the latest from Meta’s first-ever LlamaCon for developers, Alexis Ohanian’s advice for cold email marketing, AND a chat with LayerNext CEO Buddhika Madduma about the secret to onboarding new customers.

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