KTM City Posts

via https://ift.tt/nhVXLqx Digital mortgage lender Better.com continues to lay off staff, and seemingly in as callous a way as possible. Indeed, whereas most companies try to avoid repeated layoffs, the outfit — which gained notoriety by laying off about 900 employees over Zoom on December 1, 2021 — has since been laying off smaller groups very systematically, say sources. The tactic accomplishes two things. One, it has a disconcerting effect on existing employees, who never know when the axe might fall so begin seeking to leave on their own, enabling Better.com to avoid laying them off and paying out related severance payments. Secondly, sources say Better.com is navigating around large severance payments by letting go 249 people or fewer at a time. Why that matters: The company’s recent layoffs are believed to have not triggered the WARN Act , which means it would not be required to pay out as much in severance to the affected employees. According to New York state law, by not l...

via https://ift.tt/NWvhoYa Porsche plans to go public on Thursday at a $73 billion valuation, catapulting the company to become the world’s fourth-most valuable automaker and netting billions of dollars for parent company Volkswagen to advance its drive toward electric vehicles. The initial public offering for Porsche AG on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange values the brand at $79 a share in one of Europe’s largest-ever listings. Volkswagen , Europe’s biggest carmaker, is poised to receive more than $9 billion for its stake, positioning it to challenge Tesla for the EV crown. The juggernaut is poised to overtake Tesla in EV sales in 2024, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Intelligence . Volkswagen set a goal for EVs to comprise a quarter of its sales by 2026, assisted by the launch 16 battery-electric models, including the Audi A4 e-tron, Audi A6 e-tron and Volkswagen ID. Buzz van. Proceeds from the IPO could help fund the $50 billion Volkswagen plans to invest in electrification ove...

via https://ift.tt/oR6UP3Q Taiwanese battery-swapping company Gogoro has signed a $345 million five-year credit facility agreement in order to increase liquidity among uncertain economic conditions. The loan comes from a group of 10 syndicated banks led by Mega International Commercial Bank Co., according to a regulatory filing . Gogoro will use the funds to pay off an existing facility, secure energy cells for its batteries, support operations in Taiwan and provide working capital as needed, according to a company spokesperson. The company will have an option to extend the loan for an additional two years and even get a discount if it continues to meet its carbon reduction goals. The fresh funds come a month after Gogoro released its second-quarter earnings results, which showed a company that is still growing, but is cautious, given market and macroeconomic conditions. Year-over-year Gogoro managed to increase its revenue by 5.3% to $90.7 million; however, the impact of COVID i...

via https://ift.tt/CWu4Odc Tesla’s second AI Day is fast approaching, and with it a flurry of speculations as to what will be discussed at the event — a phenomenon that we at TechCrunch are certainly not above. AI Day is the luxury electric vehicle maker’s annual event to hype up its artificial intelligence capabilities across different business segments, with the ultimate goal of recruiting the brightest minds and engineers. Even without Tesla’s star head of AI Andrej Karpathy, who left the company in July , expect this event to be full of technical jargon and big promises from Tesla’s executives, including the big dog himself, CEO Elon Musk. We’ll talk about what we’re expecting to hear about based on recent news, as well as last year’s AI day event . But first, how to watch. Tesla’s AI Day is scheduled for September 30 and should begin around 5 p.m. PT, although Tesla’s events are often notorious for running late. Remote viewers can watch it livestreamed on Tesla’s YouTube ch...

via https://ift.tt/Pivj6qh At its Search On event this afternoon, Google announced a number of shopping-related changes and new features across areas that include visual shopping, personalization and buying with the help of trusted reviews. The additions aim to help the company better attract online consumers to shop on Google, instead of starting their searches directly on Amazon — as has become the norm for many online shoppers today. Of significant concern, Amazon has been steadily eating into Google’s core search advertising business over the years and is projected to capture 14.6% of the U.S. digital ad revenue market share by 2023, data from Insider Intelligence indicates. Google’s share meanwhile, is expected to drop to 24.1% by that time, down from the 31.6% share it had in 2019, the report said. To combat this threat, Google has been investing heavily into its Google Shopping services, including by making listings free for merchants then integrating those free listings ...

via https://ift.tt/kF6Pqtr Ahead of the official relaunch of subscription-based movie ticketing service MoviePass, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a complaint against three of its former executives, claiming they lied to investors and the public. The SEC filing targeted former MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe and Ted Farnsworth, the former CEO of parent company Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY), claiming they lied about how it planned to be profitable and used “fraudulent tactics to prevent MoviePass’s heavy users from using the [unlimited subscription service],” the SEC wrote. When under the rule of Lowe and Farnsworth, MoviePass promised users a $9.95 per month subscription that would give them an unlimited number of 2D movie tickets. However, MoviePass quickly kissed “unlimited” goodbye, ending the service that was likely losing a lot of money. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2020. Last year, Farnsworth and Lowe settled with the Federal Trade Commission af...

via https://ift.tt/gAinUZE Now that the U.S. has finally committed to electrifying cars and trucks, there’s been a lot of handwringing over where they’ll charge. The Biden administration just approved all 50 states’ plans for where to install DC fast chargers, and while those plans will help fill massive infrastructure gaps, those chargers won’t be nearly enough to handle all the miles that EVs will rack up. Fortunately, they won’t have to — a lot of EV charging is done while cars are parked at home. But that does raise another problem — millions of households will be installing EV chargers in the coming years. Electricians are likely to be stretched thin, which could make it difficult for homeowners to book their services. A new startup hopes to ease the burden on both sides by creating a platform to make installing a charger as easy for homeowners as ordering new furniture. Kopperfield today closed a $5 million seed round, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. The round was co-le...