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In Today’s Edition
Wonder, Marc Lore's $3.5 Billion Startup, Has Launched a Food Hall in Walmart
Wendy’s will experiment with dynamic surge pricing for food in 2025
Macy's will close about 150 of its namesake stores
South Korean telco giant SK Telecom will offer the paid version of Perplexity's AI
Bumble laying off ~30% of staff
Klarna in talks to IPO at $20B valuation
🚀Startups Nuts
Wonder has opened its 11th location inside a Walmart in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. The company plans to open two more locations inside Walmart stores in Ledgewood and Teterboro, New Jersey. Wonder is a 'fast-fine' food startup that until last year operated high-tech food trucks. The company achieved a $3.5 billion valuation after a $350 million capital raise in 2022. Its pivot away from its curbside delivery model netted a $100 million loss.
Other News
Workday entered a definitive agreement to acquire AI-powered talent management startup HiredScore. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquisition will help Workday offer its clients comprehensive, transparent, and intelligent talent acquisition solutions.
AI-powered humanoid robot maker Figure AI is reportedly raising a $675M funding round at a pre-money valuation of $2B.
African vehicle financing startup Moove is in talks with Uber to raise between $75M and $100M at a valuation of $750M.
Exodigo, an underground mapping startup, raised $105 million
Shadowfax, an Indian logistics startup, raised $100 million
Intenseye, a workplace safety software provider, raised $61 million
CheckSammy, a bulk waste collection startup, raised $45 million
Turquoise Health, a health care pricing platform, raised $30 million
🏭Business Nuts
Apple has reportedly ended work on its electric car project. It will shift some of the staff to work on generative AI projects while laying off others. Project Titan, which had been in development for 10 years, was originally going to be a car with a luxurious limo-like interior and robust self-driving capabilities. Its ambitions were scaled back after multiple changes in direction and leadership. The project faced high startup costs and a difficult regulatory environment, making it hard for the company to find the profit margins it hoped for.
Wendy's will start testing dynamic pricing and AI menu features in 2025. Dynamic pricing means that prices for food items will automatically change throughout the day depending on demand. The company will invest approximately $20 million to install digital menus capable of displaying real-time variable prices across all of its company-operated locations in the US. Dynamic pricing is a common business practice for several industries, but its application in the fast-food sector is largely untested.
Other News
Macy's will close about 150 of its namesake stores and invest in its roughly 350 remaining locations. It will also open new locations of its Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury chains. The changes, announced as part of the retailer’s new growth strategy, reflect the brands that are performing the best at Macy’s.
Walmart announced last week that it plans to acquire smart TV maker Vizio in a $2.3 billion deal. With the move, the big-box retailer is pushing deeper into the world of advertising. The company is also uniquely positioned because it is a major seller of Vizio TVs and can link advertisements to customers’ purchases.
Warner Bros. Discovery is done exploring a mega media merger with Paramount Global. Paramount still has options: Skydance Media is considering a deal and mogul Byron Allen has a $14B offer on the table.
Bumble laying off ~30% of staff, eliminating 350 employees.The company said the layoffs will help drive stronger operating leverage and align its operating model with “future strategic priorities.” CEO Lidiane Jones said the company is taking “significant and decisive” action to accelerate its product roadmap, according to the release.
Klarna in talks to IPO at $20B valuation, with $2.3B in revenue in 2023. It was looking at a valuation of about $20 billion as it makes detailed plans to list in the third quarter.
📱Tech Nuts
Meta may reveal a pair of augmented reality smart glasses at its Meta Connect event later this year. Orion will be a 'true' AR device. There is a lot of internal pressure at the company to produce a high-quality demo. Company insiders are now experimenting with advanced prototypes. The glasses likely won't be available to the public until 2027.
Other News
Tumblr and Wordpress are apparently preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI to train their AI tools.
South Korean telco giant SK Telecom will offer the paid version of Perplexity's AI-powered search engine to subscribers for free per a newly announced partnership between the two companies.
The Early Bird is a 7:00 AM newsletter that covers stories that will impact the stock market each day. Powered by MarketBeat
🎁Miscellaneous
Intuitive Machines believes that its mission to land on the Moon was a complete success, despite Odysseus toppling over after touching down. The moon lander's range finders were discovered to be inoperable a couple of hours before it was due to attempt to land on the Moon, so the company rewrote its software to take advantage of three telescopes on a NASA payload for altimetry purposes. While the patch mostly worked, Odysseus' onboard flight computer was unable to process the data in real time - its last accurate altitude reading was more than 12 minutes before touchdown. This forced the lander to rely on optical data, resulting in it coming down much faster than planned.
💡What else are we reading and seeing?
Barclays thinks S&P 500 could hit 6,000 soon
The U.S. could make 20% of all high-end chips by end of decade
Ozempic could boost the U.S. economy by a trillion dollars in a few years
X Hiring claims there are more than 1M open jobs postings live
The market always wins
Why time seems to pass faster as we age
7 examples of poor leadership behavior that limit business success
😎Fun Fact
🐦Joke of the Day
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