DoorDash has asked a California Superior Court judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Uber that accuses the food delivery company of stifling competition by intimidating restaurant owners into exclusive deals.
DoorDash argues in its motion that Uber’s claim lacks merit on all fronts. On a post on its website on Friday, DoorDash said, “the lawsuit is nothing more than a cynical and calculated scare tactic from a frustrated competitor seeking to avoid real competition. It’s disappointing behavior from a company once known for competing on the merits of its products and innovation.”
In its post, DoorDash added that it will “vigorously” defend itself, and positioned the company as one that “competes fiercely yet fairly to deliver exceptional value to merchants.”
A hearing has been set for July 11 in California Superior Court in San Francisco County.
Uber filed its lawsuit against DoorDash in February. The ride-hailing giant alleged DoorDash, which holds the largest share of the food delivery market in the U.S., threatens restaurants with multimillion-dollar penalties or the removal or demotion of the businesses’ position on the DoorDash app.
Uber responded to the DoorDash request in a statement sent to TechCrunch.
“It seems like the team at DoorDash is having a hard time understanding the content of our Complaint,” reads the emailed statement from Uber. “When restaurants are forced to choose between unfair terms or retaliation, that’s not competition — it’s coercion. Uber will continue to stand up for merchants and for a level playing field. We look forward to presenting the facts in court.”
Uber requested a jury trial in its original complaint. The company has not specified the amount of damages it is seeking.
Separately, Deliveroo confirmed Friday that DoorDash offered to buy the European food delivery company for $3.6 billion.
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Busy week, so let’s get to it. Starting with federal regulations! Woohoo. Exciting stuff.
I’m talking about the U.S. Department of Transportation’s new Automated Vehicle Framework, which includes a standing general order (SGO) on crash reporting for vehicles equipped with certain advanced driver-assistance systems and automated driving systems. There were also some changes to the Automated Vehicle Exemption Program (AVEP).
Briefly, the AVEP handles language and processes of domestic and imported vehicles receiving exemptions. I want to spend a bit more time on the SGO, which has more significant changes. The Trump administration says it streamlines the process; others, like Consumer Reports, disagree.
The SGO ends a 24-hour reporting requirement and instead allows companies five days to submit a report if a vehicle with a Level 2 system is involved in a crash. As Consumer Reports notes, the new order also changes reporting requirements for when a vehicle with Level 2 driving automation has been towed away after a crash.
In the past, any vehicle with a Level 2 or above advanced driver-assistance system involved in a crash that DID NOT involve a fatality or hitting a vulnerable road user like a pedestrian or cyclist still had to report it within five days. Now the rule will only apply to vehicles with ADS (automated driving systems), which cuts out the bulk of vehicles on the road today.
That means if a Tesla that has Autopilot engaged (or a GM vehicle with Super Cruise or Ford with its BlueCruise system on) crashes and must be towed, it doesn’t need to report that to the feds as long as the incident did not involve a fatality, an individual being transported to a hospital for medical treatment, a pedestrian or other vulnerable road user being struck, or an air bag deployment.
Reporting is still required for any vehicle with Level 2 ADAS (like Tesla Autopilot) or ADS that is in a crash in which there is a fatality, an air bag is deployed, a person is transported to the hospital, or a vulnerable road user is hit.
During an interview at a Semafor event, DOT Secretary Sean Duffy seems to give a nod to those rules (although he says “autonomous” and not “ADAS”) when he said, “What we want to do is be able to get good data, but if there’s a scraping of paint off of an autonomous vehicle, the reporting requirements became very laborious and challenging, and it slowed the process down.”
Think I got this wrong? Reach out.
OK, on to the rest.
Slate, the Bezos-backed EV startup, broke cover at an event in Long Beach, California. Many of the details that senior reporter Sean O’Kane reported in his initial scoop were finally presented to the public.
Earlier in the week, we published some other insider details thanks to some little birds that describe how leaders have internally described the Slate EV as a “transformer” — as in the animated “more than meets the eye” series. Turns out, that is exactly what the company is pitching to customers.
Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at [email protected] or my Signal at kkorosec.07, Sean O’Kane at [email protected], or Rebecca Bellan at [email protected]. Or check out these instructions to learn how to contact us.
Ather Energy, the Indian startup manufacturing electric two-wheelers, cut the size of its initial public offer by 18% to 26.26 billion Indian rupees ($308.3 million).
DoorDash wants to buy Deliveroo for $3.6 billion, Axios reported.
Electra, the hybrid electric aircraft startup, raised $115 million in a Series B round led by Prysm Capital. Jay Park, co-founder and managing partner at Prysm, has joined Electra’s board of directors.
Fora, a travel agent startup based in New York, raised $60 million across Series B and C rounds. Josh Kushner’s Thrive co-led the $40 million Series C round.
The venture arm of United Airlines has invested an undisclosed amount in JetZero, a startup developing a blended wing body design.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai received some attention for remarks during the company’s earnings call about its self-driving vehicle unit Waymo. In response to a question, he said, as part of a longer answer, “There’s future optionality around personal ownership as well.”
Waymo has talked vaguely about licensing its tech (presumably to automakers) before, so I wouldn’t read too much into this. But it’s certainly notable that Pichai said it in an earnings call.
Tesla has started testing its autonomous ride-hail service with employees in Austin and the Bay Area ahead of the company’s planned robotaxi launch this summer.
Volkswagen of America and Uber plan to launch a commercial robotaxi service — using autonomous electric VW ID. BUZZ vehicles — in multiple U.S. cities over the next decade.
The companies expect to launch a commercial service in Los Angeles by late 2026, although it will initially include human safety drivers. The news brought me back to 2017-18 — an era of partnership announcements, many of which never materialized. VW has a lot of work to do before it launches commercially, including gaining even the most basic testing permit.
Aidan Gomez, the co-founder and CEO of generative AI startup Cohere, joined Rivian’s board. I don’t want to read too deeply into the appointment, but it does signal Rivian’s interest in applying AI to its own venture while positioning itself as a software leader — and even provider — within the automotive industry.
Faraday Future somehow still exists and its board has appointed founder Jia Yueting as the company’s co-CEO, three years after he was sidelined following an internal probe into allegations of fraud. Side note: A Securities and Exchange Commission investigation remains ongoing.
Tesla earnings supported a hypothesis I’ve had cooking in my brain for a while now. The company exists in contradictory realities. In one, Tesla’s profits are down 71% YoY, automotive revenues continue to fall, and its energy business is exposed to the U.S.-China trade war. In the other, Tesla is really an AI company that finally has the attention of its CEO Elon Musk and is on the cusp of launching an autonomous vehicle ride-hailing service and a cheaper EV — although it has yet to do either.
Investors grabbed on to the Tesla-is-an-innovator reality with both hands and they really don’t want to let go — even if the reality is that anti-Musk sentiment is affecting the brand and is even an official risk in its regulatory filing. Musk’s comments about allocating more time to Tesla and less at DOGE helped push them there. If you want to catch up on all the nuggets in the earnings report and call, scroll through our Tesla earnings wrap-up.
The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against Uber, alleging the company charged customers for its Uber One subscription service without their consent.
What is Lyft’s loss is Uber’s gain. Delta SkyMiles members in the United States can now start earning points when they ride with Uber or order delivery through Uber Eats as part of a recently announced exclusive partnership between the two companies. (Lyft had a partnership with Delta.)
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In the battle between two “agentic” coding tools — Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex CLI — the latter appears to be fostering more developer goodwill than the former. That’s at least partly because Anthropic has issued takedown notices to a developer trying to reverse-engineer Claude Code, which is under a more restrictive usage license than Codex CLI.
Claude Code and Codex CLI are dueling tools that accomplish much of the same thing: allow developers to tap into the power of AI models running in the cloud to complete various coding tasks. Anthropic and OpenAI released them within months of each other — each company racing to capture valuable developer mindshare.
The source code for Codex CLI is available under an Apache 2.0 license that allows for distribution and commercial use. That’s in contrast to Claude Code, which is tied to Anthropic’s commercial license. That limits how it can be modified without explicit permission from the company.
Anthropic also “obfuscated” the source code for Claude Code. In other words, Claude Code’s source code isn’t readily available. When a developer de-obfuscated it and released the source code on GitHub, Anthropic filed a DMCA complaint — a copyright notification requesting the code’s removal.
Developers on social media weren’t pleased by the move, which they said compared unfavorably with OpenAI’s rollout of Codex CLI. In the week or so since Codex CLI’s release, OpenAI has merged dozens of developer suggestions into the tool’s codebase, including one that lets Codex CLI tap AI models from rival providers — including Anthropic.
Anthropic didn’t respond to a request for comment. To be fair to the lab, Claude Code is still in beta (and a bit buggy); it’s possible Anthropic will release the source code under a permissive license in the future. Companies have many reasons for obfuscating code, security considerations being one of them.
It’s a somewhat surprising PR win for OpenAI, which in recent months has shied away from open-source releases in favor of proprietary, locked-down products. It may be emblematic of a broader shift in the lab’s approach; OpenAI CEO Sam Altman earlier this year said he believed that the company has been on the “wrong side of history” when it comes to open source.
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In the latest development of an increasingly public dispute between HR and payroll services rivals, Deel has filed a countersuit against Rippling.
To recap: Rippling publicly announced on March 17 that it was suing Deel over alleged corporate espionage, with accusations ranging from violation of the RICO racketeering act (typically used to prosecute organized crime) to misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair competition. Deel is now slamming that lawsuit as part of a “campaign to try to impugn Deel’s reputation.”
That original lawsuit included an affidavit from the alleged spy that reads like a movie script. Deel had previously denied all wrongdoing.
Now the startup is taking things a step further. In a blog post Friday, Deel announced it has filed a civil suit against Rippling in the Superior Court in Delaware.
Deel’s complaint, dated April 24 and reviewed by TechCrunch, paints an unflattering picture of Rippling CEO Parker Conrad, describing the executive as “haunted by his previous failures, and now fueled by suffocating jealousy at his inability to fairly compete with Deel in the marketplace.”
Deel also alleged that Rippling was not remitting its customers’ payroll tax and social benefits dollars to local taxation authorities, but rather “categorizing and reporting these funds as its own earnings.” It went on to claim that “not only does Rippling steal these funds from its clients, but also from its own employees by using a similar scheme.”
In response, Conrad took to X to post that, “Nowhere does Deel dispute our central allegation – that @Bouazizalex personally recruited a spy to steal rippling’s trade secrets, and personally directed the theft.”
Specifically, Deel filed three motions addressing Rippling’s March lawsuit, including:
In its complaint, Deel makes counter-accusations, alleging that Rippling solicited Deel employees “to pass on to Rippling confidential commercially sensitive information about Deel.” The filing further accuses Rippling of placing its own “insider at Deel, essentially allowing it to eavesdrop on Deel’s internal communications without Deel’s permission.”
As of April 14, Rippling was attempting to serve Alex Bouaziz with legal papers. However, French bailiffs hired by Rippling couldn’t seem to find Bouaziz. On April 15, TechCrunch reported that Deel’s CEO was in Dubai, further complicating Ripple’s efforts to serve him. A Deel spokesperson told TechCrunch on Friday: “Alex lives in Israel. He was in Dubai for a few days for Passover with his family, something he’s done for the past several years.”
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Slate Auto, the buzzy new EV startup that broke stealth this week, is close to locking in a former printing plant located in Warsaw, Indiana as the future production site for its cheap electric truck, a review of public records shows.
The company is expected to lease the 1.4 million-square-foot facility for an undisclosed sum. Economic development officials told local media earlier this year (without naming Slate) the factory could employ up to 2,000 people, and that the county offered the undisclosed company an incentive package.
It’s not immediately clear what that incentive package includes or if it has been finalized. Slate did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Peggy Friday, the CEO of the Kosciusko County Economic Development Corporation said in an email that she is “under a strict non-disclosure agreement with the project.”
Slate showed an aerial photo of the factory during Thursday’s event. The company did not say where it was located, but the photo matches a public listing for the facility available on the Indiana Economic Development Corporation’s website. TechCrunch previously reported that the company planned to make its EVs, which will cost under $20,000 after the federal tax credit, in Indiana.
“Our truck will be made here in the USA as part of our commitment to re-industrializing America,” Slate’s CEO Chris Barman said onstage while the factory photo was displayed on a screen behind her.
Slate’s focus on domestic manufacturing is embedded in the company’s DNA. The startup was originally created inside of Re:Build Manufacturing, a Massachusetts-based company focused on beefing up the country’s ability to make things.
The factory in Warsaw was built in 1958, and was occupied for decades by printing company R.R. Donnelly. It has been dormant for around two years, according to local media.
Converting a factory, especially one that was not previously pumping out cars, is no cheap or easy task. Slate has amassed a serious war chest to help tackle that goal. Backed in part by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Guggenheim Partners CEO Mark Walter, and powerhouse VC firm General Catalyst, the startup has raised well over $100 million to date.
The approach Slate is taking in designing and building its electric truck should help keep costs down, too. The company plans to sell wraps for the trucks instead of painting them, meaning it does not need to build a paint shop at the factory. That alone could save Slate hundreds of millions in the plant buildout process.
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We’re thrilled to announce that Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, will be joining us at our upcoming StrictlyVC event in Athens, co-hosted with Endeavor, on Thursday night, May 8, at the stunning Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center.
For those who might not be familiar with his background, Mitsotakis brings a fascinating blend of experiences to the table. Before entering politics, he worked at both McKinsey and Chase Investment Bank, giving him firsthand experience in the business world that many operators throughout the startup ecosystem can appreciate. The youngest of four children, he also has some Silicon Valley-esque academic credentials — he headed to Harvard, then to Stanford for a master’s degree in international relations, and finally nabbed an MBA at Harvard Business School — and says his education has long shaped his vision for Greece’s future.
Mitsotakis has also been championing Greece’s tech transformation for many years. In fact, after navigating the country through the pandemic, he has doubled down on positioning Athens as an emerging tech hub, recently introducing initiatives to attract international talent, including tax incentives and reforms aimed at cutting bureaucratic red tape for new businesses.
The prime minister comes from a political family — his father was prime minister and his sister was mayor of Athens — but he has carved out his own reputation as a reformer focused on modernizing the Greek economy. His administration has been particularly interested in how tech can help diversify renowned traditional Greek strengths like shipping and tourism.
StrictlyVC events are constrained by design to give attendees a unique opportunity for investors, founders, and ecosystem builders to engage directly with power players like the prime minister, so if you want to ask about his government’s vision for Greece’s tech future, and how the country fits into the broader European innovation landscape, this could be your chance.
You can check out more details here to learn more about the agenda and other speakers (you can also buy tickets while they are still available). Registration is now open for what promises to be a fun evening, filled with illuminating discussions, and this chat — with one of Europe’s most interesting political leaders in Greece’s emerging technology narrative — is definitely one you won’t want to miss. Register for your StrictlyVC Greece ticket here.
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