Bolt is set to launch food delivery via robot in partnership with the robotics firm Starship Technologies.
Bolt
Estonian ride-hailing firm Bolt says it will begin delivering food to people’s doors from a fleet of self-driving robots through a partnership with robotics firm Starship Technologies.
The company said it would start offering online food deliveries in its home city of Tallinn later this year in an initial rollout of Starship’s robots, which are roughly the size of a suitcase.
“We are focused on providing well-rounded solutions to help make local transportation as sustainable as possible,” Markus Villig, founder and CEO of Bolt, said in a statement Wednesday.
“Starship offers a smart and much-loved service that has proven itself over the past five years and we’re excited to introduce this service to more people.”
Bolt, one of Europe’s most highly valued tech companies with a valuation of $8.4 billion, made a name for itself challenging Uber in the U.S. ride-hailing giant’s key international markets, particularly the U.K.
The company has since expanded into several other lines of business, including online food and grocery delivery and e-scooters.
Founded in 2013 and formerly known as Taxify, Bolt has around 100 million customers in 45 countries across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
Bolt has raised more than $2 billion in funding to date from investors including Sequoia, World Bank unit IFC, and the European Investment Bank.
How it will work
Just like ordering food online from apps in the typical way, Bolt’s Starship partnership will allow users to get their food delivered from robots at the tap of a button.
Once the robot arrives at your door, you’ll be able to press a button that opens it up and receive your meals or groceries.
Wednesday’s news marks a major milestone in reaching commercial deployment of the technology at scale.
Bolt plans to start deliveries in Tallinn in the coming months and then roll the robots out to further markets at a later point in time.
Starship, headquartered in San Francisco and co-founded by some of the founders of Skype, already operates a fleet of autonomous delivery robots in the U.S.
Stateside, the service is primarily used by college students in partnership with the food delivery firm Grubhub.
The firm has a similar deal in place in the U.K. and other European countries with British grocer Co-op.
Starship, which has raised around $200 million in funding to date, is one of many companies testing the use of robotics for delivering food and other goods.
In Asia, Chinese companies have been early to the trend. Meituan, the major food delivery app, was testing its robots in offices and hotels as early as 2019.
Some attempts to make deliveries using fleets of robots have been hit with setbacks, as widespread takeup of the technology has been limited.
In the U.S., for example, Amazon ended its field tests of Scout, a delivery robot that sent small packages to customers’ homes, in a bid to cut down on costs.
This photo illustration created Jan. 7, 2025, shows an image of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, and an image of the Meta logo.
Drew Angerer | Afp | Getty Images
Meta is seeking to stop the promotion of a new memoir by a former staffer that paints the social media company in an unflattering light, including allegations of sexual harassment by the company’s policy chief.
An emergency arbitrator ruled Thursday that Sarah Wynn-Williams is prohibited from promoting “Careless People,” her book that was released Tuesday by Flatiron Books, an imprint of publisher Macmillan Books.
The memoir chronicles Wynn-Williams’ tenure at Facebook from 2011 through 2017. During that time, she became a high-level employee who interacted with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, then-COO Sheryl Sandberg and Joel Kaplan, the company’s current policy chief. In the book, Wynn-Williams alleges that Kaplan made a number of inappropriate comments to her, which she then reported to the company as sexual harassment.
“This is a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about our executives,” a Meta spokesperson previously said about both her book and complaint.
Wynn-Williams also details in her book the company’s various attempts to enter the Chinese market, including building tools that would censor content to appease the Chinese Communist Party. Wynn-Williams addressed some of these China-specific claims in a whistleblower complaint that she filed in April with the Securities and Exchange Commission, NBC News reported.
The emergency arbitrator ruled in favor of Meta after watching a podcast appearance of Wynn-Williams in which she discussed her memoir and her allegations that Meta was attempting to “shut this book down.”
“The Emergency Arbitrator finds that, after reviewing the briefs and hearing oral argument, (Meta) has established a likelihood of success on the merits of its contractual non-disparagement claim against Respondent Wynn-Williams, and that immediate and irreparable loss will result in the absence of emergency relief,” the filing said.
Additionally, the arbitrator ruled that so much as Wynn-Williams can control, she is prohibited from further publishing or distributing the book and from further disparaging Meta and its officers or repeating previous disparaging remarks. The arbitrator also ruled that Wynn-Williams is to retract her previous disparaging remarks.
The company has previously dismissed Wynn-Williams’ claims as “out-of-date” and said that she was fired for “poor performance and toxic behavior.”
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone shared the emergency arbitrator’s ruling in a post on Threads, saying that it “affirms that Sarah Wynn Williams’ false and defamatory book should never have been published.”
“This urgent legal action was made necessary by Williams, who more than eight years after being terminated by the company, deliberately concealed the existence of her book project and avoided the industry’s standard fact-checking process in order to rush it to shelves after waiting for eight years,” Stone said.
Meta alleged that Wynn-Williams violated the non-disparagement terms of her September 2017 severance agreement, resulting in the company filing an emergency motion on Friday. The emergency arbitrator then conducted a telephone hearing involving legal representatives of Meta and Macmillan Books, but not Wynn-Williams who did not appear though she was given notice, the filing said.
Wynn-Williams, Flatiron Books and Macmillan Books did not respond to requests for comment.
Lip-Bu Tan appointed chief executive officer of Intel Corporation
Courtesy: Intel
Intel said on Wednesday that it had appointed Lip-Bu Tan as its new CEO, as the chipmaker attempts to recover from a tumultuous four-year run under Pat Gelsinger.
Tan was previously CEO of Cadence Design Systems, which makes software used by all the major chip designers, including Intel. He was an Intel board member but departed last year, citing other commitments.
Tan replaces interim co-CEOs David Zinsner and MJ Holthaus, who took over in December when former Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger was ousted. Tan is also rejoining Intel’s board.
The appointment closes a chaotic chapter in Intel’s history, as investors pressured the semiconductor company to cut costs and spin off businesses due to declining sales and an inability to crack the booming artificial intelligence market.
Intel shares rose over 12% in extended trading on Wednesday.
Tan becomes the fourth permanent CEO at Intel in seven years. Following Brian Krzanich’s resignation in 2018, after the revelations of an inappropriate relationship with an employee, Bob Swan took the helm in Jan. 2019. He departed two years later after Intel suffered numerous blows from competitors and chip delays. Swan was succeeded by Gelsinger in 2021.
Gelsinger took over with a bold plan to transform Intel’s business to manufacture chips for other companies in addition to its own, becoming a foundry. But Intel’s overall products revenue continued to decline, and investors fretted over the significant capital expenditures needed for such massive chip production, including constructing a $20 billion dollar factory complex in Ohio.
Last fall, after a disappointing earnings report, Intel appeared to be for sale, and reportedly drew interest from rival companies including Qualcomm. Analysts assessed the possibility of Intel spinning off its foundry division or selling its products division — including server and PC chips — to a rival.
In AI, Intel has gotten trounced by Nvidia, whose graphics processing units (GPUs) have become the chip of choice for developers over the past few years.
In January, Intel issued a weak forecast even as it beat on earnings and revenue. The company pointed to seasonality, economic conditions and competition, and said clients are digesting inventory. The prospect of tariffs was adding to the uncertainty, Zinsner said.
Intel said that Zinsner will return to his previous role of CFO. Holthaus will remain in charge of Intel Products.
Intel was removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average in November and was replaced by Nvidia, reflecting the dramatic change of fortune in the semiconductor industry. Intel shares lost 60% of their value last year, while Nvidia’s stock price soared 171%. At Wednesday’s close, Intel’s market cap was $89.5 billion, less than one-thirtieth of Nvidia’s valuation.
Roomba vacuums by iRobot are displayed at Best Buy store on January 19, 2024 in San Rafael, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Shares of iRobot plunged more than 30% on Wednesday after it said there is “substantial doubt” about its ability to stay in business.
The Roomba maker’s financial outlook has darkened since Amazon abandoned its planned $1.7 billion acquisition of the company in January 2024, citing regulatory scrutiny. Since then, iRobot has struggled to generate cash and pay off debts.
Massachusetts-based iRobot has been restructuring since the Amazon deal plunged into uncertainty. The company has laid off 51% of its workforce since the end of 2023, and iRobot has looked to reignite revenue growth by overhauling its product lineup. The company on Tuesday launched eight new Roombas in the hopes of “better positioning iRobot as the leader in the category that we created,” CEO Gary Cohen said in a statement.
“There can be no assurance that the new product launches will be successful,” iRobot said in its Wednesday earnings statement, citing limited consumer demand, tariff uncertainty and heightened competition.
“Given these uncertainties and the implication they may have on the company’s financials, there is substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least 12 months,” iRobot said in its earnings report.
The company’s fourth-quarter revenue sagged 44% year over year to $172 million, missing estimates of $180.8 million, according to FactSet. The Roomba maker posted a net loss of $77.1 million, or $2.52 per share. Excluding a one-time “manufacturing transition charge,” iRobot had a loss of $2.06 a share, exceeding the $1.73 per share projected by analysts surveyed by FactSet.
In July 2023, iRobot took a $200 million loan from the Carlyle Group to fund the company’s operations as a stopgap until the Amazon deal closed. The company amended the loan for a temporary waiver on certain financial obligations, which requires iRobot to pay a fee of $3.6 million.
As part of Wednesday’s report, iRobot said its board has initiated a strategic review of the business and is considering alternatives that could include refinancing its debt and exploring a potential sale. The board hasn’t set a deadline for when its review will conclude, the company said.
The proposed merger, which was announced in late 2022, would have allowed iRobot to scale and better compete with its rivals, Jassy said. Several of the fastest-growing robotic vacuum businesses are based in China, such as Anker, Ecovacs and Roborock, all of which have eaten into iRobot’s share of the market.
“We abdicate the acquisition, iRobot lays off a third of its staff, the stock price completely tanks, and now, there’s a real question of whether they’re going to be a going concern,” Jassy told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in an interview last April.