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This Cruise in San Francisco seemingly could not figure out how to pull aside on a narrow street to let a buss pass.

Matt Rosoff, CNBC

Cruise CEO and founder Kyle Vogt posted comments on Hacker News on Sunday responding to allegations that his company’s robotaxis aren’t really self-driving, but instead require frequent help from humans working in a remote operations center.

First, Vogt confirmed that the General Motors-owned company does have a remote assistance team, in response to a discussion under the header, “GM’s Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve ‘autonomous’ driving.”

The CEO wrote, “Cruise AVs are being remotely assisted (RA) 2-4% of the time on average, in complex urban environments. This is low enough already that there isn’t a huge cost benefit to optimizing much further, especially given how useful it is to have humans review things in certain situations.”

CNBC confirmed with Cruise spokesperson Tiffany Testo that the comments were accurate and came from the company’s CEO.

Cruise recently took the drastic move of grounding all of its driverless operations following a collision that injured a pedestrian in San Francisco on October 2. The collision and Cruise’s disclosures around it led to state regulators stripping the company of its permits to operate driverless vehicles in California, unless there is a driver aboard.

The DMV previously said its decision was based on several factors, citing four regulations that allow suspension in the event “the Department determines the manufacturer’s vehicles are not safe for the public’s operation,” and “the manufacturer has misrepresented any information related to safety of the autonomous technology of its vehicles.”

As NBC News previously reported, California Department of Motor Vehicles accused Cruise of failing to show them a full video depicting the October 2 collision, during which a pedestrian was thrown into the path of the Cruise robotaxi by a human driver in a different car who hit her first.

During that incident, Cruise previously told NBC, its vehicle “braked aggressively before impact and because it detected a collision” but then tried to pull over and in the process pulled the pedestrian forward about 20 feet. 

Rival Waymo, which is owned by Google parent company Alphabet, continues to operate in the city.

How often do remote workers intervene?

A New York Times story followed last week diving into issues within Cruise that may have led to the safety issues, and setback for Cruise’s reputation and business. The story included a stat that at Cruise, workers intervened to help the company’s cars every 2.5 to five miles.

Vogt explained on Hacker News that the stat was a reference to how frequently Cruise robotaxis initiate a remote assistance session.

He wrote, “Of those, many are resolved by the AV itself before the human even looks at things, since we often have the AV initiate proactively and before it is certain it will need help. Many sessions are quick confirmation requests (it is ok to proceed?) that are resolved in seconds. There are some that take longer and involve guiding the AV through tricky situations. Again, in aggregate this is 2-4% of time in driverless mode.”

CNBC asked Cruise to confirm and provide further details on Monday.

The Cruise spokesperson wrote in an e-mail, that a “remote assistance” session is triggered roughly every four to five miles, not every 2.5 miles, in Cruise’s driverless fleet.

“Often times the AV proactively initiates these before it is certain it will need help such as when the AV’s intended path is obstructed (e.g construction blockages or detours) or if it needs help identifying an object,” she wrote. “Remote assistance is in session about 2-4% of the time the AV is on the road, which is minimal, and in those cases the RA advisor is providing wayfinding intel to the AV, not controlling it remotely.”

CNBC also asked Cruise for information about typical response time for remote operations, and how remote assistance workers at Cruise are trained.

“More than 98% of sessions are answered within 3 seconds,” the spokesperson said.

She added, “RA advisors undergo a background check and driving record check and must complete two weeks of comprehensive training prior to starting, consisting of classroom training, scenario-based exercises, live shadowing and knowledge-based assessments. Advisors also receive ongoing training and undergo supplemental training whenever there is a new feature or update. Regular reviews, refreshers and audits are conducted to ensure high performance.”

As far as the ratio of remote assistance advisors to driverless vehicles on the road, the Cruise spokesperson said, “During driverless operations there was roughly 1 remote assistant agent for every 15-20 driverless AVs.”

George Mason University professor and autonomous systems expert Missy Cummings, who was previously a safety advisor to the federal vehicle safety agency (NHTSA), told CNBC that whether or not the public still considers Cruise vehicles self-driving, it has been an “industry standard” for humans to be on call, monitoring the operations of drones, robotics, and now autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles.

“I start to get concerned,” she said, “about how we’re using humans when we are using them. In other domains, we’ve seen issues where, for example, an air traffic controller maybe fell asleep on the job.”

Cummings also said it would be very important to understand whether Cruise vehicles involved in any collisions — especially in the October pedestrian collision — called back to remote operations for help. “I would like to know whether a human was notified at all and what the human’s actions were in the remote operations center.”

Cruise declined to say whether the October 2 incident triggered a remote assistant call, whether a human advisor made decisions to authorize the vehicle’s movement, or whether any Cruise employee had called 911.

The company spokesperson said, “We have initiated third-party reviews of the October 2 incident and are working with NHTSA on their investigation as well. In respect of those processes, we will await the findings of those reviews before commenting further.”

GM said last month that the company has lost roughly $1.9 billion on Cruise in the first nine months of this year, including $732 million in the third quarter alone.

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Super Micro hires new auditor to maintain Nasdaq listing; shares pop 23%

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Super Micro hires new auditor to maintain Nasdaq listing; shares pop 23%

Charles Liang, chief executive officer of Super Micro Computer Inc., during the Computex conference in Taipei, Taiwan, on Wednesday, June 5, 2024. The trade show runs through June 7. 

Annabelle Chih | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Embattled server maker Super Micro Computer said on Monday that it’s hired BDO as its new auditor and submitted a plan to Nasdaq detailing its efforts to regain compliance with the exchange. The shares jumped 23% in extended trading.

“This is an important next step to bring our financial statements current, an effort we are pursuing with both diligence and urgency,” Super Micro CEO Charles Liang said in a statement.

Super Micro is late in filing its 2024 year-end report with the SEC, and said earlier this month that it was looking for a new accountant after its previous auditor, Ernst & Young, stepped down in October. Ernst & Young was new to the job, having just replaced Deloitte & Touche as Super Micro’s accounting firm in March 2023.

Super Micro said it told Nasdaq that it believes it will be able to file its annual report for the year ended June 30, and quarterly report for the period ended Sept. 30. The company said it will remain listed on the Nasdaq pending the exchange’s “review of the compliance plan.”

Shares of Super Micro soared more than twentyfold over a two year period from early 2022 until their peak in March of this year. But the stock has been hammered on troubling news about its compliance with Nasdaq. Once valued at about $70 billion, the company’s market cap was at $12.6 billion at the close on Monday, following a 16% rally during regular trading.

Super Micro has been one of the primary beneficiaries of the artificial intelligence boom, due to its relationship with Nvidia. Sales last fiscal year more than doubled to $15 billion.

On Monday, Super Micro announced that it was selling products featuring Nvidia’s next-generation AI chip called Blackwell. The company competes with vendors like Dell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise in packaging up Nvidia AI chips for other companies to access.

Super Micro was added to the S&P 500 in March, reflecting its rapidly growing business and then-soaring stock price. Less than two weeks after the index changes were announced, Super Micro reached its closing high of $118.81.

The troubles began within months. In August, Super Micro said it wouldn’t file its annual report with the SEC on time. Noted short seller Hindenburg Research then disclosed a short position in the company, and said in a report that it identified “fresh evidence of accounting manipulation.” The Wall Street Journal later reported that the Department of Justice was at the early stages of a probe into the company.

The month after announcing its report delay, Super Micro said it had received a notification from the Nasdaq, indicating that the delay in the filing of its annual report meant the company wasn’t in compliance with the exchange’s listing rules. Super Micro said the Nasdaq’s rules allowed the company 60 days to file its report or submit a plan to regain compliance. Based on that timeframe, the deadline was Monday.

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Canva hires former Zoom CFO Kelly Steckelberg to run finance ahead of expected IPO

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Canva hires former Zoom CFO Kelly Steckelberg to run finance ahead of expected IPO

Kelly Steckelberg attends an Evening from the Heart LA 2022 Gala hosted by the John Ritter Foundation for Aortic Health at Valley Relics Museum in Van Nuys, California, on May 5, 2022.

Araya Doheny | Getty Images

Canva, a high-valued design software startup that competes with Adobe, said Monday that it hired Kelly Steckelberg as its chief financial officer, five years after she helped take Zoom public and then guided the company through its Covid-19 pandemic surge.

Founded in 2013, Canva was valued recently at $32 billion, a drop from its peak of $40 billion in 2021.

“Kelly’s impressive track record as a strong leader and strategic thinker, combined with her proven expertise in scaling enterprise companies, make her the perfect addition to our leadership bench,” Canva said in an emailed statement.

Canva is generating about $2.5 billion in annualized revenue and boasts 220 million monthly users. The company is widely viewed as a top initial public offering candidate for venture-backed tech companies after a historically slow period for new offerings dating back to early 2022.

On Monday, ServiceTitan, which sells software for the trades, filed to list on the Nasdaq. Cerebras, a maker of artificial intelligence chips, has been on file since late September, and online lender Klarna said last week that it has confidentially filed its IPO paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

A Canva spokesperson declined to comment on the startup’s timeline for an IPO.

Steckelberg held financial positions at Cisco and was CEO of online dating company Zoosk before joining Zoom in 2017. Steckelberg is based in Austin, Texas, while Canva has its headquarters in Sydney, Australia.

Zoom went public with Steckelberg’s help in 2019. The video-chat company saw its market cap soar to upward of $160 billion in October 2020, early in the Covid-19 pandemic, as users working from home swarmed to the app. Zoom has since lost more than 85% of its value.

Steckelberg announced her departure from Zoom in August after seven years at the company. Last month, former Microsoft executive Michelle Chang replaced Steckelberg as Zoom’s CFO.

Canva’s previous finance chief Damien Singh resigned in February after the company said it was conducting an internal investigation surrounding inappropriate behavior.

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Cloud software company ServiceTitan files to go public on Nasdaq

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Cloud software company ServiceTitan files to go public on Nasdaq

ServiceTitan offices in Draper, Utah.

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ServiceTitan, a company that sells software to contractors such as plumbers and roofers, on Monday filed to go public on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “TTAN.”

The filing suggests that investors could be getting more interested in next-generation software companies. Just a few, including Reddit and Rubrik, debuted on public markets in the U.S. this year, and chipmaker Cerebras filed for an initial public offering. There were basically no tech initial public offerings in 2021 or 2022 as central bankers pushed up interest rates to flight inflation, making investors less willing to bet on money-losing challengers.

Based in Glendale, California, ServiceTitan offers cloud software for advertising, scheduling jobs, dispatching, producing invoices and taking payments. It had a $35.7 million net loss on $193 million in revenue in the quarter that ended on July 31, according to the filing. Revenue was up about 24% year over year, and the quarterly loss had narrowed from almost $52 million.

ServiceTitan’s revenue growth rate will stand out for people investing in cloud stocks, who have seen rates sag with few new public companies in the sector. The average growth rate for Bessemer’s Nasdaq Emerging Cloud Index, the basis for the WisdomTree Cloud Computing Fund, is 16.6%.

The company was originally founded in 2007 by Ara Mahdessian and Vahe Kuzoyan, whose fathers were both residential contractors. While most ServiceTitan customers are small and medium-sized businesses, it has started focusing more on selling products to big companies and construction customers, according to the filing.

ServiceTitan plans to keep up to 5% of shares in the IPO for eligible clients, the founders’ friends and family members and others through a directed share program.

Investors include Battery Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Iconiq and TPG. Iconiq on its own controlled 24% of the compan’s Class A shares.

Competitors include Salesforce and SAP, along with specialty companies such as HouseCall Pro, Jobber and Workwave.

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Citigroup are among the company’s IPO underwriters.

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