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Cruz Foam, and pro surfer Zak Noyle, are fighting plastic pollution.

Cruz Foam

More than 100 cities in the US have put ordinances in place restricting or flatly banning the use of disposable styrofoam, especially by restaurants and for shipping food and other products. In the state of California alone, 97 cities or counties have a partial or full ban on single-use styrofoam, with another one slated to take effect in Los Angeles County this May.

Meanwhile, companies that ship or sell fragile goods, food or medical supplies that need to stay cold during shipping still need materials with the lightweight, insulating qualities and manufacturability of styrofoam.

That’s where startup Cruz Foam comes in. Founded in 2017 by CEO John Felts and CTO Marco Rolandi the startup, which employees about 30 full-time today, has created an alternative to expanded polystyrene, better known by its trade name styrofoam.

Cruz Foam is made from naturally occurring materials including chitin (pronounced like “kite-in”) along with starches and fibers diverted from agricultural waste streams. Chitin is a polymer contained in the shells of shrimp and other crustaceans, as well as insect exoskeletons. It’s biodegradable and generally safe for animals to eat.

By contrast, traditional styrofoam is made using heavy chemicals, degrades slowly, and proves harmful when it crumbles and accumulates in our oceans, adding to micro-plastics pollution.

According to wildlife conservation researchers at Fauna & Flora International, when marine life ingests styrofoam it can “cause a range of problems such as digestive obstructions, a false sense of fullness that can lead to starvation, and reduced fertility.” Besides that, styrofoam products are usually treated with flame retardants and can absorb other pollutants from water around them, increasing the threat to any wildlife that eats or lives amid the discarded styrofoam.

Cruz Foam CEO and cofounder John Felts says that he and CTO Marco Rolandi bonded during their graduate studies in materials science over a love of the ocean, surfing and a wish to enjoy nature without causing any harm to it.

Cruz Foam CTO Marco Rolandi and CEO John Felts

Cruz Foam

They based their startup in Santa Cruz, California — a city known for its gorgeous beaches, boardwalk, surf culture and elephant seals, and used the name of the city for their startup.

For about two years, they focused their efforts in the lab on developing a kind of foam from chitin that could serve as the core of a molded surfboard. Chitin was already known as a promising bioplastic, but it was typically used to create bioplastic films and not so much puffy foams, Felts recalls.

As they tinkered and tested, they realized they could make a broader impact on ocean health if they addressed a larger market than surfboards. They shifted their attention to packaging.

Since then, Cruz Foam has developed a foam pellet from natural materials which can be extruded and shaped into a wide range of packaging materials and containers on the same machinery that’s in place in factories making traditional styrofoam products today.

On Wednesday, Cruz Foam formally introduced its new line of shipping products including:

  • A foam and paper wrap that can replace bubble wrap or styrofoam peanuts
  • A foam-padded mailer
  • Foam coolers that can protect and keep fresh and frozen items cold
  • Foam products that protect large items like furniture.

All of its new packaging products are “curbside recyclable,” and compostable, said Felts.

Cruz Foam developed a styrofoam alternative that won’t harm marine life or add to plastic pollution in the ocean.

Cruz Foam

The foam dissolves in a tub of water and can be poured over a lawn or garden to safely add some nitrogen back into the soil, Felts said. And it’s safe if your dog, or your fish, eats any of the foam.

To finance its growth so far, Cruz Foam got $2 million in grants from the National Science Foundation to develop materials and manufacturing processes. The startup has also raised just over $25 million in venture funding from climate tech and science-focused investors including At One Ventures, Ashton Kutcher and his climate fund Sound Waves, Helena Group, Regeneration VC and others.

At One founding partner Tom Chi said that his firm wanted to back companies making a difference to ocean health. They looked into “closed loop plastic recycling,” where companies take back the packaging that they make and recycle it, but the unit economics there don’t work because of the high cost of “reverse logistics and post-consumer material processing.”

Cruz Foam’s approach, Chi said, “solves the problem by using earth-compatible materials in the first place, but does so in a way that can be directly cost-competitive with virgin foam production.”

The startup has just kicked off a partnership with North Carolina-based Atlantic Packaging to bring its sustainable foam products to a wide range of grocers and retailers. And Cruz Foam expects to move into its first phase of high-volume production by mid-year 2023, Felts told CNBC.

When it comes to new products, Felts acknowledged there’s a huge amount of demand out there for disposable insulating coffee cups and takeout containers. But the focus for his company this year will remain on e-commerce, shipping and protecting everything from car parts and medical supplies to meal kits.

The pandemic has juiced e-commerce and shipping demand, Felts said, but many businesses are just now figuring out how to ship items they make or sell directly to homes, rather than to grocers or retailers, and that includes rethinking their packaging end to end.

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Amazon’s Zoox robotaxi unit issues second software recall in a month after San Francisco crash

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Amazon's Zoox robotaxi unit issues second software recall in a month after San Francisco crash

A Zoox autonomous robotaxi in San Francisco, California, US, on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Amazon‘s Zoox robotaxi unit issued a voluntary recall of its software for the second time in a month following a recent crash in San Francisco.

On May 8, an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi was turning at low speed when it was struck by an electric scooter rider after braking to yield at an intersection. The person on the scooter declined medical attention after sustaining minor injuries as a result of the collision, Zoox said.

“The Zoox vehicle was stopped at the time of contact,” the company said in a blog post. “The e-scooterist fell to the ground directly next to the vehicle. The robotaxi then began to move and stopped after completing the turn, but did not make further contact with the e-scooterist.”

Zoox said it submitted a voluntary software recall report to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Thursday.

A Zoox spokesperson said the notice should be published on the NHTSA website early next week. The recall affected 270 vehicles, the spokesperson said.

The NHTSA said in a statement it had received the recall notice and that the agency “advises road users to be cautious in the vicinity of vehicles because drivers may incorrectly predict the travel path of a cyclist or scooter rider or come to an unexpected stop.”

If an autonomous vehicle continues to move after contact with any nearby vulnerable road user, it risks causing harm or further harm. In the AV industry, General Motors-backed Cruise exited the robotaxi business after a collision in which one of its vehicles injured a pedestrian who had been struck by a human-driven car and was then rolled over by the Cruise AV.

Zoox’s May incident comes roughly two weeks after the company announced a separate voluntary software recall following a recent Las Vegas crash. In that incident, an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi collided with a passenger vehicle, resulting in minor damage to both vehicles.

The company issued a software recall for 270 of its robotaxis in order to address a defect with its automated driving system that could cause it to inaccurately predict the movement of another car, increasing the “risk of a crash.”

Amazon acquired Zoox in 2020 for more than $1 billion, announcing at the time that the deal would help bring the self-driving technology company’s “vision for autonomous ride-hailing to reality.”

While Zoox is in a testing and development stage with its AVs on public roads in the U.S., Alphabet’s Waymo is already operating commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, and is ramping up in Atlanta.

Tesla is promising it will launch its long-delayed robotaxis in Austin next month, and, if all goes well, plans to expand after that to San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Antonio, Texas.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

WATCH: Tesla’s decade-long journey to robotaxis

Tesla's decade-long journey to robotaxis

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Intuit shares pop 9% on earnings beat, rosy guidance

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Intuit shares pop 9% on earnings beat, rosy guidance

Intuit CEO: This is the fastest organic growth in over a decade

Shares of Intuit popped about 9% on Friday, a day after the company reported quarterly results that beat analysts’ estimates and issued rosy guidance for the full year.

Intuit, which is best known for its TurboTax and QuickBooks software, said revenue in the fiscal third quarter increased 15% to $7.8 billion. Net income rose 18% to $2.82 billion, or $10.02 per share, from $2.39 billion, or $8.42 per share, a year earlier.

“This is the fastest organic growth that we have had in over a decade,” Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi told CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime” on Thursday. “It’s really incredible growth across the platform.”

For its full fiscal year, Intuit said it expects to report revenue of $18.72 billion to $18.76 billion, up from the range of $18.16 billion to $18.35 billion it shared last quarter. Analysts were expecting $18.35 billion, according to LSEG.

“We’re redefining what’s possible with [artificial intelligence] by becoming a one-stop shop of AI-agents and AI-enabled human experts to fuel the success of consumers and small and mid-market businesses,” Goodarzi said in a release Thursday.

Read more CNBC tech news

Goldman Sachs analysts reiterated their buy rating on the stock and raised their price target to $860 from $750 on Thursday. The analysts said Intuit’s execution across its core growth pillars is “reinforcing confidence” in its growth profile over the long term.

The company’s AI roadmap, which includes the introduction of AI agents, will add additional upside, the analysts added.

“In our view, Intuit stands out as a rare asset straddling both consumer and business ecosystems, all while supplemented by AI-prioritization,” the Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a note.

Analysts at Deutsche Bank also reiterated their buy rating on the stock and raised their price target to $815 from $750.

They said the company’s results were “reassuring” after a rocky two years and that they feel more confident about its ability to grow the consumer business.

“Longer term, we continue to believe Intuit presents a unique investment opportunity and we see its platform approach powering accelerated innovation with leverage, thus enabling sustained mid-teens or better EPS growth,” the analysts wrote in a Friday note.

WATCH: Intuit CEO: This is the fastest organic growth in over a decade

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Why Trump’s iPhone tariff threat might not be enough to bring production to the U.S.

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Why Trump's iPhone tariff threat might not be enough to bring production to the U.S.

FILE PHOTO: Apple CEO Tim Cook escorts U.S. President Donald Trump as he tours Apple’s Mac Pro manufacturing plant with in Austin, Texas, U.S., November 20, 2019.

Tom Brenner | Reuters

The once-solid relationship between President Donald Trump and Apple CEO Tim Cook is breaking down over the idea of a U.S.-made iPhone.

Last week, Trump said he “had a little problem with Tim Cook,” and on Friday, he threatened to slap a 25% tariff on iPhones in a social media post.

Trump is upset with Apple’s plan to source the majority of iPhones sold in the U.S. from its factory partners in India, instead of China. Cook officially confirmed this plan earlier this month during earnings.

Trump wants Apple to build iPhones for the U.S. market in the U.S. and has continued to pressure the company and Cook.

“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United  States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday.

Analysts said it would probably make more sense for Apple to eat the cost rather than move production stateside.

“In terms of profitability, it’s way better for Apple to take the hit of a 25% tariff on iPhones sold in the US market than to move iPhone assembly lines back to US,” wrote Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo on X.

UBS analyst David Vogt said that the potential 25% tariffs were a “jarring headline,” but that they would only be a “modest headwind” to Apple’s earnings, dropping annual earnings by 51 cents per share, versus a prior expectation of 34 cents per share under the current tariff landscape.

Experts have long held that a U.S.-made iPhone is impossible at worst and highly expensive at best.

Analysts have said that made in U.S.A. iPhones would be much more expensive, CNBC previously reported, with some estimates ranging between $1,500 to $3,500 to buy one at retail. Labor costs would certainly rise.

But it would also be logistically complicated.

Read more CNBC tech news

Supply chains and factories take years to build out, including installing equipment and staffing up. Parts that Apple imported to the United States for assembly might be subject to tariffs as well.

Apple started manufacturing iPhones in India in 2017 but it was only in recent years that the region was capable of building Apple’s latest devices.

“We believe the concept of Apple producing iPhones in the US is a fairy tale that is not feasible,” wrote Wedbush analyst Dan Ives in a note on Friday.

Other analysts were wary about predicting how Trump’s threat ultimately plays out. Apple might be able to strike a deal with the administration — despite the eroding relationship — or challenge the tariffs in court.

For now, most of Apple’s most important products are exempt from tariffs after Trump gave phones and computers a tariff waiver — even from China — in April, but Apple doesn’t know how the Trump administration’s tariffs will ultimately play out beyond June.

“We’re skeptical,” that the 25% tariff will materialize, wrote Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers.

He wrote that Apple could try to preserve its roughly 41% gross margin on iPhones by raising prices in the U.S. by between $100 or $300 per phone.

It’s unclear how Trump intends to target Apple’s India-made iPhones. Rakers wrote that the administration could put specific tariffs on phone imports from India.

Apple’s operations in India continue to expand.

Foxconn, which assembles iPhones for Apple, is building a new $1.5 billion factory in India that could do some iPhone production, the Financial Times reported Thursday.

Apple declined to comment on Trump’s post.

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