Someone’s offering an unusual deal for a 13-acre property in Mill Valley, just north of South Francisco.

Homeowner and investment banker Storm Duncan has created a LinkedIn page for the home, which he said he’d “like to exchange […] for Anthropic equity.”

The San Francisco Standard reports that Duncan described this as a “diversification play,” as he’s “under-concentrated in AI investments relative to the importance of AI in the future, and over-concentrated in real estate,” while a young Anthropic employee might be “in the exact opposite scenario.”

Duncan is asking potential buyers to email him to discuss deal specifics, but he said it would be a private transaction that doesn’t require the buyer to sell their stock outright. On LinkedIn, he also said the homebuyer would “continue to retain 20% of the upside value of the shares exchanged for the duration of the lockup period.”

Duncan, who described himself as a longtime Bay Area resident who moved to Miami during the pandemic, bought the property in 2019 for $4.75 million. It’s currently occupied by “a high profile VC,” he said, but he declined to identify the VC.

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Tesla earnings came and went, and much of it fell into the “we expected this” category. Investors seemed surprised by the $1.4 billion in free cash flow, which gave shares a brief bump, and revenue met or slightly exceeded expectations, depending on which batch of analysts you reviewed. 

The earnings call, however, did deliver one eyebrow-raising moment that prompted readers (including some ex-Tesla engineers and other founders in the industry) to reach out to me with some schadenfreude-tinted prose. CEO Elon Musk admitted that millions of Tesla owners will need hardware upgrades to run a future, more capable version of its Full Self-Driving software that doesn’t require human supervision. 

There are financial and legal implications for Tesla. As senior reporter Sean O’Kane wrote, Tesla owners with Hardware 3 cars have spent years bugging the company and Musk for a straight answer about whether they would be able to run this advanced version of Full Self-Driving — which, it should be noted, Tesla has not yet released or even proven it is capable of releasing. Tesla sold these Hardware 3 cars between 2019 and 2023.

Now, here is the kicker and it made me guffaw. Musk said the company would need to physically upgrade each of these vehicles, a feat that would require Tesla to set up microfactories in several major cities to service potentially millions of vehicles. 

Microfactories? Yes, you heard correctly. This is not going to be cheap, and it could be one of the line items in Tesla’s capital expenditures budget, which it expanded to a whopping $25 billion this year. 

A little bird

Senior reporter Sean O’Kane obtained (and verified) an internal memo sent by Redwood Materials founder and CEO JB Straubel that announced layoffs and a restructuring. (Thanks to the little bird who shared it.) Straubel is a former CTO of Tesla.

The company laid off around 135 employees, or roughly 10% of its workforce, as it restructures to better accommodate its growing energy storage business. O’Kane later learned several executives have also recently left. Chief operating officer Chris Lister is retiring, and at least three other VPs have left in recent months, with the company telling TechCrunch there has been a focus on reducing layers of management.

Last week, I shared that a new autonomous hauler startup (think a cabless autonomous big rig) backed by Eclipse was about to break cover and announce a seed round, thanks to a little bird. Welp, it happened just days later. 

The San Francisco-based startup, called Humble Robotics, raised $24 million in a seed round. Eclipse led the round, which also included backing by Energy Impact Partners and RedBlue Capital, a small early-stage VC firm that is surprisingly active. 

As I had been told, Humble really is chock-full of Silicon Valley elite, including founder Eyal Cohen, who previously had stints at Apple special projects, Uber ATG, Pronto, and Waabi. He also founded Spark AI, which was acquired by John Deere in 2023. 

Other execs include Drew Gray, who has a similarly AV-heavy résumé, including early days at Cruise, before jumping over to self-driving trucks startup Otto, which was acquired by Uber. After leaving Uber, he became CTO at Voyage, which was then acquired by Cruise. 

A full-circle moment, cemented by this fun fact: Humble Robotics is in the same building Cruise was in right after the startup moved out of founder Kyle Vogt’s garage. I know, we keep circling back to 2016.  

Except it’s not 2016, and Cohen and Gray talked to me about how much has changed since then, why this is the time to launch an AV startup, and where the industry is headed. Stay tuned for that story next week.

Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or my Signal at kkorosec.07, or email Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com. 

Deals!

Lyft stuck to the North American market for much of its history, while Uber took a global, expand-at-all-costs strategy. Lyft has been trying to catch up since last year when it bought German multi-mobility app Freenow from BMW and Mercedes-Benz Mobility for about $197 million in cash. 

Now it’s acquiring ride-hailing app Gett’s U.K. business. Lyft says the deal will give it the majority of registered black cab drivers across Greater London on the Lyft platform. The company didn’t disclose the terms, but Calcalist reported it was $55 million. 

The company is also building out other means of transport in the region, including its recently renewed partnership with Serco to provide the bikes and stations for Europe’s bike-share system Santander Cycles. Lyft is also planning to start testing autonomous rides in London with Baidu later this year. 

Other deals that got my attention …

A&K Robotics, a Vancouver, Canada-based maker of autonomous vehicles for airports, raised an $8 million CAD Series A round led by BDC’s Industrial Innovation Venture Fund and Vantage Futures.

Decade Energy, which provides power infrastructure at logistics depots, raised €22 million in funding led by Eiffel Investment Group and SET Ventures, along with existing investors.

Reliable Robotics, a Silicon Valley startup developing autonomous systems for aircraft, raised $160 million in a round led by Nimble Partners, existing backers Eclipse, Lightspeed, Coatue, and Pathbreaker Ventures, and new investors Island Green Capital, Socium Ventures, AE Ventures (a strategic partner of the Boeing Company), RTX Ventures, Presidio Ventures (Sumitomo Corporation), UP.Partners, KAS Venture Partners, What If Ventures, Calm Ventures, Gaingels, and Mana Ventures. History lesson: Co-founder and CEO Robert Rose had a brief stint at Tesla where he was senior director of Autopilot and helped ship that first iteration in 2015.

PlusAI and blank-check company Churchill Capital Corp IX terminated its SPAC merger deal due to market conditions.

Porsche is selling its stake in the Bugatti Rimac joint venture, which it formed in 2021, as well as electric-vehicle maker Rimac Group. Porsche, which holds a 20.6% stake in Rimac and a 45% stake in the joint venture, is selling to HOF Capital. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

Notable reads and other tidbits

Einride is adding 75 of its electric heavy-duty trucks to Amazon’s Relay freight network as part of a deal that gives the Swedish startup a toehold in the e-commerce giant’s operations. 

Ford and Chinese automaker Geely reportedly held talks about extending a European tie-up into the U.S., the Wall Street Journal reported. The implications, of course, would be Chinese vehicles entering the U.S. market. But it sounds like talks have stalled, leaving this consequential deal in limbo. Bloomberg reported that Ford has denied these claims. 

Porsche is adding another EV to its lineup. The Cayenne electric coupe will come to market in late summer. There’s some interesting data in my article on why this one might be a winner for Porsche. 

The first customer-ready Rivian R2 SUVs rolled off the production line at its factory in Normal, Illinois, just days after it was hit by an EF-1 tornado that tore off part of the roof. Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said Rivian doesn’t anticipate any delays to the R2, which are expected to reach customers in June. 

One more thing …

As diligent readers of this newsletter know, I test-drive a fair number of vehicles, and sometimes they are not EVs. Take the Aston Martin Vantage Roadster, for instance. I was anxious to get into the roadster, not just because this $205,000 chiltern-green machine is sleek, powerful, and a convertible. I wanted to test the Apple CarPlay Ultra, the next-generation infotainment system that projects iPhone content to the vehicle’s screens (including the instrument cluster) and integrates vehicle controls like the radio, performance settings, and climate. CarPlay Ultra first launched in the Aston Martin, which isn’t exactly easy to get my hands on. 

My first experience with Apple Ultra CarPlay last summer was mixed. It was great — when it worked, but it often didn’t. The problem seemed to be tied to a bug that showed two versions of the vehicle in the Bluetooth settings. 

This time around, the setup was instant and it never glitched. Hooray. And it always worked. This really matters for Aston Martin, which for years was stuck with Mercedes-Benz’ old COMAND system. (Mercedes ditched that system in 2018 for its new MBUX one).

After 15 years as Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook will be stepping down from the role in September. 

On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed Apple’s big announcement. We reflected on how Apple has changed since Cook took over from Steve Jobs in 2011, and what challenges incoming CEO John Ternus will be facing.

“If you look at a certain camp, it is very much like, ‘John Ternus is a product guy and this is going to be amazing’ and it’s very nostalgic and going back to Steve Jobs,” Kirsten said. “But I think what people forget is that Tim Cook actually made another product, which was completely around operations.”

Similarly,  Sean noted that Cook has given Ternus a strong “running start” as “the company’s numbers just sort of keep going up.” But a running start doesn’t guarantee victory: “How much volatility is around the corner? Are we really looking at a situation [with] the breaking apart of a global economy, along with the rise of artificial intelligence changing how business gets done?”

Keep reading for a preview — edited for length and clarity — of our full conversation.

Anthony: The decisions that Apple makes also trickle down to a bunch of other companies, because there are all kinds of startups that maybe don’t build their entire business on the iOS platform, but certainly a significant part of their business comes on the iPhone.

Kirsten: I think it’s been really interesting to see the different pockets of the tech world responding to whether this is a good or bad move and [asking] what were the successes of Tim Cook and what does Apple need now?

If you look at a certain camp, it is very much like, “John Ternus is a product guy and this is going to be amazing” and it’s very nostalgic and going back to Steve Jobs. But I think what people forget is that Tim Cook actually made another product, which was completely around operations. And there has been some really interesting coverage, in even books that have done deep dives into this. His operations strategy is an Apple product. And it changed whole economies. 

The question to me is: What happens when a strategist and operations guy leaves? Who is filling that void? Because you can make great products, and that’s very important in the Apple universe for sure. But you need to have an operations strategy. And the world is changing, it isn’t the same as it was when Tim Cook was first building this out.

Sean: It isn’t, but  it’s hard to imagine a better running start to get as a new CEO than the company that Tim Cook has built. 

As much as people complain about some of Apple’s products stagnating, the iPhone hasn’t really changed the design in many generations, whatever new products you do get are very kind of niche and overthought, like the Vision Pro —  for all of that, the company’s numbers just sort of keep going up. They’re bringing in a ton of revenue. They make an incredible amount of money from the services business that Tim Cook spun up. 

They’re doing, in some ways, better brand-building than in a while, by even going out and making content, like winning an Oscar for a movie, there’s just so much going on. And it seems like such a sturdy business, even in turbulent times, that Ternus can not have to worry about what the first year looks like. 

We should say: Tim Cook is resigning as CEO in September this year. He’s also going to be executive chairman. So I think the idea here is, Tim Cook’s not going away and he’s still going to be your sort of shield against, and also sort of partner with, the Trump administration. Because he certainly has proved his ability to do that — sacrificing, I think, what many people would argue are some of Apple’s values in the process, in order to make sure those relationships are durable enough. Donald Trump even put a Truth Social post out about how Tim Cook kisses his ass all the time, in response to this news. 

So the question, with all that said, is: As comfortable a start as this probably is for Ternus, how much volatility is around the corner? Are we really looking at a situation [with] the breaking apart of a global economy, along with the rise of artificial intelligence changing how business gets done? Is that something that’s really going to be easy for him to handle? And who is he going to put alongside him to make sure he’s able to handle it?

Anthony: And I think related to that is the question [is,] Apple seems to have a very durable business right now, both on the hardware side and increasingly on the service side, but to what extent can it continue to have that business just playing the old hits? At what point does it actually need to create a new product category?

I don’t know the exact answer to that. And maybe the iPhone [and] the creation of the smartphone category, in particular, is a once-in-a-generation kind of thing, you can’t really expect that to happen every 10 years or more.

I think there’s also this interesting question around AI. It seems like that is not a category that Apple has had a lot of success in, and maybe that’s okay. Maybe whatever products end up breaking through there, that’s just software on your iPhone, on your MacBook, and Apple is fine not having to build all of that [and] instead doing these partnerships like it’s doing. 

But I don’t think that’s guaranteed. I think there’s probably a lot of stress and concern about what that future looks like.

Kirsten: Just really quickly, I was going to say that also Apple can and does have the cash on hand to make some big bets and acquisitions. And I’ll be really curious to see how John [Ternus] executes on that.

I mean, one of the places where I reported on Apple was the special projects team, Project Titan, the supposed Apple car, and that seems to have petered out and a lot of money was spent on that. Is he going to make any big bets? 

You guys were talking about cash on hand, and I think it’s more than $45 billion at the end of 2025. So they have a lot of money to play around with. Is he going to do anything with it in the near term?

Sean: The other thing I think we should point out is, as we talk about Apple having a durable business, the App Store is also really crushing it lately. Sarah Perez wrote a really good story this week for us about all the different ways that numbers are up in the App Store — installs, new releases to the App Store, it’s just a really fascinating look for anybody who wants to dig into some data of one of the biggest sort of software marketplaces in the world.

In a world where everybody’s talking about how your ability to vibe code anything is going to remove the need for distributed software, [the App Store] is clearly proving that wrong.