Google Plans Ad Sales Restructuring as Automation BoomsSave 25% and Read Now

SoftBank’s Onetime Pizza-Robot Darling Shuts Down

Zume, which raised $375 million from SoftBank to automate pizza-making with robots before switching to developing sustainable packaging, has shut down.

The company is insolvent and has retained restructuring firm Sherwood Partners to liquidate the assets for the benefit of the creditors, an alternative to bankruptcy, according to Martin Pichinson, Sherwood Partners’ cofounder. It ceased operations late last month, according to a person with direct knowledge.

Zume, which raised a total of nearly half a billion dollars in venture capital, was an early cautionary tale about the dangers of writing big checks to startups that hadn’t proved their product could scale profitably.

Access on the go
View stories on our mobile app and tune into our weekly podcast.
Join live video Q&A’s
Deep-dive into topics like startups and autonomous vehicles with our top reporters and other executives.
Enjoy a clutter-free experience
Read without any banner ads.
AWS sales chief Matt Garman. Collage by Clark Miller
Exclusive amazon cloud
AWS Overhauls 60,000-Person Sales Team to Fix ‘Fiefdoms,’ Customer Complaints
Matt Garman, head of sales at Amazon Web Services, plans to reorganize his more than 60,000-person team to address problems that have pierced the world’s biggest cloud provider’s aura of invincibility and created an opening for Microsoft and other rivals.
Google's chief business officer, Philipp Schindler. Photo via Getty
Exclusive google ai
Google Plans Ad Sales Restructuring as Automation Booms
Google plans to reorganize a big part of its 30,000-person ad sales unit, an executive told some staff last week, prompting anxiety that some departments will face job cuts.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic. Photo via Getty.
Exclusive startups venture capital
Anthropic to Raise $750 Million in Menlo Ventures-Led Deal
Anthropic is in talks to raise $750 million in a venture round led by Menlo Ventures that values the two-year-old artificial intelligence startup at $15 billion not including the investment, more than three times its valuation this spring, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Photo via Getty. Art by Shane Burke.
ai
OpenAI Overhauls Content Moderation Efforts as Elections Loom
OpenAI has overhauled how it handles the task of rooting out disinformation and offensive content from ChatGPT and its other products, as worries about the spread of disinformation intensify ahead of next year’s elections.
Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen. Photo By Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile for Collision via Getty Images.
Exclusive e-commerce
Flexport’s 2024 Goals: Triple Revenue While Slashing Costs
Flexport has set ambitious targets for both revenue growth and cost-cutting in 2024, even as it reels from a sagging freight market and its cash pile continues to shrink.
Battery developer Enovix has replaced almost all its senior managers as part of an effort to right itself. Photo: Shutterstock
The Electric electric vehicles
The Electric: As 2024 Nears, Are Next-Gen Battery Companies on the Verge of a Culling?
In the 1920s, more than 700 U.S. manufacturers vied in a brutal competition to sell a new product—electric washing machines.
Cookies on The Information
We use cookies for a number of reasons, such as keeping The Information reliable and secure, personalizing content and ads, providing social media features and to analyze how our sites are used.