Monarch Tractor has laid off around 10% of its workforce as part of a restructuring that will see it prioritize non-agricultural customers, license its autonomous technology, and boost sales of its AI-powered farm management software, TechCrunch has learned.

Around 35 employees were cut this week by the Livermore, California-based autonomous electric tractor startup that has raised a total of $220 million since it was founded in 2018. Some Monarch workers told TechCrunch they were let go without severance. It’s the second cut this year; Monarch previously laid off around 15% of its workforce in July.

CEO Praveen Penmetsa told TechCrunch in an interview the company decided to restructure after a slower-than-expected third quarter, and despite raising $133 million in July from the likes of Foxconn and agri-food tech impact firm Astanor. Penmetsa said he was uncertain if employees were let go without severance, but that the company has been trying to help out laid-off workers on a case-by-case basis.

“All of this happened pretty quickly,” Penmetsa said, referring to the recent crash of California’s vineyards, which made up a bulk of Monarch’s early customers. That development, plus an ongoing pullback in agri-tech investing, left Penmetsa and his team looking at other options.

“The industry has slowed down on acquisition of new equipment and new solutions, especially in the core farming sectors,” Penmetsa said. “But in the meantime, as a platform company, we also have some very exciting non-agriculture opportunities that started sprouting because of our success in ag.”

He said the company, which has shipped 500 tractors to date, is now focused on widening its customer base in a number of ways. It is expanding beyond agricultural customers to golf courses, solar farms, and even municipalities. It’s also putting more focus on selling its “WingspanAI” farm management software. And Monarch is in talks with other “off-road” vehicle companies to license its autonomous technology.

Penmetsa said these changes inspired the cuts which hit, among other things, some of Monarch’s engineering and operations team. He also said that Monarch is leaning more on contract-manufacturer Foxconn, which builds the tractors at its Lordstown, Ohio facility, for operational roles.

“We are a startup,” Penmetsa said. “You have to be agile, right?”

The Beatles have been nominated for two Grammys — nearly 50 years after the band officially split up. Their final song, called “Now and Then,” was restored last year with the help of AI, and is now up for record of the year alongside the likes of Beyoncé, Charlie XCX, Billie Eilish, and Taylor Swift. It’s also been nominated for best rock performance, where it goes up against Green Day, Pearl Jam, and The Black Keys.

However, “Now and Then” was never released, as technology at the time couldn’t separate John’s vocals and piano to get a clear sound. But in 2021, filmmaker Peter Jackson and his sound team were able to separate the instrumentals and vocals with machine learning technology, allowing Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to finally complete the song.

Though “Now and Then” was finished using machine learning, it still falls within the bounds of The Grammy’s rules surrounding AI. The guidelines currently state that “only human creators are eligible to be submitted for consideration for, nominated for, or win a GRAMMY Award,” but work that contains “elements” of AI material is “eligible in applicable categories.”

It’s a bit strange to see “Now and Then” competing with modern-day music like Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em,” but it’s been a long time coming. We’ll get to see how the Beatles fare during the 2025 Grammy Awards, which takes place on Sunday, February 2nd.

Strands is the NYT’s latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it’s great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my Wordle today, NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games.

A number of popular generative AI platforms are seeing consistent growth as users are figuring out how they want to use the tools — and ChatGPT is at the top of the list with the most visits, at 3.7 billion worldwide. So many people are visiting the AI chatbot, and its figures are rivaling browser market share. It can only be compared to Google Chrome figures in terms of monthly users, which is estimated to be around 3.45 billion.

Statistics from Similarweb indicate that ChatGPT saw a 17.2% month-over-month (MoM) growth and a 115.9% year-over-year (YoY) traffic growth. Some highlights that spurned the ChatGPT growth during 2024 include its parent company, OpenAI, updating its web address from a subdomain, chat.openai.com, to a main domain, chatgpt.com. The tool especially saw a surge of traffic in May 2024, when it hit a 2.2-billion-visit milestone, and has been growing ever since, according to Similarweb researcher David F. Carr.

While ChatGPT has had an infamous presence in the technology industry since November 2022, OpenAI, continues to flesh out its product with new versions, features, and supplementary applications, or GPTs, to keep users interested. Recently, the company introduced ChatGPT Search, an in-house search engine feature that allows users to receive real-time answers to queries, such as sports scores, breaking news, and stock quotes.

Many note how the generative AI tool has come full circle to offer services very similar to the industry its intended to displace, Google Search. Overall, the web-based versions of ChatGPT would still rely on browsers to exist. In comparison, Google’s Chrome browser has a solid market share of 35.4 billion users in 2024. It has seen minimal growth YoY but has grown 45.35% in the last 5 years, according to Statscounter.

Other recent news indicates that OpenAI has purchased the domain name Chat.com; however, there is no word on what the company plans to do with this product.

Meanwhile, other AI tools continue to see traffic and growth, despite not being at the same level as ChatGPT. Despite recent plagiarism claims, the Perplexity chatbot has seen 90.8 million visits in October, a 25.5% MoM growth and 199.2% YoY growth. Google’s Gemini Chatbot saw 291.6 million visits in October, a 6.2% MoM growth and 19% YoY growth after the company introduced a new ChromeOS update that brought new AI features to its Chromebooks.

Anthropic’s Claude chatbot has seen 84.1 million visits in October, a 25.5% MoM growth and 394.9% YoY growth, after recently rolling out a desktop application for Windows and macOS. Microsoft’s web-based Copilot website saw 69.4 million visits in October, an 87.6% MoM growth.

Lastly, NotebookLM has seen 31.5 million visits in October, an over 200% MoM growth. Based on Google generative models, the note-taking, document, link, and content collection app allows users to process and summarize different formats of information using AI prompts.

Google accidentally posted a leak of the Performance Loop band for its Pixel Watch lineup recently. This isn’t the first leak of the smartwatch accessory and it’s not even the first time Google showed off the band. It was featured in marketing for a short period when the Pixel Watch 3 was launched earlier this year. It was also leaked through Best Buy Canada, with all colors being showcased, before Google had the listings pulled.

This is because the band still hasn’t been released and Google hasn’t officially announced it. Chances are though, that a release is close at hand, given that it’s been leaked by retailers already. This most recent leak of the Google Pixel Watch Performance Loop band was published in a Pixel Watch Help community forum post, which was spotted by Droid Life. The post itself wasn’t about the Performance Loop band but the featured image that was used showed off the band in two of the available colors.

Google has since pulled that image and replaced it, but not before it was grabbed.

The Pixel Watch Performance Loop band leak shows off two colors

The band may not have been officially announced but you still get a look at two of the colors Google will offer it in. Although the image has been pulled, while it was up, both the Light and Mojito color options were displayed. As noted by 9To5Google it will also be coming in two other colors. Before the Best Buy Canada listing was removed back in September, all four colors of the band were shown off, and included the names of each color.

In addition to Light and Mojito, the Performance Loop band will also come in Dark and Cosmic options. These will all no doubt hit the Google Store once they’re released. Google also recently started selling third-party bands in the store as of this week. At the moment there is only one option though.

Google wants to know what your favorite Pixe Watch band combination is

The community forum post where the band was briefly on display was mainly about which band combinations people like to use with their Pixel Watch. Google lists off a variety of combinations that include specific bands with a certain style of watch face. Almost like a recommended wine pairing for food at a fancy restaurant. For example, Google suggests trying out the Duo watch face with a leather band. Calling it “bold and bright.”

It also suggests a bright color band with a themed watch face if you want something “fun and funky.” Of course, the Performance Loop band isn’t mentioned. But, you can see it in the image above.