16 Startup Trends That Will Be Huge In 2015

Enlarge / The first stage of Ariane 6 rocket Europe's Spaceport in Kourou in the French overseas department of Guiana, on March 26, 2024. (credit: LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP via Getty Images) There was a panel discussion at a space conference in Singapore 11 years ago that has since become legendary in certain corners of the space industry for what it reveals about European attitudes toward upstart SpaceX. The panel included representatives from a handful of launch enterprises, including Europe-based Arianespace, and the US launch company SpaceX.

Enlarge / A Tesla Cybertruck at the Viva Technology show at Parc des Expositions Porte de Versailles on May 24, 2024 in Paris, France. (credit: Getty Images | Chesnot ) Tesla has announced two more recalls of the Cybertruck, both of which affect over 11,000 vehicles produced since the car first became available late last year.

Enlarge / A screen capture from the partially AI-generated Toys "R" Us brand film created using Sora. (credit: Toys R Us) On Monday, Toys "R" Us announced that it had partnered with an ad agency called Native Foreign to create what it calls "the first-ever brand film using OpenAI's new text-to-video tool, Sora." OpenAI debuted Sora in February, but the video synthesis tool has not yet become available to the public.

Enlarge / Don't get your hopes up—this iOS version of Doom was ported from open source code, not run via a classic PC emulator. (credit: Tom Kidd) Earlier this year, Apple started officially allowing "retro game emulators" on the iOS App Store without the need for cumbersome jailbreaking or sideloading.

Enlarge (credit: Rivian) Volkswagen is committing $5 billion to upstart EV company Rivian, with $1 billion in cash upfront and $4 billion over time. The companies aim to use this joint venture to deliver new vehicles "in the second half of the decade," according to the announcement, and the cash will likely help push along Rivian's next generation of vehicles, including more affordable models. Oliver Blume, left, CEO of Volkswagen Group, and RJ Scaringe, founder and CEO of Rivian.

Enlarge (credit: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty) YouTube is in talks with record labels to license their songs for artificial intelligence tools that clone popular artists’ music, hoping to win over a skeptical industry with upfront payments. The Google-owned video site needs labels’ content to legally train AI song generators, as it prepares to launch new tools this year, according to three people familiar with the matter. The company has recently offered lump sums of cash to the major labels—Sony, Warner, and Universal—to try to convince more artists to allow their music to be used in training AI software, according to several people briefed on the talks.