450K
Google’s Waymo is now doing more than 450,000 paid autonomous rides per week, CNBC reports. That’s nearly double the 250,000 it reported doing in April, as the service expands to cities across the country and widens its lead against Tesla.
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Meta pushes deeper into AI robots with acquisition
Meta just bought robotics AI startup Assured Robot Intelligence, Bloomberg reports, doubling down on its push into humanoid tech. The team will join Meta’s Superintelligence Labs to build models that let robots “understand, predict and adapt to human behaviors in complex environments.”
The goal, Bloomberg says, is to be the Android of robots: building the software and hardware foundation others can use.
The move comes right after China forced Meta to let go of its acquisition of agentic AI startup Manus.
Apple’s capital spending is heading the opposite direction of Big Tech
The big story in Big Tech has been just how much they’re spending on capex to furnish their AI futures. Not only are Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft spending more than ever, they’re also spending more than they said they would just a quarter earlier. In total, their 2026 capital expenditure bill is now slated to surge beyond $700 billion.
Apple, by contrast, continues to take a different approach. The company has lagged peers in developing its own frontier AI models and has leaned more on partnerships. The strategy certainly doesn’t seem to be hurting Apple yet. The company posted record revenue in the March quarter that beat analysts’ expectations this week, even without a robust AI offering.
Apple’s capex actually fell in the March quarter. Its payments for acquisition of property, plant, and equipment totaled about $1.9 billion in its fiscal second quarter, down 36% from roughly $3 billion a year earlier. So on a year-over-year basis, Apple’s capex declined while everyone else’s jumped sharply.
Elon Musk’s companies more than doubled their spending on each other last year
And that’s before Tesla invested $2 billion in xAI, which it has since converted to a stake in SpaceX.
Rani Molla5/1/26
Tim Cook: Popular Mac mini and Mac Studio will be constrained for “several months”
Apple may have missed out on the first wave of generative AI when it comes to software, but its hardware is another story.
The current OpenClaw craze — where users run their own AI agents on a dedicated computer in their homes, and chat with it via messaging apps — has made the once sleepy Mac mini and pro-level Mac Studio an unlikely hit.
Reports of shortages are not lost on Apple.
During this week’s earnings call, outgoing CEO Tim Cook acknowledged the supply constraint of the popular desktops:
“On the Mac mini and the Mac Studio, both of these are amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools, and the customer recognition of that is happening faster than what we had predicted. And so we saw higher-than-expected demand.”
Cook noted that the Mac mini was the top-selling desktop computer in China last quarter, where the DIY agentic AI boom is especially popular. In addition to strong customer demand, Cook cited supply chain constraints adding to the problem, which “may take several months to reach supply/demand balance.”
The Mac mini is one of the products that Apple will be making in the US starting later this year.
Reports of shortages are not lost on Apple.
During this week’s earnings call, outgoing CEO Tim Cook acknowledged the supply constraint of the popular desktops:
“On the Mac mini and the Mac Studio, both of these are amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools, and the customer recognition of that is happening faster than what we had predicted. And so we saw higher-than-expected demand.”
Cook noted that the Mac mini was the top-selling desktop computer in China last quarter, where the DIY agentic AI boom is especially popular. In addition to strong customer demand, Cook cited supply chain constraints adding to the problem, which “may take several months to reach supply/demand balance.”
The Mac mini is one of the products that Apple will be making in the US starting later this year.
Apple’s iPhone is the top-selling smartphone in urban China
Apple’s second-quarter earnings beat expectations and underscore its growing strength in China, where it is closing in on the top spot in the smartphone market.
“We are thrilled with the performance in Greater China,” CEO Tim Cook said, noting that the iPhone was “the top-selling model in urban China.” Cook first called the iPhone the rather than a top-selling model there during the company’s first-quarter earnings earlier this year.
Data from IDC and Counterpoint Research shows Apple accounted for 19% of smartphone shipments in China in the first calendar quarter of 2026, just behind Huawei at 20%. Analysts say Apple is poised to take the lead soon, helped in part by rising memory chip costs, which are pushing up competitors’ prices.
Apple’s China revenue rose 28% in the March quarter, ahead of analyst estimates, and is up 33% in the first half of the year.
Data from IDC and Counterpoint Research shows Apple accounted for 19% of smartphone shipments in China in the first calendar quarter of 2026, just behind Huawei at 20%. Analysts say Apple is poised to take the lead soon, helped in part by rising memory chip costs, which are pushing up competitors’ prices.
Apple’s China revenue rose 28% in the March quarter, ahead of analyst estimates, and is up 33% in the first half of the year.
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