Tech
Telsas in a parking lot in Brooklyn
(Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Machine Learnings

Musk says every Tesla is “capable of being a robotaxi.” But a report says the robotaxis are getting special parts.

Robotaxi hardware upgrades pour some water on Musk’s assertion that every Tesla could be a robotaxi.

Rani Molla

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly painted a future where all Teslas would be autonomous and revolutionize the economics of car ownership.

“In the future, most people are not going to buy cars,” he said on the company’s last earnings call. Instead, most people would utilize the Tesla Network, a ride-hailing service that would be made up of company-owned and personally owned vehicles. For those still bullish on buying, their Teslas would become income-generating assets that they lease out to the network when they’re not in use. That’s supposed to include current Tesla owners.

“The vast majority of the Tesla fleet that we’ve made is capable of being a robotaxi,” Musk said on the same call.

Ahead of the company’s tiny but mostly successful robotaxi launch over the weekend, Musk reiterated that the vehicles consumers are buying now, which make up the vast majority of its revenue, are the same ones that will be part of the autonomous ride-hailing future.

“These are unmodified Tesla cars coming straight from the factory, meaning that every Tesla coming out of our factories is capable of unsupervised self-driving!” The robotaxi software, he said, which allows for unsupervised driving, was a “branch” of existing consumer software that would be rolled out to everyone “soon.”

But yesterday, Business Insider reported that Tesla is working on hardware modifications to its Model Ys specifically for the robotaxi program. That includes adding self-cleaning and more durable cameras, as well as a second telecommunications unit to “provide GPS coordinates for the vehicle and allow it to connect with remote operators,” among other changes.

The move suggests the obvious: the needs of a commercial vehicle are more demanding than that of consumer products. They’re also likely more expensive.

Musk has repeatedly knocked Google’s Waymo, which has a much bigger market so far than Tesla’s robotaxi, as costing too much. Indeed, the promise that every Tesla could be a robotaxi is central to the company’s promise to scale the service rapidly.

Presumably the company’s forthcoming Cybercabs — which are supposedly going into “volume production” next year — could bridge the gap between what is acceptable for individuals versus individuals hoping to lease their cars to the Tesla Network, but the BI report pours water on the idea that any car can be a robotaxi.

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Tom Jones

Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

Rani Molla6/15/26
tech
Jon Keegan

Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

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