tech

David Crowther & Rani Molla10/6/25

OpenAI’s social app for AI videos, Sora, spent the weekend at the top of the App Store rankings

Last week OpenAI unveiled Sora, an AI-only social media app for its latest text-to-video generation model Sora 2. Despite the obvious threat of copyright lawsuits from just about every major studio, artist, or creative owner, the app’s release has prompted a deluge of AI slop invading social media feeds on TikTok, Instagram, X, Threads, Reddit, and more.

But the true home for the always bizarre, often realistic, and occasionally funny clips was on its dedicated iOS social app where they were made.

Designed for people to “create, remix each other’s generations” and “discover new videos in a customizable Sora feed,” the app allows users to bring themselves into videos via cameos. They can also “cameo” others. And, while that might creep some people out, others are apparently loving it. The currently invite-only app spent the weekend at the top of the free App Store in the US, after bumping Google’s Gemini from the top slot last week.

Per data from Appfigures, Sora continued to beat out rival AI apps like Gemini and sister app ChatGPT to the top spot over the weekend. You are going to see a lot more AI-generated videos over the coming years. Brace yourself.

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Alphabet’s 2015 investment in SpaceX is about to pay off handsomely with the company’s hotly anticipated IPO later this year, which is expected to be the largest in history.

Bloomberg reports that according to new financial filings, Alphabet’s investment could be worth up to $100 billion.

Google invested in SpaceX in 2015 when it, along with Fidelity, invested $1 billion in a round that valued SpaceX at $10 billion. At the end of 2025, Google owned just over 6% of SpaceX, per Bloomberg’s reporting on the more recent filings. That stake has likely been diluted due to SpaceX’s merger with xAI.

OpenAI pulls out of Stargate Norway, hands data center off to Microsoft

This is the third piece of Project Stargate that OpenAI is retreating from since a flurry of announcements last year.

Narvik, Norway

Barclays says autonomous couriers — think sidewalk robots and drones — could push delivery costs down to as little as $1 per order, from between $5 and $7 today and closer to $9 for traditional deliveries in high-labor-cost markets. If robots save $4 on every delivery, and enough companies start using them, the food delivery industry, including companies like DoorDash and Uber, could end up with $16 billion in extra profit every year, according to Barclays.

The catch: we’re nowhere near that world yet. Robots and drones handle less than 1% of deliveries today. Even by 2035, Barclays only sees penetration hitting around 10%.

Google’s Wing and Amazon have also been trying to crack last-mile product delivery — a reminder that this is part of a broader race to automate the most expensive leg of e-commerce.

Lyft is building the infrastructure robotaxis can’t avoid

The ride-hailing company is building an 80,000-square-foot Nashville warehouse where humans will help robotaxis with everything but driving.

Person working at Lyft Nashville warehouse

Uber has long had an asset-light business model: it provided the ride-hailing platform, and its contract workers brought their own vehicles. That’s changing as Uber positions itself at the center of the robotaxi era.

The Financial Times estimates that Uber has committed more than $10 billion to buying robotaxi fleets ($7.5 billion) and investing in the companies that make them ($2.5 billion). That includes yesterday’s announcement that it’s expanding its investment in Lucid, a deal worth about $2 billion, with plans to buy 35,000 vehicles.

This shift pits Uber against industry leaders like Google’s Waymo and Tesla, whose models involve company-owned vehicles running on proprietary platforms. While these autonomous fleets eliminate the need for drivers, they introduce new capital-intensive requirements for charging, cleaning, storage, and repair.

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