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Uber’s self-proclaimed “strongest quarter ever” doesn’t come close to satisfying investors

The ride-hailing company is trading lower after its results fell short of Wall Street estimates.

J. Edward Moreno

Uber’s share price slid after it missed Wall Street expectations despite what it said were its strongest quarterly and full-year results in its history.

The company reported an operating income of $770 million, well bellow the $1.2 billion analysts were expecting. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said its operating income was “partially offset by discrete legal and regulatory related matters.” The company has been fighting off lawsuits over how it pays its drivers, among other issues.

Uber also said it expects its gross bookings — an industry metric that measures how much customers spend on its platform — for the first three months of 2025 to be between $42 billion and $43.5 billion. Analysts had forecast $43.4 billion, according to FactSet.

The company reported a net income of $6.9 billion for its fourth quarter of 2024, way above the $1 billion the Street expected. But that’s not because its business suddenly became more profitable: Uber noted that figure included $6.4 billion from a tax valuation release and $556 million of unrealized gains on its equity investments.

Still, the company reported its “strongest quarter ever,” Khosrowshahi said. It was Uber’s second full year as a profitable company, and it has consistently grown its gross bookings.

The company also announced on Wednesday that it would open a waitlist for customers in Austin to indicate interest in Waymo, an autonomous driving venture backed by Alphabet that Uber has a partnership with.

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Report: Amazon’s AI bots have been behind multiple AWS outages

Amazon’s AI tool Kiro, which launched in July and can code autonomously, was behind a 13-hour interruption to Amazon Web Services in December, according to reporting by the Financial Times.

The FT reports that the company’s AI tools have caused AWS service disruptions at least twice in recent months.

In the December outage, which Amazon called an “extremely limited event” that did not have an impact on customer-facing service, engineers allowed Kiro to make changes and the tool opted to “delete and recreate the environment.”

Amazon has a closely tracked internal target that 80% of its developers use AI to code once a week, employees told the FT. The company says the December incident was a “user access control issue” and not an issue with Kiro’s permissions.

AWS accounted for 57% of Amazon’s operating profit in 2025. In December, following a larger outage months earlier, AWS and Google announced a partnership to attempt to prevent massive network outages.

In the December outage, which Amazon called an “extremely limited event” that did not have an impact on customer-facing service, engineers allowed Kiro to make changes and the tool opted to “delete and recreate the environment.”

Amazon has a closely tracked internal target that 80% of its developers use AI to code once a week, employees told the FT. The company says the December incident was a “user access control issue” and not an issue with Kiro’s permissions.

AWS accounted for 57% of Amazon’s operating profit in 2025. In December, following a larger outage months earlier, AWS and Google announced a partnership to attempt to prevent massive network outages.

$830B

OpenAI is finalizing commitments on a funding round that could climb beyond $100 billion at a valuation of $830 billion, according to a report from The Information.

Per The Information, SoftBank is expected to invest $30 billion into the ChatGPT maker, spread across the year in three installments of $10 billion. Up to $50 billion could come from Amazon and $30 billion from Nvidia (up from the $20 billion Bloomberg reported earlier this month). An additional investment in the low billions could come from Microsoft.

OpenAI was last valued at $500 billion following a fundraising round completed in October. Earlier this month, its rival Anthropic took in $30 billion from investors including Microsoft and Nvidia at a $380 billion valuation.

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Tesla’s 45 Austin Robotaxis now have 14 crashes on the books since launching in June

Since launching in June 2025, Tesla’s 45 Austin Robotaxis have been involved in 14 crashes, per Electrek reporting citing National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data.

Electrek analysis found that the vehicles have traveled roughly 800,000 paid miles in that time period, amounting to a crash every 57,000 miles. According to the NHTSA, US drivers crash once every 500,000 miles on average.

The article says Tesla submitted five new crash reports in January of this year that happened in December and January. Electrek wrote:

“The new crashes include a collision with a fixed object at 17 mph while the vehicle was driving straight, a crash with a bus while the Tesla was stationary, a collision with a heavy truck at 4 mph, and two separate incidents where the Tesla backed into objects, one into a pole or tree at 1 mph and another into a fixed object at 2 mph.”

Tesla updated a previously reported crash that was originally filed as only having damaged property to include a passenger’s hospitalization.

Last month, Tesla shares climbed after CEO Elon Musk said in a post on X that the company’s Austin Robotaxis had begun operating without a safety monitor.

The article says Tesla submitted five new crash reports in January of this year that happened in December and January. Electrek wrote:

“The new crashes include a collision with a fixed object at 17 mph while the vehicle was driving straight, a crash with a bus while the Tesla was stationary, a collision with a heavy truck at 4 mph, and two separate incidents where the Tesla backed into objects, one into a pole or tree at 1 mph and another into a fixed object at 2 mph.”

Tesla updated a previously reported crash that was originally filed as only having damaged property to include a passenger’s hospitalization.

Last month, Tesla shares climbed after CEO Elon Musk said in a post on X that the company’s Austin Robotaxis had begun operating without a safety monitor.

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Jon Keegan

Ahead of IPO, Anthropic adds veteran executive and former Trump administration official to board

Anthropic is moving to put the pieces in place for a successful IPO this year.

Today, the company announced that Chris Liddel would join its board of directors.

Liddel is an seasoned executive who previously served as CFO for Microsoft, GM, and International Paper.

Liddel also comes with experience in government, having served as the deputy White House chief of staff during the first Trump administration.

Ties to the Trump world could be helpful for Anthropic as it pushes to enter the public market. Its reportedly not on the greatest terms with the current administration, as the startup has pushed back on using its Claude AI for surveillance applications.

Liddel is an seasoned executive who previously served as CFO for Microsoft, GM, and International Paper.

Liddel also comes with experience in government, having served as the deputy White House chief of staff during the first Trump administration.

Ties to the Trump world could be helpful for Anthropic as it pushes to enter the public market. Its reportedly not on the greatest terms with the current administration, as the startup has pushed back on using its Claude AI for surveillance applications.

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Rani Molla

Meta is bringing back facial recognition for its smart glasses

Meta is reviving its highly controversial facial recognition efforts, with plans to incorporate the tech into its smart glasses as soon as this year, The New York Times reports.

In 2021, around the time Facebook rebranded as Meta, the company shut down the facial recognition software it had used to tag people in photos, saying it needed to “find the right balance.”

Now, according to an internal memo reviewed by the Times, Meta seems to feel that it’s at least found the right moment, noting that the fraught and crowded political climate could allow the feature to attract less scrutiny.

“We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” the document reads.

The tech, called “Name Tag” internally, would let smart glass wearers identify and surface information about people they see with the glasses by using Meta’s artificial intelligence assistant.

Now, according to an internal memo reviewed by the Times, Meta seems to feel that it’s at least found the right moment, noting that the fraught and crowded political climate could allow the feature to attract less scrutiny.

“We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” the document reads.

The tech, called “Name Tag” internally, would let smart glass wearers identify and surface information about people they see with the glasses by using Meta’s artificial intelligence assistant.

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