The Streets of San Francisco, the Waymo way

(Stan Grossfeld/Getty Images)

Waymo announces Chicago and Charlotte expansion as driverless rollout accelerates

The company is currently operating in 10 US cities.

2/25/26 11:39AM

Waymo’s expansion is speeding up.

Today the Alphabet subsidiary announced plans to expand its driverless car service to Chicago and Charlotte. As with each new city, it’s starting with manual testing and mapping before progressing to driverless operations and, eventually, a public ride-hailing service. Waymo didn’t provide a timeline for Chicago or Charlotte, but its expansion pace has clearly accelerated.

Waymo first launched fully driverless service to the public in Phoenix in 2020 and expanded slowly in the years that followed. San Francisco became its second public market in 2024, and Atlanta its fifth last summer. Already this year, the company has rolled out service in five additional markets — including Miami and, as of yesterday, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Orlando — though those last four are opening on a “rolling basis.”

The service is currently live in 10 markets, with another 20 on the way, including an expected 2026 launch in London.

The company’s biggest competitor, Tesla, is currently operating a smattering of vehicles in its Austin fleet without a safety monitor onboard. The company has a larger service in which a driver employs supervised Full Self-Driving tech in the Bay Area. Tesla said last month that it plans to expand that service to a half dozen other US cities in the first half of 2026.

Jon Keegan

10h

Stanford AI report: Model capability accelerating, China has closed the gap with the US

Stanford’s annual AI Index Report says “leading models are now nearly indistinguishable” from each other, and benchmarks used to evaluate them are falling behind their accelerating capabilities.

Rani Molla13h

Meta will surpass Google in ad revenue this year, new industry data shows

In a world supported by digital ad dollars, Meta may soon be king. The Instagram owner’s net digital ad revenues are expected to hit $243.5 billion in 2026, surpassing Google’s projected $239.5 billion, according to new data from eMarketer.

The shift is happening as Big Tech companies, including Meta and Google, are increasing their spending on AI in hopes that AI will grow their top and bottom lines.

On the company’s last earnings call, Meta CFO Susan Li credited AI with driving performance gains, and said that growth will continue: “We expect the set of investments we’re making in 2026 will enable us to drive further gains as we continue to integrate AI across all layers of the marketing and customer engagement funnel.”

“In surpassing Google, Meta has essentially had many of its core strategies validated,” said Max Willens, principal analyst at eMarketer. “Meta has long understood that scale, network effects, and habits are more important than anything else in digital media. It has carefully built and defended the advantages it has in all three areas.”

JAPAN-FOOD-DRINK-SCIENCE-REASEARCH-MSG-AJINOMOTO

What does delicious Asian food seasoning have to do with a potential bottleneck for AI chips?

Japanese food flavoring company Ajinomoto, which commercialized MSG, also makes a key component in AI chips. It’s having trouble scaling to meet demand.

Jon Keegan14h

Jon Keegan15h

Report: Microsoft looks to remake Copilot in the image of OpenClaw

Microsoft is feeling the heat from all corners of the tech world as it tries to infuse its productivity apps with useful AI tools.

OpenAI, Anthropic, and now open-source OpenClaw are enabling powerful agentic AI that can do work on your computer for you — including productivity functions like managing emails, spreadsheets, and slide decks.

This is obviously an area where Microsoft needs to compete, or it will be left in the dust by AI startups.

The Information reports that Microsoft is indeed realizing this, and is now trying to reboot its many Copilot tools to act more like the extremely popular DIY agentic AI tool OpenClaw.

OpenClaw is usually set up running on a dedicated personal computer, and given access to all of a user’s permissions and logins. The user issues orders to OpenClaw through messaging apps like Telegram or WhatsApp, and the agent goes off and completes tasks in the background, notifying you when they’re done. But many users have had security disasters with the setup, so Microsoft is looking to borrow the popular concept but implement the strict security controls needed for use in enterprise environments.

According to the report, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has made revamping 365 Copilot a top priority.

Microsoft Plots New Copilot Features Inspired by OpenClaw

This is obviously an area where Microsoft needs to compete, or it will be left in the dust by AI startups.

The Information reports that Microsoft is indeed realizing this, and is now trying to reboot its many Copilot tools to act more like the extremely popular DIY agentic AI tool OpenClaw.

According to the report, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has made revamping 365 Copilot a top priority.

Rani Molla18h

Tesla competitor Slate closes $650 million funding round and says 2026 production is “on time and on budget”

Tesla competitor Slate Auto said it closed a $650 million Series C funding round led by TWG Global, giving it the “operating capital to reach the next stage of development.” Slate’s new CEO, Peter Faricy, says it has more than 160,000 reservations, up from 150,000 in December, and is “on time and on budget” to deliver its first mid-$20,000 electric trucks to customers by the end of 2026.