Waymo

Georgia on my mind

Waymo launches in Atlanta, trying to take wind out of Tesla’s sails

This weekend, Tesla launched its robotaxi program in Austin with about 20 vehicles, while Waymo has more than 100 in the city. Here’s how the two services stack up.

Rani Molla

6/24/25 6:00AM

Just two days after Tesla served its first robotaxi ride in Austin, its first market, Google’s Waymo is expanding to its fifth major market: Atlanta.

Starting today, people using the Uber app for trips within 65 square miles across Atlanta — from Buckhead north of the city through downtown and south to Capitol View — can opt in to taking Waymo’s autonomous cars. Google is up 1% while uber is up more than 4% in early trading.

The company likened the Atlanta rollout to its March launch in Austin, where it opened with dozens of cars and now has more than 100 vehicles, with plans to grow to “hundreds.”

Waymo has a total of 1,500 autonomous vehicles operating in five major markets, including San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. Next up for Waymo is Miami and potentially Washington, DC. As of last month, the company docked more than 10 million paid trips and is doing more than a quarter million per week.

Meanwhile, Tesla launched in Austin this weekend with about 10 to 20 cars. The company didn’t disclose the exact square milage, but it’s isolated to a tourist-heavy area south of downtown. Waymo, on the other hand, covers 37 square miles north and south of the river, including downtown Austin.

Here’s how the two services stack up by vehicles and coverage area:

There are some other notable differences, too. While Tesla’s robotaxi is available only to a small group of influencers and requires that a Tesla employee sit in the front passenger seat to supervise, Waymo’s service is open to the public and has no one else is in the car. Waymo operates 24 hours a day, while so far Tesla is running from 6 a.m. to midnight. Waymo also costs more than a traditional ride-hailing service, while Tesla, for now, costs a flat fee of $4.20 per ride.

Still, any of the above can change quickly.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said, despite the prominent existence of Waymo, that his company has no real competitors. “I don’t see anyone being able to compete with Tesla at present,” Musk said on the company’s last earnings call. “At least as far as I’m aware, Tesla will have, I don’t know, 99% market share or something ridiculous.”

On the same call, he derided Waymo’s business, which outfits its cars with numerous expensive sensors including lidar, as costing “way-mo money.”

Musk and Tesla are banking on the success of Tesla’s less expensive, camera-only robotaxis (which for now are actually new Model Ys, not the blingy Cybercab concept the company unveiled in October) to help scale its autonomous driving technology to all the vehicles it sells, not just those operated as robotaxis. Currently, Tesla owners can use supervised full self-driving software, while the robotaxis are using an unsupervised “branch” that Musk says will be merged with the standard one “soon.”

Until then, there’s a lot of daylight between Tesla’s and Waymo’s businesses.

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Rani Molla2h

Apple stock takes a hit on report it’s pushing back AI Siri features — again

Apple customers may have to wait even longer for the company’s long-awaited AI Siri, Bloomberg reports.

The iPhone maker had been planning to include a number of upgrades to Siri in a March operating system update, but the company now is planning to spread those out over future versions. That means some features first announced in June 2024 — an AI Siri that can tap into personal data and on-screen content — might not arrive until September with iOS 27.

The postponements happened after “testing uncovered fresh problems with the software,” Bloomberg said, including instances where Siri didn’t properly process queries or took too long to respond.

The stock, which had been trading up more than 2% today, has pared some of those gains on the news.

For what it’s worth, Apple’s iPhone sales — a record last quarter — don’t appear to be suffering for lack of AI.

Apple’s Latest Attempt to Launch the New Siri Runs Into Snags

The stock, which had been trading up more than 2% today, has pared some of those gains on the news.

For what it’s worth, Apple’s iPhone sales — a record last quarter — don’t appear to be suffering for lack of AI.

Rani Molla2h

Meta breaks ground on massive $10 billion AI data center — and the costs won’t stop there

Meta announced today that it broke ground on a new, giant AI data center. This one is located in Indiana, has 1 gigawatt of capacity, and will cost more than $10 billion.

In a press release, the company touted the 4,000 construction jobs and 300 operational positions Meta expects to bring to the area. It did not disclose any tax incentives tied to the project.

But much like with the company’s Hyperion data center in Louisiana — where we calculated incentives in the billions — the number of long-term jobs is likely small relative to any public subsidies the company ultimately receives.

The $10 billion build represents a notable chunk of Meta’s planned $115 billion to $135 billion in capital expenditure this year. And operating costs will add substantially to that total over time.

Earlier this year, President Trump warned tech giants to “pay their own way” when it comes to energy, as data centers have driven up electricity costs in some regions. Meta’s announcement appears to anticipate that criticism, dedicating significant space to explaining how it will mitigate the energy and water impact of the facility:

“With all our data centers, we strive to be good neighbors. We pay the full costs for energy used by our data centers and work closely with utilities to plan for our energy needs years in advance to ensure residents aren’t negatively impacted. To help support local families in need, we’re providing $1 million each year for 20 years to the Boone REMC Community Fund to provide direct assistance with energy bills, and funding emergency water utility assistance through The Caring Center. We also pay the full cost of water and wastewater service required to support our data centers. Over the course of this project, Meta will make investments of more than $120 million, toward critical water infrastructure in Lebanon, as well as other public infrastructure improvements including roads, transmission lines and utility upgrades.”

Unlike hyperscalers such as Google and Microsoft, which can offset infrastructure costs by selling cloud capacity to customers, Meta bears those expenses largely on its own. That dynamic could make the economics of AI infrastructure more challenging for the company as its AI spending continues to accelerate.

Meta’s New Data Center in Lebanon, Indiana Marks a Milestone AI Investment

The $10 billion build represents a notable chunk of Meta’s planned $115 billion to $135 billion in capital expenditure this year. And operating costs will add substantially to that total over time.

“With all our data centers, we strive to be good neighbors. We pay the full costs for energy used by our data centers and work closely with utilities to plan for our energy needs years in advance to ensure residents aren’t negatively impacted. To help support local families in need, we’re providing $1 million each year for 20 years to the Boone REMC Community Fund to provide direct assistance with energy bills, and funding emergency water utility assistance through The Caring Center. We also pay the full cost of water and wastewater service required to support our data centers. Over the course of this project, Meta will make investments of more than $120 million, toward critical water infrastructure in Lebanon, as well as other public infrastructure improvements including roads, transmission lines and utility upgrades.”

Jon Keegan6h

Humanoid robot maker Apptronik raises $520 million

Apptronik, an Austin, Texas-based robot manufacturer, said it has closed out its Series A fundraising round, raising $520 million. The fundraising is an extension of a $415 million round raised last February, and included investments from Google, Mercedes-Benz, AT&T, and John Deere. Qatar’s state investment firm, QIA, also participated in the fundraising round.

Apptronik makes Apollo, a humanoid robot targeted for warehouse and manufacturing work. The company is one of several US robotics companies that are racing to apply generative-AI breakthroughs to humanoid robots, in anticipation of a new market for robots in homes and workplaces.

Apptronik Raises $520 Million in New Funding to Build More Humanoids

Ives: Microsoft and Google’s giant capex plans are worth it

Don’t mind the AI sell-off, says Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, who thinks fears around seemingly unfettered Big Tech capex budgets are unfounded, especially in the case of Microsoft and Google. Together, the two hyperscalers are slated to spend around $300 billion on the purchases of property and equipment this year as they double down on AI infrastructure, but he says both have already shown that they can turn the spending into revenue and growth.

“They are reshaping cloud economics around AI-first workloads that carry higher switching costs, deeper customer lock-in, and longer contract durations than before,” Ives wrote, adding that these giant costs will be spread out over time and set the companies up for success in the long run. Per Ives:

“While near-term free cash flow optics remain noisy, the platforms that invest early and at scale are best positioned to capture durable share, pricing power, and ecosystem control as AI workloads mature. Over time, we expect utilization leverage to turn today’s elevated investment into a meaningful driver of long-term value creation.”

How the Big Tech companies are spending their huge capex budgets

“While near-term free cash flow optics remain noisy, the platforms that invest early and at scale are best positioned to capture durable share, pricing power, and ecosystem control as AI workloads mature. Over time, we expect utilization leverage to turn today’s elevated investment into a meaningful driver of long-term value creation.”

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