Alphabet Waymo Storage Facility in San Francisco

San Francisco, CA - August 6, 2023: Aerial view of Alphabet’s Waymo fleet storage facility in the Bayview-Hunters Point district.

Waymore rides

Waymo’s had a quiet — but huge — increase in ridership

In one year in California, Waymo’s paid driverless rides increased from 12,000 to over 312,000 a month, though the unit still loses parent company Alphabet money.

Yiwen Lu

11/4/24 3:55PM

Waymo has quietly ramped up its status. A lot.

Last year, Waymo started offering paid, driverless rides to passengers in San Francisco. In the year since, Waymo went from 12,000 rides in August 2023 to over 312,000 rides in August 2024. Its service area in California also expanded from one city to multiple, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and three cities in the San Francisco Peninsula, where the region’s main airport is located.

During an earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, Waymo’s parent company, said Waymo is now driving more than 1 million fully autonomous miles and over 150,000 paid rides each week. That’s about 50% more than what the company announced just last quarter. Now, Waymo has about 700 cars operating across three states: California, Arizona, and Texas.

Waymo doesn’t seem to face much competition yet. Cruise, the only other company that has obtained a driverless-deployment permit in California, is not providing driverless ride-hail service to the public in the state.

In an oversubscribed fundraising round this October, Waymo said it had raised $5.6 billion in new capital, led by Alphabet and outside investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Fidelity. Bloomberg reported last week that the latest round valued Waymo at more than $45 billion — which was more than the market size of Ford and the company’s partner, Hyundai.

Still, the success of Waymo begs a reality check. Uber racks up millions of rides every hour globally, and it dominates the US ride-hailing market with more than three-quarters of market share. The company is also now profitable. Alphabet’s so-called “other bets,” which include Waymo and other subsidiaries, lost $1.12 billion in Q3 2024, though less than the $1.19 billion in Q3 2023.

Rani Molla4h

Amazon’s Prime Day is coming early this year

Amazon is moving its four-day Prime Day event up from July, where it’s been for the last five years, to June 23 through 26.

The retail giant cites scheduling clashes with the FIFA World Cup and the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence as reasons for the move. Prime Day is one of Amazon’s biggest sales events of the year, helping drive $24.1 billion in US online spending last year, according to Adobe Analytics.

More concretely, the move means Amazon will pull a massive chunk of sales from one of its biggest events into Q2, which ends June 30, rather than Q3.

Beyond the top-line revenue shift, Amazon is also using the event to flex its newer strategic muscles, aggressively cross-promoting its same-day grocery delivery networks and its Amazon Haul discount storefront.

Rani Molla4h

Tesla’s China-made EV sales grew 39% in May, marking 7 straight months of growth

Sales of Tesla vehicles made at its Shanghai plant — produced for China, Europe, and other international markets — grew 39% in May to 85,982 vehicles, a record for the year.

The data marks the company’s seventh straight month of year-over-year wholesale growth for made-in-China vehicles and the company’s continued stabilization overseas. Across the entire Chinese auto industry, overall wholesale volume of so-called new energy vehicles — EVs and hybrids — produced domestically grew 12% from May 2025.

The China Passenger Car Association will report China-only sales later this month, offering a clearer picture of performance in Tesla’s second-largest market. On Monday, several European markets posted year-over-year sales growth for Tesla.

Tesla China May wholesale volume reaches 85,982 units, highest this year

Rani Molla20h

Alphabet announces $80 billion equity raise to fund AI infrastructure, including a $10 billion bet from Berkshire Hathaway

To fund its rapidly expanding AI infrastructure push, Alphabet just announced a whopping $80 billion equity capital raise.

While concerns over share dilution sent the stock down slightly after-hours, the deal secured a major anchor partner: Berkshire Hathaway, which is backing the offering with a $10 billion investment. (Berkshire was run by Warren Buffett until he stepped down as CEO at the beginning of this year, handing the reins to Greg Abel.)

Alphabet plans to spend up to $190 billion on capex this year.

Alphabet Announces Proposed $80 Billion Equity Capital Raise to Expand AI Infrastructure and Compute

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Rani Molla24h

Despite a massive surge in corporate AI spending, the technology is broadly failing to deliver the massive cost reductions executives had anticipated, according to a new global survey from Bain & Co. shared with Bloomberg. The largest share of major companies measuring their AI returns — 40% — realized cost savings of 10% or less, with poor access to internal data cited as the primary roadblock. Most had expected higher returns. More concerningly, Bain warned that many companies are using their original, overly optimistic projections — rather than their actual savings — to justify funding their next wave of expensive AI investments, creating a “circular bet with a structural leak.”

Rani Molla

6/1/26

Meta thinks it can save its hardware division with AI subscriptions. There are reasons to be skeptical.

An $8 AI subscription won’t plug a $19 billion hardware hole.

A visitor is seen trying a Ray-Ban Meta glasses at a Meta