Transcript
Brian McCullough (0:04)
Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride home for Monday, August 4th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today Robo Taxis are coming to Europe Apple wants answers, Literally the AI researcher who turned down a billion and a half dollars. How the vibe seems to have definitively shifted in Silicon Valley and will rollable laptop screens become mainstream? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech Foreign it's not just the US and China, y'. All. Lyft has announced a partnership with Baidu to launch autonomous vehicles in Germany and the UK in 2026, pending regulatory approval. Quoting Bloomberg. Under the arrangement, Lyft will deploy the sixth generation of Baidu's robotaxis, with the fleet scaling to thousands of vehicles across Europe in the following years, they added. The announcement follows Lyft's acquisition of freenow, one of Europe' largest taxi apps, marking its entry into nine new countries in the region. Last month, Uber announced a similar deal with Baidu to have its driverless cars on the Uber app, but the initial deployment later this year is planned for Asia and the Middle east, not Europe. But the Lyft deal is not exclusive, meaning it won't preclude Uber from rolling out Baidu robotaxis in the same markets in the future. Lyft is working toward offering its first driverless rides in Atlanta later this year with May Mobility. Separately, it's planning U.S. deployments in 2026 with intel back Mobileye Global and Benteler Group. Meanwhile, Uber already offers driverless rides in Phoenix, Austin and Atlanta in partnership with Alphabet's Waymo, as well as in Abu Dhabi with WeRide for Baidu, which runs one of the largest fleets of robotaxis in China. Working with different mobility service providers, local taxi companies and third party fleet operators will help it expand the global footprint of its driverless service Apollo Go. It has so far racked up more than 11 million rides and is seeking to expand in Switzerland, Singapore and Malaysia. End quote. Apple has apparently formed an Answers Knowledge and information team for creating a chatgpt like search experience. Quoting Mark Gurman. Despite philosophical reservations among some Apple leaders, the company is clearly heading in the direction of AI based search. Earlier this year, Apple quietly formed a new team called Answers Knowledge and Information, or aki. This group, I'm told, is exploring a number of in house AI services with the goal of creating a new chatgpt like search experience. The AKI team is led by Robbie Walker, a senior director, reporting to AI chief John Giannandrea. Walker previously oversaw Siri but lost control of it after engineering delays following that shakeup, he was assigned the New Answers initiative and has brought along several key team members from his Siri. While still in early stages, the team is building what it calls an answer engine, a system capable of crawling the web to respond to general knowledge questions. A standalone app is currently under exploration alongside new backend infrastructure meant to power search capabilities in future versions of Siri, Spotlight and Safari. Apple has recently begun advertising job openings for the team on its Careers site, stating, our work fuels intuitive information experiences across some of Apple's most iconic products, including Siri, Spotlight, Safari, Messages, lookup and more. Join us in shaping the future of how the world connects with information. Several listings specifically mention experience with search algorithms and engine development. A finished product may still be far off, but the direction is now unmistakable, something akin to a stripped down Apple built approach to ChatGPT like search is coming, end quote. I mentioned her sort of jokingly the other day, but Lina Khan herself is citing figma's recent IPO as vindication of M and a scrutiny, saying letting startups grow independently rather than being acquired can generate enormous value. Quoting TechCrunch, Khan was alluding to a $20 billion deal for Adobe to acquire Figma that fell through back in 2023. While Adobe cited the lack of a clear path to approval from the European Commission and the UK Competition and markets, the acquisition also faced regulatory scrutiny in the United States over concerns that it could prevent Figma from being an effective competitor to Adobe. Khan was FTC chair at the time, leading the agency to challenge big tech on fronts, including startup acquisitions, to the point that companies tried to avoid this scrutiny with reverse acqui hires, in which they hired key team members and licensed technology rather than acquiring startups outright. The practice seems to be continuing despite Khan's departure from the ftc. While her aggressive stance led to intense criticism from corners of the tech industry, she defended her approach by saying that only a tiny percentage of deals received a second look and arguing that founders would ultimately benefit from a world in which you have six or seven or eight potential suitors rather than just one or two. And although Khan, who'd been appointed by President Joe Biden, resigned at the start of the second Trump administration, her comments Friday paint the figma IPO as a vindication for her approach, calling the IPO a win for employees, investors, innovation and the public. Of course, Khan's critics are more likely to see figma's success as coming despite regulatory scrutiny, not because of it. For example, Wedbush securities analyst Dan Ives told Business Insider, figma is a massive success, but it's because of the company's innovative growth and not due to the FTC and Khan, end quote. The Wall Street Journal Sundays one particular AI researcher declined an offer from Mark Zuckerberg of a pay package totaling more than $1.5 billion over six years. As Mark Zuckerberg sought to play catch up in the generative AI race, he reached out a few months ago to OpenAI's former chief technology officer Mira Muradi and offered to buy her fledgling startup, Thinking Machines Lab. When she said no, the Matta chief executive responded by launching a full scale raid. In the following weeks, he approached more than a dozen of Marathi's RO50 employees to sound them out about jumping ship. His chief target, Andrew Tulloch, a leading researcher and co founder at the startup. To peel him off, Zuckerberg dangled a billion dollar package that could, with top bonuses and extraordinary stock performance, have been worth as much as 1 1/2 billion dollars over at least six years, according to people familiar with the matter. Tolik said no, none of his colleagues left either. Meta spokesman Andy Stone called the description of the offer inaccurate and ridiculous, and said that the size of any compensation pack predicated on a stock rising. He added that Meta is not interested in acquiring thinking machines. Even in Silicon Valley, where star engineers have long wielded outsized economic power, turning down nine figure pay packages is rare. But as the battle royale for AI talent escalates, the companies with the biggest war chests are finding the cash cannon only gets them so far. While some AI researchers act like free agents bouncing between labs in pursuit of more pay and power, quite a few display an unwavering allegiance to their chosen leaders. Larger than life figures who in the tech industry carry the single name cache of rock stars, the idiosyncratic cultures of the different startups bind employees to one another. Meanwhile, after years of poaching and round, the companies involved are getting savvier about playing defense. End quote. A study has found that AI trading bots can collude and fix prices in simulated markets without explicit instruction to do so, thereby posing challenges to regulators. Quoting Bloomberg It's a regulator's nightmare. Hedge funds unleash AI bots on stock and bond exchanges, but they don't just compete, they collude. Instead of battling for returns, they fix prices, hoard profits and sideline human traders. Now, a trio of researchers say that scenario is far from science fiction. In simulations designed to mimic real world markets, trading agents powered by artificial intelligence formed price fixing cartels without explicit instruction Even with relatively simple programming, the bots chose to collude when left to their own devices, raising fresh alarms for market watchdogs. Put another way, AI bots don't need to be evil or even particularly smart to rig the market. Left alone, they'll learn it themselves. The latest study, conducted by ITE Goldstein and Wharton colleague Winston Dow and Yan Ji from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has already drawn attention from both regulators and asset managers. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority invited the researchers to present their findings at a seminar. Some quant firms, unnamed by Dow, have expressed interest in clear regulatory guidelines and rules on AI powered algorithmic trading execution. They worry that it's not their intention, dow said, but regulators can come to them and say you're doing something wrong. In several of the simulated markets, the AI agents began cooperating rather than competing effectively, forming cartels that shared profits and discouraged defection. When prices reflected clear, fundamental information, the bots kept a low profile, avoiding moves that might disrupt the collective gain in noisier markets. They settled into the same cooperative routines and stopped searching for better strategies. The researchers called this effect artificial stupidity, a tendency for the bots to quit trying new ideas, locking into profit sharing patterns simply because they worked well enough for humans. It's hard to coordinate on being dumb because we have egos, said Dao. But machines are like as long as the figures are profitable, we can choose to coordinate on being dumb. Academic research is increasingly probing how generative AI and reinforcement learning might reshape Wall street, often in ways few anticipated. A recent Coalition Greenwich survey showed that 15% of buy side traders already use AI in their execution workflows, with another quarter planning to follow in the next end quote.