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Greetings! Flying cars may not have arrived yet, but the long-awaited era of everyday robotaxis is here. And not just in America, if I'm correctly reading signals about the state of the industry from the last several days. They were all equally eye-opening, even if one was a little grim. In Los Angeles, a real-life "Black Mirror" moment played out, with protestors setting fire to several Waymos as part of an escalating series of demonstrations over immigration policy. That likely wouldn't have happened even a year ago—Waymo hadn't launched to the public in Los Angeles at that point—and it was a reminder of how the company has picked up the pace of its rollout lately. (I'm sure it also sent some team at Waymo hurrying to figure out the best practices for shutting off robotaxis during times of future public unrest.) The cars have quickly become such a core part of people's minds in the cities they're in that they're now useful political effigies. Meanwhile, people on the streets of Austin, Texas, this week spotted Tesla's first robotaxi in the wild, without a person in the driver's seat keeping an eye on it. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on X that the company will most likely open the robotaxis up to the public on June 22. Let me also direct your attention to a development across the world in Lagos, Nigeria, where Moove, a five-year-old startup, is on track to raise $300 million and push its valuation past $1 billion, as Alex and Sri reported this week. That would be a tidy sum for any startup—and all the more so for one founded in Africa, which has produced fewer than 10 billion-dollar startups over the last decade. A portion of Moove's business is cleaning and charging Waymos. In the future, it hopes to expand to purchasing autonomous vehicles and leasing them to individual entrepreneurs. The strategy is a reminder that the robotaxi era won't just be good for a handful of giant companies. Rather, it could have far more expansive economic effects, perhaps resembling a moment in time more like the gig economy's proliferation a decade ago. Meta Platforms' mega-investment in Scale AI was one of the most intriguing stories of the week. We broke news about the terms of the deal as the companies were still hammering it out and followed up with a feature about how the courtship between Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Scale's Alexandr Wang played out. We had two scoops about Saudi Arabia making moves in tech, including how Humain, a new Saudi artificial intelligence company, has lined up Cisco Systems and AMD as investors in a division that sells access to AI chips. Sri broke a story about OpenAI talking to the Saudi Public Investment Fund and India's Reliance Industries about investing in the AI startup. Anita took a deep dive into the valuation of adult content platform OnlyFans. Cory broke a story about travel software startup Navan's plans to file confidentially for an IPO later this month. Miles and Cathy had a scoop about Google offering voluntary buyouts for employees. Anissa wrote about Nvidia encroaching on the turf of some of its partners. And Kevin had a story about Amazon Web Services revamping some of its AI cloud services, including Bedrock, to better compete with Google. We chronicled how Elon Musk's relationship with President Donald Trump went off the rails so badly. And then, as their feud simmered down, Sylvia had a scoop about how the Securities and Exchange Commission is planning a restructuring pushed by Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. Two AI-powered customer support startups, Intercom and Kore.ai, are discussing deals with investors at multibillion-dollar valuations. Ramp, meanwhile, is in talks to raise a new round led by Founders Fund at a $16 billion valuation. Kevin and Stephanie scooped how Salesforce has cut off some AI rivals from accessing data on Slack, Salesforce's messaging service. We also wrote a colorful Weekend story about how Bret Taylor, a onetime Salesforce executive, is now competing with his old boss, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, at Taylor's new AI startup. • A nonprofit backed by 23andMe co-founder and former CEO Anne Wojcicki had the winning bid to buy the DNA-testing company at a bankruptcy auction. • President Trump will headline an AI energy summit planned for July 15 in Pittsburgh. OpenAI's Sam Altman, Google's Sundar Pichai, Meta's Zuckerberg and Microsoft's Satya Nadella are on the guest list for the event too, according to Axios. • Walmart and Amazon are considering issuing their own stablecoins, which would allow their customers to sidestep traditional payment methods on their online stores. • A group of Silicon Valley executives, including Palantir Technologies' Shyam Sankar, Meta's Andrew Bosworth, and OpenAI's Kevin Weil and Bob McGrew, will join the U.S. Army Reserve as part of a new group called Detachment 201 focused on military innovation. AI Agenda by Stephanie Palazzolo separates hype from reality and explains how AI is transforming industries. The 4x/week newsletter details the innovation and disruption happening in AI, from the AI startup funding frenzy to the major technological breakthroughs that will set the agenda for decades to come. Sign up today. | 
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