Steak used to be Nicole Maffeo’s favorite food. Then she started cooking several ribeyes a day as sous chef to a bossy robot. “I can’t look at another one,” Maffeo said.

The searing marathon has been taking place in a robotics workshop in the Manhattan offices of Viam, an automation software platform. There, Maffeo has been building out a small startup called Gambit Robotics that aims to make a kitchen assistant for consumers.

Viam founder and CEO Eliot Horowitz says he wants his platform to be a software layer for a new wave of robotics and automation, similar to Gambit’s project. Horowitz, who previously co-founded database giant MongoDB, cooked up the idea with Maffeo over a game of chess in Washington Square Park (Maffeo is a former member of the US Chess Team).

Horowitz thinks the world is ready for a whole slew of new robots. They won’t be powered by generative AI—the tech might serve as an interface—but he said robotics has benefited from some of the same innovations that are making generative AI possible: cheaper, more energy-efficient chips, better connectivity and batteries, more compute power.

“Right now, it’s green field,” Horowitz said. “There are way too few people who are ready and excited about building these kinds of things yet, because historically, the trope in the VC world is that hardware is hard. People are excited, but it’s early. It’s very early.”

Keep reading here.—PK

These days, a whole slew of companies want to supply AI agents that purport to help you do your job better.

Add Amazon Web Services (AWS) to that growing list. The tech giant is rolling out a new platform called Amazon Quick Suite that aims to provide a universal chat interface for surfacing and assembling workplace information, as well as creating agents to perform certain routine tasks.

“The idea is that we want people to have this unified interface from which you can answer questions, do research, take actions, all of that,” Jose Kunnackal John, director of Amazon Quick Suite, said.

The move positions AWS to compete with the likes of Microsoft and Google, which have their own agentic tools for enterprise. These companies and others have heralded agents as the next chapter of generative AI adoption in the workplace.

What sets Amazon apart, Kunnackal John said, is that AWS customers wanted an AI system that can operate across the many apps and platforms that workers use in a typical day.

“There is this plethora of tools in the enterprise, and every tool has AI,” he said. “Google’s got its own suite. Microsoft’s got its own suite. You can pick every provider; they have their own suite of tools. The idea is, can you bring all of the context that you have, all of the data that you have, into one place? And often that’s not the case, and with Quick Suite, we are trying to make that the case.”

Keep reading here.—PK

Waymo is sticking around the Big Apple.

The Alphabet-owned robotaxi company announced on Oct. 1 that the New York City Department of Transportation had extended its autonomous testing permit through the end of 2025, after Waymo started testing its technology on NYC roads earlier this year.

The permit allows Waymo vehicles to drive on city streets with a human behind the wheel.

“We’ll continue laying the groundwork to serve New Yorkers in the future while we also advocate for changes in state law that enable us to offer the same reliable service we provide in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta,” the company said in a statement. New York state law doesn’t allow autonomous vehicles with no human behind the wheel.

In addition to those cities where Waymo already has commercial operations, the ride-hailing service is slated to open to the public in Dallas, Denver, Miami, Nashville, and Washington, DC, “within the next year.”

That’s just one of numerous business updates Waymo has announced in recent weeks, including its decision to launch a service specifically geared toward business travelers.

Keep reading here.—JG

Payback time: Buy now, pay later (BNPL) apps, like Klarna and Affirm, have been around for years now. But what happens when shoppers buy now and then…fail to pay later? The New York Times details cautionary tales that end with tens of thousands of dollars in debts. Even still, BNPL tech is popular: Retail Brew reports the apps are “set to drive $20.2 billion in online spending” this holiday season, an 11% YoY jump.

Model why? Tesla debuted its long-awaited “affordable” EVs this week, The Verge reports, and they’re “just stripped down versions of the automaker’s best-selling models.” Wired quotes Joseph Yoon, an Edmunds consumer analyst, as saying it “feels like a classic legacy automaker move.”

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