|
Oct 28, 2024
|
|
|
|
Supported by
|
|
|
|
|
Welcome back! Google is developing artificial intelligence that takes over a person’s web browser to complete various tasks. Waymo has raised $5.6 billion. Alibaba has agreed to pay $433.5 million to settle a shareholder lawsuit in the U.S.
|
|
|
|
Google is developing artificial intelligence that takes over a person’s web browser to complete tasks such as gathering research, purchasing a product or booking a flight, The Information reported Saturday. The product, code-named Project Jarvis, is similar to one Anthropic announced this week. OpenAI has also been working on similar software. Google plans to preview the product, also known as a computer-using agent, as early as December alongside the release of its next flagship Gemini large language model, which would help power the product. Google’s product, unlike Anthropic’s, largely targets consumers.
|
|
|
|
Autonomous vehicle company Waymo, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, announced on Friday that it had raised $5.6 billion in a funding round led by its parent company. Other investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity and Silver Lake also participated in the fundraising, according to the company. Waymo says it will use the capital to expand its robotaxi service and improve its autonomous driving technology “to support a variety of business applications over time.” The company has made efforts to commercialize its self-driving technology in different ways, including by
running an autonomous trucking division. But in recent months it has been focused on expanding its ride-hailing program, including partnership with Uber to bring it to new U.S. cities including Atlanta and Austin. Alphabet and other investors have poured a total of at least $13 billion into Waymo over time, according to an estimate by The Information, disclosures by Waymo, and a statement from Alphabet’s management on its earnings call in July that it would invest another $5 billion into the company in the next few years. It’s unclear how much Alphabet or any of the other investors alone contributed to the latest round.
|
|
|
|
Alibaba Group said it has agreed to pay $433.5 million to settle a U.S. class-action lawsuit that alleged the Chinese e-commerce giant made misstatements about its antitrust practices. The lawsuit, filed in November 2020 in the U.S. District Court, alleged that Alibaba violated federal securities laws by making misstatements about its “exclusivity practices” that prevented Alibaba’s sellers from doing business with other e-commerce sites. The lawsuit alleged that some of Alibaba’s disclosures misled investors into believing that the company had already stopped its exclusivity practices, when in reality such practices continued to exist. Such misstatements “artificially increased the stock price and eventually caused financial loss” to its investors, the lawsuit said. In a regulatory filing, Alibaba said it
denies any allegations of wrongdoing and agreed to the settlement “to avoid the cost and disruption of further litigation.“ Alibaba’s stock price set a record high in late 2020, but fell sharply in 2021 and 2022 amid the Chinese government’s antitrust probe into Alibaba and the country’s broader regulatory crackdown on the tech sector. The class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of all investors who acquired Alibaba’s U.S.-listed shares between July 9, 2020 and Dec. 23, 2020.
|
|
|
|
Perplexity, the AI-powered search engine startup that is reportedly raising a new round at a valuation of at least $8 billion, was a hot acquisition target last year, The Information reported Friday. X, Notion, and OpenAI all approached Perplexity with acquisition offers of between $150 million and $200 million, while Microsoft also expressed interest. Last year’s feeding frenzy showed that tech giants were bargain shopping, as Perplexity was valued at $150 million after a funding round in March that year. The suitors had reason to
think Perplexity might look to exit, given the high computing costs associated with running the search engine. Neeva, a highly-touted AI search startup that failed to gain many subscribers, was acquired by Snowflake in May last year for around $180 million.
|
|
|
|
The Federal Trade Commission on Friday said Lyft had agreed to pay $2.1 million to settle charges the ride-hailing company had made deceptive claims about the money its drivers would make on the app. The antitrust agency disclosed the settlement the same day the Department of Justice sued Lyft for how it advertised drivers’ potential earnings in 2021 and 2022 as demand for rideshare services rebounded after the pandemic. In particular, Lyft advertised specific hourly amounts that drivers could make in certain cities. Instead, the government claimed, those hourly rates were based on the earnings of the top one-fifth of drivers and overinflated actual earnings for most drivers by as much as 30%. They also included tips, which drivers would reasonably expect would be in addition to the hourly pay, the suit said. The
antitrust agencies also said Lyft misled drivers with “earnings guarantees” that advertised a certain payout if drivers completed a specified number of rides, which drivers said they thought would be a bonus rather than the total amount. Lyft, in a blogpost Friday, said it reached the settlement “because we recognize the importance of transparency in maintaining trust in the communities we serve.” Under the settlement, Lyft can’t make claims about hourly earnings that include tips and must disclose that earnings guarantees mean drivers will receive the difference between what they earn and the guaranteed amount, said the FTC. Rival Uber in 2017 settled the FTC’s claims that it had deceived its drivers over pay claims. A Lyft spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
|
|
|
|
Amazon’s top grocery executive, Tony Hoggett, plans to leave the company after less than three years, Hoggett and the company said Friday. A member of Amazon’s top leadership team, Hoggett oversees Whole Foods Market, Amazon-branded grocery and convenience stores and the company’s grocery delivery business. Amazon did not immediately name a successor for Hoggett, who is leaving on Nov. 1. Until Amazon finalizes a succession plan, Hoggett’s direct reports—Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel, Amazon Fresh vice president Claire Peters, and worldwide grocery product and technology vice president Anand Varadarajan—will report to Amazon’s global consumer chief Doug Herrington, according to Amazon. Hoggett joined Amazon in January 2022 from Tesco, shortly before CEO Andy Jassy began a cost-cutting drive that led the
company to rein in its physical stores and grocery ambitions. Early in his tenure, Hoggett oversaw the closure of Amazon’s non-grocery physical stores, such as bookstores and 4-Star shops. This year, Hoggett revamped the Amazon Fresh store chain by removing Just Walk Out checkout technology and redesigning stores. He also experimented with ways to bring Whole Foods closer to
Amazon’s other grocery brands, including by unifying online orders and opening an Amazon-branded grocery store in the same building as a Whole Foods.
|
|
|
|
Microsoft’s board of directors reduced CEO Satya Nadella’s pay package by $5.2 million after the CEO requested the move as a way of taking responsibility for recent cybersecurity breaches, the company said in a proxy filing on Friday. The cut came out of Nadella’s cash incentive for hitting company goals, which would have been $10.4 million before the pay cut. For the current fiscal year ending in June 2025, Microsoft will officially tie a larger share of executive pay to the company hitting its security goals, the company said in the filing. Even after the cut, Nadella earned more than $79 million | | | |
