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On Thursday, California regulators voted to approve round-the-clock robotaxi service in San Francisco from two rival companies: Waymo and Cruise. By Friday night, a group of Cruise vehicles had stopped short in the city’s North Beach neighborhood, flashing hazard lights and causing a traffic backup, according to reports. 

The service expansion, approved in a 3 to 1 vote by California’s Public Utilities Commission, made San Francisco the first major U.S. city to allow two robotaxi companies to compete for service “at all hours of day or night.” It allows Waymo, owned by Google parent-company Alphabet, and Cruise, owned by General Motors, to expand their fleets as needed and charge for fares at any time of day. 

But on Friday night at about 11 p.m., pedestrians reported spotting as many as 10 of Cruise’s driverless cars stopped on and around Vallejo Street in North Beach, trapping human-driven vehicles for at least 15 minutes, according to reports. The company cited cell phone service issues related to a nearby music festival, which it said hampered its ability to route the vehicles. 

Cruise did not respond to a request for comment. 

The weekend traffic jam followed strong opposition to the regulators’ decision from some groups, including San Francisco’s police and fire departments. In a hearing last week, officials from the city’s fire department, police department and municipal transportation agency prepared a report of at least 600 incidents with driverless vehicles since June 2022, including unpredictable operations near an emergency response zone, obstructing travel to an emergency, contact or near misses with personnel or equipment and more. 

Before Thursday’s vote, both Waymo and Cruise were limited in their ability to operate in San Francisco. In Cruise’s case, if there wasn’t a safety driver present in the vehicle, it could offer fared service in certain areas from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. If the rides were free, it could offer that service at any time. If the vehicle did have a safety driver, then the company could charge for fares around-the-clock.

In Waymo’s case, before regulators’ decision, the company could not charge fares for ride-hailing at any time if there wasn’t a safety driver. But if a safety driver was present in the car, then the company could charge passengers for rides at any time. 

Waymo said it had more than 100,000 signups on a waitlist for service, and in a statement Friday, Tekedra Mawakana, co-CEO of the company, said that the service expansion “marks the true beginning of our commercial operations in San Francisco.” 

Waymo declined to share the weekend’s ride-hailing numbers with CNBC, or comment on whether the Cruise traffic jam impacts its operations plans moving forward. But Chris Ludwick, the company’s product management director, told CNBC in a statement that the company is seeing “incredibly high demand” for its service.

“We’ve always taken an incremental approach to deploying our technology and will continue to expand our service and fleet in SF gradually, with safety and the needs of local communities in mind,” Ludwick added.

In a July 25 earnings call, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt discussed plans to “blanket a city like San Francisco” with Cruise vehicles, saying the company would need to ramp up manufacturing if it did so, and expressed potential plans to introduce several thousand robotaxis in the area. 

“There’s over 10,000 human ride-hail drivers in San Francisco, potentially much more than that, depending on how you count it,” Vogt said on the call. “Those drivers, of course, aren’t working 20 hours a day like a robotaxi could. So it does not make a very high number to generate significant revenue in a city like San Francisco. But certainly, there’s capacity to absorb several thousand per city at minimum.” 

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Temu slashes U.S. ad spending, plummets in App Store rankings after Trump China tariffs

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Temu slashes U.S. ad spending, plummets in App Store rankings after Trump China tariffs

In just 17 days after launch, Temu surpassed Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat and Shein on the Apple App Store in the U.S., according to Apptopia data shared with CNBC.

Stefani Reynolds | Afp | Getty Images

Chinese online retailer Temu, whose “Shop like a billionaire” marketing campaign made its way to last year’s Super Bowl, has dramatically slashed its online ad spending in the U.S. and seen its ranking in Apple’s App Store plunge following President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on trade partners.

Temu, which is owned by Chinese e-commerce giant PDD Holdings, had been on an online advertising blitz in recent years in a bid to attract deal-hungry American shoppers to its site. With hefty spending on TV ads as well across Facebook, the company promoted clothing, jewelry, home goods and electronics at bargain basement prices.

The strategy was so effective that Temu topped Apple’s list of the most downloaded free apps in the U.S. for the past two years. Downloads of Temu on Apple’s App Store have fallen 62% in recent days, according to data from SimilarWeb, a digital data and analytics company. Ads for 50-cent eyebrow trimmers and $5 t-shirts that used to blanket Google search results and Facebook feeds have all but disappeared.

President Trump’s tariffs have upended Temu’s business model, along with its advertising strategy. Packages shipped from China are now subject to a tariff rate of 145%, while the de minimis provision, which allows shipments worth less than $800 to enter the country duty-free, is set to go away on May 2.

Temu and Shein, a fast-fashion marketplace with ties to China, plan to raise their prices in response to the tariffs. Both companies posted notices to their websites in recent days that warned they’ll be raising prices late next week.

“Due to recent changes in global trade rules and tariffs, our operating expenses have gone up,” Temu said on its site. “To keep offering the products you love without compromising on quality, we will be making price adjustments starting April 25, 2025.”

Sellers on Amazon’s third-party marketplace, many of whom source their products from China, have said they’re considering raising prices as they reckon with higher costs from the tariffs. Many businesses on TikTok Shop, the social media app’s marketplace, also count on Chinese manufacturers for their items.

Amazon launched a competitor to Temu last November, called Amazon Haul, which features items under $20 that are largely from China.

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The Temu app is now No. 69 in a list of the top free apps in the U.S., after consistently ranking in the top 10, according to data from Sensor Tower. Shein is currently at 42, down from 15 last month. PDD’s shares that trade in the U.S. have plummeted 22% this month, compared to the Nasdaq’s 6% drop. Shein is privately held.

Rival Chinese retailers have subsequently risen to the top of the app store ranks, including Beijing-based wholesaler DHgate, which surged to the No. 2 top free iPhone app in the U.S., and Alibaba‘s Taobao, which ranked No. 7. Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that viral videos promoting their cheap products have spurred the download frenzy.

A separate analysis by SimilarWeb showed Temu’s paid traffic, or search, display and social media advertising that drove visits to its website, has dropped 77% since April 11. Temu’s paid traffic previously outpaced nonpaid traffic to its website by 2 1/2 times, Ben Parkes, a consumer goods and retail analyst at Similarweb, said in an interview.

Marketing firm Tinuiti found that 20% of U.S. Google Shopping ad impressions were bought by Temu on April 5. A week later, that number had fallen to zero. By comparison, Shein’s impressions remained at 17% on April 12, while 60% of impressions were bought by Amazon.

Representatives from Temu and Shein didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Temu was previously one of Meta’s largest advertisers, but it appears to have dramatically scaled back its spending on the platform. As of Wednesday, Temu is running six ads across Meta platforms in the U.S., a review of Meta’s ad library shows. Temu is running approximately 27,000 ads across Meta sites and apps globally, particularly in Europe and the U.K.

That could be troublesome for Meta’s advertising business, which has gotten a significant boost from the discount retailer. Advertising analyst Brian Wieser at Madison and Wall estimated that more than $7 billion of Meta’s $132 billion in ad revenue in 2023 came from China. Meta is scheduled to report first-quarter results on April 30.

E-commerce analyst Juozas Kaziukenas said he expects Temu to turn its ads back on in the U.S. at some point, but that the company appears to be shifting its dollars to other markets in the interim.

“It doesn’t mean Temu usage has dropped as significantly as the app did,” Kaziukenas said in an email. “But it means that new user acquisition is gone.”

WATCH: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says sellers will pass cost of tariffs on to consumers

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy: Sellers will pass increased tariff costs on to consumers

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Spotify restores service after Wednesday outage

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Spotify restores service after Wednesday outage

The Spotify logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Dec. 4, 2023.

Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters

Spotify was down Wednesday, with about 50,000 reports of an outage on Downdetector.

The company posted an all-clear to social media site X just after noon EDT, thanking listeners for their patience.

“Spotify experienced an outage today beginning around 6:20am EDT. As of 11:45am EDT, Spotify is back up and functioning normally,” the company said in a statement.

The music-streaming giant did not provide additional details about the scope of the outage.

Users peppered the replies to the company’s outage announcement with frustrations and memes.

“I’ll just hum to myself,” wrote user @alexissTyler.

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The company recently reported its first profitable year and said it paid a record $10 billion in royalties to the music industry.

Nearly 1,500 artists generated more than $1 million individually, according to Spotify’s annual Loud and Clear Report, and more than 80% of those in that pool did not have a song reach the app’s Global Daily Top 50 Chart.

The app has added new advertising features in recent months.

Earlier in April, the company released new generative artificial intelligence ads and reported that automated ad channels drove $2 billion in ad spending with digital audio since the beginning of the year.

Out of the company’s 675 million monthly active users, more than half are free users who are served ads when they stream music.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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AMD expects $800 million hit from U.S. chip restrictions on China

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AMD expects 0 million hit from U.S. chip restrictions on China

Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, attends the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit at the Grand Palais in Paris, Feb. 10, 2025.

Benoit Tessier | Reuters

Shares of Advanced Micro Devices slid more than 5% on Wednesday after the company said it could incur charges of up to $800 million for exporting its MI308 products to China and other countries.

“The Company expects to apply for licenses but there is no assurance that licenses will be granted,” AMD said in the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The new U.S. license requirement, which applies to exports of certain semiconductor products, would hit inventory, purchase commitments and related reserves, AMD said in the filing.

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AMD is one of the companies that builds the hardware behind the artificial intelligence boom. The company claims its AMD Instinct MI300 Series accelerators are “uniquely well-suited to power even the most demanding AI and HPC workloads,” according to its website.

It generated a “record” revenue of $25.8 billion in 2025, according to its February earnings release, but the new export restrictions could slow growth.

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AMD one month stock chart.

Nvidia, an AMD competitor, released a similar disclosure on Tuesday. The company said it will take a quarterly charge of about $5.5 billion for exporting H20 graphics processing units.

China is Nvidia’s fourth-largest region by sales, after the U.S., Singapore, and Taiwan, according to the company’s annual report. More than half of its sales went to U.S. companies in its fiscal year that ended in January.

–CNBC’s Kif Leswing and Jordan Novet contributed to this report.

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