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.”
The logo of LG Electronics is seen on the opening day of the Integrated Systems Europe exhibition in Barcelona on January 31, 2023.
Pau Barrena | Afp | Getty Images
South Korea-based LG Energy Solution announced Wednesday that it had signed a $4.3 billion contract for supplying batteries to a major corporation, without naming the customer.
The effective date of contract — receipt of orders — began Tuesday and will conclude at the end of July, 2030. During this period, the counterparty will not be disclosed to maintain business confidentiality, the company’s filing with the Korea Exchange showed Wednesday.Reuters reported that Tesla was the counterparty.
Earlier this week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the EV maker was behind a previously undisclosed $16.5 billion chip contract with South Korea’s Samsung Electronics.
LG Energy said in its filing that details of the contract such as the deal amount were subject to change and the contract period could be extended by up to seven years.
“Investors are advised to carefully consider the possibility of changes or termination of the contract when making investment decisions,” the company cautioned. It’s shares were trading 0.26% lower.
The filing did not clarify whether the lithium iron phosphate batteries would be used in vehicles or energy storage systems. Its major battery customers include American electric-vehicle makers Tesla and General Motors.
The company has been expanding its battery production in the U.S., and is constructing a plant in Arizona that will produce lithium iron phosphate batteries.
LG Energy Solution and Tesla did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks, looks on during the closing bell at the Nasdaq Market in New York City, U.S., March 25, 2025.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
CyberArk shares soared as much as 18% on Tuesday after The Wall Street Journal reported that cybersecurity provider Palo Alto Networks has held discussions to buy the identity management software maker for over $20 billion.
Cloud security is becoming an increasingly critical piece of the enterprise tech stack, especially as rapid advancements in artificial intelligence bring with them a whole new set of threats, and as ransomware attacks become more commonplace.
Founded in 2005, Palo Alto Networks has emerged in recent years as a consolidator in the cybersecurity industry and has grown into the biggest player in the space by market cap, with a valuation of over $130 billion. CEO Nikesh Arora, who was appointed to the job in 2018, has been on a spending spree, snapping up Protect AI in a deal that closed in July, and in 2023 buying Talon Cyber Security, Dig Security and Zycada Networks.
But CyberArk would represent by far Arora’s biggest bet yet. The Israeli company, which went public in 2014, provides technology that helps companies streamline the process of logging on to applications for employees.
CyberArk faces competition from Microsoft, Okta and IBM‘s HashiCorp. Another rival, SailPoint, returned to the public markets in February.
With Tuesday’s rally, CyberArk shares climbed to a record, surpassing their prior all-time high reached in February. The stock is up 29% this year, pushing the company’s market cap to almost $21 billion, after jumping 52% in 2024. Palo Alto shares, meanwhile, slid 3.5% on the report and are now up about 9% for the year.
Representatives from Palo Alto Networks and CyberArk declined to comment.
During the first quarter, CyberArk generated around $11.5 million in net income on around $318 million in revenue, which was up 43% from a year earlier.
It’s been an active stretch for big deals in the cyber market. Google said in March that it was spending $32 billion on Wiz, its largest acquisition on record by far, and a purchase intended to bolster its cloud business with greater AI security technology.
Networking giant Cisco also made its biggest deal ever in the security space, buying Splunk in 2023 for $28 billion. Splunk’s technology helps businesses monitor and analyze their data to minimize the risk of hacks and resolve technical issues faster.
Spotify shares dropped about 4% Tuesday after the music streaming platform fell short of Wall Street’s expectations and posted weak guidance for the current quarter.
Here’s how the company did versus LSEG estimates:
Loss: Loss of .42 euros vs earnings of 1.90 euros per share expected
Revenue: 4.19 billion euros vs. 4.26 billion expected
The Sweden-based music platform’s revenues rose 10% from about 3.81 billion euros in the year-ago period. The company posted a net loss of 86 million euros, or a loss of .42 euros per share, down from net income of 225 million euros, or 1.10 euros per share a year ago.
Third-quarter guidance came up short of Wall Street’s forecast.
The company expects revenues to reach 4.2 billion euros, compared to a 4.47 billion euro estimate from StreetAccount. Spotify said the forecast accounts for a 490-basis-point headwind due to foreign exchange rates.
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Monthly active users on the platform jumped 11% to 696 million, while paying subscribers rose 12% from a year ago to 276 million.
For the current quarter, Spotify said it expects to reach 710 million monthly active users, with 14 million net adds. The company expects 5 million net new premium subscribers in the third quarter to reach 281 million subscriptions.
During the period, Spotify said it rolled out a request feature for its artificial intelligence DJ. The company said engagement with the offering has roughly doubled over the last year.
In 2024, Spotify posted its first full year of profitability. Shares are up 57% this year.