A Waymo rider-only robotaxi is seen during a test ride in San Francisco, California, U.S., December 9, 2022.
Paresh Dave | Reuters
Waymo has filed a voluntary recall notice with federal vehicle safety regulators for software that was previously used in their driverless cars, the company announced Tuesday, marking a first for Alphabet‘s self-driving vehicle unit.
In a company blog post Tuesday, Waymo said the company chose to do the voluntary recall after consulting with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and its internal review of two incidents which took place in Phoenix on Dec. 11, 2023, in which two robotaxis crashed into the same towed pickup truck within minutes of each other.
The NHTSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two collisions involving their robotaxis resulted in only minor vehicle damage and no injuries, Waymo said in the post. No passengers were in the vehicles, according to the post.
Waymo spokesperson Katherine Barna said Waymo’s automated driving system, or ADS, incorrectly predicted the “future motion of a towed vehicle,” and the company’s voluntary recall included updating its software to address this issue. The company updated the software when the cars were returned to Waymo depots for regular maintenance and recharging, not over-the-air or through remote software updates, Barna added.
The software updates were completed by Jan. 12 and did not interrupt Waymo’s ride-hailing service, Barna said.
Waymo currently operates its driverless ride-hailing service Waymo One in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin. The company has approximately 700 vehicles total in the Waymo One fleet, with a couple hundred cars in each of its fully autonomous Waymo One service areas, Barna stated.
In recent months, some public backlash has arisen over driverless vehicles and how they are being tested and rolled out on public roads, following collisions and concerns over the impact of automation on drivers’ jobs.
Waymo has generally faced the least of public criticism, owing in part to its public affairs communications with agencies like NHTSA and local first responders. Waymo says it has driven 10 million fully autonomous miles and served over one million ride-hail trips.
However, in the fourth-quarter of 2023, the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended the deployment and testing permits it had previously issued to Waymo competitor Cruise, which is owned by GM.
The revocation of those licenses followed an Oct. 2, 2023 incident in which a pedestrian in San Francisco was dragged 20 feet by a Cruise robotaxi after first being struck by a separate, human-driven vehicle.
Another would-be Waymo competitor, Tesla, has yet to deliver an automated driving system (ADS) or robotaxi although CEO Elon Musk promised that a self-driving Tesla would be able to navigate across the U.S. without any human interventions by the end of 2017. Instead, Tesla sells advanced driver assistance systems that it markets as “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” options.
The California DMV has filed formal accusations against Tesla saying that the company’s marketing and advertising is deceptive.
Last week, a driverless Waymo car collided with a cyclist in San Francisco, causing minor injuries and the incident is now being reviewed by the state’s auto regulator.
In a separate incident, unknown parties set a Waymo vehicle ablaze on Saturday in San Francisco’s Chinatown during Lunar New Year celebrations. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the destruction of the Waymo car. Authorities are investigating who the responsible parties are, according to reports by NBC Bay Area.
Founded in 2022, ElevenLabs is an AI voice generation startup based in London. It competes with the likes of Speechmatics and Hume AI.
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LONDON — ElevenLabs, a London-based startup that specializes in generating synthetic voices through artificial intelligence, has revealed plans to be IPO-ready within five years.
The company told CNBC it is targeting major global expansion as it prepares for an initial public offering.
“We expect to build more hubs in Europe, Asia and South America, and just keep scaling,” Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs’ CEO and co-founder, told CNBC in an interview at the firm’s London office.
He identified Paris, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico as potential new locations. London is currently ElevenLabs’ biggest office, followed by New York, Warsaw, San Francisco, Japan, India and Bangalore.
Staniszewski said the eventual aim is to get the company ready for an IPO in the next five years.
“From a commercial standpoint, we would like to be ready for an IPO in that time,” he said. “If the market is right, we would like to create a public company … that’s going to be here for the next generation.”
Undecided on location
Founded in 2022 by Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski, ElevenLabs is an AI voice generation startup that competes with the likes of Speechmatics and Hume AI.
The company divides its business into three main camps: consumer-facing voice assistants, integrations with corporates such as Cisco, and tailor-made applications for specific industries like health care.
Staniszewski said the firm hasn’t yet decided where it could list, but that this decision will largely rest on where most of its users are located at the time.
“If the U.K. is able to start accelerating,” ElevenLabs will consider London as a listing destination, Staniszewski said.
The city has faced criticisms from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists that its stock market is unfavorable toward high-growth tech firms.
Meanwhile, British money transfer firm Wiselast month said it plans to move its primary listing location to the U.S.,
Fundraising plans
ElevenLabs was valued at $3.3 billion following a recent $180 million funding round. The company is backed by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and ICONIQ Growth, as well as corporate names like Salesforce and Deutsche Telekom.
Staniszewski said his startup was open to raising more money from VCs, but it would depend on whether it sees a valid business need, like scaling further in other markets. “The way we try to raise is very much like, if there’s a bet we want to take, to accelerate that bet [we will] take the money,” he said.
Synopsys logo is seen displayed on a smartphone with the flag of China in the background.
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The U.S. government has rescinded its export restrictions on chip design software to China, U.S.-based Synopsys announced Thursday.
“Synopsys is working to restore access to the recently restricted products in China,” it said in a statement.
The U.S. had reportedly told several chip design software companies, including Synopsys, in May that they were required to obtain licenses before exporting goods, such as software and chemicals for semiconductors, to China.
The U.S. Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.
The news comes after China signaled last week that they are making progress on a trade truce with the U.S. and confirmed conditional agreements to resume some exchanges of rare earths and advanced technology.
The Datadog stand is being displayed on day one of the AWS Summit Seoul 2024 at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Center in Seoul, South Korea, on May 16, 2024.
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Datadog shares were up 10% in extended trading on Wednesday after S&P Global said the monitoring software provider will replace Juniper Networks in the S&P 500 U.S. stock index.
S&P Global is making the change effective before the beginning of trading on July 9, according to a statement.
Computer server maker Hewlett Packard Enterprise, also a constituent of the index, said earlier on Wednesday that it had completed its acquisition of Juniper, which makes data center networking hardware. HPE disclosed in a filing that it paid $13.4 billion to Juniper shareholders.
Over the weekend, the two companies reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, which had sued in opposition to the deal. As part of the settlement, HPE agreed to divest its global Instant On campus and branch business.
While tech already makes up an outsized portion of the S&P 500, the index has has been continuously lifting its exposure as the industry expands into more areas of society.
Stocks often rally when they’re added to a major index, as fund managers need to rebalance their portfolios to reflect the changes.
New York-based Datadog went public in 2019. The company generated $24.6 million in net income on $761.6 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2025, according to a statement. Competitors include Cisco, which bought Splunk last year, as well as Elastic and cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.
Datadog has underperformed the broader tech sector so far this year. The stock was down 5.5% as of Wednesday’s close, while the Nasdaq was up 5.6%. Still, with a market cap of $46.6 billion, Datadog’s valuation is significantly higher than the median for that index.