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A Zoox autonomous robotaxi in San Francisco, California, US, on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Amazon‘s Zoox robotaxi unit issued a voluntary recall of its software for the second time in a month following a recent crash in San Francisco.

On May 8, an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi was turning at low speed when it was struck by an electric scooter rider after braking to yield at an intersection. The person on the scooter declined medical attention after sustaining minor injuries as a result of the collision, Zoox said.

“The Zoox vehicle was stopped at the time of contact,” the company said in a blog post. “The e-scooterist fell to the ground directly next to the vehicle. The robotaxi then began to move and stopped after completing the turn, but did not make further contact with the e-scooterist.”

Zoox said it submitted a voluntary software recall report to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Thursday.

A Zoox spokesperson said the notice should be published on the NHTSA website early next week. The recall affected 270 vehicles, the spokesperson said.

The NHTSA said in a statement it had received the recall notice and that the agency “advises road users to be cautious in the vicinity of vehicles because drivers may incorrectly predict the travel path of a cyclist or scooter rider or come to an unexpected stop.”

If an autonomous vehicle continues to move after contact with any nearby vulnerable road user, it risks causing harm or further harm. In the AV industry, General Motors-backed Cruise exited the robotaxi business after a collision in which one of its vehicles injured a pedestrian who had been struck by a human-driven car and was then rolled over by the Cruise AV.

Zoox’s May incident comes roughly two weeks after the company announced a separate voluntary software recall following a recent Las Vegas crash. In that incident, an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi collided with a passenger vehicle, resulting in minor damage to both vehicles.

The company issued a software recall for 270 of its robotaxis in order to address a defect with its automated driving system that could cause it to inaccurately predict the movement of another car, increasing the “risk of a crash.”

Amazon acquired Zoox in 2020 for more than $1 billion, announcing at the time that the deal would help bring the self-driving technology company’s “vision for autonomous ride-hailing to reality.”

While Zoox is in a testing and development stage with its AVs on public roads in the U.S., Alphabet’s Waymo is already operating commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, and is ramping up in Atlanta.

Tesla is promising it will launch its long-delayed robotaxis in Austin next month, and, if all goes well, plans to expand after that to San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Antonio, Texas.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

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Figma’s stock sinks more than 20% after last week’s IPO pop

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Figma's stock sinks more than 20% after last week's IPO pop

Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO of Figma, appears on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on July 31, 2025.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Figma shares dropped 23% on Monday, cutting into the gains the design software company posted after hitting the market last week.

The stock dropped $27.50 to $94.50 as of midday. That’s down from a close of $122 on Friday.

Figma and top stockholders sold about 37 million shares at $33 per share late Wednesday, yielding around $412 million in proceeds flowing to the company. On Thursday, its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, the stock more than tripled.

The initial reception shows a renewed appetite on Wall Street for high-growth technology companies after a historically slow stretch for initial public offerings.

Figma said in an updated IPO prospectus that it expects second-quarter revenue to increase about 40% from a year earlier. But unlike many technology companies that have gone public over the past several years, Figma has regularly posted profits.

Figma’s fully diluted valuation sits at approximately $56 billion, almost triple the amount Adobe agreed to pay in its 2022 acquisition offer. Regulators in the European Union and the U.K. opposed the deal, which the two companies called off in late 2023.

Dylan Field, Figma’s 33-year-old CEO, owns stock in the company worth more than $5 billion even after Monday’s slide.

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Amazon lays off over 100 employees in Wondery unit as part of audio business restructuring

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Amazon lays off over 100 employees in Wondery unit as part of audio business restructuring

The logo for Wondery is displayed on a smartphone in an arranged photograph taken in the Brooklyn borough of New York, U.S., on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020.

Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Amazon is laying off roughly 110 employees in its Wondery podcast division and the head of the group is leaving as part of a broader reshuffling of the company’s audio unit.

In a Monday note to staffers, Steve Boom, Amazon’s vice president of audio, Twitch and games, said the company is consolidating some Wondery units under its Audible audiobook and podcasting division. Wondery CEO Jen Sargent is also stepping down from her role, Boom said.

“These changes will not only better align our teams as they work to take advantage of the strategic opportunities ahead but, even more crucially, will ensure we have the right structure in place to deliver the very best experience to creators, customers and advertisers,” Boom wrote in the memo, which was viewed by CNBC. “Unfortunately, these changes also include some role reductions, and we have notified those employees this morning.”

Bloomberg was first to report on the job cuts.

The move comes nearly five years after Amazon acquired Wondery as part of a push to expand its catalog of original audio content. The podcasting company made a name for itself with hit shows like “Dirty John” and “Dr. Death.”

More recently, Wondery signed several lucrative licensing deals with Jason and Travis Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast, along with Dax Shepard’s “Armchair Expert.”

Amazon is streamlining “how Wondery further integrates” into the company by separating the teams that oversee its narrative podcasts from those developing “creator-led shows,” Boom wrote.

The narrative podcasting unit will consolidate under Audible, and creator-led content will move to a new unit within Boom’s organization in Amazon called “creator services,” he wrote.

Amazon’s audio pursuits face a heightened challenge from the growing popularity of video podcasts on Alphabet‘s YouTube, which now hosts an increasing number of shows.

Video shows require different discovery, growth and monetization strategies than “audio-first, narrative series,” Boom wrote in the memo to Amazon staffers.

“The podcast landscape has evolved significantly over the past few years,” Boom said.

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Baidu plans to expand its robotaxis to Europe with Lyft deal

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Baidu plans to expand its robotaxis to Europe with Lyft deal

Cheng Xin | Getty Images

Baidu will bring its driverless taxis to Europe next year via a partnership with U.S. ridehailing firm Lyft, as the Chinese tech giant looks to expand its autonomous vehicles globally.

The robotaxis will initially be deployed in the U.K. and Germany from 2026 with the aim to have “thousands” of vehicles across Europe in the “following years,” the two companies said.

Lyft has had very little presence in Europe until last week when it closed the acquisition of Germany-based ride hailing company FreeNow, which is available in over 150 cities across nine countries, including Ireland, the U.K., Germany and France.

Deployment of the autonomous cars is “pending regulatory approval,” Lyft and Baidu said in a Monday statement. It’s unclear if Lyft will offer Baidu’s robotaxis via the FreeNow app or another product.

The partnership marks a continued push from Baidu to expand its robotaxis to international markets.

Last month, Baidu partnered with Uber to deploy its autonomous cars on the ride-hailing giant’s platform outside the U.S. and mainland China, with a focus on the Middle East and Asia, which will launch later this year. The partnership also covers Europe, though a launch date for the region has not yet been disclosed.

In China, Baidu has been operating its own robotaxi service since 2021 in major cities like Beijing, allowing users to hail an Apollo Go car through the app. Meanwhile, for Lyft, the deal could boost the firm’s presence in the region as it looks to take on rivals like Uber and Bolt.

Autonomous vehicles have become a big focus for ride-hailing companies which have looked to partner with companies that are developing the technology for driverless cars.

In the U.K., a market that Lyft is targeting, Uber this year partnered with self-driving car technology firm Wayve to launch trials of fully autonomous rides starting in spring 2026.

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