Waymo, the robotaxi unit owned by Alphabet, has crossed 450,000 weekly paid rides, according to a letter from investor Tiger Global viewed by CNBC.

That’s almost double the milestone it hit in April, when Waymo reported 250,000 paid robotaxi rides a week in the U.S.

“Waymo is the clear leader in autonomous driving, recently surpassing 450k trips per week with a product that is 10x safer than human drivers,” Tiger Global wrote in a letter to investors announcing the launch of a new fund.

Tiger’s 450,000-ride estimate is based on publicly available data. Waymo is one of the largest positions in Tiger’s 2024 fund.

Waymo declined to comment.

This year, Waymo has also announced a slew of expansions, including its debut on freeways in three cities, and autonomous driving in cities including Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando.

The latest milestone is also another sign that Waymo is continuing to push ahead of aspiring self-driving competitor Tesla, which has run limited pilots in Austin and operates a ride-hailing service in the Bay Area.

Tesla vehicles include human drivers or safety supervisors on board and are not driverless like Waymo’s fleet vehicles.

According to Tesla’s latest earnings call, executives said the company hit a quarter of a million miles with its fleet in Austin, and more than one million in the Bay Area. In July, Waymo announced 100 million total fully autonomous miles.

CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this article.

Apple chip leader Johny Srouji addressed rumors of his impending exit in a memo to staff on Monday, saying he doesn’t plan on leaving the company anytime soon.

“I love my team, and I love my job at Apple, and I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon,” he wrote.

Bloomberg reported on Saturday that Srouji had told CEO Tim Cook that he was considering leaving, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

Srouji is seen as one of the most important executives at the company and he’s been in charge of the company’s hardware technologies team that includes chip development. At Apple since 2008, he has led teams that created the M-series chips used in Macs and the A-series chips at the heart of iPhones.

The memo confirming that he plans to stay at Apple comes as the company has seen several high-profile executive exits in the past weeks, raising questions about the stability of Apple’s top leadership.

In addition to developing the chips that enabled Apple to drop Intel from its laptops and desktops, in recent years Srouji’s teams have developed a cellular modem that will replace Qualcomm’s modems in most iPhones.

Srouji frequently presents at Apple product launches.

“I know you’ve been reading all kind of rumors and speculations about my future at Apple, and I feel that you need to hear from me directly,” Srouji wrote in the memo. “I am proud of the amazing Technologies we all build across Displays, Cameras, Sensors, Silicon, Batteries, and a very wide set of technologies, across all of Apple Products.”

Last week, Apple announced that its head of artificial intelligence, John Giannandrea, was stepping down.

Two days later, the company announced the departure of Alan Dye, the head of user interface design. Dye, who was behind the “Liquid Glass” redesign, is joining Meta.

A day after Dye’s departure, Apple announced the retirement of general counsel Kate Adams and vice president for environment, policy, and social initiatives Lisa Jackson. Both Adams and Jackson reported directly to Cook.

Apple’s chief operating officer, Jeff Williams, retired this fall.

Tiger Global Management announced Monday the launch of its latest venture capital fund, Private Investment Partners 17, according to a letter to investors viewed by CNBC.

Tiger is targeting a raise of $2.2 billion for the fund, according to a person familiar with the firm’s strategy who declined to be named in order to discuss internal matters.

The hedge fund wrote that it’s expecting PIP 17 to be similar in “strategy, size and construction” to its earliest vintages and its most recent, PIP 16, which targeted $6 billion but ultimately closed at $2.2 billion.

The largest positions in PIP 16 are OpenAI and Waymo, stakes that have helped performance rebound. In a call with investors, Tiger said that PIP 16 is up 33% year-to-date, while PIP 15 is up 16%.

Compared to the megafunds of the early 2020s, the latest raise target signals a pivot to a more disciplined strategy for Tiger Global.

The firm was one of the biggest forces in the startup ecosystem over the last half-decade, but has seen heavy markdowns and slower deployment in the last few years.

In 2021, the heyday of its “spray and pray” approach, it led 212 rounds, according to Crunchbase data. This year, it made just nine new private investments.

Tiger first invested in OpenAI in 2021 at a valuation of less than $16 billion and in Waymo that same year at $39 billion.

The Tiger Global letter and audio of the investor call obtained by CNBC also signal some concerns about the potential for a bubble in artificial intelligence.

“[V]aluations are elevated, and, in our view, at times unsupported by company fundamentals,” the firm wrote in the letter. “We also recognize the importance of approaching a technological shift of this magnitude with some humility.”

The strategy that founder Chase Coleman laid out is to prune aggressively and reinforce its biggest winners.

Tiger says it has sold more than 85 companies from PIP 15, generating over $1 billion in proceeds.

That money can now be recycled into follow-in investments for companies it considers winners.

Some of the names Tiger said it would concentrate on include Revolut, a digital banking startup, and ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.

Other companies Tiger is focusing on include police tech company Flock Safety, EV company Harbinger, e-commerce startup Rokt, freight company Cargomatic, and stablecoin startup BVNK, the investor presentation showed.