Business & Tech

Forget the 'Crypto Bowl,' This Super Bowl Will Be Chock Full of AI Ads — Here Are Five of Them

Expect all the big players in AI to be spending lavishly on ads during the Super Bowl this year, including rivals OpenAI and Anthropic — with the latter taking not one but two swings at its bigger competitor.

Bay Area Sports

Hotels and Airbnbs Are Making Bank by Gouging Super Bowl Visitors This Week

The inevitable surge pricing is now underway as the Super Bowl tourists come pouring into SF, with some hotels up to nearly $2,500 a night, and some SF Airbnb units costing $2,000 for the weekend stay.

Business & Tech

Elon Musk Looking to Merge Highly Profitable SpaceX With Money-Losing xAI

Recurring Epstein files character Elon Musk may merge one of his most successful ventures with one of his least, and is reportedly on the verge of combining rocket company SpaceX with Bay Area-based xAI.

Business & Tech

Anthropic Signs Lease For Entire 27-Story Downtown Tower

Anthropic, the growing AI concern founded by two siblings and former OpenAI execs, had inked a deal for an entire office building at Howard and Fremont streets, marking one of the largest office deals in the city since 2019.

Business & Tech

Giant Holographic Schlong on Muni Is Actually an AI Ad, Muni Yanks It From Circulation

A real cock-up in the annals of Muni advertising, as users noted what appeared to be a holographic penis on the side of a bus, though it’s just an AI company ad that may have been approved willy-nilly.

Business & Tech

Waymo Started Taking Passengers to SFO Today

Waymos are ferrying paying customers from SF to San Francisco International Airport for the first time on Thursday, but the robocars will not be able to take you directly to the terminals, at least not yet.

Business & Tech

Amid Declining Sales, Tesla to Convert Fremont Plant Into Robot Factory

Elon Musk made a big announcement about Tesla on Wednesday, saying in an earnings call that the company would be ending production of its Model S and Model X, and converting the Fremont factory to production of the Optimus robot.

SF Politics

Gavin Newsom Cancels His Own $250 Million Deal to Save California Newspapers

Just two years after Gavin Newsom brokered a $250 million deal with Google and Meta for them to help preserve the local newspapers that their business models have destroyed, Newsom himself is now dismantling the deal.

Business & Tech

TikTok Users Claim Anti-Trump Posts Are Suddenly Being Censored, Gavin Newsom Vows Investigation

After TikTok was sold to a cabal of Trump’s buddies and donors, users say their posts criticizing ICE or mentioning the Epstein scandal are being buried with zero views, and now Gavin Newsom says the state will investigate.

Business & Tech

Google Settles Class-Action Suit Over Voice Assistant Eavesdropping For $68M

Google/Alphabet has agreed to pay $68 million to customers who used its voice assistant and whose words were unwittingly recorded and shared with advertisers.

Business & Tech

Glassdoor Ranks In-N-Out as Best Place to Work in California, Ahead of Nvidia, Google, and Facebook

We had to do a double-double take at Glassdoor’s new Best Places to Work 2026 list, as they ranked fast-food chain In-N-Out as a better place to work than the cushy, high-paid confines of Nvidia, Facebook, and Google.

Business & Tech

The Sam Altman-Elon Musk Feud Had Another Public Escalation Today

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who hasn't been afraid to publicly rebuke his former friend Elon Musk in the past, once again appeared to have had it with Elon on Tuesday.

SF Politics

‘Call a Republican’ Phone Goes Up on Valencia Street (Just Be Aware That It’s Some Startup Recording You)

A “emotional fitness community” that just got $26 million in venture capital thrown at them has installed a phone on Valencia Street that lets you “Call a Republican” in Texas, perhaps to foster unity, or perhaps just to record you.

Business & Tech

SF Parents Putting Teens and Tweens In Waymos By Themselves, Violating Company Policy

It's become common practice for busy San Francisco parents to summon Waymos for their kids, whatever the expense, to avoid having to chauffeur them everywhere, and because they're safer than Ubers or Lyfts.

Business & Tech

Man Claims Self-Driving Zoox Smashed His Hand, Zoox Claims the Guy Doored Their Vehicle

Gadzooks! A new SF self-driving car controversy, this time as a man claims one of Amazon’s Zoox self-driving cars hit his vehicle and smashed his hand, while Zoox instead insists that the man opened his door into incoming traffic.

Business & Tech

It Looks Like Elon Musk's Suit Against OpenAI Over Abandoned Nonprofit Mission Is Headed to Trial

It had seemed earlier like Elon Musk's dogged, seemingly vengeful pursuit of OpenAI, which he co-founded, over its swerve toward being a for-profit enterprise, wasn't going anywhere. But a ruling from judge on Thursday points to the parties heading to a trial sometime this year.

Business & Tech

JP Morgan Conference Goes Full Woke and DEI, Women Executives in Pink Suits Flash-Mob Union Square

The JP Morgan Healthcare Conference is back in town, and while biotech executives are 80% men, a renegade group of women executives took over Union Square in so many pink pantsuits it would have made Mary Tyler Moore proud.

Business & Tech

California Now Investigating xAI Over Grok's Non-Consensual Deepfake Imagery

Elon Musk is facing his umpteenth controversy this week as the worldwide outcry grows over the Grok chatbot's image-editing capability, which combined with X has created a tool for producing and spreading non-consensual, sexualized deepfakes and child sexual abuse material.

SF News

Vanderbilt University Is Indeed Opening an SF Campus, and It Will Be at Potrero Hill’s California College of the Arts

Get ready for Vanderbilt University San Francisco, and part of it will be called “California College of the Arts Institute at Vanderbilt,” as Vanderbilt has basically bought up the dying husk of the California College of the Arts.

Business & Tech

xAI's Grok Being Blocked, Investigated By Multiple Countries Over the Creation of Sexualized Deepfakes

Elon Musk's no-holds-barred AI chatbot Grok is again having one of its holds barred as regulators across the globe are balking at its widespread production of sexualized images, based on real images posted to X.

Business & Tech

Uber Unveils Robotaxi Design at CES In Las Vegas

Uber's line of robotaxis that are set to hit the road in San Francisco sometime later this year made their big public debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Monday.

Business & Tech

Waymos Are Parking In One- and Two-Hour Spots Around SF, and Car Owners Are Bound to Start Fuming About This

The next autonomous vehicle scandal likely to start causing some noise in the new year is this: idle Waymos parking in coveted curbside parking spaces while waiting to be hailed for their next ride.

Business & Tech

Now We Know How Hackers Reprogrammed Peninsula Crosswalks With Fake Elon Musk and Zuckerberg Messages

Palo Alto and Menlo Park crosswalks were hacked in April to play fake, satirical messages from Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Hackers were able to do this because Caltrans just never changed the default factory passwords.

SF Politics

Billionaires Going Berserk on Twitter Over Proposed California Billionaire Tax

There’s a signature drive to put a 5% “billionaire tax” on the California ballot. It has not collected even one signature, but the billionaires are freaking out on Twitter with grand tantrums saying they will leave the state en masse.

Business & Tech

Waymos Were Looking for Human Remote 'Confirmations' at Intersections During Blackout, Company Says

It took a blackout across a huge swath of San Francisco for Waymo to figure out that its robot system for handling such situations has a key weakness, which caused huge traffic problems on Saturday.