Business & Tech Musk's X Sues Media Matters Over Article Regarding Hate Speech and Ads Elon Musk is extremely mad at Media Matters, a nonprofit watchdog group that has been calling out hate speech on X/Twitter, and now he's filed a lawsuit against them.
Business & Tech Sam Altman and Other Key Players at OpenAI Head to Microsoft as OpenAI Hires Former Twitch Guy Whatever professional or interpersonal drama is underpinning the chaotic last few days at OpenAI, it sounds like the company's board might regret the mess they created by abruptly firing CEO Sam Altman on Friday, and an employee revolt at the company is ongoing.
SF News Monday Morning Headlines: CEO of Cruise Resigns After Robotaxi Recall Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt has resigned after that recall of the company's robotaxis; a food truck worker in Oakland was shot after being robbed; and Thanksgiving week is expected to be extra busy at SFO.
Business & Tech OpenAI Board Fires Sam Altman For Reasons Unclear The board of OpenAI, one of the leading players in the currently booming artificial intelligence sector, just fired its celebrity CEO, Sam Altman, and we may not know the complete story behind this for some time.
Business & Tech Elon Musk Puts X/Twitter In Jeopardy Again With One Antisemitic Tweet Elon Musk can't help himself when it comes to tweeting, and his opinions on many matters are gross and/or deeply misguided, and thus him owning Twitter and taking all the guardrails off it has come back to bite him yet again.
Business & Tech New 71-Story Tower Proposed for Howard and First Streets, Would Be City’s Third-Tallest Building Plans have been submitted for what would be the third-tallest building in San Francisco if completed, a 71-story tower at 530 Howard Street that would utilize a new state law to bypass SF Board of Supervisors approval.
Business & Tech Men Behind Latest Sports Gambling Ballot Initiative Revealed to Be Crypto Guy, High-Stakes Poker Guy Two dudes who sold an online gaming platform to a Nevada casino giant believe that they have the winning formula for a ballot measure that legalizes sports betting at tribal casinos in California, and they say they're willing the bankroll the whole thing.
Business & Tech Will Trump Get Back on Twitter/X? Truth Social Close to Kaput, Accountants Say The prospect of Donald Trump tweeting again, with all his incoherently capitalized words and not-very-veiled threats against anyone and everyone, is getting closer to becoming a reality.
Business & Tech Andreessen Horowitz Partner Has Wedding at Natural Landmark, Infuriates Locals By Leaving It Trashed A Labor Day weekend wedding ceremony between a Silicon Valley bigwig and a former Miss Ireland has residents of a rural Utah town up in arms, after the area was left trashed, and the couple allegedly misrepresented their event when applying for a permit.
Business & Tech Exclusive: Warren Buffett’s $53 Million Glide ‘Power of One’ Lunch Auction Taken On By Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff The annual Glide auction for lunch with Warren Buffett will now be an auction for lunch with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, as Benioff is taking over the annual charity auction that has fed San Francisco’s neediest residents to the tune of $53 million.
SF News Cruise Recalling Self-Driving Robotaxis Nationwide, Amidst Report Vehicles Had Safety Issues Around Children While the recall appears temporary, Cruise is pulling all of its 950 self-driving robotaxis from the streets, and a separate report shows Cruise internal communications acknowledged safety issues around children and holes in roads.
Business & Tech Dreamforce Is Indeed Returning to SF in 2024, Despite Marc Benioff’s Threat to Move Conference Elsewhere Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff will not move his company's Dreamforce mega-conference to Las Vegas or Austin or wherever, despite his own threats that he might, as he announced today that Dreamforce 2024 will remain right here in SF.
Business & Tech AI Engineers Convinced They Can Fix SF’s Problems at Hackathon This weekend saw more than a hundred AI programmers and engineers meet up to “build AI solutions to the most pressing challenges in San Francisco,” at a Fort Mason hackathon that hoped to move fast and break bureaucracy.
Business & Tech Moped-Sharing Service Revel is Pulling Its Mopeds From San Francisco November 18 will be the last day you can ride one of those blue Revel rental mopeds, as the company is discontinuing moped service in SF and New York City, but they’re staying in business and pivoting to some sort of EV charging model concept.
Business & Tech FiDi 24-Hour Fitness and McDonald’s Both Announce Closures Amidst Record Office Vacancy Two Financial District chain retail businesses less than 500 feet from one another — both of which opened in 1994 — have announced their closures: a McDonald's and a 24-Hour Fitness, both shutting down due to the district’s offices being emptied out.
Business & Tech Biden Administration Issues Executive Order on AI Safety Requiring Testing of New Tools As has been expected for months, the Biden Administration on Monday issued an executive order laying out standards and basic regulations for safety and security around artificial intelligence.
Business & Tech One Year Into the Musk Era, Twitter/X Has Fewer Users, Fewer Advertisers, Less Clout Whatever Elon Musk's ultimate vision for the platform he and almost no one else calls X may be, it is still slow to take shape, and one year into his tenure at the company, the results of his leadership aren't great.
Business & Tech Downtown Tech Office Shuts Down Its Free Cocktail Bar For Employees, CEO Says 'The Office Is Dead' An experiment in 2020s incentivizing the workplace as a dot-com-era adult playground where work also occurs has ended with a whimper in downtown SF. Tech company Expensify is shutting down its bar, which it opened earlier this year, after six months.
SF News Cruise Suspends All Driverless Operations In Multiple Cities Following CA DMV Suspension GM-owned Cruise is hitting the pause button on all of its driverless taxi operations in order to "rebuild public trust," the company says, a move that comes two days after the California DMV ordered the company to cease operating its vehicles in San Francisco without a driver present.
Business & Tech Two of SF's Largest Hotels Head Toward Receivership, Will Have a Year to Find Buyer Two enormous hotels in downtown SF, the Hilton San Francisco Union Square and the Parc 55, will likely be bought up by a new owner or owners within a year, and they are now set to go into receivership shortly.
Business & Tech California DMV Suspends Cruise Robotaxis From Operating In SF, Indefinitely One of the two companies operating driverless taxis in San Francisco will no longer be able to do so, after the DMV has suspended their permit allowing them to take passengers without a test driver present.
Business & Tech Microsoft Trying to Dump Office Space at SF’s ‘Trump Tower,’ 555 California Not even a month after Microsoft announced they opened an “AI Co-Innovation Lab” at 555 California, the tech giant is now trying to lease off the space at the building that is, infamously, partially owned by Donald Trump.
SF News SF Woman Details Airbnb Nightmare of $300,000 In Water Damage by Guests In Viral Social Media Post That $3 million in damage protection that Airbnb offers hosts isn’t all it's cracked up to be, according to a viral Twitter thread of an SF Airbnb host, who says the short-term rental company is leaving her on the hook for hundreds of thousands in damages.
Business & Tech San Ramon-Based Chevron Buys Up Smaller Rival Hess for $53 Billion A big merger in Big Oil has Bay Area connections, as San Ramon’s Chevron just announced they’re acquiring a smaller rival called Hess Corp., reaping the gains of record profits generated by high gas prices.
Business & Tech Jon Stewart Is Leaving His AppleTV+ Show, May Be Butting Heads With Apple Over China Coverage There’s a problem with ‘The Problem With Jon Stewart,’ which won’t be returning for a third season because of its handling of controversial topics, and there's industry speculation that Apple doesn’t want Stewart angering the Chinese market.
