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.
Business & Tech SF-Based AI Company Anthropic Sued by Music Publishers for Using Pop Stars’ Copyrighted Work Universal Music and a ton of other music publishers have filed a lawsuit against the up-and-coming SF AI company Anthropic, alleging that its chatbot is spitting out copyrighted lyrics to their top artists’ work.
SF News Mid-Market Luxury Apartment Tower NEMA, a Symbol of Last Tech Boom, Faces Foreclosure A decade ago we were cringing in horror over the douchey marketing video for a luxury apartment tower that went up next door to the building we used to call the Twitter Building. Now, it's facing foreclosure.
Business & Tech United Airlines to Start Boarding People With Window Seats First, Aisle Seats Last Hallelujah! United Airlines is soon going to implement a new boarding procedure that it previously tested at a handful of airports, boarding economy passengers with window seats first in order to cut down on boarding time.
Business & Tech Feds Now Investigating Cruise Self-Driving Robotaxis Over Their Behavior Around Pedestrians The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened a probe into an unknown number of incidents where Cruise robotaxis allegedly encroached on pedestrians, in the wake of one SF Cruise car running over a hit-and-run victim.
Business & Tech LinkedIn Lets Go of Hundreds More Employees In New Round of Layoffs Following two earlier layoff rounds that occurred this year, Bay Area-based LinkedIn announced Monday that it is slashing 668 more jobs, or 3% of its workforce.
Business & Tech Cruise Announces Software Updates to Its AVs In Response to Emergency Situations After a number of concerning incidents involving its autonomous vehicles getting in the way of fire engines and ambulances, Cruise announced a set of software improvements Thursday aimed at "minimizing operational impact" for emergency responders.
Business & Tech As Misinformation About Israel-Hamas War Proliferates, EU Threatens X/Twitter With Fines The European Union's digital enforcer has sent an urgent letter to Elon Musk about the proliferation of misinformation on X regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict, "reminding" Musk of the company's obligations under the EU's Digital Services Act, and CEO Linda Yaccarino has replied.
Business & Tech Google Is Opening a Visitors' Center at Its New Campus In Mountain View for Tech Tourists Fans of the Google brand and mythology, as well as the architecturally curious, will be able to check out a new visitors' center at the company's "Gradient Canopy" office complex in Mountain View starting next week.
Business & Tech Starbucks Is Closing Seven Downtown San Francisco Locations on October 22 The 59 Starbucks locations in San Francisco will be trimmed down later this month, with Starbucks telling managers that they are permanently closing seven SF stores on October 22, adding to the city's vacancy woes.
Business & Tech Driver Strikes Pedestrian Near Fifth and Market; Cruise Car Subsequently Runs Her Over and Stops On Top Of Her A pedestrian collision Monday night is likely to provide more fodder for the debate over autonomous vehicles and how they react to certain uncommon situations — and it has Cruise once again in aggressive defense mode.
SF News Historic Warfield Building Moves Forward Toward Residential Conversion; Eight Other Downtown Buildings Could Follow While we still may be years out before we see lots of residential units hit the market in former downtown office buildings, at least eight landlords of downtown buildings are putting out feelers about converting — and the developer behind 100 Van Ness is eyeing a big building on Spear Street.
Business & Tech Veritas Investments May Have Found a Buyer for Its Defaulted Loan Portfolio, and It’s an Ex-Westfield Mall Owner A new buyer has emerged for the nearly $1 billion in defaulted properties for the city’s biggest residential landlord Veritas Investments, and its Brookfield Properties, a partner that just walked away from the Westfield Centre shopping mall.
SF Politics Elon Musk Claims He’ll Spend $100,000 to Beat Dean Preston In 2024 Election Is it a blessing or a curse when perhaps the most widely loathed and cartoonish CEO in tech vows he’ll spend $100,000 to defeat you in an election? Supervisor Dean Preston will find out, as Elon Musk claimed in a tweet that he’ll pledge a hundred grand to beat the District 5 supervisor.
SF News Welp, at Least One Dreamforce Attendee Was Accosted By a Mentally Ill Person A week after Dreamforce ended, we thought, without a hitch and without any report of an unpleasant street incident, we now get a report of one such incident in which an attendee was assaulted and knocked to the ground by an unhinged suspect.
Business & Tech Cruise CEO Says SF ‘Should Be Rolling Out the Red Carpet’ for Robotaxis in TechCrunch Disrupt Interview In his first major public interview since the DMV cut their San Francisco fleet in half, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said “we cannot expect perfection” from the self-driving cars, and acknowledged a possibility they could leave town if regulators curtail them any further.
Business & Tech SF-Based Instacart Goes Public In First Big Tech IPO In Two Years Instacart had its initial public offering today, landing on the NASDAQ exchange under the stock symbol "CART." The IPO raised $660 million, with shares popping 43% in initial trading, temporarily giving the company a valuation of $14 billion.
SF News Day Around the Bay: Twitter (X) May Start Charging Everyone Elon Musk says X may have to start charging everyone to use it, to combat bots; the CEO of Square is stepping down after that huge outage; and SF's Turtle Tower restaurant has closed after 23 years.
Business & Tech Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu Has Friendly Live Chat With Elon Musk About AI, Antisemitism, and Judicial Power Embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew overnight to San Francisco to have a public conversation with Elon Musk Monday morning about multiple subjects, including AI, antisemitism on Twitter/X, and the power of courts in a functioning democracy.
SF Politics Benioff Praises City Cleanup For Dreamforce, Asks Why It Can't Be Like This Every Day Apparently Dreamforce went well this week, and city efforts to clean up the area around the Moscone Center so that conventioneers didn't have to step over bodies or needles were a success.
Business & Tech Biden Administration Seeks Supreme Court Intervention In Case About Twitter 'Censorship' Brought By Republicans The Biden Administration has filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court Thursday regarding a ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that pertains to government officials contacting social media platforms.
Business & Tech Tech Bigwigs Zuckerberg, Musk, Altman and Others Hold Private Meeting With Congress on Regulating AI In what seems like inviting the foxes to a forum on henhouse safety, the biggest names in AI held a secret meeting in Washington, D.C. yesterday to advise Senate leaders on how to regulate the fast-growing AI industry.
Business & Tech Feds’ Blockbuster Antitrust Suit Against Google Is Underway, Could (Maybe) Break Up Google As We Know It In what is likely the most significant tech trial of the modern internet era, the U.S. Department of Justice is arguing that Google has grown into an “illegal monopoly” for search and internet ad sales that ought to be broken up.
SF News American Eagle Sues Westfield Mall, Saying Ownership Let the Place ‘Deteriorate Into Disarray’ A new wrinkle in the Westfield Centre drama, as large tenant American Eagle Outfitters just filed a lawsuit saying Westfield management abandoned any attempt at security and allowed the place to go to hell in a handbasket.
