Good morning. And a very happy birthday to GoPro founder Nick Woodman, who turns the big 5-0.
It’s hard to describe the frenzy around GoPro during its heyday more than a decade ago. By creating a camera that pro surfers could take through a hollow barrel, Woodman tapped into an adventure-meets-mobile-devices moment that made him, briefly, the highest paid CEO in the U.S.
Today, Woodman remains chief executive (and the largest shareholder) of GoPro—though the company is now worth just $135 million, a fraction of its post-IPO peak and not quite the next Apple as some had hoped. —Andrew Nusca
P.S. In Thursday’s edition, I wrote that Tesla counted 126,000 employees last year (true)…but also 36,000 (false). The smaller figure’s attribution was meant to say Nvidia.
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Tesla robotaxi finally launches, but hiccups abound
After years of bold promises, Elon Musk’s company finally began ferrying passengers on their own without a human directly behind the wheel.
On the one hand, the day marked a historic milestone for Tesla, whose shares are set to open 1.7% higher in a flat market.
For the very first time, a manufacturer heavily reliant on hardware sales demonstrated it was on the path to becoming a company that one day could earn a substantial share of its profits from high-margin software and services.
On the other hand, it wasn’t anywhere near the “ChatGPT moment” the Tesla CEO has promised for the past two years.
Geofenced to a portion of Austin, Texas, the pilot program’s rides tended to be short. Tesla employees serving as safety monitors were seated at all times in the front passenger seat.
Participants cited unusually long wait times and far-off pickup locations in some cases.
The biggest issue, however, arose during a trip that Rob Maurer took. The former Tesla Daily podcaster was in the backseat of a Model Y when it briefly attempted to make a left turn before swerving back to its previous path.
“Obviously we’re on the wrong side of the double yellow lines here,” Maurer said. “No vehicles anywhere in sight so this wasn’t a safety issue, [but] we did get honked at by the car that was behind us.” —Christiaan Hetzner
Goldman Sachs has apparently rolled out an internal AI assistant
Goldman Sachs has reportedly rolled out a firmwide artificial intelligence assistant.
According to an internal memo obtained by Reuters, the New York investment bank aims to boost productivity with the chatbot, which relies on generative AI.
About 10,000 employees of the bank’s 46,000 or so are using the tool, according to the memo, which was written by CIO Marco Argenti.
It intends to help Goldman staffers summarize documents, draft content, and perform data analysis, the memo added.
Goldman is far from the first financial services company toying with an internal assistant as players in the category explore how to put AI to work.
Citi has a pair of such tools for searching and summarizing internal documentation; Morgan Stanley has an OpenAI-powered chatbot to augment human financial advisors.
Finance companies must tread carefully, though. Customer-facing uses are subject to far more regulatory scrutiny—around explainability, traceability, and the threat of hallucinations—than internal ones. —AN
WhatsApp is reportedly banned on some U.S. government devices
The U.S. House of Representatives has reportedly banned WhatsApp on government devices.
The chief administrative officer informed congressional staffers of the policy on Monday, according to an Axios report.
WhatsApp is owned by Facebook and Instagram parent Meta.
Unsurprisingly, the ban is concerned about leaked data. It follows similar congressional efforts with regard to services by TikTok owner ByteDance, Chinese AI upstart DeepSeek, and even OpenAI’s ChatGPT and the generative AI assistant Microsoft Copilot.
The memo described WhatsApp as “high-risk” because of its “lack of transparency” in how it protects user data, absence of “stored data encryption,” and other security concerns. (Meta disagreed.)
“House staff are NOT allowed to download or keep the WhatsApp application on any House device, including any mobile, desktop, or web browser versions of its products,” the memo reportedly reads.
The messaging apps favored by Congress, by the way? Wickr, Signal, and Apple’s iMessage, plus Apple’s FaceTime and Microsoft’s Teams. —AN
More tech
—“Mr. Musk does not use a computer.” Just a phone, according to his lawyers.
—DeepSeek gave user data to help China’s military, a senior U.S. official says.
—Fiserv to launch its own stablecoin. It’s coming by year’s end.
—Microsoft tests “aggregated” game library. Xbox, Game Pass, Battle.net, etc. in one PC app.
—Meta-Runway AI? Talks of a tie-up reportedly occurred, but never got serious.
—Custom AI based on KPIs. The value proposition of Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab comes into view.
—Super Micro seeks to raise $2 billion. The IT company will repurchase shares and fund growth efforts.
Endstop triggered
