Los Angeles Dodgers fans celebrate in downtown Los Angeles as their team clinches another World Series title

A Los Angeles Dodgers fan stands on top of a Waymo as fans in downtown Los Angeles celebrate their team’s World Series title (Jason Armond/Getty Images)

Waymo Vehicles

Waymo to expand to Minneapolis, Tampa, and New Orleans

Waymo currently operates in five cities with plans for 20, while Tesla operates in two with named plans for seven so far.

Rani Molla

11/20/25 9:00AM

It’s been a big week for autonomous cars, and it’s only getting bigger.

Right on the heels of announcing this week that its driverless cars would be available to the public next year in five more markets — Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando — Google’s Waymo said Thursday that it’s also planning to expand to Minneapolis, Tampa, and New Orleans. It will begin manual testing there in the “coming days.”

Currently in five cities in the US, Waymo already plans to more than quadruple that number, and says there’s “more to be announced.”

The company did not provide a time frame for the most recent announced expansion, but typically Waymo follows a set of procedures in each city: it reveals that it will expand to that market, tests with — and then without — drivers, and finally opens to the public.

The time between Waymo announcing its expansion to a city and actually opening to the public in that city has been getting shorter. Most recently, Waymo became available through the Uber app in Atlanta in June, less than a year after the company said it would expand there.

Waymo’s biggest competitor, Tesla, also made some big progress this week. It got approval to launch its robotaxi service in Phoenix — one of the markets it said during its annual shareholder meeting that it was expanding to in addition to Las Vegas, Dallas, Houston, and Miami.

Currently, Tesla operates a ride-hailing service in Austin, with a safety monitor in the passenger seat, and in the Bay Area, with a driver using supervised Full Self-Driving tech. As of this week, the app is no longer invite-only in those cities but is now open to the iPhone-holding public. On the last earnings call, CEO Elon Musk said the company planned to operate in 8 to 10 markets by the end of the year.

Jon Keegan2h

OpenAI reportedly delaying erotica feature to focus on “gains in intelligence”

OpenAI is delaying its planned “Adult Mode,” as it seeks to shore up ChatGPT’s core capabilities before the chatbot can generate erotic content.

A source within OpenAI told tech news site Sources that the company will miss its Q1 target for launching the feature:

“We’re pushing out the launch of adult mode so we can focus on work that is a higher priority for more users right now, including gains in intelligence, personality improvements, personalization, and making the experience more proactive,”

The company said it still believes in “treating adults like adults,” but said it wants to get the experience right. OpenAI has been testing user age estimation technology ahead of the planned release.

Liz Reid on where Google Search ends and Gemini begins

“We’re pushing out the launch of adult mode so we can focus on work that is a higher priority for more users right now, including gains in intelligence, personality improvements, personalization, and making the experience more proactive,”

Rani Molla

Why Apple is moving into the lower-cost smartphone and laptop markets

The luxury tech maker is heading down-market.

Man taking picture of Times Square using smart phone, personal perspective view

Ads have entered the chat

Advertisers are crowding into the next digital frontier.

Rani Molla5h

Jon Keegan6h

Anthropic will sue the Pentagon over supply chain risk designation, Amodei says

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in a public post that the company will sue the Pentagon after receiving a letter from the Department of Defense officially designating Anthropic as “a supply chain risk to America’s national security.”

Amodei says that the effect of the unprecedented designation for an American company is more narrow than originally described, and that most of its customers would not be affected.

“With respect to our customers, it plainly applies only to the use of Claude by customers as a direct part of contracts with the Department of War, not all use of Claude by customers who have such contracts.”

Amodei says the company does not “believe this action is legally sound, and we see no choice but to challenge it in court.”

The CEO also apologized for statements he made in a leaked internal memo in which he claimed that the company was targeted because it didn’t show “dictator-style praise” for President Trump.

Where things stand with the Department of War

“With respect to our customers, it plainly applies only to the use of Claude by customers as a direct part of contracts with the Department of War, not all use of Claude by customers who have such contracts.”

Amodei says the company does not “believe this action is legally sound, and we see no choice but to challenge it in court.”

The CEO also apologized for statements he made in a leaked internal memo in which he claimed that the company was targeted because it didn’t show “dictator-style praise” for President Trump.

$40B💰

Rani Molla8h

SoftBank is going to great lengths to double down on OpenAI — including taking on significant debt. After completing a $40 billion investment to become one of the ChatGPT maker’s largest backers, the Japanese conglomerate is now seeking a roughly $40 billion loan with a 12-month term, Bloomberg reports.

The financing would be SoftBank’s largest-ever dollar-denominated deal. The AI investment has helped lift profits, but it is also pressuring SoftBank’s credit profile.