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Jul 18, 2025
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Uber, Lucid Motors and Nuro announced a partnership Thursday that will put 20,000 robotaxis—Lucid vehicles powered by Nuro’s self-driving technology—on Uber’s ride-hailing service over the next six years. As part of the deal, Uber will also invest hundreds of millions of dollars in both companies. The partnership is the latest in a string of deals Uber has struck to make robotaxis available on its ride-hailing service, including one already operating with Alphabet’s Waymo, and others with firms such as Baidu overseas. The arrangements are designed to protect Uber as companies like Waymo and Tesla launch their own robotaxi service, potentially undermining existing ride-hailing firms.
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OpenAI on Thursday launched features for ChatGPT subscribers to create and edit spreadsheets and presentations, generate reports and automate tasks using web browsers, confirming The Information’s earlier report about the product. The new capabilities, combined with document collaboration features OpenAI has developed but not yet released, could boost ChatGPT as an enterprise product in competition with Microsoft Office and Google Workspace. The new features, dubbed ChatGPT agent, combine previously-released
products from OpenAI such as its browser-using agent, Operator, and its research tool Deep Research, and will be able to navigate websites, filter results in databases and run code. Customers can also connect ChatGPT agent to external apps like Gmail and Github so it can pull information from, or take actions in, these apps.
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Cursor has restricted China-based users from accessing U.S. models offered by its coding assistant software, such as Claude-4-Sonnet and Gemini-2.5-Pro, according to three users. These users received notifications stating that these models had become unavailable due to location-based restrictions when they attempted to access them via Cursor’s software this week, according to screenshots seen by The Information. Users with paid memberships have the option to request a partial refund for the restricted services, according to Cursor’s website. Cursor didn’t immediately
respond to requests for comment. U.S. companies including Anthropic, Google and OpenAI have not made their close-weight models available to China, where any generative AI applications must be approved by regulators before being released to consumers. However, China-based coders were able to access these models via Cursor until the recent restrictions. Cursor also includes some China-developed models such as DeepSeek in its offering and they remain accessible by China-based coders. However, Claude and Gemini models tend to be favored by developers.
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Netflix’s business generated $11.1 billion in revenue during the second quarter of 2025, up nearly 16% from the previous year. It also posted an operating margin of 34.1%, nearly 7 percentage points higher than the same quarter last year. After surpassing 300 million global subscribers at the end of last year, Netflix stopped reporting subscriber numbers—opting instead to focus on its revenue and profit growth. The company also said its advertising business continues to grow and that it still expects to double ad revenue this year. It has also finished rolling out its own ad tech platform across all markets it offers an ad-supported tier.
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Thinking Machines Lab, the artificial intelligence startup founded by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, has raised $2 billion in funding at a $10 billion pre-investment valuation, the company said. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Nvidia, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco, AMD, Jane Street and others. The fundraising is one of the largest of its kind for a company that’s five months old. Though the company hasn’t shared much about its focus publicly, its executives have told investors that it plans to develop AI customized for
business customers’ key performance indicators, which typically relate to revenue or profit growth. TML has hired a number of prominent researchers from Murati’s former employer, including OpenAI co-founder John Schulman and researchers Barret Zoph and Luke Metz. Murati has also received an unusual level of control through the deal. Investors gave her board-voting rights that ensure she will control major decisions such as whether to accept an acquisition offer, fire senior executives and approve executive compensation, The Information has reported.
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is speeding up the construction schedule of its second and third factories in the U.S. by “several quarters,” responding to strong demand from its American customers, CEO C.C. Wei said on an earnings call on Thursday. The company in January pledged to invest $100 billion to expand its manufacturing capacity in the U.S, and its first chipmaking plant in Phoenix, Arizona began production last year. TSMC originally planned for the second facility in Phoenix to begin production in 2028, and Wei didn’t give an update on when construction of the additional plants is scheduled to complete. The Taiwanese company has planned to build six chipmaking plants and two advanced packaging facilities in the U.S. The world’s biggest chipmaker reported net income for the June quarter
rose 66% to $12.8 billion, compared to a year ago. Revenue climbed 44% to $30.07 billion during the same period. The company, which counts Apple and Nvidia as two of its biggest customers, also raised its revenue | | | |
