• Markets: Stocks zoomed to their best day in a month after Federal Reserve Gov. Christopher Waller suggested he could vote to hold interest rates steady at this month’s meeting. Meanwhile, Campbell’s dipped after the struggling soupmaker said it was cutting 13% of its workforce.

SHINY NEW THING

Jay Janner/Getty Images

Tesla CEO Elon Musk promised nearly a decade ago that his everyday electric vehicles were on the verge of driverless capabilities. So far, no dice, but yesterday in Austin, Texas, his company introduced the vehicle that might mark another step in that direction.

Hello, Cybercab:

• Tesla’s purpose-built robotaxi is a matte gold, steering-wheel-free, pedal-less two-seater with butterfly doors—a design that was initially unveiled two years ago.
• Musk said at the event that Cybercab’s cost “is probably going to be around 20 cents a mile. And the price, including taxes and everything else, probably ends up being 30 or 40 cents a mile. And you will be able to buy one.” The vehicle isn’t available for purchase yet.

Yesterday’s launch event signified the Cybercab’s official addition to Tesla’s robotaxi fleet, which otherwise consists of Model Ys. Growing that bunch of unsupervised (aka fully autonomous) vehicles is “key for the stock to outperform through year-end,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote ahead of the event.

It’s also key for Tesla’s long-term future

In its broader ambitions to refocus its business around self-driving cars and robotics, Tesla hopes to overtake Waymo as the king of the driverless hill.

It’s fighting that battle at a steep incline:

• Waymo’s ~4,000 driverless vehicles operate in 14 US cities, making it the largest fleet of self-driving cars in the country.
• Tesla’s robotaxi business, which operates in Florida and Texas (with Arizona and Nevada coming soon), “has been extraordinarily difficult to nail down,” per The Verge. Tallies vary, but one tracker pegs Tesla’s fleet of unsupervised cabs at ~200.

“Longer term, the software is the most important piece,” a senior Morningstar analyst wrote about Tesla ahead of the Cybercab launch. Tesla’s Full Self-Driving product relies on cameras, while Waymos use a costlier trio of lidar, radar, and cameras. Some Tesla engineers previously worried that without sensors, Tesla’s self-driving system could get thrown off by camera-obscuring weather.

Regardless of Wall Street’s reaction to Cybercab, Tesla still has to win over the public. Its driver-assist systems have been linked to thousands of crashes and dozens of deaths. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is currently investigating the EV-maker over potential automated driving defects, and said yesterday that it was “in contact with Tesla and is evaluating the situation” with Cybercab, as it’s hit the road in Austin without features the agency typically requires.—ML

      

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World

Tour de headlines

Thomas Fuller/Getty Images

🤖 OpenAI rolled out its latest model, GPT-6 Astra. “Welcome to the AGI era,” OpenAI President Greg Brockman told reporters yesterday, referring to artificial general intelligence, aka AI that can outperform humans at most tasks. According to the company, Astra is its fastest and most accurate model yet—and also its most powerful in cybersecurity. For that reason, OpenAI is initially rolling it out only to users in its Daybreak program, before launching a version with additional safeguards for paid subscribers. The release comes amid growing concern with AI’s cybersecurity capabilities, after two OpenAI models escaped their sandbox to hack Hugging Face servers.—AE

🔌 Several chatbots went down in a major outage. If you’re an office worker using AI to process invoices or a college freshman using it to write your Animal Behavior essay, you may have hit a roadblock yesterday. Most major chatbots—including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and SpaceX’s Grok—were down for many users to varying degrees yesterday. It’s unclear what caused the outages, but Mashable noted that it’s unusual for several AI services to go down at the same time. Service had been restored to all of the chatbots as of yesterday afternoon.—AE

🇳🇵 Two trapped workers rescued alive from hydropower tunnel in Nepal. Two men identified as a mechanical foreman and a mechanical supervisor were rescued Friday morning local time from the Trishuli 3A hydropower project, according to officials, nine days after deadly flooding struck the Himalayan region and left thousands of people dead or missing. A spokesperson for the Nepalese army said one of the rescued workers said more people were still alive inside the tunnel. The two men were flown to a hospital in Kathmandu. One of them is in critical condition. Rescue efforts remain ongoing.—HVL

HUGGING FACE VALUE

Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images

Nvidia is putting Hugging Face in a tight corporate embrace: The AI chip giant said yesterday that it’s buying the platform housing open-source AI models for $12.9303 billion—a price tag derived from the emoji identification number for 🤗 (really).

What’s in it for Nvidia? The chipmaker gets control of the go-to platform that millions of developers use to share, run, and tweak 3 million AI models available for free:

• Analysts say Nvidia can now mold Hugging Face’s offerings to run on its chips, though the company said it won’t require developers to use its hardware.
• It could bundle access to its chips’ computing power with services offered on the platform, according to TechCrunch.

The deal comes as some AI labs are developing their own chips to rival Nvidia’s main product.

Banking on open-source

Unlike the proprietary models from Nvidia customers OpenAI and Anthropic, Hugging Face’s models can be modified by anyone.

Nvidia has previously argued that without open-source AI, a handful of labs will have monopolistic control of the technology. Meanwhile, some in Silicon Valley worry American AI models are losing ground to popular Chinese open-source models—which are cheaper to run. Hugging Face itself used a Chinese model modified by Nvidia to deflect a cyberattack from OpenAI’s rogue AI agents earlier this year.

But…some skeptics say the acquisition is the latest example of an AI circular financing deal, in which AI giants inject funding into their own customers, potentially creating a bubble.—SK

      

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AGING OUT

Niv Bavarsky

Burning Man, the annual event in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, kicked off earlier this week—and the folks biking around in goggles and gaudy costumes are a little older than they used to be. Just 10% of burners at last year’s event were in their 20s, a record low, according to the Black Rock City annual census.

Gen Z seems less charmed by the “radical inclusion” of Burning Man than previous generations. In 2015, 30% of attendees at Burning Man were in their 20s. But the younger crowd has steadily declined over the last decade, mostly because of the cost:

• A ticket has ballooned from $390 in 2015 to $550 this year as the festival has struggled to stop hemorrhaging money.
• With a vehicle pass, camping gear, fees, and food, attendees are typically looking at a minimum $1,000 trip, according to Business Insider.

It hasn’t just gotten older. John Law, one of the co-founders of Burning Man, wrote last month that the current festival has “lost its anarchist soul.” Silicon Valley elites and billionaires have been flocking to the fest, which is also probably why it’s having such a problem with Meta AI Glasses.—MM

      

Reader Poll

Dave’s sports desk

Brands and influencers are stars at the US Open

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photos: Dave Lozo

On Fridays, the Brew’s Dave Lozo looks at a sports business story that says a lot more than just the final score of a game.

NEW YORK — What do yogurt, AI for lawyers, and Coco Gauff have in common? Thousands are coming to see them at the US Open, the most brand- and influencer-friendly of the four tennis Grand Slam events:

• With rain delaying matches on the outer courts on Tuesday, poncho-laden fans partook in one of the US Open’s grandest traditions—getting free stuff from the nearly two dozen brand activation booths.
• Emily Little and her husband, Tyler, took the Denzel Washington “I’m leaving here with something” approach. They had already gathered merch along the Brand Activation Booth Mile, but needed the free Harvey.ai tote. “We have too much free stuff so now we need a bag,” she told Morning Brew.

Sponsors and giveaway booths are nothing new, but it feels like they now want something more—namely, first-party consumer data. Giving away a seat cushion, tennis racket shock absorber, or lotion is a no-brainer exchange for these companies.

Under the influence

While Arthur Ashe Stadium said goodbye to bathrooms in luxury seats, forcing the privileged to relieve themselves with the peasants, it has said hello to influencers in an attempt to attract a new audience:

• Nearly 100 content creators received received credentials that give them access nearly everywhere (except the luxury suites to do first-hand toilet journalism, as I can attest).
• The USTA hired about two dozen creators to produce content on behalf of the US Open.

Not everyone loves them: Jessica Pegula, the world’s third-ranked women’s player, appreciates that influencers can bring more eyeballs to the tournament, but said they can also be “disrespectful” when they interrupt play.—DL

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Quiz

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew’s Weekly News Quiz has been compared to catching that first twinge of autumn in the air.

It’s that satisfying. Ace the quiz.

News

What else is brewing

• Gloria Steinem, a feminist icon and leader of the women’s liberation movement, died on Wednesday. She was 92.
• Fox News parted ways with longtime anchor Maria Bartiromo. The network did not give a reason for her departure.
• Good Good ousted its CEO and president following backlash over its controversial ad with fellow golf brand Callaway.
• The Trump administration revealed a plan to strip tax-exempt status from universities that provide targeted support to minority students.
• TikTok announced that it’s adding voice comments, polls, and other features to its comment section.
• Dianna Russini violated The Athletic’s standards with her personal relationship with New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel, according to the outlet’s internal investigation.

recs

• What to know if you’re traveling for Labor Day Weekend.
• A game where you’re shown a photo and have to guess where and when it was taken.
• A working replica of a computer desktop from 1996.
• The accessory that makes soup season a breeze.**

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Play

Jigsaw: This edition of our news picture puzzle pays homage to Dolly Parton. Play the Jigsaw here.

Friday riddle

It’s a long weekend coming up, so here’s a longer riddle for you to chew on.

Five pirates—A, B, C, D, and E—discover a treasure chest containing 100 gold coins. They are ranked by seniority such that A is the most senior and E is the most junior.

Rules:

• The most senior pirate alive proposes a distribution of all 100 coins.
• All pirates, including the proposer, vote on the proposal.
• A proposal is accepted if at least half of the pirates vote in favor.
• In case of a tie, the proposer has the casting vote.
• If the proposal is rejected, the proposer is eliminated, and the next senior pirate makes a new proposal.

All pirates are perfectly rational and always prioritize survival first. After that, they try to maximize their coins, and if outcomes are equal, they prefer fewer pirates alive.

What is the maximum number of gold coins Pirate A can keep while ensuring that his proposal is accepted?

Answer

98. Here’s the solution.

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: henceforth, meaning “from this time forward or from now on.” Thanks to Cathy from Denver for the suggestion. Submit another Word of the Day here.