Blackouts Take Waymo Out

What It Covers

Waymo robotaxis stall during San Francisco blackouts, Larry Ellison backs Paramount's Warner Brothers Discovery bid with forty billion dollar personal guarantee, Google's TPU chips challenge NVIDIA's GPU dominance in AI infrastructure market.

Key Questions Answered

• •Autonomous vehicle limitations: Waymo suspended robotaxi service during San Francisco power outages affecting 130,000 customers because vehicles treated nonfunctioning traffic signals as four-way stops, causing extended stationary periods that created traffic congestion beyond normal operational parameters.
• •Corporate acquisition financing: Larry Ellison provides irrevocable personal guarantee of forty billion dollars through blind trust containing 1.2 billion Oracle shares to backstop Paramount's 108 billion dollar enterprise value bid for Warner Brothers Discovery after board questioned funding commitment.
• •Dynamic pricing backlash: Instacart immediately ends all item price testing after Consumer Reports reveals 437 shoppers saw thirteen percent average price differences for identical items, with some variations reaching twenty-three percent, prompting sixty million dollar FTC settlement.
• •AI chip competition dynamics: Google trains Gemini 3 exclusively on TPUs and sells chips to Meta, challenging NVIDIA's dominance, but NVIDIA maintains advantages through locked packaging capacity, volume economics, and established CUDA ecosystem that extends beyond raw performance benchmarks.