Good morning. I’m off to Singapore for our second Fortune Brainstorm AI gathering of the year.
I’m looking forward to hosting a lunch about putting generative AI to work, a conversation about the global AI chips war, a discussion about Asia’s venture landscape, a chat about the robotaxi race, a debate about AGI, and sit-downs with L.A. artist Refik Anadol and Walmart India chief Balu Chaturvedula.
I also can’t wait to hear conversations led by star colleagues Clay Chandler, Jeremy Kahn, Ellie Austin, and Nicholas Gordon. (See the complete agenda here.)
We’ll be covering what happens on Fortune.com and in this newsletter, of course. In the meantime, I’m again grateful to tech editors Alexei Oreskovic and Verne Kopytoff, plus the entire Fortune technology desk, for taking the wheel of this newsletter while I’m away.
Today’s tech news below; have a great weekend. —Andrew Nusca
Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Fortune Tech? Drop a line here.
Uber, Lucid, Nuro partner to launch 20,000 U.S. robotaxis
Uber says it will make “multi hundred million-dollar investments” in electric vehicle maker Lucid and autonomous vehicle upstart Nuro as part of a major robotaxi push in the U.S.
The trio will deploy “20,000 or more” such vehicles in the U.S. over the next six years—specifically a self-driving version of Lucid’s Gravity SUV, which starts at about $80,000. Nuro will supply the autonomous tech; Uber will exclusively make them available to hail.
The companies haven’t yet determined where they will launch their first vehicles, but it will happen next year, they say.
“Autonomous vehicles have enormous potential to transform our cities for the better,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a statement.
The prevailing global king of human ride-hailing wants to ensure that it remains on top as autonomous tech slides into the driver’s seat. In that new environment, it’s not just Lyft to contend with on a platform basis, but also Alphabet’s Waymo, Amazon’s Zoox, and Tesla, too.
Meanwhile Uber gives Lucid, which controls only a fraction of the domestic electric vehicle market, a leg up and helps Nuro, which abandoned building its own self-driving vehicles in favor of licensing its tech, pivot its business. At a time when the federal government has grown hostile to EVs, it also gives them much-needed funds.
Strap in—the robotaxi race has only just begun. —AN
Netflix beats earnings, brightens outlook
Netflix can thank the final season of Squid Game for its stellar second quarter results.
The streaming service not only beat Wall Street estimates on Thursday—it raised its annual revenue guidance, too.
Not bad for a media company in 2025.
For Q2, Netflix posted diluted earnings per share of $7.19 on revenues of $11.1 billion, which were up 16% from the same period last year. The California company raised its top-end guidance from $44.5 billion to $45.2 billion.
Netflix shares have risen more than 40% this year.
It’s not all about dystopian Korean dramas, though. Sirens, The Four Seasons, and season three of Ginny & Georgia also gave Netflix lift this quarter. Coming attractions this fall include the return of Wednesday and the final episodes of Stranger Things—both popular series.
It’s worth noting that Netflix stopped disclosing quarterly subscriber numbers this year in favor of a more concrete investor metric: profit. The company said member growth was pacing ahead of forecast; its operating margin for the quarter was about 34%.
Would Netflix consider acquiring media assets from some of its less fortunate Hollywood peers? Maybe, CFO Spencer Neumann told investors: “We've historically been more builders than buyers.” —AN
Amazon joins the AI agent craze. Now the real work begins
Amazon Web Services joined the agentic AI frenzy in a big way this week.
At an event in New York, it revealed a host of services and tools dubbed Agentcore that let technologists build and deploy so-called AI agents capable of automating internal tasks.
It could potentially overhaul the way consumers interact with online businesses, too.
In the short term, the real battle between AWS and its competitors may depend less on technology and more on talent to help guide large corporations on where to even begin with agentic AI.
Businesses “are frustrated because they want someone to tell them what to do and how to do it,” Dave Nicholson, chief technology advisor at The Futurum Group, told Fortune. “There isn’t enough [talent] to go around. Humans are the bottleneck.”
Slick as some of the agentic AI scenarios may sound—asking an agent to plan a long trip overseas, from airfare to activities, then book it—the reality is that there are currently few examples of corporations using agents at massive scale.
Amazon Web Services’ market leadership in cloud computing should serve as some advantage, providing a large existing customer base to sell to. Those customers may also have more patience for any bumps Amazon experiences, too.
In an interview with Fortune, Swami Sivasubramanian, the AWS VP of agentic AI, said that Fortune 500 execs whose companies don’t start experimenting with the technology risk missing out.
“Agents,” he said, “are fundamentally going to change how we work and how we live.” —Jason Del Rey
More tech
—Worse than the dotcom bubble: The AI craze, according to Apollo’s chief economist.
—Meta hires two Apple AI researchers after earlier poaching their boss.
—OpenAI debuts ChatGPT Agent. It will take control of your computer and perform multi-step tasks.
—Musk’s Neuralink: A “small disadvantaged business” worth $9 billion and owned by the world’s wealthiest man, per a federal filing.
—Perplexity worth $18 billion. The AI startup has fundraised five times over the past 18 months.
—Substack becomes a unicorn. The newsletter platform raises $100 million from Andreessen, Chernin, others.
—Crypto for retirement? Trump to make crypto available to U.S. retirement accounts; gold and private equity would also be fair game.
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