dailynewsnblog
I realized something this week.
I’ve been too consumed with the daily happenings at Nvidia (NVDA), Micron (MU), Sandisk (SNDK), and the “Magnificent Seven.” I suspect you have too, which makes sense given how important these stocks are to the broader market.
But for me, the monitoring has crossed over into an unhealthy obsession. I’m failing at highlighting other things top execs are telling me about. There’s more going on in the world than AI everything.
A quick example: This week, I sat down with Bai founder Ben Weiss. Weiss sold Bai to Dr Pepper Snapple Group for $1.7 billion in 2016. Now he’s back in the beverage game with his children, making a new charge into organic hard soda. I think Weiss is ahead of the curve on this one, and I’m psyched to share my chat with him shortly.
Here are a few interesting things I’ve picked up in conversations on Yahoo Finance’s Power Players with Brian Sozzi podcast. A new episode drops on Monday morning with “Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe.
Lyft drives into the robotaxi space
Lyft CEO David Risher has revamped the Uber (UBER) rival. Now he’s pushing out a fleet of robotaxis in select markets like Nashville and building an 80,000-square-foot warehouse to service and manage the fleet.
“So, we were a very domestic company for a long time. Very US-focused,” Risher said. “We made a big decision last year to go global. We acquired a company called FreeNow. We’ve also bought a couple of companies since then that have real strength in Europe, and that’s going to help us in so many ways. It diversifies our business, but it also really sets us up for self-driving cars.”
He added, “Waymo, of course, is the leader. They are our partner in Nashville. So, in Nashville, starting over the coming weeks and then months, you’ll be able to not only order a Waymo on Lyft, but even when you order it on Waymo’s own app … we will be doing the fleet management.”
Axon is developing one hell of a new Taser
Taser maker Axon (AXON) was founded in 1993 in a Tucson, Ariz., garage by brothers Rick and Tom Smith under the initial name Air Taser Inc.
Today, Rick is a billionaire, and Axon has expanded into drone-delivered security.
Smith said the company is moving toward making bullets obsolete.
“We announced the Apollo cartridge a year ago, and to be honest, it was failing in testing,” Smith said. “We weren’t getting through clothing well enough, so we had to hit the pause button. And so, yeah, I parachute back in with the engineers … I don’t want to claim victory yet, but we’re close. I think we’ve got some design mods that are testing very well.”
