Seeking Alpha’s roundup of statements, announcements, and remarks that could impact markets, sectors, or individual stocks.
- Alphabet’s (GOOG) (GOOGL) Waymo said that it plans to begin manually driven robotaxi service in Minneapolis, Tampa, and New Orleans, with driverless service beginning as soon as next year.
The company intends to wait until its technology is validated in those cities before committing to service launches in those areas, Waymo spokesperson Ethan Teicher told CNBC via email.
“2026 is very much on the table, but we’ll be led by our safety framework,” Ethan Teicher added.
Earlier this week, Waymo announced it had begun limited driverless service in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Miami, and Orlando, with plans to offer the service to the general public beginning next year.
Waymo already operates in Austin, the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. The company previously announced plans to expand into Detroit, Denver, Las Vegas, London, Nashville, San Diego, and Washington, D.C., next year, CNBC noted.
Other companies involved in developing robotaxi services include Amazon’s (AMZN) Zoox, Tesla (TSLA), Baidu (BIDU), Pony AI (PONY), Uber (UBER) and Lyft (LYFT).
- Cleveland Federal Reserve President Beth Hammack told CNBC on Thursday that she thinks interest rates need to be somewhat restrictive in order to bring down the inflation rate.
“I think that we need to maintain a modestly, somewhat restrictive stance of policy to make sure that we are continuing to bring inflation back down to our 2% objective,” Hammock said on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street.
“Right now, to me, monetary policy is barely restrictive, if at all, and I think we need to make sure that we’re maintaining that somewhat restrictive stance to bring monetary to bring in place,” she added.
Hammock is currently an alternate voting member of the FOMC.