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Speaking to about 250 founders and investors at a Bay Area event hosted by Endeavor Greece, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis acknowledged he lacks answers to many AI policy questions facing global leaders. The trip combined fact-finding stops at Tesla and Sequoia Capital with efforts to pitch Greece as a destination for tech investment ahead of its expected upgrade to developed market status by MSCI next year.
Waymo introduced a transit rewards program in the San Francisco Bay Area that gives riders Waymo Cash when they link a Visa card and combine Waymo rides with public transit trips. The program starts with employees before a public rollout in coming weeks, and covers all 27 Bay Area transit agencies that accept contactless Visa tap-to-pay.
San Francisco filed a state lawsuit against Trump Media & Technology Group, alleging its Truth API service — which charges customers $100,000 a month for early access to posts from Trump and other officials on Truth Social — violates California's Unfair Competition Law and federal anti-corruption statutes. The suit cites instances, including an August 21st post about ground beef tariffs that moved cattle futures, as evidence that early access to presidential posts can be financially valuable.
Even as OpenAI and Anthropic employees anticipate windfalls from potential IPOs, Bay Area tech layoffs hit over 14,500 workers in the year ending June, nearly double the prior year. Former Google employee Basem Istanbouli started un(PTO) in December to support unemployed tech workers, and the group has grown from three founding members to more than 1,700, with weekly hikes now drawing crowds of 80 or more.
A photographer spent three hours at San Francisco's Muni Heritage Weekend 2026 using a line scan camera to photograph vintage streetcars, including the 1912 Muni No. 1, the first publicly owned big-city streetcar in the US, and other historic trams from Melbourne, Milan, and Blackpool. The resulting images, which capture the vehicles in a distinctive scanned format, have been released under a CC-By-SA 4.0 license and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.
TechCrunch has announced that its current discounted ticket pricing for Disrupt 2026 expires Friday, Sept. 25 at 11:59 p.m. PT, after which rates rise. The conference will take place October 13-15 at Moscone West in San Francisco, expecting over 10,000 founders, investors, and tech leaders.
A venture called San Francisco Onion Futures Company is selling private, transferable contracts for future delivery of yellow onions, priced between $3 and $12 per onion for delivery up to six months ahead. Payments are processed via Stripe, and buyers in San Francisco, Toronto, Seattle, and Chicago receive physical onion delivery arranged in the first week of the contract month.
Waymo's in-cabin monitoring system flagged a terms-of-service violation involving a weapon during an early-morning ride in San Francisco's Richmond District, prompting the company to pull the vehicle over and call emergency services. Police conducted a high-risk stop and found a homemade 'ghost gun' styled like an assault rifle, along with suspected marijuana and mace, leading to the arrest of two unnamed minors on firearm possession charges.
A reporter's visit to an AI-run store in San Francisco found few customers and little of practical value on offer, while the operation appeared to be burning through money quickly. The store, positioned as a showcase for automated retail, reportedly failed to demonstrate a working business model during the visit.
Waymo's in-cabin sensors flagged two juvenile passengers handling a loaded AR-style firearm in San Francisco's Outer Richmond neighborhood, prompting the company to notify police. Officers conducted a high-risk stop early on September 3, arresting the pair and also finding suspected marijuana and mace spray in the vehicle.
A Waymo self-driving vehicle in San Francisco detected a firearm violation among its passengers and pulled over, prompting a call to police. Officers arrested two juvenile riders found with a loaded AR-style ghost gun and took them to juvenile hall. Waymo confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that its system flagged the terms-of-service breach involving a weapon before stopping the car.
In an essay, Holtzbrinck Group's Chief Scientific Officer Daniel Hook recounts riding in a driverless Waymo in San Francisco with Macmillan Learning CEO Susan Winslow, and how both admitted they preferred the silent, frictionless ride to the small talk of a human driver. He uses the anecdote to argue that similarly 'frictionless' AI tools may be quietly eroding the incidental human contact that drives collaboration in research.