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Amazon-owned Zoox is offering free rides in a fleet of about 100 purpose-built robotaxis in San Francisco, using a Rider Lounge and partnerships with local restaurants and landmarks to build public awareness. The company still lacks permission to charge passengers in California, so it's using free trips to establish a presence against Waymo, which operates nearly 4,000 vehicles in the city.
Collaborative Fund, a $1 billion New York venture firm known for early investments in Lyft, Reddit, Sweetgreen and Olipop, has acquired a stake in Major League Soccer's D.C. United and its home venue, Audi Field. The move follows a broader pattern set by Thrive Capital, whose Thrive Eternal vehicle recently bought stakes in the San Francisco Giants and acquired the Los Angeles Lakers outright for $12.5 billion with Bob Iger as co-owner.
San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu issued a formal cease-and-desist letter demanding Meta stop permitting paid ads containing AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery. The order follows WIRED reporting that over 350 such ads, identified by researchers at the Tech Transparency Project, turned images of real minors into sexualized video clips and reached roughly 29,000 accounts across the EU, US, Australia and India. Many ads promoted apps capable of generating nonconsensual intimate imagery, and dozens more appeared even after WIRED's initial exposure in August.
Fast Company's Best Workplaces for Innovators 2026 awards recognized six companies in the financial services and fintech category, with two of the winning firms based in San Francisco. Judges selected the winners based on innovation practices within their workplace cultures.
Four murals in San Francisco's Clarion Alley were painted over by a worker acting on orders from a property manager who reportedly mistook the artwork for graffiti. The Clarion Alley Mural Project, which has curated the alley's murals since 1992, says none of the artists or organizers were consulted before the paint-over occurred. Co-director Veronica Torres called the group 'heartbroken and furious' in a letter demanding accountability.
Director Romain Thomassin is raising $40,000 on Kickstarter to produce 'Road Rage,' a short film pitting a human ridehail driver against 'Roboride,' a menacing autonomous vehicle that turns a minor traffic spat into a deadly chase. The villain car is built from a modified Prius with cold LED lighting, fake cameras, a spinning lidar-style rig, and blinking red lights meant to evoke a 'nasty Waymo,' while the chase itself will use practical stunts rather than CGI.
Oura, the Finland-founded, San Francisco-based maker of health-tracking smart rings, has filed paperwork with the SEC to go public on Nasdaq. The company has built a leading position in the wearable ring market as it moves toward becoming a publicly traded stock.
Celeste Amadon, founder of AI dating app Known, launched a public nomination campaign called 'San Francisco's Hot List,' inviting people to nominate attractive, accomplished singles in the city. The X post drew mixed reactions—mockery alongside genuine engagement—but generated over 15,000 submissions within a day, according to Amadon. The campaign taps into a growing narrative pushing back on San Francisco's reputation as an undateable, style-deficient tech hub.
More than 200 employees at the Wikimedia Foundation voted 158-14 to join the Communications Workers of America, with results tallied by the National Labor Relations Board. The unionizing group spans software engineering, finance and communications roles across the roughly 700-person, largely remote nonprofit behind Wikipedia.
Security personnel working at San Francisco offices of major AI firms, represented by SEIU-United Service Workers West, voted this week to authorize a strike. The vote gives union leadership the go-ahead to call a walkout if labor negotiations with contractors fail to produce an acceptable deal.
Market Street, once San Francisco's bustling commercial core, has become a largely deserted stretch lined with boarded-up storefronts and a barren, car-free roadway used mainly by buses. The decline followed the city's 2019 decision to ban private vehicles from the street, compounded by a wave of pandemic-era crime and looting and the mass shift to remote work that emptied downtown offices. Because San Francisco's downtown is zoned mostly for offices rather than housing, the pandemic-driven exodus left the area far emptier than mixed-use downtowns common in Europe and Asia.
Gooseworks, a San Francisco-based YC W23 company building self-improving AI agents that manage ad creative, UGC, and organic content for consumer brands, is hiring a Founding Creative Engineer. The role involves designing AI-operated creator channels, shaping the company's voice on platforms like X and LinkedIn, and training the taste layer of its creative agent. The startup, only a few months old, already has over 200 paying users and has generated more than 30,000 ad creatives in two months.