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European shares were mixed in early trading while Asian shares mostly fell on Friday after a respite from Wall Street’s recent feverish rally. The price of gold also pulled back from record highs following recent torrid runs.The futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were both up less than 0.1%. Oil prices slipped.In early European trading, Germany’s DAX rose 0.2% to 24,652.73, while France’s CAC 40 added 0.4% to 8,076.96.Britain’s FTSE 100 slipped 0.1% to 9,498.95, weighed down by losses for mining and energy stocks.Most Asian indexes fell. But South Korea’s Kospi climbed 1.7% to 3,610.60 as trading reopened after a holiday. India’s BSE Sensex also gained, adding 0.5%.The Kospi’s surge was fueled by a rally of tech shares including SK Hynix, which rose 8.2%. Samsung Electronics added 6.1%, boosted by news that Nvidia-backed Reflection AI had raised $2 billion in funding, increasing its market value to $8 billion.Japan’s Nikkei 225 closed 1% lower to 48,088.80, pulling back from big gains the previous day after data showed producer prices rose more than expected in September.Political uncertainty also loomed after the ruling Liberal Democrats failed to persuade their junior coalition partner, the Buddhist-backed Komeito, to stay. The Komeito’s leader said the group was unhappy with the Liberal Democrats’ stance on cleaning up corruption.The Komeito’s move was a significant blow to hopes for LDP leader Sanae Takaichi, an ultra-conservative lawmaker, to become Japan’s first female prime minister.Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index shed 1.8% to 26,277.84, while the Shanghai Composite index slipped nearly 1% to 3,897.03.Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 slid more than 0.1% to 8,958.30. Taiwan’s stock market was closed for a holiday.On Thursday, the S&P 500 slipped 0.3% from its latest all-time high for just its second loss in the last 10 days. The Dow dropped 0.5% and the Nasdaq composite lost 0.1%.Gold also fell following its stellar rally this year, losing 2.4% to drop back below $4,000 per ounce, while Treasury yields held relatively steady in the bond market. They’re taking a moment following big runs driven in large part by expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates to support the economy.Financial markets have been climbing so relentlessly, including a 35% leap for the S&P 500 from a low in April, that worries are mounting that prices may have shot too high. Concerns are particularly strong about the frenzy lifting stocks related to artificial-intelligence technology.In other dealings early Friday, U.S. benchmark crude oil shed 6 cents to $61.45 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, edged down 14 cents to $65.08 per barrel.The U.S. dollar fell to 152.71 Japanese yen from 153.05 yen. The euro rose to $1.1585 from $1.1569. Teresa Cerojano, Associated Press
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Megan Rapinoe, Caitlin Clark, Serena Williams, Mia Hamm, Lindsey Vonnthe list of high-profile, recognizable women athletes is growing. And track and field athletes may be the next to become household names. Thats the bet that Alexis Ohanian is making with Athlos, an all-womens track and field league, which is hosting its second event in New York this week. Ohanian is perhaps best known as the cofounder of Reddit, but he’s also an investor whos made no secret of his interest in investing in sports. During a press event in New York City this week, he said the idea for Athlos came to him while watching the Olympics, during which millions of people tune in to watch track and field events. His logic: Why not try to tap into that audience outside of larger events? Thats how Athlos was born. The league is an attempt to capture the excitement around track and field events that has, traditionally, only existed around the Olympics and other big-time track and field events. Last year, during its inaugural event, Ohanian says it drew 3 million viewers, attracted big-name advertisers like Toyota and Tiffany & Co., and was more successful than anticipated. This year, he expects it to be even bigger, and hopes that some of the athletes taking part will start to become recognizable to casual sports fansperhaps on a level that even matches what Clark has achieved in basketball. “Americans are going to be paying attention” When the Olympics or World Championship track and field events come around, Americans are going to be paying attention,” Ohanian says. “[We] have a legacy of American excellence in the sport, especially among our women. No one doubted for a second that womens soccer, womens basketball, was a tier-one opportunity. Ohanian was joined at the press conference by a lineup of Olympic Gold Medalists, world champions, and recordholders, including Masai Russell, Alexis Holmes, Grace Stark, Keely Hodgkinson, Faith Kipyegon, and Georgia Hunter Bell. Those athletes and others will compete this week for a top prize of $60,000. And Athlos is also giving some of them the chance to focus entirely on their chosen events, something that, until very recently, only the top sliver of athletes have been able to do. British mid-distance runner Georgia Hunter Bell, for instance, said that she only recently was able to quit her full-time job in tech sales to focus on track and fieldand shes an Olympic medalist who has set national records. It was hard training around a full-time, corporate job and trying to train like a professional athlete, she said. But leagues like Athlos are creating pathways to the pros for athletes like her. Globally, revenue from women’s sports doubled from 2023 to 2024 and was expected to exceed $2.3 billion this year, according to a March 2025 report from Deloitte. Basketball and soccer remain the sector’s biggest moneymakers. Athlos is only the most recent attempt at creating a professional-level league for female athletes. Several others are already gaining traction, including the WNBA, the National Womens Soccer League (NWSL), and the Professional Womens Hockey League (PWHL). The demand is there, Ohanian argues, and theres a big business opportunity for brands, advertisers, athletes, and others to get in on itthough he thinks itll take some time. I think this is just the start. Were not at F1 (Formula 1) size yet, he said. But I want people to take for granted that this sportwhich, again, is the most popular sport during the Olympicscan have the same-size platform outside of that, and bring together athletes, builders, CEOs, and investors who can keep driving it.
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Greetings, salutations, and my thanksas alwaysfor reading Fast Companys Plugged In. Me: Are you here just to monitor for safety? Guy sitting in the drivers seat of the Tesla Model Y Im riding in: I cant specify. That was the extent of the conversation during a recent trip I took using Teslas Robotaxi service. I was curious why the car that picked me up had a human in it: After all, Tesla bills its service as the future of autonomy, and the car did, in fact, drive itself for the entirety of my 4.5-mile journey. But I didnt get any answers from this guyor Tesla the corporate entity, which prides itself on ignoring the media and didnt reply to my emailed questions. This we do know. After years of anticipation, Tesla rolled out Robotaxis in Austin in June. A month later, they arrived here in the San Francisco Bay Area. For now, however, it falls far short of a full-blown deployment of a small-r robotaxi service. (The term is often used generically for self-driving car services as well as being a Tesla trademark.) For one thing, I spent time on a waitlist before being allowed to start hailing cars. For another, Tesla reportedly launched Robotaxi in the Bay Area without securing the necessary approval to operate a fleet of autonomous vehicles in California. Its Robotaxis are autonomous in the same sense that any Tesla car with the misleadingly named full self driving package is autonomous. Hence the need for the guy in the drivers seata safety monitor who could take over in an emergency. Its a little like getting a lift from a friend who owns a Tesla, who would also be required to stay behind the wheel. In Austin, where Tesla is further along in the regulatory process, the company initially put the safety monitors in the front passenger seat, but has reportedly moved them to the drivers seat as well. All of this is fundamentally different from Waymo, which began as Googles self-driving car project andafter an extraordinarily long, hard, expensive slogis up and running in Austin, San Francisco, and three other U.S. metropolitan areas. Waymos have no safety monitors; its just you, any friends or relatives youve brought along, and the car. The service is a triumph not only of technology but also the patient labor required to convince relevant officials that permitting unsupervised cars to drive themselves around a city isnt a deadly mistake, and might even be safer than letting humans behind the wheel. The Robotaxis back-seat touchscreen [Photo: Harry McCracken] In its present incarnation, Teslas Robotaxi service also bears scant resemblance to the one Elon Musk talked up at an event in April 2019. Back then, the company was going to have a million such vehicles on the roadnot Tesla-owned ones, primarily, but privately owned cars that could hit the road and ferry passengers when their owners didnt need them. Oh, and Musk said that would happen by the end of 2020. During this presentation, Musk did cheerfully acknowledge his tendency to blow deadlines. But a half-decade later, his 2019 plan has barely inched toward reality. Even his comparatively modest recent prediction of Tesla autonomous ride-hailing being available to half the U.S. population (subject to regulatory approvals) by the end of 2025 is not going to happen. Meanwhile, I dont intend to pay much attention to the Cybercaba self-driving two-seater Tesla with no drivers seat, allegedly due next yearuntil Im riding in one. Judged on their own merits as a mode of transportation, Ive found my first Tesla Robotaxi trips uneven at best. Unexpectedly, the best part has been their aggressively low pricing. Tesla has abandoned its original per-trip flat rate of $4.20 (ha ha, Elon!). But for my journeys, Robotaxi always beat Waymo and Uber pricing, sometimes by a lot. The first trip I tookreturning home from a nearby mallcost a mere $1.92. More pluses: Teslas Robotaxi fleet of Model Y cars is more reliably clean and cushy than Uber or Lyft. The service covers a far broader swath of the Bay Area than Waymo. And unlike Waymos in their present form, Robotaxis can take the highwaypresumably because theyre not officially autonomous vehiclesmaking longer trips practical. Once one of the best-regarded car companies in the world, Tesla is now dogged with a reputation for safety problems, especially when it comes to self-driving: When I announced Id been in a Robotaxi, one friend told me I shouldnt put my life at risk like that. Grim humor aside, all the trips Ive taken felt safe and involved efficient routes. (I should note that in one case, the safety monitor did have his hands on the wheel a fair amount of the timewhether out of necessity or force of habit, I cant say.) Still, moving past the question of autonomy for a moment, I didnt find Robotaxis ready to replace ride-hailing services even in their traditional, human-driven form. How many taxis Tesla has in the Bay Area is a mystery, but its clearly not enough: When I checked, pickup wait times usually were in the neighborhood of 13 to 15 minutes and got as high as 29 minutes.Worse, the Robotaxi app often said no cars were available at all, and told me to try again later. The Robotaxi software also lacks Waymos polish. When I leaned forward to play with the back-seat touchscreen, I kept getting a message telling me to put my (still buckled) seat belt back on or the car would pull over. That screen appeared to offer an array of entertainment options, but when I tapped on Netflix and Disney+, all I got were sign-up promos. Then theres the services iPhone app, which has a rickroll-style gag involving tipping that I didnt find funny the first time and dont relish encountering on any future trips. Screens from Teslas Robotaxi app, including a supposed tipping option and what you get if you choose it Most of all, the need for the safety monitor eviscerates any possibility of Robotaxi rivaling the experience Waymo is already delivering. Once you get over the coolness factor, much of Waymos value proposition is the aura of comfy isolation. You can take calls, bang away at your laptop, or maybe even take a short nap without feeling like privacy is an issue or youre being rude to the driver. Its the closest thing to an office on wheels Ive ever encountered. The Robotaxi safety monitors may be a vestigial concession to regulatory reality, but they eliminate the magic of autonomy. Whenif?Tesla is able to safely ditch them, it will make the service a true Waymo competitor. For now, the monitors I encountered were perfectly polite but also resistant to my efforts to chat them up. Heres another dialogue I had with one: Me: So the car is driving itself? Safety monitor: Yeah. Surveys show that many people who havent been in a self-driving car remain deeply skeptical of the whole idea. I cant help but think that Tesla is missing an opportunity by not turning the monitors into ambassadors. Rather than deflecting inquiries, maybe they should be volunteering information, as if they were welcoming tour guides to the autonomous future Musk has promised but not yet fully delivered. Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. More top tech stories from Fast Company Whats it really like to use a folding phone? Life with the Google Pixel 10 Pro FoldA gimmicky category is growing up. And skepticism be damned, it does feel like a taste of the future. Read More Metas next big bet for VR: Your living roomThe companys Hyperscape VR app will have the ability to create digital replicas of your surroundings. Photorealistic avatars may soon follow. Read More What can the rise and falland reboundof NFTs teach us about the AI bubble? After the market for NFTs collapsed in 2022, the tech quickly fell out of the mainstream. It never went away, though. Experts now tell Fast Company what went wrong and whats next. Read More The flailing Trump Media is part of the Russell 3000 index. These states want to know why The companys poor performance raises questions about its inclusion. Read More This massive new data center is powered by used EV batteries A new project from battery recycling startup Redwood Materials and data center builder Crusoe shows that its possible to build data centers cheaper and faster while also slashing emissions. Read More ChatGPT wants to be the new operating system. Heres why that should worry us Compute has become the new oil, and OpenAI just secured drilling rights. Read More
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