Nov 20, 2025 5 min read Daily Rundown

⛵ Tesla vs Waymo, Game On

Plus: Australia’s Teen Ban, Nexperia Deal Paused

Good Morning, Early Adopters!

The tech landscape is no longer background noise but the main engine of change.

ROBOTAXI

Tesla vs Waymo, Game On

👀 What’s the move: Tesla just won Arizona’s ride-hailing permit — the last piece it needed to legally run a commercial robotaxi service. From this moment, the long-teased “autonomous showdown” is no longer theory. Arizona, home turf of Waymo’s 315-square-mile driverless empire, is now the first real battleground where Musk’s robotaxis will meet Google’s head-on.

💡 Why it’s not boring: Tesla’s earlier pilots in Austin and California were controlled demos. This is open war. Waymo has spent seven years refining safety, mapping, and trust in Phoenix, while Tesla bets everything on scale, fleet updates, and its camera-only vision stack. One side perfects; the other iterates in public. Arizona will decide which strategy wins first: data purity or brute deployment.

⛵ Key takeaway: The permit isn’t paperwork; it’s the starter pistol. From here on, it’s Tesla and Waymo in a live-fire test of whose AI really owns the road.

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BILL

Australia’s Teen Ban Was Written by People Who Don’t Use Instagram

👀 What’s the move: Meta will block all users under 16 in Australia from Facebook, Instagram, and Threads by December 10, complying with the new national law. The decision affects half a million teens and marks the first country to legally cut minors off social platforms. But the policy didn’t come from digital natives — it came from a parliament whose average age is 52, with only one member under 30.

💡 Why it’s not boring: This isn’t about safety anymore, it’s about generational disconnect. Lawmakers who barely understand how algorithms, virality, or online identity work are legislating a total blackout instead of building digital literacy. The real goal shouldn’t be to isolate kids from the internet but to teach them how to survive it — how to manage attention, privacy, and manipulation in the feed. By banning access, Australia didn’t make teens safer; it just outsourced their education to VPNs.

⛵ Key takeaway: You can’t regulate what you don’t understand. Australia just proved that age isn’t the problem — ignorance is.

CHIPS

Netherlands Hits Pause on Nexperia Takeover to Unclog Chip Supply

👀 What’s the move: The Dutch government has suspended its intervention in Nexperia, the Chinese-owned chipmaker whose internal feud has disrupted auto supply chains across Europe. The decision follows progress in talks between Nexperia’s European and Chinese teams, as well as easing export restrictions from China. Automakers like BMW, Bosch, and Mercedes welcomed the move — though production risks remain.

💡 Why it’s not boring: This is less about politics and more about survival logistics. Nexperia sits in the quiet but critical layer of the chip stack — the power components every car needs but no one notices until factories stall. The episode highlights how fragile “boring chips” have become in an era obsessed with AI semiconductors. Fixing this gridlock isn’t about geopolitics; it’s about keeping Europe’s industrial heartbeat running.

⛵ Key takeaway: In chips, the next crisis won’t come from AI labs — it’ll come from the supply line that keeps the engines on.

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🚨 RapidSOS
“The AI safety pipe for 911.”
Routes real-time data from phones, cars, and sensors into emergency centers, giving responders verified context before they arrive.
→ Founded by Michael Martin and Nick Horelik; more than $450M raised to date, including a $100M round in 2025 as its network scales across 22,000+ agencies.

🩺 Arbiter
“AI that stitches U.S. healthcare together.”
Care-orchestration engine that automates referrals, scheduling, and next-best actions across payers, providers, and patients.
→ Founded by Michelle Carnahan (ex–Eli Lilly, Thirty Madison); emerged in 2025 with a $52M raise at a ~$400M valuation and early deployment across 1,000+ clinicians.

BAY AREA MEMOS

Larry Summers resigned from the OpenAI board amid renewed scrutiny of his Epstein ties.
Maxima raised $41M to automate month-end close with specialized AI agents, shifting accountants from manual tasks to review and decision-making.
Nokia announced an AI-driven strategy, reorganizing into two segments with 2028 profit targets and leadership changes.
Warner Bros. Discovery wants Paramount to raise its bid to $30 per share as multiple potential buyers explore offers ahead of the Nov. 20 bid deadline.
BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF saw a record $523 million outflow, signaling heavy pressure during bitcoin’s downturn.

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