• Uber's CEO wants to work with Tesla on robotaxis. But Tesla wants to go it alone.
• Uber partners with Waymo in Austin and will compete with Tesla's autonomous vehicle platform.
• Analysts suggest Tesla may need Uber or Lyft to scale its robotaxi operations.

Uber's CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, said he wants to work with Tesla on robotaxis — even though the electric vehicle maker isn't interested right now.

"At this point, they want to build it alone," Khosrowshahi said in an interview with Bloomberg at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Miami on Friday. "Life is long, but we would love to partner with them."

Khosrowshahi added that Uber and Alphabet-owned Waymo, who partner in Austin, will compete with Tesla in the autonomous vehicles market when they launch in the city.

Earlier this month, Uber said it was opening an "interest list" for Austin users who want to be the first to try Waymo robotaxis on the Uber app. Tesla unveiled its robotaxis, called Cybercabs, in October. They are expected to launch in June in Austin.

Khosrowshahi's Friday remarks came about a week after he said that he hoped Tesla would work with Uber.

In an interview published on February 14, Khosrowshahi said, "No one wants to compete against Tesla or Elon, if you can help it."

Door open for Tesla

Musk has previously said Tesla would create its own ride-hailing platform — a cross between Uber and Airbnb apps — for riders to call a driverless car. While a portion of the fleet would be owned by Tesla, individual Tesla customers would also have the option to add their vehicles.

Despite these plans, Khosrowshahi's Friday remarks suggested he was willing to keep the door open for a partnership with Tesla.

"It makes a lot of economic sense" for Tesla drivers to use Uber as a platform, he said. "What we bring is demand to the AV ecosystem when demand often is quite variable."

Analysts have stressed this, too.

In a note published on the day the Cybercab was unveiled, Jefferies analysts wrote that Tesla may struggle without a partner like Uber or Lyft.

Tesla "potentially underappreciates the obstacles to scaling a robotaxi fleet" such as the technology, asset ownership, regulation, fleet management, and demand required to run an operation at scale, the analysts wrote. "We also believe TSLA could struggle to scale fleet operations without offering access to demand via Uber/Lyft."

Independent analyst Dan O'Dowd, a previous Musk critic, said that the contrast between Tesla and robotaxi competitors like Waymo was "stark."

"Until Tesla robotaxis are transporting 100,000 paying customers a week around major American cities like Waymo does, Tesla robotaxi is nothing more than the latest work of fiction to come out of the Warner Bros. Studio," he said in a note at the time.

Investor pressure

Uber has faced pressure from investors to ramp up its autonomous vehicle strategy, and shareholders have been closely monitoring developments with self-driving competitors.

In December, Uber's stock plunged 10% after Waymo announced its expansion to Miami — without mentioning Uber.

In some cities, like Austin, Phoenix, and Atlanta, Waymo rides are only available on the Uber app. In Los Angeles and San Francisco, Waymo is available on its own booking platform.

Days after the Waymo expansion news, Uber's stock fell nearly 6% when its AV partner, Cruise, announced it was shutting down operations.

Following the Cruise news, the ride-hailing platform's chief financial officer, Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, tried to quell investor concerns. He said the company was well positioned to be a demand aggregator for AVs and that it still believes AVs are critical for its growth.

Besides Waymo, Uber has self-driving partnerships with Tesla's biggest competitor, Chinese EV maker BYD, and with AV company Aurora Innovation.

Uber's stock is up over 30% so far this year.

• The 31st SAG Awards were held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on Sunday.
• Many celebrities weren't afraid to show up in bold ensembles, some featuring elements like feathers and fringe.
• Danielle Deadwyler, Demi Moore, and Anna Sawai all wore sculptural gowns that turned heads on the red carpet.

The 31st Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards took place on Sunday at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

Unlike other awards, such as the Oscars or the Golden Globes —which also honor directors, writers, musicians, and production teams — the SAG Awards are dedicated exclusively to recognizing actors.

Before the ceremony, which was hosted by Kristen Bell, some of Hollywood's biggest celebrities posed for the cameras on the red carpet.

Here are some of the most daring looks from the night.

The NFL will take a look at a number of kickoff rule changes this offseason after the league was happy with the way the new kickoff rule worked in its first season in 2024. 

The former Mets ace has been receiving a taste of that satisfaction this weekend at Clover Park, where he is serving as a guest instructor for the team.

Not long ago, he wanted to remain a Yankee for life, though the interest was not mutual.

The 44-year-old has not competed since the Miami Open in March 2024.

© PA Archive

Amazon’s influence is pulling streaming ad costs downward.

Right now, ad buyers are paying around $40 to reach a thousand viewers on Prime Video, about the same as on Netflix. Whether that holds for the rest of the year is anyone’s guess, but Amazon’s impact on ad pricing is already undeniable.

“Regarding video CPMs, the average for 2024 was close to $40 on Amazon Prime,” said Robert Kurtz, group vp of search media solutions at Basis Technologies. “This is comparable to Netflix, but Disney+ was a significant percentage higher than Amazon Plus.” 

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Changing habits among search engine users have begun to take a toll on the biggest players in the search space — namely Google.

The tech giant still enjoys an enormous chunk of the search market — 89%, October through December in 2024, according to an estimate from Statcounter — but that’s the lowest its share has been in a decade.

Because the tech giant has been synonymous with search, it’s the player with the most to lose, but advertisers need to find new productive ways to reach consumers too.

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Last year, Snapchat started laying the foundations to make Snapchat more accessible to small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), with the goal of creating a more consistent, sustainable and diverse ad revenue stream. And so far, the strategy appears to be paying off, according to the company’s recent earnings call.

With a big year ahead to prove these investments were, and continue to be, the right ones for Snapchat to make, Digiday caught up with Snap’s vp of SMB and mid-market executive Sid Malhotra, to get the lowdown on how important SMBs are to Snapchat’s overall ad revenue stream, what the platform can offer advertisers that its platform peers can’t, and what prevented advertisers from giving the company a proper chance — until now.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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Last week, the Federal Trade Commission announced a new public inquiry to investigate whether online platforms have censored users based on speech or affiliation — and if any actions break any laws.

In its announcement, the FTC said technology companies could use “confusing or unpredictable internal procedures” to cut off users with limited ability to appeal decisions. The agency also invited companies and individuals to submit commentary during the three-month public commentary period while encouraging users who have been “banned, shadow banned, demonetized or otherwise censored.”

“Tech firms should not be bullying their users,” Andrew Ferguson, the FTC’s chair appointed by President Donald Trump, said in a statement. “This inquiry will help the FTC better understand how these firms may have violated the law by silencing and intimidating Americans for speaking their minds.”

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Marketers can’t just check the influencer box on a campaign these days — it’s not enough to have influencers in the mix. Brands need the right influencers for them.

That’s what Black-owned digital media network Culture Genesis has been pitching to brands: A targeted, engaged audience through a network of multicultural and Black creators that are already successful on YouTube. Creators like YouTuber LaLa Milan (422K YouTube subscribers and 3.9 million Instagram followers) and streamer Kai Cenat (with 12 million YouTube subscribers and 13 million Instagram followers) work with Culture Genesis; the agency’s creators make content for brands like Ford and Dove. Now the company hopes it can replicate that growth in its creator strategy with the launch of a new content network dedicated to South Asian creators, called HYPHEN8.

“We are copy pasting … from Culture Genesis, where you’ll see that they follow this exact pattern,” said Joey Mullick, partner at Skara Ventures, an investor of Culture Genesis. (Sean Kilbane, current chief strategy officer at Skara, will also serve as the network’s interim CEO.)

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Although it’s safe to predict that a good portion of the expected crush of mergers and acquisitions in the agency landscape will happen in the U.S., recent signals point toward consolidation and scale-seeking on a global level.

And not just by the major holding companies either — although last week brought news that Publicis bought a Brazilian influencer marketing firm (see Antoinette Siu’s story below in Speed Reading) while Havas bought an Argentinian creative shop.

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Traffic getting sent to publishers’ sites from AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity is growing. And while that makes sense for the publishers that have signed deals with those companies to receive attribution for their content surfaced on those AI chatbot or search platforms, data shows that referral traffic is growing even to sites that are attempting to block those platforms’ crawlers.

Execs at three large digital media companies told Digiday they have seen referral traffic from Open-AI owned ChatGPT increase recently.

The Atlantic saw a “significant” increase in traffic from ChatGPT in the past few months. Referrals rose by more than 80% from December to January, according to a spokesperson. The Atlantic signed a deal with OpenAI in May 2024.

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Jason and Nicholas Robertson are the first set of brothers to score multiple goals on the same day since Pavel and Valeri Bure in March 2000.

Jane Fonda received the SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award, highlighting activism and empathy in her speech.

Newsweek has assembled a set of useful hints to help you navigate Monday's puzzle, all without revealing too many details.

Newsweek has put together some useful hints and tips on how to solve today's brainteaser.

Starting March 4, Starbucks is removing less popular drinks in an attempt to make way for more innovative products

From unrehearsed bits to powerful speeches, here are the most memorable moments from this year's SAG Awards

Justin Bieber and Jeremy Roenick didn’t seem to be saying “Sorry” after the two dropped the gloves during Sunday’s Skate For LA Strong event at Crypto.com Arena.