The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on Friday concluded that Tesla's (NASDAQ: TSLA) Autopilot system contributed to at least 467 collisions, 13 of which were fatal, in the results of its nearly three-year investigation. The NHTSA's report found that Tesla's Autopilot design has "led to foreseeable misuse and avoidable crashes," as the system did not "sufficiently ensure driver attention and appropriate use." Moreover, the NHTSA said that "gaps in Tesla's telematic data create uncertainty regarding the actual rate at which vehicles operating with Autopilot engaged are involved in crashes. Tesla is not aware of every crash involving Autopilot even for severe crashes because of gaps in telematic reporting." The federal regulator said it is opening a new probe into the effectiveness of Tesla's recent software update that was part of its recall in December.

Snap (NYSE: SNAP) revealed its its Q1 2024 earnings release on Thursday that total watch time on its TikTok competitor, Spotlight, rose more than 125% year-over-year. The social media company said overall global time spent watching short-form content on Spotlight was driven by increases in total time spent watch and creator Stories. The app had 422 million daily active users in its first-quarter, rising by 39 million or 10% year-over-year. The company's premium subscription, Snapchat+, also surpassed 9 million subscribers during the quarter, more than tripling year-over-year. "Given the progress we have made with our ad platform, the leadership team we have built, and the strategic priorities we have set, we believe we are will positioned to continue to improve our business performance," the company wrote in a letter to investors on Thursday.

President Joe Biden has signed a bill that would ban the short-video social media platform TikTok in the United States if its Chinese parent ByteDance fails to sell it to a U.S. company in the next nine months. If ByteDance fails to sell the app, it would become illegal for app stores run by companies like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) to distribute the app in the U.S. "This ban would devastate 7 million businesses and silence 170 million Americans. As we continue to challenge this unconstitutional ban, we will continue investing and innovating to ensure TikTok remains a space where Americans of all walks of life can safely come to share their experiences, find joy, and be inspired," TikTok said in an emailed statement to TechCrunch. The new law also includes roughly $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel, and $8 billion for security in Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific.

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) announced Tuesday the launch of a new unlimited grocery delivery subscription for Prime members and EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer) customers in the United States living within 3,500 eligible cities. The additional subscription costs Prime members $9.99 per month and registered EBT card holders $4.99 per month. Subscribers now have access to free one-hour grocery deliveries on orders over $35 across Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods and other local retailers including Cardenas Markets, Save Mart, Bartell Drugs, Rite Aid, Pet Food Express and Mission Wine & Spirit on Amazon's website. The new grocery delivery plan rivals offerings from Walmart (NYSE: WMT) and Target (NYSE: TGT).

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) will begin selling its smart grocery technologies to retailers, the ecommerce giant announced Wednesday, in effort to transition its Just Walk Out, Amazon Dash Cart and Amazon One into a service beyond physical Amazon stores. A small group of grocery stores in Kansas and Missouri are beginning to test Amazon's Dash Cart, which track and total items while customers shop, in their stores, Amazon said in a blogpost. The carts use a combination of sensors to identify items and adjust the price total based on what a customer adds or removes from the cart in real time. Beyond Dash Cart, Amazon said in the blogpost that it has "strong conviction" that its cashierless technology Just Walk Out "will be the future in stores that have a curated selection where customers can pop in, grab the small number of items they need, and simply walk out.”

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Tuesday that while the U.S. economy remains strong, policymakers will need to maintain interest rates at a higher-for-longer level until inflationary pressures return to the Fed's 2% goal. "The recent data have clearly not given us greater confidence, and instead indicate that it's likely to take longer than expected to achieve that confidence," Powell said during a panel discussion. "That said, we think policy is well positioned to handle the risks that we face." Powell added that until inflation shows more easing, the Fed will "maintain the current level of restriction for as long as needed." The central bank has maintained its benchmark interest rate target range between 5.25% to 5.5% since July following 11 straight rate hikes that began in March 2022.

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is cutting more than 10% of its global workforce and two high profile executives have departed from the electric vehicle maker, TechCrunch reports. "As we prepare the company for our next phase of growth, it is extremely important to look at every aspect of the company for cost reductions and increasing productivity," Musk said in a memo to employees, according to reports. "As part of this effort, we have done a through review of the organization and made the difficult decision to reduce our headcount by more than 10% globally ... This will enable us to be lean, innovative and hungry for the next growth phase cycle." Alongside the layoffs, Drew Baglino, SVP of Powertrain and Energy, and Rohan Patel, VP of Public Policy and Business Department, have also parted ways with Tesla, which was first reported by Bloomberg.

Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA) announced Thursday it has paused its plan to build a vaccine manufacturing facility in Kenya amid waning demand for COVID vaccines since the peak of the coronavirus pandemic. The biotech company said it has not received any vaccine orders for Africa since 2022 and has taken over $1 billion in losses related to order cancellations. "Moderna believes it is prudent to pause its efforts to build an mRNA manufacturing facility in Kenya," the company said in a statement. "This approach will allow Moderna to better align its infrastructure investments with the evolving healthcare needs and vaccine demand in Africa." Back in 2022, the company said it would invest about $500 million in a facility in Kenya to supply as much as 500 million mRNA vaccine doses to Africa annually. Now, Moderna has determined demand in the continent "is insufficient to support the viability of the factory planned."

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) on Wednesday unveiled its next-gen in-house artificial intelligence chip, called the Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) chip. "This chip's architecture is fundamentally focused on providing the right balance of compute, memory bandwidth, and memory capacity for serving ranking and recommendation models," the company wrote in a blog post. The MTIA chip is part of the social media and technology company's efforts to expand its hardware infrastructure alongside its software systems as Meta invests billions in AI chips from Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and others; CEO Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this year that Meta plans to accumulate the equivalent processing power of 600,000 H100 (Nvidia) chips in 2024.

Costco (NASDAQ: COST) selling between $100 million to $200 million in gold bars per month, Wells Fargo analysts estimated on Tuesday, making a rapid uptake in revenue for the big-box retailer since it began selling gold bars in August 2023. "Our work suggests there has been significant interest given COST's aggressive pricing and high level of customer trust," said equity analyst Edward Kelly in a note to clients on Tuesday. "The accelerating frequency of Reddit posts, quick online sell-outs of product, and COST's robust monthly eComm sales suggests a sharp uptick in momentum since the launch." If the firm's estimate is correct, that is a large jump from Costco's $100 million in gold sales seen in its fiscal first-quarter ended November 2023. Costco currently sells 1-ounce nearly pure 24-karat gold bars on its website based on the commodity's spot price.

The U.S Commerce Department announced Monday it has signed an agreement to grant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE: TSM) up to $6.6 billion in funding under the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act to support the building of three semiconductor factories in Phoenix, Arizona. The chipmaker is also eligible for up to $5 billion in loans in addition to the grant. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said during a press briefing that the partnership with TSMC will bring "the manufacturing of the world's most advanced chips to American soil." Raimondo added that the funds will include $50 million to train local workers in Arizona, as TSMC Arizona has already created more than 25,000 jobs in the state.

Meta Platform's (NASDAQ: META) Threads missed a key moment to better rival Elon Musk's X, formerly known as Twitter, on Friday, as news of the New York City metropolitan area earthquake did not trend on the social network until the afternoon, TechCrunch reports. On X, traffic surged soon after the 4.8 earthquake shook the northeastern United States around 10:20 a.m on Friday, with hashtags including #earthquake followed by areas of impact like "East Coast," "Manhattan," "Brooklyn," and "Philly," quickly taking the top of the platform's trending tab in the country, while earthquake related terms did not reach Tread's trending tab until around 2 p.m, according to TechCrunch.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) shares rose as much as 4.6% on Thursday, but closed slightly higher amid broader market weakness, after analysts at Jefferies and RBC Capital Markets raised their price targets on the social media giant, citing its growing market share in digital advertising. Jefferies analysts raised their price target to $585 from $550, while RBC analysts increased their target to $600 from $565 in a note on Wednesday. "Meta has too many advantages to count," Jefferies analysts wrote, highlighting that Meta could capture as much as 50% of industry ad dollars this year, up 33% in 2023 and could outgrow Amazon's (NASDAQ: AMZN) ad business. RBC analysts said Meta's market share gains could benefit from Google's (NASDAQ: GOOGL) weakness, as they have seen "advertiser resistance" to Google's efforts to increase its Performance Max ad campaigns.

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is laying off hundred of workers in its cloud computing division, the company confirmed Wednesday following multiple reports, focusing on its physical stores technology and sales and marketing units. "We've identified a few targeted areas of the organization we need to streamline in order to continue focusing our efforts on the key strategic areas that we believe will deliver maximum impact," an AWS spokesperson said in a statement. "We didn't make these decisions lightly, and we're committed to supporting the employees throughout their transition to new roles in and outside of Amazon." The new round of job cuts follow Amazon's recent trend starting in 2022, with the company letting go tens of thousands of jobs across nearly every area of its operations to date.

A group of 200 musicians including Billie Eilish, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Noah Kahan, and Jon Bon Jovi signed on open letter to tech companies and developers, arguing artificial intelligence makers not to undermine human creativity with AI music generation tools. The letter asserts that AI poses "enormous threats" to artist's' ability to protect their privacy, identity, music and livelihood. "Some of the biggest and most powerful companies are, without permission, using our work to train AI models," the letter reads. "For many working musicians, artists and songwriters who are just trying to make ends meet, this would be catastrophic." Current AI music models generate new lyrics, sounds and voices by using massive datasets of existing work by artists. Some models can even mimic popular artists entirely, with the songs known as deepfakes.