Alphabet‘s self-driving car unit Waymo is finally shifting into high gear.

Elon Musk is on a mission to build new supercomputers. As the CEO of Tesla and his new artificial intelligence startup xAI, the tech titan has big plans for how artificial intelligence can help to supercharge his businesses.

In January, he wrote on X that Tesla should be viewed as an AI/robotics company rather than a car company. Tesla’s custom-built supercomputer named Dojo is key to this transformation. Tesla has said it plans to spend $500 million to build the supercomputer in Buffalo, New York. Tesla is also building another supercomputer cluster, called Cortex, at the company’s headquarters in Austin, Texas.

Dojo will process and train AI models using the large amounts of video and data captured by Tesla cars. The goal is to improve Tesla’s suite of driver assistance features, which the company calls Autopilot, and its more robust Full Self-Driving or FSD system. Subscriptions to Tesla’s FSD features cost $99 a month and include automatic lane changes, automatic parking and automatic stopping for traffic lights and stop signs.

“They’ve sold what is it, 5 million plus cars. Each one of those cars typically has eight cameras plus in it. And if you think then that those cars are driving around, let’s just say 10,000 miles a year on average, they’re streaming all of that video back to Tesla,” says Steven Dickens, chief technology advisor at the Futurum Group. “So what can they do with that training set? Obviously they can develop Full Self-Driving and they’re getting close to that.”

Despite their names, neither Autopilot nor FSD make Tesla vehicles autonomous and require active driver supervision, as Tesla states on its website. In the past, the company has garnered scrutiny from regulators who say that Tesla falsely advertised the capabilities of its Autopilot and FSD systems. But reaching full autonomy is critical for Tesla, whose sky-high valuation is largely dependent on bringing robotaxis to market, some analysts say.

The company reported lackluster results in its latest earnings report and has fallen behind other automakers working on autonomous vehicle technology. These include Alphabet-owned Waymo, which is already commercially operating fully autonomous taxis in several U.S. cities, GM’s Cruise and Amazon’s Zoox. In China, competitors include Didi and Baidu.

Tesla hopes Dojo, which Musk says has been running tasks for Tesla since 2023, will change that. A Tesla robotaxi event originally scheduled for August is now expected to occur in early October.

Dojo can also be useful for training Tesla’s humanoid robot, Optimus, which the company plans to use in its factories starting next year. Musk has said that Tesla plans to spend $10 billion this year on AI.

Musk is also betting on supercomputers to run his new AI venture xAI. Musk launched xAI in 2023 to develop large language models and AI products, like its chatbot Grok, as an alternative to AI tools created by OpenAI, Microsoft and Google.

Despite being one of its founders, Elon Musk left OpenAI in 2018 and has since become one of the company’s harshest critics. In June, it was announced that xAI would build a supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee to train Grok. In early September, Musk revealed that a portion of the Memphis supercomputer, called Colossus, was already online.

To learn more about Elon Musk’s supercomputer plans, watch the video.

DETROIT – A year after unprecedented strikes by the United Auto Workers against the Detroit automakers, the union is once again threatening work stoppages that could disrupt the U.S. automotive industry.

The UAW on Wednesday announced a strike deadline at a Ford Motor tool and die plant that supports the automaker’s Rouge Complex near Detroit – one of two U.S. plants that produce the company’s highly profitable F-150 pickup truck.

The 11:59 p.m. Sept. 25 strike deadline came a day after UAW President Shawn Fain announced plans to hold strike authorization votes at one or more local unions covering Stellantis plants in the U.S.

Both announcements amount to warning shots against Ford and Stellantis and center on union contracts and local issues at the facilities. The union has not announced similar actions against General Motors.

UAW members are covered by national agreements, which include issues such as wages, bonuses and other benefits, as well as local contracts that are tailored to each facility.

Local contracts have historically taken months, if not years, to settle after a national agreement is reached. Sometimes they are not settled at all during the terms of the national deal.

Last year’s auto worker strikes came during historic negotiations over national contracts with all three Detroit automakers at once. The union won record wage increases — 25% over the term of the deal — and reinstatement of cost-of-living adjustments, but labor experts said it could be at the expense of jobs.

The most recent strike deadline for Ford was called over local plant negotiations involving “job security, wage parity for Skilled Trades, as well as work rules,” according to the union.

A strike at a supporting facility for an assembly plant could impact vehicle assembly if the automaker cannot make contingency plans for the parts. The plant employs fewer than 500 workers.

Ford, in a statement Thursday, said negotiations with the union are ongoing: “Ford invested $15 million in the plant last year and we have been at the table problem-solving. Negotiations continue and we look forward to reaching an agreement with UAW Local 600 at Dearborn Tool & Die.”

The strike deadline takes tensions there a step further than at Stellantis, where the union has announced authorization voting. Strike authorization votes are procedural. They are votes by workers to authorize UAW leaders to call a strike, if warranted. Such votes for the national contract negotiations typically pass with more than 90% of worker approval.

The announced voting at Stellantis comes after months of mudslinging by Fain against Stellantis and its CEO, Carlos Tavares, following product cuts, layoffs and other actions that the union has deemed detrimental to union workers, including the potential to move production of vehicles such as the Dodge Durango out of the U.S.

The union on Monday filed unfair labor practice claims with the National Labor Relations Board against Stellantis, saying the automaker refused to “provide the Union with relevant information” regarding investments and products.

“The company wants you to be scared, but we are 100% within our rights and within our power to take strike action if necessary,” Fain said Tuesday night during an online broadcast.

Stellantis has contended such a strike would be illegal.

Fain has been adamant that the union won the right to strike over the automakers’ product and investment commitments during national bargaining. However, there remains language in the contracts regarding market conditions, economics and other factors that could grant the company leniency.  

Stellantis Tuesday night after Fain’s strike authorization vote announcement criticized the union leader for his actions and comments.

“Shawn Fain continues to allege that the company has violated the contract, but to date has provided no data or information to back up his claims. Instead, he continues to willfully damage the reputation of the company with his public attacks which is helpful to no one including his members,” Stellantis said in an emailed statement.

Stellantis said a strike “does not benefit anyone – our customers, our dealers, the community and, most importantly, our employees.”

In addition to Monday’s NLRB complaint against the company, Fain said 28 Stellantis locals have filed grievances against the automaker. Those complaints cover about 98% of Stellantis’ UAW-represented workforce, according to the union.

“Once we’ve authorized a strike at a local, we meet with the company seven times and either resolve the issue or take strike action as our union sees fit,” Fain said.

As of the beginning of this year, Stellantis employed roughly 43,000 workers represented by the union.

The union this week also began contract negotiations with Volkswagen. VW workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, overwhelmingly voted in favor of UAW representation earlier this year.

Uber announced Friday it is expanding its partnership with Alphabet’s Waymo to offer robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas, and Atlanta beginning in early 2025. Shares of Uber jumped 5% on the news while Alphabet rose about 1%.

Uber riders in those cities can be matched with a driverless Waymo car for some trips, according to the companies. The rides will only be available through Uber’s app, unlike in San Francisco and Los Angeles where riders book through the Waymo app. A Waymo spokesperson said it had no plans to partner with Uber in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The expansion comes as Uber faces investor pressure to step up its autonomous vehicle strategy, especially ahead of Tesla‘s planned robotaxi event slated for Oct. 10. Shares of Uber have fallen 9% since the Tesla event was announced and are off 17% from their 52-week highs. 

It may also slow Waymo encroachment into Uber’s market share. An analysis from Bernstein estimated that, as of May 2024, Waymo’s 50,000 weekly paid rides made up approximately 2% of ride-sharing usage in San Francisco. Since then, Waymo has doubled its paid robotaxi trips to 100,000 a week, the company announced. 

“We’re thrilled to build on our successful partnership with Waymo, which has already powered fully autonomous trips for tens of thousands of riders in Phoenix,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a release. 

Uber’s initial agreement with Waymo in Phoenix also included autonomous Uber Eats deliveries in the city. The expansion into Austin and Atlanta won’t include Uber Eats at first, according to the Waymo spokesperson, but they’re exploring that possibility for the future. 

Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said, “We’ve been delighted at the positive feedback from our Waymo One riders to date, and we can’t wait to bring the comfort, convenience, and safety of the Waymo Driver to these cities in partnership with Uber.” 

The expansion into two more cities is another step in Uber’s advancement into the robotaxi space, after struggling to get a foothold and selling off its own self-driving division in 2020, now relying on partnerships with companies including Waymo, GM‘s Cruise and the SoftBank-backed U.K. startup Wayve to gain ground. 

Uber shares dipped in August after the company announced a multiyear partnership with Cruise to offer autonomous rides through its app next year. Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski cited Cruise’s previous safety challenges as a part of the investor skepticism, along with now-fulfilled hopes for a partnership with Waymo instead. 

Waymo has rapidly made strides in the self-driving race. It currently offers robotaxi services to the public in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix. It has logged more than 22 million miles through June of this year, and last week, it released a report that argued its vehicles are safer than human drivers. It began testing driverless cars on Bay Area freeways with Google employees in August.

Some analysts were more hopeful for a potential Uber and Waymo expansion into San Francisco. But Atlanta and Austin, where Waymo has already begun testing, may still help sentiment. 

— CNBC’s Laura Batchelor and Lora Kolodny contributed to this article.