AUTO

Make Minivans Great Again

In a big milestone for the self-driving industry, Waymo said yesterday it will open up its autonomous ride-hailing service to the general public in metro Phoenix, AZ. 

That means in the next few weeks, people in the Phoenix area can a) hail a taxi like they would a Lyft or an Uber b) hop in a car that’ll know where they want to go and c) be taken to that destination. The only difference? The car will be driving itself. 

Now, we’re supposed to be detached business reporters, but we just have to say...

Great googly moogly that’s cool.

How we got here

Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving vehicle division, has been testing its cars in the Phoenix area since 2016, slowly upgrading its tech and capacity to eventually roll out a fully fledged commercial service. 

Hundreds of human guinea pigs have been experimenting with the robotaxi service through the Waymo One app. The announcement yesterday expands the current program in two ways:

1. Existing customers of Waymo One can start taking their friends and family along for the ride.
2. By November, Waymo will make the app available to more people (aka the “general public”) in the Phoenix area.

We’ve managed to get through 200 words of a story without mentioning Covid-19, which unfortunately must make an appearance now. The pandemic has forced Waymo to limit the scope of its service by restricting it to fully driverless rides. It’s working on installing barriers in its vehicles so down the road it can plunk a human safety driver in the front seat and address a larger geographical market. 

Zoom out: Other car companies like Tesla and GM are racing to introduce driverless vehicles, but Waymo has recently separated itself from the pack. This spring, it raised $3 billion to accelerate the rollout of its commercial service, the first time it’s cashed a check from a company not associated with Google.

ECONOMY

Jobless Claims Are Still Really, Really High

840,000 Americans applied for first-time unemployment benefits last week, a number that remains extremely high relative to pre-pandemic levels and much worse than the bleakest weeks of past recessions.

• As you can see in the Yahoo Finance chart above, jobless claims are way down from their peak in the spring. But they hit a wall this summer and refuse to drop much further.

What’s going on? The current economy has a “remarkable level of churn,” writes the NYT’s Ben Casselman. Plenty of companies are reopening and rehiring workers, while others are closing down and cutting jobs because of lower demand.

Looking ahead...negotiations for a stimulus deal are also experiencing what you might call a remarkable level of churn, meaning lawmakers haven’t made much progress in working out a compromise. Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected a standalone package for airlines without a larger deal in place.

CORPORATE

Established Firms Try Hair Plugs

Vibes in the biz world yesterday? Dads in Vans and teachers on TikTok. Iconic but aging blue-chip companies made big moves to show they’re down with the kids.

IBM announced a spinoff. The company will break up with the segment that manages IT infrastructure for clients—which accounts for almost a quarter of Big Blue’s staff and sales (~$19 billion in annual revenue). IBM is chasing customers who are increasingly fleeing those services for cloud computing. Shares climbed almost 6%. 

Morgan Stanley agreed to acquire money manager Eaton Vance for $7 billion...and the ink on its E-Trade buyout is just barely dry. The bank is scooping up passive fund managers as consumers increasingly avoid swashbuckling stock pickers trying to beat the market. 

McDonald’s reported a positive Q3. McD’s same-store sales were juiced nearly 5% in the quarter, in part by a collaboration with rapper Travis Scott. The promotion touted Scott’s favorite meal—which was so popular it caused ingredient shortages. A partnership with reggaeton superstar J Balvin is next. 

SPONSORED BY WHOOP

Mental Health Day Tomorrow, Sleep Better Today

Tomorrow is World Mental Health Day. Today, we want to try and help you improve something that can go a long way toward feeling more mentally healthy: sleep habits.

WHOOP makes a wearable device designed to do just that.

Their technology helps change the way you think about sleep. Instead of sleep being the forgotten third of your life, WHOOP prioritizes sleep for you so you can repair muscle and memory, improve recovery and immune system, and feel better all day. 

WHOOP doesn’t just measure how long you sleep; it also measures how much time you spend in each stage, helping you better understand sleep quality. 

Once WHOOP has all that data, the WHOOP Sleep Coach can tell you exactly how much sleep you need to feel good the next day.

Sleep better and get 15% off a WHOOP membership with the code “MORNINGBREW.”

CRYPTO

Square Buys a Load of Nodes

Yesterday, Jack Dorsey’s payments company Square bought 4,709 bitcoins for $50 million, or about $10,600 per coin. That represents about 1% of Square’s total assets as of Q2. 

The backstory: Square dipped its toes in the bitcoin pool, then waded in to hip-level. 

• In 2014, the company started letting merchants accept the cryptocurrency. 
• In 2018, it enabled the buying and selling of bitcoin on its payments app, Cash App. 
• Last year, it created an independent team called Square Crypto that focuses exclusively on supporting open-source work in bitcoin. 

Now, Square is cannonballing into the decentralized deep end after revenue from bitcoin operations grew 367% annually in Q1. 

It’s not a sure thing. In its 11-year run, bitcoin has stumbled under wild volatility and high transaction costs. But it’s up to nearly $11,000 currently from $7,100 in January, and Square is bullish. “We believe that bitcoin has the potential to be a more ubiquitous currency in the future,” said CFO Amrita Ahuja. 

QUIZ

There's a Fly on My Quiz

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew's Weekly News Quiz has been compared to playing a Draw Four Wild card on someone who's about to win Uno. It's that satisfying.

Ace the quiz.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Thirteen men were arrested in a foiled plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
• WarnerMedia is restructuring to cut costs and it could shed thousands of jobs, per the WSJ.
• Dollar General is going more upscale with a new chain called “popshelf.”
• GoPuff, the delivery startup beloved in Philly, raised $380 million at a $3.9 billion valuation.
• Instacart is now worth $17.7 billion after its latest fundraising round.

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Nobel prose: The committee has spoken, and Louise Glück has won 2020’s Nobel Prize in Literature. Read her Pulitzer Prize-winning poem about reincarnation, “The Wild Iris,” and The New Yorker’s 2012 analysis of her body of work.  

Follow Friday: Rupi Kaur put a spotlight on Instagram poetry, and the space has since filled with low-word-count wizards...

• Instagram: Cleo Wade, Tyler Knott Gregson, Sam Payne, and Marya Layth
• Twitter: Brian Bilston, Charmeuse, The Circus, and this NYT Haiku bot

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GAMES

Friday Puzzle

Today’s Friday Puzzle is for people with a little time to kill. We’ll give you a series of letters that represent the first letter of various words. Those words, when grouped together, form the contents of a larger category.  

It’s simpler than it sounds. For example, R, O, Y, G, B, I, V = the names of the colors comprising a rainbow (Red, orange, yellow, green, etc.). 

1. H, O, M, E, S
2. M, V, E, M, J, S, U, N
3. A, T, G, C, L, V, L, S, S, C, A, P
4. Z, O, T, T, F, F, S, S, E, N, T
5. Okay this one’s impossible but we’re going to ask it anyway: G, J, T, J, J, J, A, M, W, J

FRIDAY PUZZLE ANSWER

1. The Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan...
2. The planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth...
3. The Zodiac symbols in order: Aries, Taurus, Gemini...
4. Numbers spelled out: zero, one, two, three, four...
5. The first name of the first 10 U.S. presidents: George, John, Thomas...