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Christian Pfister, a 68-year-old retiree, walks his Great Pyrenees, Wally, each morning on the street in his quiet neighborhood—a compilation of old oak tree-lined streets for single-family homes, duplexes, and apartments in southeast Austin where he’s been living the last 26 years. It was about three weeks ago, on one of these morning strolls, that he spotted a white Tesla Y with a Texas manufacturer plate drive by, with a dark-colored Tesla closely trailing behind it.
He watched as the Tesla tandem conducted a left turn at a street up ahead of him, disappeared around the block for half a mile, then drove by him again—once, then twice, then again and again.
“That’s all they did—around the same block over and over and over, all day long,” Pfister says in an interview.
Since Pfister’s spotting of the vehicles a few weeks ago, a handful of white Teslas (and some black and gray Teslas too) have frequented the streets of Pfister’s small neighborhood, driving the same routes and taking the same turns repeatedly—typically with drivers in the front seat, though two residents in the neighborhood that Fortune interviewed say they have seen some driverless vehicles with someone in the passenger seat. Another resident saw Teslas without anyone in them at all on multiple occasions.
Tesla is testing the vehicles in the neighborhood as it gears up for a long-anticipated launch of its self-driving taxi service in Austin by the end of this month. The EV company, which has been working on autonomous technology for more than a decade now, has said it is finally ready to go up against robotaxi competitors like Alphabet, whose subsidiary Waymo has already offered 10 million paid rides and is operating in four cities and planning to launch soon in several more. Elon Musk has assured investors that Tesla’s robotaxi service, which will initially start small with 10 to 20 vehicles, will expand to several other cities before the end of the year. But it all will start in Austin—and specifically in this small neighborhood—as Tesla proves its concept and irons out any kinks.
When the sightings of Tesla’s robotaxis began a few weeks ago, they raised alarm among some of the people who lived in the neighborhood. A couple of residents took to the community messaging platform Nextdoor to query their neighbors as to why white Teslas—with drivers—were parking in front of their houses for long stretches of time. “It’s freaking me out,” one woman posted.
Anastasia Maren, 24, who moved into the neighborhood last month, said she has seen Teslas drive by or park in front of her duplex repeatedly since she moved in, particularly when she is going on walks.
“They stare you down as if you’re in their way, or you’re the one who shouldn’t be here,” Maren says of the drivers. She says that while she has sometimes seen the vehicles driving around with only someone in the passenger seat—she often sees a person in the driver’s seat controlling the vehicles. “Sometimes I can see the person actually turning the wheel,” she says.
A 37-year-old Austin resident, Robert Yeats, who lives in an apartment complex further north in the neighborhood than Maren and Pfister, says he sees white Teslas line up in front of his apartment, parked and with their hazard lights on, often in groups of about four. In some cases, the Teslas were parked in the middle of the road with their hazard lights on, forcing other drivers to go around them. According to one resident, the tests have occurred as late as 10 p.m. None of the residents Fortune spoke to said they had received any notice or information from Tesla about the testing in their neighborhood.
Austin residents are used to seeing self-driving vehicles around town. Waymo’s cars started mapping the city in 2023 with safety drivers on board, and has since begun offering passenger service around the city without safety drivers in the vehicles. Pfister told Fortune he has seen Waymos parked overnight in front of empty lots in the same neighborhood. A few years ago, Cruise had released robotaxis on the streets of Austin, back before parent company General Motors stopped all rides, and later shut down the ride-hail service, after a high-profile accident in San Francisco.
But the Tesla sightings add to the questions that many industry observers have about the viability of the company’s technology and approach to autonomous driving. While other autonomous vehicle companies have needed to digitally map roads and neighborhoods before launch, Tesla claims that its camera-only system doesn’t require high-definition mapping, radar, or lidar technology. According to the company, its approach to autonomous driving is less expensive and more adaptable than the competition: instead of mapping an area for months, Tesla cars can figure out the terrain wherever they are. But if that’s the case, why are Teslas driving around the same streets of one neighborhood over and over—and why do many of the vehicles have someone driving them?
“I thought, well, maybe they’re just in the driver’s seat, so that if something goes wrong, they can grab the steering wheel. But they are actually driving the car,” Pfister says, noting that he has seen the drivers with their hands on the steering wheel. “They are actually driving the car, so it’s not driverless. I don’t really understand.”
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
Tesla has also conducted testing in at least two other locations in Texas. There was a scheduled testing with emergency vehicles in a separate isolated street in Austin, as Fortune earlier reported. Tesla also did testing at a training facility in Florence, Tex., with the Texas Department of Public Safety’s crash reconstruction team. During that event, state agencies set up scenarios for Tesla’s robotaxis to operate, so that the company could collect information about how to respond to various encounters with emergency personnel and equipment, such as crash scenes or flashing lights and sirens, according to a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety.
But it’s along a few blocks of the neighborhood in southeast Austin where Tesla has been conducting its regular, real-world testing in the weeks before launch. There’s a Tesla Supercharger station just across a busy street—the only station for about two miles—as well as a Tesla collision center less than two miles down the road. The neighborhood itself features quiet streets, though Teslas will have to cross a busy road to get to the charging station. There aren’t sidewalks on the residential streets, so residents walk their dogs or push strollers on the street itself—giving the cars an opportunity to operate with obstacles in a controlled environment. The three residents tell Fortune that the cars appear to operate at speeds no greater than 25 miles per hour.
Tesla is nearing the end of the June deadline that Musk set for launch—with just three weeks until the end of the month. A Bloomberg report had suggested the company was aiming for a June 12 launch. But as of Tuesday, June 10, several important pre-launch checklist items appeared to be outstanding. Tesla had provided drafts, but not finalized emergency responder guides, nor had it conducted emergency responder trainings to the Austin Transportation and Works Department of the Austin Fire Department as of Tuesday, the agencies told Fortune. As Fortune earlier reported, the EV maker told city employees those items would be furnished before the company launches service.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Snapchat, long-known as a featherweight in the league of Big Tech giants, is hoping to best opponents Meta, Google and Apple by releasing its new augmented reality AI-enabled smart glasses months, maybe even years, before the big guys.
Speaking at a conference on Tuesday, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said the company would release a new version of its camera-equipped glasses next year that will incorporate an interactive, AI-enhanced digital screen within the lens. The 2026 release date would be ahead of Meta, which plans to release its AR “Orion” glasses in 2027, while Google has not attached a date to its Android XR glasses.
“The tiny smartphone limited our imagination,” Spiegel said in his keynote at the Augmented World Expo conference in Long Beach, Calif. “It’s clear that today’s devices and user interfaces are woefully inadequate to realize the full potential of AI.”
The new “Snapchat Specs” will be lightweight and AI-enhanced, Snap said. They will allow users to look at objects in the real world and leverage AI to access information, such as translating ingredients on a label from foreign languages. The glasses will also allow users to interact with the objects on the lens, Snap said, citing examples like playing video games with their eyeballs.
The company did not share photos of the Specs frames or provide information on pricing. As part of the Specs announcement, Snapchat shared that operating system partnerships with OpenAI and Google Gemini will extend into experiences for the glasses.
If Snap follows through on the promise of 2026 launch, it would be the first Big Tech company to market with augmented reality glasses for mainstream consumers, claiming an early lead in the race to create the successor to the smartphone—a competition involving everyone from Meta, Google, and Apple, to ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which recently announced a partnership with former Apple design boss Jony Ive.
A pioneer in the glasses form factor, Snap made waves with the release of its “Spectacles” in 2016. The funky looking glasses were equipped with a camera that allowed users to post photos and short video clips directly to their Snapchat feed. But in recent years, Snap’s Spectacles have been eclipsed by Meta, which partnered with EssilorLuxottica to release Ray-Ban smart glasses. Though Meta hasn’t shared financials around its Ray-Ban glasses, EssilorLuxottica noted that the companies have sold over 2 billion glasses since their 2023 debut. Luxottica plans to increase products of the co-branded glasses to 10 million units by 2026, suggesting that the companies are pleased with the results and potential of the glasses.
That said, Meta’s glasses do not have AR capabilities; rather, the glasses have audio-based AI features as well as photo and video capability. Meta has said it will release its Orion AR glasses in 2027, with technology that will allow users to scan their Threads feeds with eye tracking hardware.
Other tech giants have glasses in their sights, too. At its IO developer’s conference in May, Google announced that it would join the smart glasses market by partnering with Warby Parker. And Apple, whose $3,500 VisionPro headset has failed to catch on with consumers, is reported to release smart glasses next year that mimic the current version of Meta’s Ray Bans, while working on more advanced AR glasses that are still years away, according to Bloomberg.
The Specs announcement follows a turbulent financial period for Snapchat. After years of worrisome financials, Snapchat seems to have stabilized and increased free cash flow in the most recent quarter. The glasses are partially a revenue diversification effort as the company is propagated by ads to its social network.
Still, Snapchat did not share what the glasses will cost consumers. Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, which do not have AR capabilities, cost between $239 and $303 so it’s reasonable to assume the Specs’ prices will be steeper due to the hardware requirements.
The style and comfort of the glasses are also likely to be critical, with consumers having repeatedly demonstrated an aversion to bulky- or geeky-looking smart glasses and headsets. With its 2026 launch date, Snap has thrust itself back into the conversation, but success will rest on whether it can produce a product consumers actually want to wear.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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President Donald Trump likes to say he’s bringing in trillions of dollars in investments from foreign countries, but a provision in his tax cuts bill could cause international companies to avoid expanding into the United States.
The House-passed version of the legislation would allow the federal government to impose taxes on foreign-parented companies and investors from countries judged as charging “unfair foreign taxes” on U.S. companies.
Known as Section 899, the measure could cause companies to avoid investing in the the U.S. out of concern they could face steep taxes. The fate of the measure rests with the Senate — setting off a debate about its prospects and impact.
A new analysis by the Global Business Alliance, a trade group representing international companies such as Toyota and Nestlé, estimates that the provision would cost the U.S. 360,000 jobs and $55 billion annually over 10 years in lost gross domestic product. The analysis estimates that the tax could cut a third off the economic growth anticipated from the overall tax cuts by Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation.
“While proponents say this punitive tax hike is intended as a retaliatory measure against foreign governments, this report confirms that the real victims are American workers in states like North Carolina, South Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee and Texas,” said Jonathan Samford, president and CEO of the Global Business Alliance.
Republican Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, has defended the provision as protecting U.S. interests by giving the president a tool that can be used against countries with tax codes that, in the federal government’s opinion, put American companies at a disadvantage.
“If these countries withdraw these taxes and decide to behave, we will have achieved our goal,” Smith said in a statement last week. “It’s just common sense. I urge my colleagues in the Senate to move quickly to pass this bill and protect Americans from economic bad actors around the world.”
House Republicans have been looking into the issue for a long time and the bill provides the flexibility so that a president doesn’t have to levy taxes. There were concerns among GOP lawmakers during Joe Biden’s presidency that an agreement among countries on corporate tax codes could cause foreign governments to charge U.S. companies more.
The tax gets at a fundamental tension within Trump’s policy agenda: a contradiction in the broad strokes of Trump simultaneously trying to tax imports and foreign profits at higher rates while also seeking investments from companies headquartered abroad.
In late May, Trump defended his approach by saying that his tariffs were causing more countries to invest in the U.S. to avoid imports getting taxed. While some countries and companies have made announcements, there is not evidence of the investments pushing up spending on new factories as measured in the government’s monthly report on construction spending.
The Republican president said his tendency to impose steep tariffs, then retreat to lower rates, had succeeded.
“We have $14 trillion now invested, committed to investing,” Trump said then. “You know we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. I went to Saudi Arabia, the king told me, he said, you got the hottest — we have the hottest country in the world right now.”
The Global Business Alliance was among the groups that signed a letter on Monday warning of the consequences of Section 899 to Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo of Idaho, both Republicans.
The Investment Company Institute, representing financial firms, said the provision “could limit foreign investment to the U.S. — a key driver of growth in American capital markets that ultimately benefits American families saving for their futures.”
The analysis performed by EY Quantitative Economics and Statistics notes there is a degree of uncertainty in how the taxes under Section 899 could be implemented and other countries would respond. But they could be charged against companies based in countries that tax digital services, as is the case in parts of Europe.
If the U.S. judged the taxes unfair, there would be a 30% tax rate on foreign companies’ profits and income. People working in the U.S. for the companies who are not citizens could also be taxed, among other provisions. Still, an exemption is in place so that the foreign holders of U.S. debt are not affected by the potential new taxes.
The possibility of the taxes and seemingly arbitrary nature by which they could be imposed is also a challenge, said Chye-Ching Huang, executive director of New York University’s Tax Law Center.
“Section 899 creates a game of political chicken with trade partners that risks harming businesses, consumers, and workers in the hopes of securing US multinationals the ability to shift more of their profits out of the US to tax havens,” Huang said in an email. “It’s a high-risk strategy that could expand the damage of the failed tariff war.”
There could also be political repercussions if key states in Trump’s political coalition from 2024 suffer layoffs or simply find job growth slowing. The Global Business Alliance finds job losses could amount to 44,200 in Florida, 27,700 in Pennsylvania, 24,500 in North Carolina and 23,500 in Michigan.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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Tariffs may be leaving a cloud over the stock market, but tech companies continue their upward climb, buoyed by investor excitement around artificial intelligence. On Tuesday, Meta’s share price rose 1.20% amid reports that Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant planned to invest around $15 billion into the startup Scale AI.
Meta wasn’t the only tech company to receive a boost on Tuesday. Apple shares rose 0.61%, despite a lackluster performance at its annual developer conference, while Tesla rebounded 5.67% as the public spat between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump has become more muted. Overall, the S&P 500 rose 0.55%.
Despite markets remaining in the green, investors remain cautious as trade talks between the U.S. and China continued in London. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters on Tuesday that discussions with Chinese economic officials were going well. “We’re spending lots of time together,” he said.
Meta has retained its status as one of the topmost U.S. tech companies, despite high profile stumbles over the past few years. Those include its disastrous pivot to the metaverse, and its more recent scramble to keep pace in the AI arms race with competitors, including Google and OpenAI.
In its latest bid to shore up resources, Meta is building a new “superintelligence” AI research lab—a term for an AI system that would surpass the collective intelligence of humanity—that will likely be headed by the 28-year-old billionaire founder of Scale AI, Alexandr Wang. According to reports from Bloomberg and The Information, the deal to bring Wang on board would entail an investment into Scale AI totaling around $15 billion.
Though the move may not be enough for Meta to compete with other AI labs, the company’s stock still ticked up by 1.20%, bringing its monthly gain to 9.85%. Google rose by 1.29% on Tuesday.
As for Tesla, despite Tuesday’s bump, Tesla has still fallen by 5.55% over the past week. The company is planning to launch its long-anticipated self-driving taxi service in Austin by the end of the month.
Another red-hot tech stock, the stablecoin company Circle, maintained most of its massive gains from its initial public offering last week, hovering around $105, though it dropped 8.31% on the day. As Congress inches closer to passing landmark legislation that would establish regulation for stablecoins, a type of dollar-backed cryptocurrency, Circle had the largest two-day pop for an IPO that raised more than $500 million since 1980. Analysts said that Circle’s performance could encourage other fintech and crypto companies to go public, with the exchange Gemini announcing that it had confidentially filed for its IPO last week.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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Marines and additional National Guard troops headed to Los Angeles on Tuesday, sent by President Donald Trump in response to four days of protests over immigration raids despite the strenuous objections of state and local leaders.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, meanwhile, filed an emergency motion in federal court to block the Trump administration from using the Guard and Marines to assist with immigration raids in Los Angeles, saying the motion was in response to an apparent change in orders that had been issued for the Guard.
Trump’s deployment of roughly 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines to the country’s second-largest city came despite a relative calm to the Monday’s and Tuesday’s protests.
State officials sued Trump on Monday in an attempt to roll back the Guard deployment, saying the president had trampled on California’s sovereignty.
This appears to be the first time in decades that a state’s National Guard was activated without a request from its governor. Trump said in a social media post that the city would have been “completely obliterated” if he hadn’t sent Guard members to the city over the weekend.
Here are some things to know about the lawsuit, the protests and the troop deployments:
Mayor Karen Bass pinned the unrest at some protests squarely on the Trump administration, saying Tuesday that there was “nothing going on here that warranted the federal intervention.”
She also said she was mystified about why the Marines were sent.
“People have asked me what are the Marines going to do when they get here? That’s a good question. I have no idea,” she said at a news conference, emphasizing that violence and looting by protesters won’t be tolerated and that the city was considering imposing a curfew.
She also called out Trump for suggesting the National Guard, not local police, quelled the violence that did happen. She noted Trump made the claim in a Saturday night tweet, but that the National Guard troops didn’t arrive until Sunday.
“If you want to know what the National Guard is doing, drive by the federal building. They are stationary at the federal building protecting the building,” she said. “They are not out doing crowd control or anything like that. So I don’t know how he could say that the National Guard is who saved the day. Who saved the day was our local law enforcement agencies.”
Bass also suggested that the $134 million that the Pentagon said it was costing to deploy troops to LA would have better used to help the city prepare for next summer’s World Cup.
The governor on Tuesday filed an emergency request seeking to block the Trump administration from using the Guard and Marines to assist with immigration raids.
The filing included a declaration from Paul Eck, deputy general counsel in the California Military Department. Eck said the department has been told that the Pentagon plans to direct the California National Guard to start providing support for immigration operations. That support would include holding secure perimeters around areas where raids are taking place and securing streets for immigration agents.
The Guard members were originally deployed to protect federal buildings.
Trump and Newsom have been feuding over the immigration raids and protests, with the president and his border czar, Tom Holman, trading taunts with the governor about the possibility of arresting Newsom if he interfered with federal immigration enforcement efforts.
“I would do it if I were Tom. I think it’s great,” Trump said.
Newsom responded in a post on X: “The President of the United States just called for the arrest of a sitting Governor. This is a day I hoped I would never see in America.”
The governor called the presence of troops on the streets of Los Angeles both “illegal and immoral,” writing: “This isn’t about public safety. It’s about stroking a dangerous President’s ego.”
In a post Monday, Newsom called the deployment of Marines “a blatant abuse of power” and said officials would sue to stop it.
“U.S. Marines serve a valuable purpose for this country — defending democracy. They are not political pawns,” Newsom wrote. “The Courts and Congress must act. Checks and balances are crumbling.”
Downtown Los Angeles was fairly quiet Tuesday morning, with Guard members outnumbering protesters. Several Guard members were stationed in front of the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal lockup where some immigrants are being held, with long guns and wooden bats slung over their shoulders. Passing drivers occasionally honked at or heckled them, drawing no response. News crews were stationed across the street, awaiting the possible arrival of the Marines, who had arrived in the area by late morning.
Otherwise, there were few signs of the tumult that gripped the city in recent nights, aside from the graffiti scrawled across several buildings — “Abolish ICE,” “Amerikkka,” and obscene slogans directed at Trump and federal law enforcement.
Monday’s demonstrations were less raucous than Sunday’s, with thousands peacefully attending a rally at City Hall to protest Friday’s arrest of union leader David Huerta, who was protesting the immigration raids, and hundreds rallying outside of the Metropolitan Detention Center. The protests have been driven by anger over Trump’s stepped-up enforcement of immigration laws that critics say are tearing apart migrant families.
The protests were sparked by Trump’s immigration crackdown in the area. They started Friday in downtown Los Angeles before spreading on Saturday to Paramount and neighboring Compton.
Federal agents arrested immigrants in LA’s fashion district, in a Home Depot parking lot and at several other locations on Friday. The next day, they were staging at a Department of Homeland Security office near another Home Depot in Paramount, which drew out protesters who suspected another raid. Federal authorities later said there was no enforcement activity at that Home Depot.
Demonstrators attempted to block Border Patrol vehicles by hurling rocks and chunks of cement. In response, agents in riot gear unleashed tear gas, flash-bang explosives and pepper balls.
The weeklong tally of immigrant arrests in the LA area climbed above 100, federal authorities said. Many have also been arrested while protesting.
Protest over immigration raids have happening in major cities throughout the country, including on Tuesday, though none have reached the scale of those in Los Angeles.
Hundreds of protesters organized by the Austin, Texas, chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation gathered Monday near the state Capitol before moving toward the federal building that houses an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office.
Authorities appeared to use chemical irritants to disperse a crowd, and the city’s police chief said Tuesday that four officers were injured during the protests, including three who were struck by thrown rocks.
In Dallas, hundreds of people demonstrated on a city bridge for hours before police determined the rally to be “unlawful.” Police said one person was arrested and that charges were pending.
The demonstrations from Boston to Seattle have ranged from gatherings outside of federal office buildings or statehouses, and marches through downtown neighborhoods. “No Kings” rallies critical of Trump are planned nationwide Saturday to coincide with the president’s scheduled military parade in Washington, D.C.
Associated Press reporters Michael Casey in Boston, Jesse Bedayn in Denver, Jason Dearen in Los Angeles, Rio Yamat in Las Vegas, Maryclaire Dale in Philadelphia, Amy Taxin in Santa Ana, California, Martha Bellisle in Seattle, Kate Payne in Tallahassee, Florida, and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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