Uber-Waabi Robotaxi Partnership, Apple’s High Growth, OpenAI vs Anthropic Debate | Jan 30, 2026

0:13welcome everyone to the information's ti tv my name is akash pasricha it is friday january 30th First up today, Apple reported its fastest growth in years, driven by demand for its latest iPhone family. We'll break down the results for you and talk about its latest acquisition. Plus, I am sitting down with the CEO of autonomous trucking company Wabi, which this week announced a$1 billion new funding round. It is Friday, which means it is time for the editor's cut, our roundup of the biggest stories this week. Today we are talking OpenAI, Anthropics, SpaceX, XAI, Tesla. There is a lot going on.

0:52And we will wrap with a story that we don't cover every day, the era of babies in space. If that intrigues you, our health reporter joins us to explore the startup studying how fertility works when you're not on planet Earth. It is a fun show, so let's get right on into it. Apple reported strong results with revenue surging 16 % driven by iPhone sales growth of 23%. I want to bring on Gil Luria, Managing Director and Head of Technology Research at DA Davidson to help us break it all down. Gil, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you here. Thanks for having me. What did you think? Well, it was a spectacular quarter for Apple.

1:32They grew their iPhone sales 23%. They hadn't done that in more than four years. And so there's a lot to be excited about. But the cynical investors that we are, everybody's already starting to look ahead and thinking what happens next. And that's where some of the concerns come in. This creates a tough comp for next year. What about memory prices? And so Apple's not going to even enjoy its one day in the sun in spite of having really record, spectacular sales. And the stock didn't really move on the results. Well, that's exactly it. So first of all, people are all worried about memory prices because, you know, at the same time, you see what's happening with SanDisk and Micron and that whole memory complex.

2:19So if memory inputs are going up three, four, fivefold in terms of costs, we all know somebody's going to have to pay for it. And Apple and NVIDIA are the two biggest purchasers of memory. NVIDIA probably doesn't have as much price sensitivity to it, but Apple does. These are important components in the phone. So we know that either they're going to have to pass through some of the higher costs or absorb them as lower margins. So that's one level of concern. The other level of concern is that the best year to have a good year is to have an easy comp. That's what we had this year. And the best year, the best way to have a tough year is to have a tough comp, which is what we're going to have next year.

3:01So starting in the second half of this year towards the end of this year, we're going to have if iPhone 18 doesn't have something spectacular in it, it's probably going to decline year over year. Now investors are starting to think about that. So, yes, this is a great year, but that means there's a lot of people with a new phone that are not buying a new phone next year. And as they report that, that would bring the stock down. So I think that's why the stock is not really going up today. What are the root causes of the memory crunch that we're seeing right now? The great data center build out.

3:45We are, and just the chip design by NVIDIA, the way we're using inference through reasoning and agentic workflows is demanding so much more memory than we used to. and these companies are trying to expand supply, but they can't possibly do it fast enough to meet the great data center build out by Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and all these fly-by-night Neo clouds that are buying as many NVIDIA chips as they can. Those NVIDIA chips come packaged with a lot of memory and there just wasn't enough memory out there. And again, those memory chips also go into all the handsets and computers that we use.

4:32They go into cars and other industrial devices. They're used to much more steady supply, much more steady cycles of supply and demand. This is so beyond anything they've ever seen that they're struggling to meet demand, which is why prices, it's a commodity. If the demand exceeds supply, prices keep going up and they're going up exponentially right now. And so are you expecting iPhone prices to go up then in the coming months or years? Yeah, there are only two ways Apple can handle it, either pass along higher prices or absorb lower margins. And since they have pricing power, they're one of the only hardware companies that has at least some pricing power.

5:18It's more likely that they'll pass along at least some of the increases from memory prices to us, the consumers. There's other ways they can handle it. One of the things that may happen this year is we may finally get a folding iPhone. For those of you that have watched Samsung phones with envy, we may be getting that foldable iPhone this year. That's another way for them to increase prices because that phone is going to come in at least$1 ,500, maybe$2 ,000 for the price point, which will help raise the overall price point for iPhone and, again, help absorb that increased cost from memory. I want to go back to something that you mentioned.

6:02You talked about NVIDIA being not as price-sensitive as Apple. Other than the fact that it's a B2B business and NVIDIA is mostly selling not to consumers but to other businesses, is the margin bigger? Why is it that NVIDIA, you think, has a little more room? the portion of the cost of of an nvidia server uh from memory is is much smaller right it's it's uh the you know when you buy from nvidia if you're a data center if you're microsoft amazon google buying uh from nvidia you're buying like a three or four million dollar uh server with 72 different GPUs in it. There is a lot of memory in there, but it's not a very big part of that three or $4 million server, refrigerator looking, gold plated, most important device that we're selling right now.

7:01What did we learn about the AI story as it relates to Apple? Because Tim Cook got some questions on the call about the partnership with Google and analysts tried their best to get something out of him in terms of what the, what the, if there was any kind of a revenue share agreement, Tim Cook in classic Tim Cook fashion, he remained bum on it. He said, I'm not saying anything else. So we didn't get much detail there, but we also had the news this week that Apple would be acquiring an AI audio startup called QAI taken together. I mean, what did we learn this week about Apple's pursuits in AI and how well it's going?

7:42Siri has to get a lot Not better. Siri is not very good, especially now when you can talk to Chad GPT, talk to Gemini, talk to Grok, have a nice conversation that sounds almost human. Siri is so far behind. They have to do something. They've chosen to align themselves with Google. It's not too surprising. Gemini's come a long way. Google's an established partner. They know they can work with them. And I think part of the reason we're not getting more details is that I'm not sure these details have been worked out. Apple has to figure out how to deploy a good frontier AI model in a way that we can interact with it and interact with its applications.

8:26It's not good enough that we'll be able to talk to her. I won't say her name because she's sitting right next to me, right? I don't want to wake her up. we won't be it's not going to be enough to just talk to her we're going to need her to be able to operate at least native applications calendar email notes things like that that's a that's a heavy lift and and what he said yesterday is well some of it's going to be on the phone some of it's going to be in the data center we're not sure yet I'm not sure they've worked it out yet is it going to be a proprietary model based on Gemini? Or is it going to be the Gemini from Google that operates on our phone?

9:13I'm not even sure they've figured it out. But what we do know, what they know, is that it has to work. Otherwise, people just perpetually go around Apple to Chad GPT, to Grok, to Gemini. They don't want that because that's not as good of an experience is when the voice interaction is integrated into the native apps. Well, and I was going to point out, I mean, this acquisition with QAI, I mean, sure, it's an acquisition. They're bringing it in-house now. But this is yet another example of Apple looking outside their own house for that expertise that we've reported here at The Information. It's been difficult for them to develop as fast as they would have wanted.

9:54And so it's rare for Apple to make an acquisition of this size, although we don't know how big it is. But, I mean, it seems significant. Yeah, it's significant because it tells us that either they're in a panic or they're playing defense in terms of intellectual property. They want to make sure they own all the intellectual property in order to be able to deliver these kinds of capabilities. This is not a new problem. We've been complaining about voice commands on the iPhone for a long time. And they've had three years to figure it out and they haven't. That's why they're going externally. Whatever team was inside Apple that was tasked with solving this problem and making it just catching up to what Chad GPT and Gemini have failed, which is why they have to go externally.

10:43Because again, couldn't be more important. If they don't pull a rabbit out of the hat by the end of this year, a year from now, we're talking about how iPhone sales were down, maybe down significantly. Right. And it brings me to my last point, Gil, which is something you and I have not talked about yet. Apple is in this moment with AI. Tim Cook's still got a lot to figure out. And yet we are hearing talks about succession plans and who the next CEO of Apple might be. And there's no indication that Tim Cook is looking to step down anytime soon. But during our conversation just now, Now I've been thinking about how I think Tim Cook's going to want to see the AI story through a little bit further before he hands over the reins.

11:26And it leads me to believe that actually, even though John Ternus is a name that's been thrown around, I think we're actually further out maybe than we think. Because I don't think he's going to hand things over in the middle of such a big company transition, right? Probably not of his own will, right? There's probably an inclination to want to leave on top. This would have been a good time for him to leave on 23 % high fund growth, but the stock's not reacting very favorably. So yeah, maybe they need to give us some better answers on AI, have another good year, and maybe then he can ride into the sunset because it doesn't look like that's happening right now.

12:07Great. Well, Gil, I want to thank you for coming on. That is Gil Luria from DA Davidson here on TITV. Thank you. Okay. This week, autonomous trucking company Wabi raised$1 billion in new funding. $750 million came from a Series C that Coastal Ventures and G2 Venture Partners co-led. The other$250 million will come from Uber, but that amount is a milestone-based capital agreement. Joining me now is Raquel Urtasun, founder and CEO of Wabi. Raquel, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you here. Thank you, Kash. And really a pleasure to be here again with you. Excited to talk to you. Let's start with the partnership with Uber.

12:48How does that partnership work, given that you and I have been talking for a couple of years, we traditionally thought about Wabi as an autonomous trucking company. Uber doesn't have that many trucks. Talk a little bit about how this works. Yeah, so the vision for Wabi was really to lead the physical AI, I would say, revolution, right? So from day one, we actually built technology that could serve multiple verticals. And over the past, you know, four and a half years, we've been focusing on our first product that was driving trucks. And now that the technology is ready, it is the perfect time for us to actually enter our next vertical, which is robotaxis.

13:32And that's where the new partnership with Uber makes total sense because when you think about Uber, the global leader in right-sharing is really the market for robotaxis. So that's where that additional partnership with Uber actually kind of resides and enables us to really enter very quickly, very swiftly. and at a scale, right, with more than 25 ,000 robot taxis that we're going to deploy together on the Uber network, you know, kind of bringing that to the next level of scale that we see today. And so are you, the software that Wabi has developed, the autonomous driving system, the physical AI system that you're developing, are you installing it in cars that Uber owns?

14:18How does this agreement actually work? Yeah, so we will have a single AI system, a single physical AI platform, single brain, and that will actually drive both robot taxis as well as trucks. We will be having the software in robot taxis yet to be announced into which OEM we are going to do this. And then that will be deployed at the scale in the Uber network. And this is a separate partnership from Uber's deal with Lucid and with Neuro. That's another lane that they're exploring. Yes, a separate partnership. This is a massive partnership that Uber is doing with Wabi, as you see, you know, the scale of that deployment that we just talked about.

15:05And then I want to talk about the funding round in a second here broadly, but the$250 million that is milestone-based, What are the milestones that you need to hit to get the full$250 million from Uber? Yeah, yeah. Everybody's asking about, you know, what that is. So we have simple development milestones that will be achieved, you know, very soon by Wabi. Not, you know, unveiling more details today. We will be talking about the partnership and other things like, you know, which markets we will be deploying first, etc. soon, but not today. But yeah, they're very simple milestones that, you know, development milestones.

15:45Now, as it relates to the broader funding round here, so you have a billion dollars in capital, up to a billion dollars. What are you going to be using the money for? And specifically, I want to ask you about how you're collecting the data, because last time we had you on the show, you were talking about some of the simulation technology you were playing with. What's on the roadmap for you? Yeah, so we're going to use, you know, the$1 billion of capital to really double down on our tracking product, right, and really bring that to commercialization at a scale, and then also into expanding into the new vertical.

16:22And Wabi is, you know, super capital efficient, right? So a billion dollars of new capital, basically for us, think of it as infinite capital. So, you know, there is a lot that we can really, you know, accomplish with this. And, you know, I think we are, if you look at tracking, for example, we are the most stable player in the industry by, you know, a totally different dimension, I will say. So this gives us definitely the peace of mind and the ability to really focus on what we do best, which is executing on milestones that are extremely ambitious, but we always hit in time and under budget, which really defines who Wabi is as a company.

17:09Whenever we say that we do something, we actually truly deliver always. And the business model for Wabi, you have these deals with Uber, with OEMs as well for the trucking division. How are these deals structured? Do they pay you a certain amount for each car or truck that they're installing the system on? Yeah, so on the trucking side, we have a similar business model to what the industry has kind of adopted, which is driver as a service. This is typically paid, without talking about the Uber partnership exactly, but it's typically paid in a per mile basis. and for the robotaxi side, more details to come soon.

17:58But I think it's important, Akash, to know that we are a technology company, so we will not be the ones operating a large fleet of cell-driving trucks or a large fleet of robotaxis either. And so I'm just imagining here, I mean, in terms of your own business, if it's per mile and based on distance, how quickly is revenue growing for Wabi right now? So, you know, when you think about the revenue projections, there is, you know, there is really a hockey stick that happens once the OEM is, you know, the fully redundant platform for the OEM is ready and can be produced at the scale, you know, the factory line, right?

18:40And, you know, the opportunity of revenue per truck per robot taxi is massive. So that's, you know, what Wabi is doing since day one is really built to scale. That's where for us has been very important to really vertically integrate with an OEM so that the moment that the product is ready, then you hit that massive hockey stick. And what we really hear from the customers is that, you know, on the tracking side, they are really ready to, you know, to adopt this technology. It's not anymore like a few years ago in terms of will this actually be the technology that actually is interesting or not interesting for my business?

19:20What we hear is that how many and where can you actually deploy? And one thing that I think is important also to say is that Wabi has a very differentiated business model, which is that we can go direct to customer. What does that mean? is that instead of using a have-to-have model that the rest of the industry needs to utilize because, you know, they cannot drive in generalized surface streets, for us, since we have the ability with the superior, you know, AI technology, then basically we can go from the customer end facility to the other end point and basically, you know, move freight the same as is done with tradition, you know, traditionally with humans.

20:04And for the customers, this is a massive product differentiation. This is really, for the first time, addressing their pain points. And that actually has had tremendous reception within the customers in terms of, you know, this is really the product we want to buy. Right. Last question for you. You raised a billion. Can you tell us what the valuation is? Not today. Not today. As you can imagine, it's pretty healthy and it's exciting. Right. Well, I want to thank you for coming on the show and congrats on the funding round. And when you have more to tell us about the partnership with Uber and about the robo-taxi systems, come back on the show and talk to us more about it.

20:44That is Raquel Ortasun, the founder and CEO of Wabi here on TITV. Okay. It was a big week of news for OpenAI and Anthropic, certainly among the stories that we published here at The Information. We reported that Anthropic is now projecting more revenue than OpenAI in 2029 based on the most recent projections that we have for both of those companies. Still, OpenAI is nearing deals to get up to$60 billion in investments from NVIDIA, Amazon, and Microsoft. Both companies are charging ahead. And this week on The Editor's Cut, I want to break down the rivalry between these two AI giants. Who's winning where and who has more momentum in this chaotic race?

21:26Joining me now are Martin Piers and Abe Brown, two editors from The Information. Martin and Abe, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here. Hey, Yacob. Hey, guys. It is the Martin and Abe show. We've not done the two of you together, so I'm excited to get all of your thoughts. Abe, maybe I'll start with you. So OpenAI and Anthropic, I am curious who you think is winning this race right now, not just from a business perspective, but from a narrative perspective, a character perspective. What are your thoughts? Well, I think they're in two different races. Well, I think they're increasingly in two different races.

22:02OpenAI seems to be pretty solidly in the consumer market. And Anthropic is obviously in enterprise with Claude. And look, I think Anthropic has a better position for itself at the moment than OpenAI. Its tools seem to be more popular than Microsoft's. And also in terms of just a narrative battle, Anthropic has definitely has been winning over the last few weeks and continues to just in terms of, you know, it has done a good job of portraying itself as a more stable and thoughtful creator of this new technology in a way that OpenAI is struggling to do. Martin, do you agree with that? I mean, I think that's the conventional wisdom, which is spoken very nicely by Abe.

22:54But look, I just want to firstly, I would like to start and make the point. In 2029, I'm projecting that I will be flying to the moon. I'm not sure what you're projecting in 2029. But honestly, these projections about what companies will be earning in 2029 are ridiculous. They're pointless. No one can know what the situation will be in, you know, five years from now. So I think firstly, we should stop focusing on these very long-term projections and focus on what they will be doing this year. So that's the first thing. The other thing is the reason that Anthropic is looking like a better bet than OpenAI is that Anthropic is a normal company that has a focus.

23:40OpenAI is run by these people who are like puppies. They see something, oh, I have to do that. I'm going to make hardware. I'm going to build data centers. I mean, they've got so many different businesses that they're trying to build that there's no focus. And I think, you know, one thing is they need to buckle down and really focus on a few things and stop trying to be announcing all these different things that they're up to right now. Okay. But, Abe, I mean, this is working pretty well from a fundraising side for OpenAI. It is, but you also have to imagine that those, you know, it's the same returning investors to a large degree.

24:30and if they don't put more money in at this moment, they, you know, it's sort of like they have to put more money in, right? If they want to see any return on what they've already put in, it's sort of like - And also, hang on, sorry, not to interrupt. The only reason that they are putting in more money is Microsoft is dependent on OpenAI's business for its own projections. So they have to put in money in order to ensure that that happens. NVIDIA is the same. Amazon, if they end up putting in money, they'll get all these deals from them. I mean, this is all self-interest. So the whole thing is like just a game of circular money.

25:09It's a perpetual money machine and it just keeps going. Yeah. Well, and it has gotten me thinking, you know, Martin, I'll come back to you. But so the valuation for OpenAI that's being thrown around right now is, I think, you know, it's in the 700 billion, 700 billions, you know, a trillion dollars. You know, people are floating around that number. But, okay, so let's say OpenAI goes public, right? I mean, you've got these big tech companies that are, you know,$4 trillion around there with valuation. I mean, I have been sort of thinking like, okay, if OpenAI goes public, like, I don't know. How big can the valuation get when you literally are making no money as a public company?

25:52Who's the question for? Abel now. It's for you, Martin. I mean, I think it's like, who knows? I mean, investors will put money into anything if they've got the right feeling about it. You know, Tesla is valued at, what,$1.5 trillion, and it's widely agreed. It's massively overvalued, but people believe in Elon. So I wouldn't surprise me if OpenAI goes public and achieves some enormous valuation, but just because it's not actually making any money, I don't think that those things are actually connected. I think it's the story that they tell. And right now, Sam Altman is telling a thousand different stories, and maybe one of them will actually work.

26:45and it's sort of you know elon has kept up his stock price by also nurturing the cult of personality around himself can sam altman do the same thing is he uh have the stability to do so that's the that that is more important than uh any of the numbers and is often the case and has been the case for newly public companies for decades yeah has sam got the elon factor i'm not sure do you think abe do you do you think he has it elon is an incredibly elon is a unique individual and is uniquely beloved i think he is sort of one of one in that sense um and so no i don't think he has the same elon factor but he also doesn't you know, to some degree, he could get by with a portion of it.

27:40Well, the other thing about Elon is he's actually achieved things, right? I mean, he turned Tesla into a huge business. He's made SpaceX a real thing. He has achievements. So people believe him. Sam, the jury's out. Okay. Okay. So before we go, though, speaking of Elon, I mean, we do have to get to the news here that XAI, you know, there's talks that could end up as part of Tesla, could end up as part of SpaceX. You know, Martin, I'll start with you. What is your reaction? Elon is looking to consolidate the empire. This is all narrative, like you said. I mean, this is really AI is the narrative and it will help both of these stories.

28:26But which one do you think is more likely for it to end up with? I mean, I really don't know which is more likely. I think obviously one of them will happen. Maybe they will all merge. You know, I think it's easier to merge XAI and SpaceX. They're both private. So I can imagine that that might have the edge. But I think Tesla probably has more financial resources than SpaceX. So it might be, and also I think there's far more overlap in between what XAI and Tesla are actually working on. So it probably would be easier to merge. I mean, not easier. It would make more sense to merge XAI with Tesla, but it might be harder from a just paperwork point of view because Tesla is a public company.

29:23Abe, what do you think? I think it tells us that if Elon is eager to get XAI merged into something else, it doesn't say much about the prospects for a lot of the other AI companies that are doing things like XAI that don't have the option to merge into a broader part of a corporate empire to go public and get a hold of that capital. And it certainly gets back to the point, you know, to what extent are the models actually important? It's the applications that people end up paying for. Can you actually develop it? So I think it's a great point. Martin, Abe, I want to thank you for coming on. That is Martin Pierce, our co-executive editor, and Abe Brown, our weekend editor here at The Information.