James Altucher:

Nobody Will Say Why Every Major AI Chatbot Suddenly Went Down Yesterday

On Thursday, three major chatbots – ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok – all went down without warning.

The simultaneous outage of three flagship AI systems from three different providers was bizarre. But, in an exceedingly peculiar information gap, we still don't know why models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceXAI respectively suffered outages at the same time. Whatever linked the disruptions, for now, remains unclear.

A possible culprit? SpaceXAI. The company formerly known as xAI before being rolled into Musk's rocket company SpaceX boasts a huge glut of computing power with its massive Colossus data centers near Memphis, and selling this to its direct rivals has become a multibillion dollar stream of revenue. Anthropic is one of those customers; the two companies announced a "compute partnership" in May.

The same afternoon that the major AI models went down, SpaceXAI issued a statement on social media that made passing reference to being partially responsible for the widely experienced outage.

"We are sorry for the issues you may have experienced with Grok following an outage at our Memphis compute center this morning," SpaceXAI wrote on Thursday. "We'd also like to apologize to our impacted compute partners."

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Davis Wilson:

Tesla Rolls Out Cybercab Rides – and the Feds Roll Out an Investigation

Just hours after rolling onto Austin roads, Tesla's Cybercab ran into its first speed bump.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened a probe Thursday examining "the process and technical data on which Tesla relied when certifying the Cybercab and related issues."

A summary of the probe says Tesla notified the agency that it had certified a small number of Cybercab vehicles which began operating commercially in Austin on Thursday as compliant with all applicable Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS).

It also notes that the Cybercab lacks traditional controls like pedals and a steering wheel. The issue is that some federal safety rules require equipment the vehicle doesn't have, including a brake pedal and rearview mirrors.

Now, NHTSA is looking into how much of Tesla's certification depended on the company determining that certain standards don't apply to the robotaxi.

Amazon's Zoox, a robotaxi that also doesn't have traditional driving controls, ran into similar issues. In 2025, however, it received a demonstration exemption from some safety standards. And this July, the NHTSA granted Zoox a temporary exemption allowing it to deploy up to 2,500 robotaxis annually for two years.

The agency has also proposed updating its safety standards, specifically around brake pedals, for vehicles designed to be driven exclusively through an automated driving system.

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Greg Guenthner:

Bitcoin's $80,000 Breakout Just Failed After a Blowout Jobs Report

Bitcoin nearly crossed the Rubicon. Then Friday's jobs report sent the bulls backward.

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) surged over 5% Thursday, then climbed as high as $82,000 and change Friday morning – less than $1,000 from the resistance that has capped it since February – before reversing below the big $80,000 level.

Friday brought the counterpunch.

Employers added 162,000 jobs in August, nearly triple expectations, while June and July payrolls were revised higher by a combined 55,000. The unemployment rate held at 4.1%.

The report strengthened the labor side of the case for a September rate hike by the Federal Reserve, even as cooler wage growth left inflation as the next big hurdle. Bitcoin, gold, and many of Thursday's high-beta winners turned lower as shorter-term yields and the dollar rose.

Today Bitcoin fell more than 2%, Coinbase dropped over 3%, Strategy lost about 2%, and Palantir fell nearly 4%. Tesla tumbled more than 6%, more than erasing Thursday's gain. Robinhood and SpaceX, by contrast, were roughly flat.

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