Tech Brew Ride Home - An... AI Toothbrush??!!

Episode Date: September 1, 2026

Tim Cook sent Apple staff a farewell memo on his last day as CEO, the FTC sued Amazon over $20B in hidden ad surcharges, Starman Optical bought GoPro for $285M, Waymo hit three cities, and Dyson made an AI toothbrush. On his last day as CEO, Tim Cook sends a memo to Apple employees reflecting on his time and says he takes "enormous comfort in handing the helm" to John Ternus (9to5Mac) John Ternus became Apple's CEO on Tuesday, succeeding Tim Cook after 15 years; he'll have to navigate leadership churn, stem a talent exodus to OpenAI, and unveil a foldable iPhone this month (The New York Times) The US FTC and 22 state AGs sue Amazon, alleging it overcharged advertisers by $20B+ since 2019 via hidden surcharges, with costs largely passed on to consumers (CNBC) Starman Optical agrees to acquire GoPro in an all-cash deal valued at $285M, a premium of 29.5% to GPRO's last close; GoPro hit a market cap of $4B in 2014 (Reuters) Starman Optical will pay GoPro shareholders $1.14 per share and leave them with ~10% of the combined company, which stays public; the deal wipes out GoPro's $92M debt and is expected to close by year end (TechCrunch) Waymo starts offering driverless rides to customers in San Diego, Tampa, Florida, and Denver; Amazon's Zoox plans to start testing in Houston and San Diego (CNBC) PSI, which aims to use AI "to industrialize the discovery of new physics" including cracking interstellar travel, emerges from stealth with a $58M seed (The Deep View) Dyson unveils the $499 CameraJet, an AI-powered toothbrush with a 100K-pixel macro lens that scans at 28 images per second and is trained on nearly 470K images (Bloomberg) Subscribe to the ad-free feed.

Welcome to the TechBrewrite Home for Tuesday, September 1st, 26. I'm Brian McCullough today. Tim Cook sent Apple staff a farewell memo on his last day as CEO. The FTC sued Amazon over $20 billion and alleged hidden ad surcharges. Somebody I've never heard of bought GoPro for just $285 million. Waymo is coming to three new cities and can I interest you in an AI toothbrush? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. If you're anything like me, you're tracking every metric your wearables can give you. The hardest one to track is the same one impacting almost all of your metrics,

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There is something truly special about Apple. I am most proud of what an annual report could never capture. This place is proof that culture triumphs over everything. We share a belief that what we build matters and that we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to leave the world better than we found it. That purpose is part of what makes this place extraordinary. Apple helps nurture it, but I believe it looks. lived within each of you long before you arrived here. It is what brought you to this company and

what continues to drive the work you do every day. Together, we have created something far greater than any one of us could have imagined or accomplished alone. And that's the secret to our success. We bring out the best in each other. We lift each other up. We have made it possible to leave our dent in the universe, as Steve once described it, because of who we are and what we believe because of what we value and how we see the world. How fortunate we are. How fortunate I am. As you know, I am not leaving Apple, but I am stepping away from a role that I have loved deeply. I will miss this work in ways I can only begin to imagine even as I remain completely at peace with my decision. I will miss leading you and being with you every step, even as I take enormous

comfort in handing the helm to someone as brilliant and wonderful and capable as John. A few people understand what it takes to build products that change the world the way John does, and I could not be more excited for his leadership. I hope you know how much I appreciate you and what an honor it has been to be your CEO. Most of all, I hope you will continue to be proud to be a part of this remarkable place we call Apple and always give it your very best. When we bring our whole selves to this work with care for one another and for the people we serve, there is no limit to the profound difference we can make, end quote. and quoting the times.

John Terranes became Apple's chief executive on Tuesday, succeeding Tim Cook, the company's leader for the last 15 years. The long-anticipated handoff, Mr. Cook has said, will be, quote, perfectly smooth. But the changing of the guard could still have some bumps. Mr. Terranus will have to guide Apple through an unusual amount of leadership churn. He will have to stem an exodus of talent to companies like OpenAI, and he will have to distinguish himself from Mr. Cook,

who will remain at Apple as its executive chair. Most of all, Mr. Ternis will have to perform a balancing act displaying the financial predictability and discipline that had been a hallmark of the Cook era while showing that Apple can still create new products that capture the imagination of consumers. Mr. Ternis will have to do so while steering Apple through arguably the biggest technology shift in a generation. At its annual hardware event this month, Apple is expected to introduce a foldable iPhone, its most significant change in 19 years to its most important product.

The company is also taking another stab at weaving artificial intelligence. throughout its products. Apple is going to have to face this idea of what's next, said Michael Gartenberg, a consumer technology analyst who worked as a product marketer at Apple from 2013 to 2016. The task for Mr. Ternis, he added, is to, quote, bring Apple back to being a cool brand, even though it's a multi-trillion dollar company, show that you are able to innovate. Apple, which has waffled over how aggressively to embrace AI, will tackle those questions with a changing management team. Over the past four months, Mr. Ternis, 51, has started to install his own executives mixing a roster of Apple veterans with newcomers.

Apple is a company that's used to having a consistent brain trust, said Jennifer Chapman, the dean of the Huss School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and a director for its Center for Workplace, Culture, and Innovation. The challenge there is, are you getting enough new ideas in, end quote. Just sort of worth mentioning, since Tim Cook became CEO, Apple's market cap grew from less than $350 billion in 2011 to $4.6 trillion. Revenue went from $157 billion in fiscal year 2012 to $477 billion in fiscal year 2006, and shares rose 2,258%.

Not bad, Bob. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and 22 state attorneys general are suing Amazon, alleging it overcharged advertisers by more than $20 billion. in 2019 via hidden surcharges with costs largely passed on to consumers. Quoting CNBC, the lawsuit which was joined by 22 state attorneys general, argues that Amazon may have reaped more than $20 billion from advertisers by using hidden surcharges dating back to a change to its auction rules that took effect in 2019. Amazon has millions of advertising customers who were misled into paying significantly higher

prices, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said in a statement, these higher costs were largely passed on to American consumers. In a blog post, Amazon called the FTC's lawsuit misguided and said the complaint fundamentally misunderstands how advertisers operate. The company added that the agency's lawsuit doesn't include evidence of consumer price increases. We've provided advertisers with guidance about our auctions and pricing in the main tools they use to manage their campaigns, and we continue to update that guidance, the company said. We look forward to making our case in court.

The company said its auction systems have saved advertisers $8 billion between 2021 and 2025, not cost them extra. The complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, centers on Amazon's sponsored products ads, brand ads and display ads that run alongside search results on its sprawling web store. Amazon has amassed the third largest digital advertising business globally, trailing only Google and meta. The company hauled in more than $68 billion in ads revenue last year, the lion's share coming from sales of sponsored product ads. Third-party sellers who hawk their wares on Amazon's marketplace have recently criticized surging advertising costs on the site, including a string of recent policy changes, which

led to some top merchants withholding their ad spend in a boycott. The company has traditionally used a second-price auction system, wherein it told advertisers they, quote, only pay the least bid amount needed in order to win. the complaint states citing Amazon's own marketing materials. The FTC alleges in its complaint that Amazon in 2019 changed its auction rules without notice by adding an undisclosed surcharge it referred to as a soft reserve price which led to higher ad prices. Amazon made this surreptitious change to its auction because it was unhappy about how much revenue its advertising auctions were generating, the agency said in its complaint, which cites internal communications between Amazon ad

executives. In one exchange, a company executive allegedly acknowledged, It uses, and, quote, invented auction participant to increase prices, the FTC said. The FTC and the state's alleged Amazon's practices violate federal and state consumer protection laws, and they're seeking civil penalties, restitution, and other unspecified damages, end quote. Something called Starman Optical has agreed to acquire GoPro in an all-cash-cash deal valued at $285 million, a premium of 29.000. and a half percent to GoPro's last close on the stock markets, but this is a big come-down. GoPro hit a market cap of $4 billion in 2014, quoting TechCrunch.

A company called Starman Optical has agreed to merge with GoPro. The deal involves Starman Optical paying GoPro shareholders $1.14 per share and leaving those shareholders with about 10% of the newly combined company. The deal expected to close by the end of this year will wipe away GoPro's outstanding debt of $92 million. The merger announced Tuesday morning comes a few months after GoPro revealed it was considering pivoting from building cameras to becoming a defense tech company. A day or so ago, YouTuber Marky Plyer revealed he had amassed an 8.5% stake in GoPro.

That appears to still be on the cards, as the company said, the merger will maximize the value of GoPro's IP and growth potential in consumer, commercial, and defense markets by recapitalizing the company strengthening its balance sheet, investing in growth and on-shoring the manufacturing of products for strategic markets. GoPro will also, quote, fully support its existing consumer products while investing in growth and a broader diversified product roadmap. It's not exactly clear what all that means, and Starman Optical doesn't have a significant track record to judge its performance.

The company bills itself as an optical photonics company focused on the development and domestic manufacturing of optical transceivers and related photonics technologies through its Starman new photonics business. Both Starman Optical and Starman New Photonics are part of Starman Holdings, which owns consumer tech brands like In Case, Incipio, and Griffin, end quote. Fall is almost here, which means less time in the sun and way more time in your car. Whether you're headed to a big meeting, picking up the kids from school, or starting your cross-country road trip, you'll want to stay connected on your drive. With AT&T connected car, your eligible vehicle can become a Wi-Fi hotspot so you and your passengers can happily stream, browse, and even email from the road.

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painless, and proven. Learn more at Intuit.com slash ERP. Depending on where you live, there are more opportunities to see what the self-driving hype is all about if you want. Quoting CNBC, Waymo, which has a commanding market lead in the U.S., said it's now offering driverless rides to customers in San Diego, Tampa, Florida, and Denver the first time the company will have commercial operations in Colorado. Zooks, meanwhile, said it will begin testing its toaster-shaped vehicles in Houston and San Diego with human drivers on board. The company said it will have a presence in 12 U.S. markets when those two cities open. The announcements come ahead of a planned event on Thursday from Tesla, which is expected to share details about its driverless cybercab and its Robotaxy Ride Hailing Service.

Goldman Sachs Research Forecasts the U.S. Robotaxy Market will reach 19 billion, billion in 2030, up from about $3 billion next year, before jumping to $48 billion in 2035. Waymo now boasts over 4,000 vehicles across 14 U.S. cities. Its fleet includes the newer, Roomier-Ohai vehicles based on a Zika minivan-style chassis. They're assembled out of factory in Arizona and include automatic sliding doors, three large in-car screens, Waymo's sixth-generation driverless technology, and an entertainment system with a Gemini integration. A Waymo spokesperson said in an email that in each of the three new U.S. cities, the company will have dozens of robotaxies with plans to reach hundreds over time and that passengers will

need to hail rides through the Waymo app. Waymo provides over 500,000 robot taxi rides in the U.S. each week and aims to cross the one million ride mark by the end of 2026. In some markets, the company offers rides through Uber. Zooks is far behind Waymo, as its only paid ride hailing service today operates in Las Vegas. Zooks has a free service in San Francisco for select writers and hasn't said when it will open a paid service there, end quote. Now, this is the sort of interesting rays I can get behind, an AI startup that wants to do checks, notes here, interstellar travel. Quoting the deep view. On Tuesday, the AI Native Physics Research Lab Physical Superintelligence or PSI emerged from stealth with a 58 million

dollar seed funding round led by Breakthrough Energy. It is launching with two proofs of concept. First, a productized piece of its core platform Emmy. Emmy, named for renowned physicist Amelie Emmy Nothar, combines PSI's reasoning engine consisting of sovereign, pre-trained, and post-trained models with a large curated inventory of simulations to tackle research problems at a pace much quicker than humans could, according to the company. Initially, a subset of Emmy's capabilities will be used for optimizing terrestrial and orbital AI data centers and factories. PSI has already signed commercial agreements and live pilot deployments on operating data center infrastructure today, according to the company.

The second prong of the launch is PSI's involvement in the Fermi Explorer mission, whose ultimate goal is to launch the first spacecraft to another star system, targeting Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to Earth. This initiative is a major undertaking because Alpha Centauri is a major undertaking because Alpha Centauri is roughly 4.37 light years away, which would take about 80,000 years to reach from Earth at the speeds of current spacecraft. That makes it quite a feat of engineering to build a vessel capable of the journey. PSI is joining as a founding technical partner for the Fermi Explorer Mission, a non-profit organizing the first privately funded interstellar space mission, and the first

AI planned probe of Alpha Centauri. PSI has already claimed to have contributed to the mission by validating its physics and identifying a substantially more efficient trajectory within the mission's mass and budget constraints. The company is using this finding to demonstrate that a small team using AI-native physics could do the work typically required of a national laboratory. This reflects the company's broader mission to contribute to discoveries that are both commercially and scientifically valuable, end quote. Finally today, what if I told you there was an AI-powered toothbrush? What would you imagine that would do? Would you want one, you'd imagine? This is the version of the multiverse we are currently living in people quoting Bloomberg. Dyson introduced a $499 toothbrush that uses artificial intelligence and a built-in camera to give real-time feedback, the

latest in a growing subset of gadgets that put AI and video in sometimes unconventional places. Granted, smart toothbrushes are hardly new, brands such as Oral B and Phillips, offer models that work with an app to track coverage, pressure, brushing time, and other user data. But Dyson said its new camera jet model announced Tuesday is the first with an integrated camera to narrow in on the gaps in the teeth where plaque first forms, then hardens, and direct a precision jet at them. It is available now for pre-order and is being offered in blue and pink. Privately held Dyson, which also offers home and personal care appliances such as vacuum cleaners, fans, air purifiers, and hair dryers, said it spent six years conducting research and development for the new toothbrush. We have seen

some innovation in the space, but it's largely focused on digital features and brushing specs and no real breakthroughs in the category, which is where we come in. Senior commercial manager, Nemi attorney said in an interview ahead of the launch, the company is marketing the device toward what it believes is a sizable portion of people who often skip flossing. The system is designed to both clean teeth and help keep gums healthy, according to Dyson. The toothbrush also works with the company's existing MyDyson app, which offers live viewing, guided cleaning, coverage mapping, and personalized brushing insights. The company now views oral care as its next major category with plans to introduce related products such as non-foaming toothpaste. The Camerjet

toothbrush features a 100,000 pixel macro lens that scans at 28 images per second and is powered by machine learning algorithms trained on nearly 470,000 dental images, the company said. Once the toothbrush identifies certain areas of interest, it uses a precision jet to fire short bursts of mouth rinse at those spots. The brushhead, which incorporates both firm and soft brushes for stain removal and gumline cleaning, oscillates to reach difficult spots, the company said. The camera jet also has various brushing intensity settings, such as gentle, variable, and deep clean, along with haptic alerts that notify users if they apply excessive pressure. Dyson recommends brushing for three minutes, with the battery-lasting.

between seven and ten days between charges, end quote. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.