Tech Brew Ride Home - Tim Cook Ain't Goin Anywhere

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

Tim Cook's new pay package signaled he'd stay deeply involved at Apple, Travis Kalanick's Atoms drew a $100M Uber investment for robotaxi tech, OpenAI's chief scientist called for industry-wide AI slowdowns, and AI wiped out Kenya's essay-writing gig economy. Tim Cook's pay package indicates he will remain very active at Apple; sources: Apple's plans to squeeze more App Store profits prompted Phil Schiller to leave (Bloomberg) Sources: Travis Kalanick's Atoms is developing robotaxi tech and hired Anthony Levandowski after acquiring his company Pronto; Uber has invested $100M in Atoms (Financial Times) OpenAI Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki says no lab has solved alignment enough to keep scaling at maximum speed, and hopes voluntary slowdowns become commonplace (OpenAI) Pachocki warns AI agents are becoming "superhuman" at breaching protected systems and calls for mandated safety bars enforced by third-party auditors or government agencies, as models grow better at hiding their reasoning (Business Insider) How AI gutted Kenya's essay-writing industry, which at its peak paid 40,000+ people in Nairobi to do overseas students' homework, leaving few paths back to work (The New York Times) Subscribe to the ad-free feed.

Welcome to the TechBrewrite home for Monday, September 7th, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough today. Tim Cook's new pay package signals he'll likely stay deeply involved at Apple. Travis Kalinix Adams drew a $100 million Uber investment for a Robotaxy Tech. Open AI's chief scientist called for industry-wide, AI slowdowns, and AI wiped out Kenya's essay writing gig economy. Here's what you miss 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, though, is the same one impacting almost. all your other metrics, how the temperature of your bed affects your sleep. That's where the pod

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Tomorrow we're going to have Apple's surprise and shine iPhone event and you wouldn't expect we'll see much of Tim Cook, maybe a cameo at most so he can give new CEO John Ternis the spotlight. But according to Mark German, don't expect Tim Cook to stay in the shadows forever. Quoting Bloomberg. By stepping down at this moment and giving Terenus a massive slate of new products to work with from the start, Cook is all but ensuring that the changeover will be written about in business school textbooks, a stated goal of his.

It would mark a first for Apple whose previous CEO transitions were anything but orderly, including Cook's own succession of Steve Jobs amid the company co-founder's illness. But even if Terenus quickly puts his own stamp on Apple, it could take longer for the company to move fully out of Cook's orbit. Cook is now executive chairman and remains a powerful center of gravity at Apple. While Ternis has many changes in store, including a plan to speed up product development, it could take a while before the company is fully rebuilt in his image. Cook will play an especially crucial role in certain areas, such as the company's

dealings with the White House in Beijing and its handling of the memory shortage. Cook even told employees in his final memo as CEO that he looks forward to seeing them at Apple campuses around the world. I don't believe this is because Cook doesn't trust Terranus. I think it's because Apple remains a central focus of Cook's life, even after leaving the CEO job. As part of the transition, Cook is moving out of his office in Section 7 of Apple Park and handing the space over to the new CEO. That means Teranus is moving into the executive suite for the first time. Before being named CEO, he worked alongside the hardware engineering organization in an office away from Apple's center of power. Software Chief Craig Federigi, another long-time holdout

from the executive wing remains with his team elsewhere at Apple Park. There are other signs that Cook isn't going to just be traveling the world hiking with his new bodyguard and working from his place near Palm Springs in Southern California. The executive chairman is getting a new office at Apple's campus, but the biggest indicator that Cook will remain heavily involved is his giant new pay package, which has raised eyebrows among Apple leaders since it was announced Tuesday after the market. It closed. The pay of top Apple executives is split between a salary, cash bonus, and stock units that vest over time. For next year, Cook will get a base salary of $2 million. That's down from the $3 million he had as CEO, a salary that Ternis now receives. But the $2 million is still twice the typical base salary of senior vice presidents and members of the C-suite. In terms of restricted stock units for 2027, Terenus was given a target of $55 million, on top of the salary and unspecific. specified bonus. While Cook gets $45 million, those numbers will fluctuate based on how Apple's share price performs, but Tarynis's compensation likely won't be far off from Cook's pay

in recent years as CEO. Cook's pay clearly demonstrates how much he'll remain in the thick of things. In fact, Cook will continue to make more money than most CEOs at major public companies and nearly twice as much as other top Apple executives, including the chief financial officer and chief operating officer have historically earned. The plans are also structured differently. 75% of Ternis's stock award is tied to how Apple performs relative to its peers, while only half of Cook's is performance-based. Because of those differences, there is even an unlikely scenario in which Cook could

ultimately realize more value from his 2027 package than Ternis does. The compensation package tells you everything you need to know about what's expected from Cook in his new phase. Cook himself has said that he expects to have the chairman role for a long time, and it's now clear that it will be an active job. Will that be a problem for Ternus? For now, probably not. Cook has a collaborative management style,

and he certainly believes in Ternus's ability. Cook also clearly feels strongly about having an orderly transition, telling employees that there can only be one CEO at a time. But avoiding a power struggle isn't the same as making a clean break. Though Cook may take some time to enjoy semi-retirement, he says his top priority in life will remain Apple. That leaves some big questions for the company, its employees and investors. What is the eventual off-ramp for Cook?

And when will Apple fully become Ternis's company? End quote. Sources say that Travis Kalanick's post-Uber startup Adams is developing a Robotaxy technology and even hired Anthony Lewandoski after acquiring his startup Pronto. Uber has apparently invested $100 million in Adam, quoting the FT. Armed with Adams' recent $1.7 billion fundraise, the Uber co-founder is gearing up for a hiring spree, including potential acquisitions to bring in autonomous engineering talent, according to people familiar with his plans.

Adams, which Kalanick billed as a physical AI company, has also held preliminary talks with Uber about using its technology for robo-taxies on its ride-haling network, these people said. Uber has invested $100 million in Adams, they added. A tie-up would mark Kalinick's first involvement in ride hailing at Uber since he left its board in 2019. He was forced out as chief executive following scandals nine years ago. A lot of the things that would have happened with Uber over time are things we're doing now. Kalanick said this month at an event held by venture firm, Andrewson Horowitz, in San Francisco. Adams said it is an industrial software company focused on industrial applications.

We have no plans to enter the saturated robotaxy market. Uber is a partner of Adams and can use our technology for its ride-sharing business if it is helpful, it said. To accelerate his new project, Kalanet has brought in Waymo co-founder and former Uber self-driving chief Anthony Lewandowski to lead Adams' autonomous vehicle work, including Robotaxy development, the people said. Levindosky's theft of trade secrets from Google's self-driving car unit contributed to Kalinick's ousting from Uber. and cost the company nearly $350 million in legal settlements. In 2021, LeVandowski was spared an 18-month prison sentence when he was pardoned by President Donald Trump.

Adams acquired Levendoski's startup Pronto, an automation company focused on heavy industry and mining in March. Kalanick launched Adams in the same month, rebadging his real estate group city storage systems, which acts as a holding company for various business interests, including Dark Kitchen Operations Cloud Kitchens. Adams announced a $1.7 billion funding led by Andresen Horowitz in July. The Uber co-founder's empire spans a food delivery service, a point-of-sale business, and Lab 37 in operation to automate commercial kitchens.

Adams has more than 2,000 employees across the span of its various arms, according to public profiles on LinkedIn. The bulk work across the company's food division, but a growing number of employees are focused on autonomous vehicles, people familiar with the matter told the FT. The company is taking a similar approach, to AV companies such as Wave and Neuro, which want to build the technology for robot taxis, but not the vehicles themselves, said people familiar with the matter.

Kalanick is returning to the limelight having departed Uber in ignominy back in 2017, following allegations of managerial dysfunction. Female workers claim the company turned a blind eye to sexual harassment and discrimination. Regulatory probes in several markets and Google's lawsuit over trade secrets, theft, further damage to standing, and a boardroom clash ensued. However, Silicon Valley's culture has shifted in the Trump era and its veneration of hard-charging founders has grown. At the Andresen event, a video of which was later posted online, Kalinik walked young tech entrepreneurs through sides labeled Big Deck Energy and spoke about retard maxing

when founders stop overthinking and take immediate but imperfect actions. One of Adams' largest backers, Andresen Horowitz, has dismissed the furor over his tenure at Uber. My very favorite thing about Uber's guiding principles was meritocracy and toe-stepping, said Ben Horowitz, the Silicon Valley firm's co-founder at the August event. That was the part that got diluted when Travis went out. He added, it's certainly the biggest check I've ever written. I was at conviction very fast. Close friends maintained Kalanick was the victim of a media pile-on that left him incapable of managing Uber's day-to-day operations. There are probably 10 people who have created as much private value in the markets, and he is one of them, said David Erickson.

and a professor at Columbia Business School, certain entrepreneurs are always going to be acceptable to investors. Kalanek counts Saudi Arabia's public investment fund among investors in Adams, having earlier backed cloud kitchens, according to people familiar with the matter. One backer whom investors have turned to for assurance is Uber. Chief Executive Darakas Rashiahi remains in regular contact with Kalanik, said people familiar with the matter.

The two were spotted huddled together on the sidelines of the U.S. Saudi Arabian Business Summit held in Riyadh. in May 2025. Backers caution that Adams is not exclusively tied to the development of Robotaxies with Kalanek adopting a grander vision for the venture. He doesn't want to be boxed in. It's not just all about reclaiming some form of past glory as much as it is fulfilling a longstanding vision, one person close to the project said, end quote. Cyber threats can pop up where you least expect them to, like when you're focusing on today's well, AI is changing the entire landscape of cybersecurity right under your nose.

Rubrik can help prepare your organization to handle this new world of cybersecurity. With Rubrik, you get one platform that secures your data, controls your AI, and protects your identity. Learn more at rubric.com slash mb. That's rubr-i-k.com slash mb. Is your multi-entity management creating more confusion than clarity you need the Intuit ERP, Intuit Enterprise Suite? It's the AI-native ERP solution that's powerful, painless, and proven. Learn more at Intuit.com slash ERP. OpenAI chief scientist, Jakub Pachaki, says,

No Lab has solved AI alignment sufficiently enough to keep scaling at maximum speed and has called for voluntary slowdowns to become commonplace across the AI industry. Quoting Business Insider, days after releasing a new highly capable model, Open AIs chief scientist is calling for a slowdown And a lengthy blog post on Sunday, Yakop Pachaki said he was concerned that, quote, no one is prepared for the consequences of a continued rapid rise in machine intelligence. He said that although Open AI is pursuing internal technical solutions to better control powerful AI agents, quote, broader interventions are required.

He specifically cited concerns that increasingly autonomous agents could learn to evade human oversight, break into computer systems, and trick people to accomplish their objectives. He called for mandated safety bars that he said could be enforced by a network of third-party auditors, by government agencies or by international bodies. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, reposted Pichocki's essay on X, calling it an important post. Pichaki said AI agents are becoming superhuman at breaking into protected systems on the open Internet. He said their hacking abilities put the world's infrastructure at risk. We are currently in a narrow window to use the best available models to significantly tighten security of critical systems, he said.

AI agencies said will soon begin to pursue their own objectives, separate from prompts entered by human operators. He said that agents are not above blackmailing or bargaining with people to achieve their aims. Pichaki said OpenAI primarily monitors the chain of thought reasoning that different models used to determine how agents get off track and go rogue. For instance, an agent might think to itself, I should cheat on this test, and Open AI would be able to see that reasoning, but the agent would not realize its thinking is visible. At present, this means agents have no way to hide or otherwise obfuscate their thoughts to prevent Open AI from discovering their bad behavior. However, Pachaki said, newer models are becoming better at manipulating their own reasoning

processes, thereby preventing open AI from seeing their unvarnished thoughts. Some of the latest models don't even verbalize their reasoning at all, Pachaki said. This development, Pichaki said, could bottleneck AI development while researchers ensure they can see receipts? More and more, AI models are improving themselves via a process Pachaki calls machine recursive self-improvement. The process provides a way to rapidly scale AI development, however. Pichaki cautioned that greatly accelerated. AI on AI development in the short term poses risks and is not the right collective action we should

take as the research community. Pichaki said human minders need to find creative ways to monitor the self-improvement or else coordinate with other AI companies to orchestrate a combined slowdown to build confidence in these measures. The core challenge of automating AI research is not getting there, Pichaki said. It is getting there in a way that keeps people a part of the continued improvement process and leaves the future in humanity's hands, end quote. Finally, this Labor Day, the New York Times took a look at how AI gutted Kenya's essay writing industry, which at its peak paid more than 40,000 people in Nairobi to do overseas students' homework, leaving few paths back to work after AI has crushed the industry, quote,

Tessarios Bundy once symbolized the strange, life-changing opportunities the internet provided. Hailing from a farming village in Kenya, Mr. Bundy moved to the capital of Nairobi in 2011 to be the first in his family, to attend university. There, a friend suggested he try a new online job, writing essays for cheating overseas college students. His first assignment was a two-page essay on the health benefits of the Garcinia, Cambodia. It was a fruit he had never heard of, and an essay written for a student he didn't know anything about. He earned $7 for three hours worth of work. That was a lifeline for me. I needed the money, Mr. Bundy, now 34, said in an interview in Nairobi. He added, I could not sleep that night. I was ready to burn the midnight oil. Mr. Boondy estimates he wrote more than

2,500 essays over the next 12 years, sometimes three a day. He balanced completing his public health degree with helping faraway students studying engineering, medicine, and computer science to finish theirs. Some students gave him their school login information so he could keep up with their assignments. Mr. Boondi didn't know it then, but he was in the boom era of internet gig work. Newly wired to the global internet and hungry for jobs, well-educated youths from places like Kenya, the Philippines and India found opportunities in the crevices of the digital economy. They could make money online doing unglomerous tasks that others further up the economic ladder did not want to do. Then AI arrived and the good times ended. In 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT at colleges worldwide.

Students made a simple calculation that has become more pronounced today. Why pay a freelancer in Kenya when ChatGPT could do the job? essay work began to thin, rates fell, and assignments dwindled. Before long, the industry shrank to almost nothing. I never would have expected AI could do this, Mr. Boondi said. As technologists, economists, and policymakers worldwide debate the future of AI, Kenya's experience shows how the technology is already dismantling some lower rungs of the global labor market. It's not just going to be Kenya. It's going to be everywhere we see a big transformation, said. Mark Graham and Oxford University professor who has studied the global gig economy. AI has come in,

and taken big chunks of these labor markets, he said, end quote. So usual notice that tomorrow's show will be a bit later than usual, as I have to watch the iPhone event and then regurgitate it for you. Talk to you tomorrow.