An... AI Toothbrush??!!

Welcome to the TechBee Ride Home for Tuesday, September 1st, 2026, 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 in alleged hidden ad surcharges.

Somebody I've never heard of but 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.

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Yesterday was Tim Cook's last day as CEO of Apple.

And he sent a memo to Apple employees reflecting on his time with the company and saying he takes

quote, the enormous comfort in handing the helm to new CEO John Ternis quoting 9 to 5

Mac.

Here is quoting Cook's memo.

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 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.

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.

First 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.

And quoting the times, John Tarenus 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. Tarenus 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. Tarenus will have to perform a balancing act, displaying the financial

predictability and discipline that have been a hallmark of the Cook era while showing

that Apple can still create new products that capture the imagination of consumers.

Mr. Tarenus 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, do 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. Tarenus 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. Tarenus 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 Chattman,

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 2026,

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 since 2019 via hidden surchargers

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 surchargers dating back to

a change to its auction rules that took effect in 2019.

Amazon has millions of advertising customers who were misled in the 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 US 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 hold in more than $68 billion in ads revenue last year with the lion's share

coming from sales of sponsored product ads.

Third party sellers who hock 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 bit 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 search charge it referred to as a soft reserve price which

led to higher ad prices.

Amazon made this seraptitious change to its auction because it was unhappy about how much

revenue its advertising auctions were generating the agency said in its complaint which sites

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 states alleged Amazon's practices

violate federal and state consumer protection laws and their seeking civil penalties restitution

and other unspecified damages.

Being called Starman Optical has agreed to acquire GoPro in an all cash deal valued at

$285 million.

A premium of 29.5% to GoPro's last close on the stock market but this is a big come down.

GoPro hit a market cap of $4 billion in 2014.

Quoting tech wrench.

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 Marki Plyer revealed he had a mast and 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's strengthening its balance sheet investing in growth and

ensuring 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 builds 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 Incase, Incipio and Griffin.

Followed by the company's Starman Optical and Starman Optical

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

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When a gamer in the back seat help keep them connected and in the game with AT&T connected

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Being on the road more doesn't mean you have to put your whole life on pause stay connected

no matter where you're going.

See if your car is eligible at ATT.com slash techbrew that's ATT.com slash techbrew requires

eligible vehicle service and coverage is not available everywhere restrictions apply.

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Depending on where you live there are more opportunities to see what the self driving

hype is all about if you want.

Wemma which has a commanding market lead in the US 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 US markets when those two cities open.

The announcements come ahead of a plan event on Thursday from Tesla which is expected to

share details about its driverless cyber cab and its robot taxi ride hailing service.

Goldman Sachs research forecast the US robot taxi market will reach $19 billion in 2030

from about $3 billion next year before jumping to $48 billion in 2035.

Wemma now boasts over 4,000 vehicles across 14 US cities.

Its fleet includes the newer Rumier O'High vehicles based on a Zika mini van style chassis.

Their assembled out of factory in Arizona and include automatic sliding doors, three

large in-car screens, Wemma's sixth generation driverless technology and an entertainment

system with a Gemini integration.

A Wemma spokesperson said in an email that in each of the three new US cities the company

will have dozens of robot taxis with plans to reach hundreds over time and that passengers

will need to hail rides through the Wemma app.

Wemma provides over 500,000 robot taxi rides in the US 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 Wemma as its only paid ride hailing service today operates in Las Vegas.

Zooks has a free service in San Francisco for select riders and hasn't said when it will

open a paid service there.

Now this is the sort of interesting raise I can get behind and AI start up the once

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 seed funding round led by Breakthrough Energy.

It is launching with two proofs of concept.

First, a productized piece of its core platform, Emmy, named for renowned physicist Amely

Emmy Noether 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 Explore 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 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.

It's joining as a founding technical partner for the Fermi Explore mission, a nonprofit

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.

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 Bee 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 hairdryers, said it spent six years conducting research

and development for the new toothbrush.

We have seen some innovation in the space but it is largely focused on digital features

and brushing specs and no real breakthroughs in the category which is where we come in.

Senior commercial manager Namiya Turnie 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-phoming toothpaste.

The camera jet 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 brush head 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 3 minutes with the battery lasting between 7 and 10 days

between charges.

Nothing more for you today talk to you tomorrow.