Ford debuts its new "smart vehicle, smart world" at CES in Las Vegas. Alyssa Julya Smith met up with Sherif Marakby, Vice President of Autonomous Vehicles & EV at Ford, to discuss when the company will be hitting the road with its self-driving cars.
Earlier this year Ford teamed up with Domino's to deliver pizza to Michigan customers in driverless cars. Marakby discusses what went into making that experiment a successful one. Everything from which side of the car the touchpad should be on, to whether or not to integrate voice.
Plus, what is the future of smart cities and what are the challenges? Marakby says the biggest challenge in autonomous driving is parking. Most cities don't have enough curb accommodations for a fleet of self-driving cars to succeed. He said that Ford will be testing a fleet of self-driving cars in a new city, to be announced later this year.
Oracle soars as it cashes in on the AI boom, Plus: Starbucks shares continue to fall under its new CEO, and does anybody actually want a new iPhone Air?
Swedish buy now, pay later company Klarna is making its highly anticipated public debut on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, the latest in a run of high-profile initial public offerings this year. The offering priced at $40 Tuesday, above the forecasted range of $35 to $37 a share, valuing the company at more than $15 billion. The valuation easily makes Klarna one of the biggest IPOs so far in 2025, which has been one of the busier years for companies going public. Other popular IPOs so far this year include the design software company Figma and Circle Internet Group, which issues the USDC stablecoin..
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison wrested the title of the world’s richest man from longtime holder Elon Musk early Wednesday as stock in his software giant rocketed more than a third in a stunning few minutes of trading. That is according to wealth tracker Bloomberg. A college dropout, the 81-year-old Ellison is now worth $393 billion, Bloomberg says, several billion more than Musk, who had been the world’s richest for four years. The switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle. Forbes still has Musk as the richest, however, valuing his private businesses much higher.
