The Austin Daily News

In this week's issue: Aalo Atomics , an Austin nuclear startup, just achieved criticality — and is now expanding its facility 10x Olamaie's Michelin-starred closure and the real-estate thesis that explains why Sandy's has survived 80 years while Austin's finest restaurants keep dying Waymo's 220 million autonomous miles prove self-driving cars are 94% safer than humans — and Austin's numbers are e...

In this week's issue: Apptronik's new 90,000 sq ft Robot Park in North Austin and the Google DeepMind partnership that's making this city the ground-truth data source for humanoid AI Austin's $8.5 billion Neuralink rival just performed its first long-term brain implant — and today, Neuralink fired back with its own milestone Tesla's production Cybercab — no steering wheel, no pedals — engineering...

Hey — quick honest note before we dive in. This is a one-man operation, and I'm in the middle of figuring out a sustainable business model for this thing. I'll aim to keep it daily, but it might be slightly irregular for a little bit. Thanks for being here regardless. Now, the news: In this week's issue: Joshua Baer, the man who quietly wired Austin's entire startup ecosystem, dead at 50 in a plan...

In this week's issue: Joshua Baer, the man who built Austin's startup machine from the ground up, gone at 50 — and what happens to Capital Factory now SpaceX just bought the world's most popular AI coding tool for $60 billion, and the entire infrastructure stack ties directly to Central Texas Waymo now has 200+ robotaxis roaming 133 square miles of Austin — the autonomous ride-hail race is officia...

In this week's issue: The $1 trillion Wall Street giant that just picked Austin over Miami — and why Miami lost on private schools Billions in data center investment flooding the Austin-SA corridor, but the jobs math is more complicated than either side admits Elon Musk: officially the first human being in history worth a trillion dollars Austin's nonprofit grifter class called out by name, public...

In this week's issue: An Austin drone boat just pulled two U.S. Army pilots out of the Strait of Hormuz — the first autonomous naval rescue in combat history Ken Paxton blew out John Cornyn by 28 points, but the actual story is 400,000 Cornyn voters who simply vanished Firefly Aerospace lands a NASA Moon Base contract, and it's the only publicly traded bet on the lunar south pole Open meth use at...

In this week's issue: Abbott moving to kill $1.3 billion a year in data center tax breaks — and why that's more complicated than it sounds Joe Lonsdale's argument that AI can collapse permitting from weeks to hours — and the Austin companies already building it Tesla's Austin Robotaxi fleet nearly tripled in a week, and the number to watch isn't what you think Blue-green algae back at Red Bud Isle...

In this week's issue: SpaceX announced a factory 10x larger than anything it's ever built — in Bastrop, Texas — to manufacture AI satellites that put data centers in orbit, two days before the largest IPO in human history Austin's robotics unicorn just tripled its own valuation to $5 billion with nearly $1 billion in total Series A capital, and it was born at UT A James Beard Award-winning restaur...

In this week's issue: Austin just vaulted past every American city except four in venture capital — the hard number that ends the "is Austin for real?" debate The supply-side housing experiment that crashed prices 24% — and why the viral X discourse gets about half of the story right CrowdStrike is quietly climbing toward becoming Austin's fourth Fortune 500 company, and the recovery story behind...

In this week's issue: The Texas grid's dirty secret: four groups of data centers already connected to ERCOT can each trigger a Boston-sized blackout — and just failed the test designed to prevent it An elderly man beaten unconscious on an Austin street in broad daylight, police called, police never came — and the state of Texas has had enough Flash flooding hit Cedar Park, Leander, and Georgetown...

In this week's issue: Texas's power grid has 410+ gigawatts of AI data center requests in the queue — five times the entire state's peak capacity Austin City Hall has 176 communications staffers across 28 departments — and they don't communicate with each other — while the city bleeds $26M in budget red ink Austin defense startup just hit a $2.2 billion valuation by making drone-killers that cost...

In this week's issue: Texas just blew past California on the Fortune 500 — 57 companies vs. 56, $2.8 trillion in revenue — the throne is back A cold case at Barton Springs Pool just cracked open: the same gun that killed a DoorDash driver in the parking lot in 2022 was used in a Houston murder one month later Four Seasons closing an $870 million construction loan for Lake Austin residences startin...

In this week's issue: Tesla just expanded its Robotaxi service to the entire Austin metro — with roughly 25 cars covering a city of 1 million people Austin ISD is cutting 558 positions and gutting benefits amid a $181 million deficit — while Tesla and SpaceX are building the future two hours away Grimes County just handed Elon Musk a 100% tax abatement on a $119 billion semiconductor factory — a c...

In this week's issue: Samsung just abandoned a brand-new New Jersey HQ after eight months — moving its entire U.S. operation to Texas, becoming the second major company to flee NJ for the Lone Star State in a single week Emo's is changing hands from Live Nation to AEG Presents in 2027 — full renovation, possible name change, and what it actually means for Austin's live music economy SaveAustinNow...

In this week's issue: Austin City Council just unlocked a pathway to 1,200-foot towers — taller than anything currently standing in Texas An Austin Energy employee ran a fake vendor scheme for six years, pocketed nearly $1 million, and his supervisors signed off on every single invoice Two major downtown hotels are hitting the Travis County foreclosure auction block on the same day The San Antonio...

In this week's issue: The U.S. Secretary of Transportation inside Giga Texas with Elon Musk — calling for national AV standards that would blow open commercial robotaxi deployment everywhere A 428-room Lady Bird Lake hotel hits foreclosure auction tomorrow after defaulting on $172M in debt — and the debt is underwater Bar Peached on West 6th caught fire this morning, roof caved in, closed indefini...

In this week's issue: The $119 billion chip factory being built next to Giga Texas — and the Grimes County vote happening in three days that could greenlight the largest industrial construction project in American history "Six-gender Jimmy" vs. "the most corrupt politician in Texas" — the Texas Senate general election is live, and the fundraising gap is genuinely insane Austin ISD has 23 failing s...

In this week's issue: Zach Dell's home battery startup just tripled to a $12B valuation in eight months — and the data center play is the whole story Dell Technologies posted the most spectacular quarter in its history, 757% AI server revenue growth, and is voting to move its legal home to Texas on June 25 SpaceX drops $855M on Bastrop County to consolidate all Starlink kit production in Texas Aus...

In this week's issue: A Cybercab drove itself off the Giga Texas production line on the exact same day Texas legalized commercial Level 4 autonomous deployment — not coincidence, coordination Bastrop County, population 115K, is quietly becoming one of the most consequential places on Earth for AI compute — EdgeConneX, Amazon, and the entire Musk universe are all converging on the same stretch of T...

In this week's issue: Cedar Park just won a $75 million NASA subcontract to deliver four drones to the Moon's south pole Tesla's Chief Designer and VP of Engineering confirmed on a podcast that the Roadster is being built in Texas — and there's already a test track going up at Giga Texas IREN closed a $1.6 billion deal with Dell for Blackwell GPU systems, and Hut 8 is building a power-dense AI com...

In this week's issue: Austin outpermits the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts — and the rent data proves it worked A Cedar Park startup is building precision missiles at one-tenth the cost of a Javelin, next door to a rocket company Ken Paxton just ended John Cornyn's 24-year Senate career SpaceX is moving every single piece of Starlink hardware production on earth to Bastrop County Let's get a...

In this week's issue: Tesla Cybercabs — plural, fleet-level — flooding downtown Austin streets on Sunday, no side mirrors, Starlink terminals on the roof A Travis County jury just dropped a $116M verdict on a waste company CEO who allegedly turned a family business into a personal piggy bank An Austin-built nuclear reactor is racing to reach criticality by July 4 — first new reactor at Idaho Natio...

In this week's issue: Austin's AI boom has a water problem — and the numbers are genuinely alarming City Council votes May 28 on land bought in 2006 for cops and firefighters, still unused, now going to a private developer Austin has more self-driving car brands than Tokyo. Not a metaphor — literally true Matt's El Rancho won the internet's Tex-Mex debate, and Fonda San Miguel got ethered in the p...

In this week's issue: The Austin teen shooting suspect was an undocumented immigrant — previously arrested for stealing the same gun, released without an ICE hold — and the city had deliberately turned off the cameras that could have stopped him eleven months earlier SpaceX's S-1 filing just revealed that xAI is burning $30.8 billion per year on AI infrastructure, more than 60% of SpaceX's total c...

In this week's issue: Austin just annexed 2,614 acres east of downtown — twice the size of downtown itself — in a 45-year deal with a mystery Fortune 100 tenant who's building something big and isn't allowed to tell you what it is The same council session that did the annexation also green-lit $1 billion in new gas peaker plants — voted on in secret, announced in confusion, confirmed only by one S...