Axios

An exit is on the way for one of Silicon Valley's highest-profile minotaurs, as Lyft filed today for an IPO.

By the numbers, via Axios' Kia Kokalitcheva: In 2018, Lyft had $8.1 billion in bookings, $2.2 billion in revenue, $911.3 million in losses, and more than 1 billion total rides. It had 30.7 million riders and 1.9 million drivers. Lyft roughly doubled its revenue per rider over the past 2 years, from $18.53 to $36.04. The share of ride revenue Lyft keeps has grown over time, hitting 28.7% in Q4 2018.

Canada is set to begin proceedings that will allow Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou to be extradited to the U.S., per an announcement from the Canadian Department of Justice on Friday.

Details: There will be a court hearing on March 6 that will then schedule the date for her extradition hearing. Meng was arrested in December on fraud charges alleging that her actions caused several financial institutions to violate sanctions on Iran. U.S. authorities have been investigating Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant, for alleged tech and trade secret theft from American companies.

More than 1,000 TSA employees are still awaiting payment after the government shutdown that left 800,000 federal employees furloughed or working without pay, CNN reports.

The bottom line: TSA provided partial paychecks to its employees during the shutdown, which could be the cause of this delay as the agency scrambles pay employees the accurate amount. TSA airport screener absences hit 10% 30 days into the shutdown, signaling the financial hardship on employees.

"It appears as though their effort to partially pay people screwed things up and they are still getting their act together."

Go deeper: By the numbers: How the 35-day shutdown affected federal workers

Amazon is plotting to open several dozen grocery stores across major U.S. cities, reports the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the plans. Amazon declined to comment to Axios.

The big picture: When Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017, it spurred panic among America's big grocers, but Whole Foods — with 470 high-end locations compared to Walmart's 4,700 — gave Amazon a relatively small footprint in the food business. With its own network of stores, Amazon could attract shoppers looking for cheaper prices than Whole Foods and dramatically expand its brick-and-mortar reach.

Ride-hailing company Lyft has filed to go public on the Nasdaq under the symbol "LYFT," according to an anticipated SEC filing.

Why it matters: Lyft is part of a cohort of large private Silicon Valley tech companies that have taken years to go public — and it's beaten rival Uber to the IPO punch.

Rivals BMW and Daimler are the latest automakers to start pooling resources in order to stay competitive while they push toward full autonomy.

The big picture: Once there was a race among auto and tech companies to develop self-driving cars, but now there's a shared belief that it's frustratingly hard and incredibly expensive to do so at scale.

Automakers are increasingly creating proprietary software that can manage car-sharing and ride-sharing fleets, the customer services involved, and customer payment.

Why it matters: Automakers want to ensure they maintain control of their relationships with consumers—and more important, the data and revenue streams that can come from it—rather than relinquishing them to Uber, Lyft and other mobility-related startups with their own transportation apps.

Researchers have long been skeptical about whether surgical robots lead to better clinical outcomes than traditional surgical techniques. And now the FDA wants to make sure more patients and surgeons are aware of the pitfalls.

What they're saying: Surgical robots have not been officially labeled as safe or effective "in mastectomy procedures or the prevention or treatment of cancer," the FDA wrote Thursday in a public safety notice.

In a challenge to the narrative of a declining American advantage in the global tech race, U.S. factories are installing record numbers of robots — and elite universities, endowed with huge new contributions, are adding vast centers to study artificial intelligence.

Why it matters: As we have reported previously, China has a massive global lead in the absolute number of new factory robots, and is pouring large sums into developing AI. But the twin U.S. trendlines — a surge in university research spending and the spike in robots — suggest a still-robust competition to dominate technologies of the future.

A new report from CNN finds that a search for "vaccine" on Amazon yields a results page dominated by anti-vaccination books and movies. Some include sponsored posts, or ads for the anti-vaccine content. CNN notes that a number of anti-vaccination movies are also available for free viewing on Amazon's streaming video service Prime Video.

Why it matters: Amazon has until now avoided the "fake news" drama that its rivals Google and Facebook have faced, in part because it's considered a hub for products, not a platform for ideas. This example underscores the fact that any platform that takes contributions from the public can be susceptible to manipulation, which can lead to the spread of misinformation.

The adoption of AI technologies over the coming decade is likely to eliminate work, and in some cases entire jobs, currently being done by more than 130,000 federal agency employees in more than 80 occupations.

The big picture: Re-training hundreds of thousands of other federal government employees will take time and resources that haven't yet been allocated on a large-scale.

YouTube announced Thursday it is disabling all comments on videos of young children to deter a pattern of behavior by pedophiles originally reported on by WIRED.

Between the lines: Google-owned YouTube can't rely on simply rooting out “bad” content, since many of the videos pedophiles are exploiting can seem innocuous to human ratings teams, per WIRED. For example, many of the offending comments sections are on videos of children doing gymnastics or dancing. Some of the comments are seemingly innocent as well — such as “swimsuit” or “nice” — and may not get flagged as inappropriate.

BlackBerry on Wednesday sued Twitter, alleging it infringes on several messaging-related patents.

The big picture: Having seen its once-popular BBM service fade from the messaging scene, BlackBerry has launched a series of lawsuits against today's leaders. Last March, BlackBerry sued Facebook, along with Facebook-owned Instagram and WhatsApp. A month later, it sued Snapchat's parent company.

Most people say it's important to have a clear understanding of a company's privacy policy before signing up for its service online — but in practice, most people skip right to the "I agree" box on a privacy policy without actually reading it, according to an Axios-SurveyMonkey poll.

Why it matters: Consumers are increasingly aware that companies share and sell their personal data in exchange for free services, but consumers' privacy concerns aren't translating into concrete action to protect their data.

Federal preemption of state laws will be the sticking point to watch as the debate over national privacy rules proceeds in Congress, lawmakers made clear this week.

Why it matters: State lawmakers aren’t waiting for the feds to get their act together. There are many privacy bills floating around statehouses nationwide — and next year California will implement a sweeping law it has already passed.

Spooked by misinformation campaigns in the 2016 election, companies — concerned that coordinated attacks could drag their reputations through the mud — are hiring consultants to stave off politically motivated Twitter and Facebook mobs.

The catch: But their effort is rife with risks of its own, rooted in the hard-to-decipher difference between legitimate grassroots campaigns and online fraudsters who create the illusion of vast protest movements.