*By Madison Alworth*
Roads in the Netherlands are the best-prepared for autonomous-driving vehicles, and the government there is encouraging innovators to develop driverless technology in the country.
According to a recent report by the auditing firm KPMG, policy, technology, infrastructure, and consumer acceptance in the Netherlands make it the best place to test this new form of transportation. (Singapore and the United States come next.) The Netherlands also has 4G internet across the entire country, a feature that will be key for autonomous driving infrastructure.
"It's very important to keep investing for us and keep our country an attractive location to invest in for foreign direct investors," said Daniel Klein Velderman, an official with the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency.
He said Dutch lawmakers have passed legislation to make it easier for companies to develop autonomous driving technology. They passed measures making it legal to test autonomous vehicles on public roads in the Netherlands. And there is a bill in Parliament that would make it possible to test completely driverless vehicles.
Florien van der Windt, an official with the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, said other measures are being prepared in anticipation of regulating new types of self-driving vehicles.
"A good thing we are working on now is a driver's license for cars," he said. "So not for yourself to drive, but for the car itself."
For full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/netherlands-deemed-most-autonomous-vehicle-ready-country-in-the-world).
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.
