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A man drives his Tesla car as the Starship SN8 of SpaceX is seen behind, days before a test launch of the company’s new super heavy-lift Starship rocket from their facilities in this small town of Boca Chita, Texas, December 4, 2020.
Gene Blevins | Reuters

Tesla is moving its headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas, CEO Elon Musk announced at the company’s shareholder meeting on Thursday.

The meeting took place at Tesla’s vehicle assembly plant under construction outside of Austin on a property that borders the Colorado River, near the city’s airport. 

However, the company plans to increase production in its California plant regardless of the headquarters move.

“To be clear we will be continuing to expand our activities in California,” Musk said. “Our intention is to increase output from Fremont and Giga Nevada by 50%. If you go to our Fremont factory it’s jammed.”

But, he added, “It’s tough for people to afford houses, and people have to come in from far away….There’s a limit to how big you can scale in the Bay Area.”

Regarding the plant underway in Austin, he noted that it would take some time to reach full production even after it’s completed.

“In Tesla-land it takes longer to build the factory than to get to high volume production once the factory is built,” Musk said. For example, Tesla’s Shanghai plant was built in 11 months, but took a year to reach high volume production. He expects Tesla’s new plant near Austin will follow Shanghai’s example.

Musk’s growing dissatisfaction with California has been apparent for some time. In April 2020, on a Tesla earnings call, Musk lashed out at California government officials calling their temporary Covid-related health orders “fascist” in an expletive-laced rant.

Later, Musk personally relocated to the Austin area from Los Angeles, where he had lived for two decades.

Doing so enabled Musk, who is also CEO of aerospace company SpaceX, to reduce his personal tax burden and be closer to a SpaceX launch site in Boca Chica, Texas.

Tesla’s board granted Musk an executive compensation package that can earn him massive stock awards based on the automaker’s market cap increases and some other financial targets. If he sells options set to expire in 2021, he could generate proceeds of more than $20 billion this year, according to InsiderScore.

California levies some of the highest personal income taxes in the country on its wealthy residents, but Texas has no personal income tax.

Tesla is not the first company to its headquarters out of California to Texas. Oracle and Hewlett Packard are among the tech giants who decided to make that move last year, for example.

Texas has been actively recruiting companies via its Texas Economic Development Act offering tax breaks to put new facilities in the state. Austin, with a top tech university and cultural events like South by Southwest, is a draw for tech employers.

Making such a move is not particularly burdensome, explained business attorney Domenic Romano, managing partner of Romano Law in New York City. A Delaware business that has operated as a “foreign” corporation with headquarters in California, like Tesla has, could relocate its domicile by establishing a facility in a new state, hiring there. and relocating key employees.

They would not have to shut down operations in other states, although they typically do pare them back.

“From a legal perspective, there’s less of a regulatory burden in Texas,” Romano said. “It’s a more business- and employer -riendly state in many ways. You have to jump through far fewer hoops in Texas or Florida as an employer than you do in California in terms of reporting requirements and more.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the Tesla CEO supported his state’s “social policies” as well. However, Elon Musk declined to weigh in on Texas’ restrictive new abortion law after Abbott made that claim.

“In general, I believe government should rarely impose its will upon the people, and, when doing so, should aspire to maximize their cumulative happiness,” Musk wrote on Twitter at that time. “That said, I would prefer to stay out of politics,” said Musk.

Tesla has generally garnered a huge amount of support from the state of California since it was founded there in 2003. It has enjoyed grant funding, tax breaks, incentives and favorable policies from the likes of the California Air Resources Board, California Energy Commission and California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority, among others.

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Stocks end November with mixed results despite a strong Thanksgiving week rally

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Stocks end November with mixed results despite a strong Thanksgiving week rally

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Palantir has worst month in two years as AI stocks sell off

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Palantir has worst month in two years as AI stocks sell off

CEO of Palantir Technologies Alex Karp attends the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S., July 15, 2025.

Nathan Howard | Reuters

It’s been a tough November for Palantir.

Shares of the software analytics provider dropped 16% for their worst month since August 2023 as investors dumped AI stocks due to valuation fears. Meanwhile, famed investor Michael Burry doubled down on the artificial intelligence trade and bet against the company.

Palantir started November off on a high note.

The Denver-based company topped Wall Street’s third-quarter earnings and revenue expectations. Palantir also posted its second-straight $1 billion revenue quarter, but high valuation concerns contributed to a post-print selloff.

In a note to clients, Jefferies analysts called Palantir’s valuation “extreme” and argued investors would find better risk-reward in AI names such as Microsoft and Snowflake. Analysts at RBC Capital Markets raised concerns about the company’s “increasingly concentrated growth profile,” while Deutsche Bank called the valuation “very difficult to wrap our heads around.”

Adding fuel to the post-earnings selloff was the revelation that Burry is betting against Palantir and AI chipmaker Nvidia. Burry, who is widely known for predicting the housing crisis that occurred in 2008 and the portrayal of him in the film “The Big Short,” later accused hyperscalers of artificially boosting earnings.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp vocally hit the front lines, appearing twice in one week on CNBC, where he accused Burry of “market manipulation” and called the investor’s actions “egregious.”

“The idea that chips and ontology is what you want to short is bats— crazy,” Karp told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Despite the vicious selloff, Palantir has notched some deal wins this month. That included a multiyear contract with consulting firm PwC to speed up AI adoption in the U.K. and a deal with aircraft engine maintenance company FTAI.

But those announcements did little to shake off valuation worries that have haunted all AI-tied companies in November.

Across the board, investors have viciously ditched the high-priced group, citing fears of stretched valuations and a bubble.

In November, Nvidia pulled back more than 12%, while Microsoft and Amazon dropped about 5% each. Quantum computing names such as Rigetti Computing and D-Wave Quantum have shed more than a third of their value.

Apple and Alphabet were the only Magnificent 7 stocks to end the month with gains.

Sill, questions linger over Palantir’s valuation, and those worries aren’t a new concern.

Even after its steep price drop, the company’s stock trades at 233 times forward earnings. By comparison, Nvidia and Alphabet traded at about 38 times and 30 times, respectively, at Friday’s close.

Karp, who has long defended the company, didn’t miss an opportunity to clap back at his critics, arguing in a letter to shareholders that the company is making it feasible for everyday investors to attain rates of return once “limited to the most successful venture capitalists in Palo Alto.”

“Please turn on the conventional television and see how unhappy those that didn’t invest in us are,” Karp said during an earnings call. “Enjoy, get some popcorn. They’re crying. We are every day making this company better, and we’re doing it for this nation, for allied countries.”

Palantir declined to comment for this story.

WATCH: Palantir CEO Alex Karp: We’ve printed venture results for the average American

Palantir CEO Alex Karp: We've printed venture results for the average American

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CME disruption, Black Friday, the K-beauty boom and more in Morning Squawk

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CME disruption, Black Friday, the K-beauty boom and more in Morning Squawk

CME Group sign at NYMEX in New York.

Adam Jeffery | CNBC

This is CNBC’s Morning Squawk newsletter. Subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox.

Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

1. Down and out

Stock futures trading was halted this morning after a data center “cooling issue” took down several Chicago Mercantile Exchange services. Individual stocks were still trading before the bell, while the CME said futures indexes and options trading would open fully at 8:30 a.m. Follow live markets updates here.

The stock market has rebounded during the holiday-shortened trading week. But the three major indexes are still on pace to end November’s trading month — which ends with today’s closing bell — in the red. The Dow and S&P 500 are poised to snap six-month winning streaks, while the Nasdaq Composite is on track to see its first negative month in eight.

Today’s trading session ends early at 1 p.m. ET.

2. Shopping and dropping

A Black Friday sale sign is displayed in a shop window at an outlet mall in Carlsbad, California, U.S., Nov. 25, 2025.

Mike Blake | Reuters

Black Friday was once considered the biggest in-person shopping day of the year, drawing huge crowds to stores in search of bargains. But while millions are still expected to partake in the occasion, it’s not what it used to be.

Here’s what to know:

  • In the past six years, online sales have outpaced brick-and-mortar spending on Black Friday. Data shows in-person foot traffic has been mostly flat over the last few years, as well.
  • No matter where they make their purchases, shoppers are also skeptical that they’re getting the best deals.
  • As CNBC’s Gabrielle Fonrouge reports, the shift has meant a change in strategy for many of the retail industry’s biggest names. Some have started offering their holiday sales earlier in the season, while others are spacing out their promotions.
  • Deloitte reported that the average consumer will shell out $622 between Nov. 27 and Dec. 1, a decrease of 4% from last year.
  • Even as the day of deals loses its allure, AT&T found that Gen Z participates the most, while their older counterparts do their shopping closer to Christmas.

3. AI comeback

Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images

Alphabet has been a notable exception to the recent tech downturn. Shares of the Google parent have surged more than 13% this month as Wall Street sees the company as an AI leader.

Alphabet began the month by announcing its latest tensor processing units, or TPUs, called Ironwood. Last week, the company launched its latest AI model, Gemini 3, which caught positive attention from Silicon Valley heavyweights.

Shares of the stock are now up close to 70% this year, making it the best-performer within megacap tech. But experts told CNBC’s Jennifer Elias that Alphabet’s lead in the competitive AI market is marginal and could be hard to hold onto.

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4. Tech’s tug of wars

Alibaba announced plans to release a pair of smart glasses powered by its AI models. The Quark AI Glasses are Alibaba’s first foray into the smart glasses product category.

Alibaba

The Alphabet-Nvidia AI race isn’t the only tech rivalry that has heated up in recent days.

Alibaba‘s AI-powered smart glasses went on sale yesterday. With its new wearable tech offering, the Chinese tech company is going up against major players — namely Meta, which unveiled its smart glasses with Ray Ban in September.

Meanwhile, Counterpoint Research found Apple is poised to ship more smartphones than Samsung this year for the first time in 14 years. Apple is also poised to boast a larger market share, driven by strong iPhone 17 sales.

5. From Seoul to Los Angeles

Carly Xie looks over facial mask items at the Face Shop, which specializes in Korean cosmetics, in San Francisco, April 15, 2015.

Avila Gonzalez | San Francisco Chronicle | Hearst Newspapers | Getty Images

American shoppers are increasingly looking to South Korea for their cosmetics. NielsenIQ found U.S. sales of so-called “K-beauty” products are slated to surge more than 37% this year to above $2 billion.

Retailers ranging from beauty product hubs Ulta and Sephora to big-box chains Walmart and Costco are jumping on the trend. On top of that, Olive Young — aka the “Sephora of Seoul” — is opening its first U.S. store in Los Angeles next year.

The Daily Dividend

Here are some stories worth circling back to over the weekend:

CNBC’s Chloe Taylor, Gabrielle Fonrouge, Laya Neelakandan, Jessica Dickler, Sarah Min, Sean Conlon, Jennifer Elias, Arjun Kharpal and Luke Fountain contributed to this report. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.

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