Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who is also the new owner and CEO of Twitter, bashed Apple this week after claiming the company has threatened to remove the Twitter app from its App Store, accusing the company of hating “free speech.”
The Twitter app is still available for iOS devices, and there’s no sign that the popular social media app is at real risk of getting booted by Apple.
The Tesla CEO’s furious tweets recall how Musk has long taken shots at Apple, and highlighted just how much power the tech juggernaut still has over the world’s richest person.
Meanwhile, Apple as a company never engages in public trash talk toward Musk or Tesla, and has even avoided taking veiled shots at them, as opposed to the frequent oblique criticisms aimed at Facebook.
Behind all the attacks, Musk has great admiration for Apple’s original founder, Steve Jobs. Musk has even begun working with Steve Jobs’ biographer, Walter Isaacson, on his own official biography.
A one-way war of words
Musk’s latest spate of Apple insults began last week. This week, Musk claimed in a tweet that Apple had mostly stopped advertising on the Twitter platform.
He tried to provoke Apple CEO Tim Cook into a public discussion about the reduction in advertising on Twitter, asking him if Apple hates “free speech in America” and “what’s going on here.” Cook did not respond.
Apple is not alone in reducing its campaigns on the social media platform since Musk took over.
After Musk closed a leveraged buyout deal on Oct. 28 and appointed himself CEO, a spike of anti-Black racist and antisemitic hate speech flooded the platform, partly because of raids that were coordinated by users on online chat platform 4chan.
Musk also began making steep cuts to Twitter’s workforce, gutting sales teams, teams responsible for measuring Twitter performance metrics and content moderation teams, among others.
Twitter has been losing advertisers and ad revenue ever since, with civil rights groups and previous advertisers on the platform pressuring Musk to prove that his much smaller team can responsibly manage content moderation, ad campaigns, cybersecurity and more.
Whether accurate or not, Musk’s allegation that Apple has “threatened to withhold” Twitter from its App Store may resonate with other developers.
Apple is notorious for providing few details when notifying app makers that their apps are at risk of suffering delayed updates or removal from the App Store. Responses inside Apple’s App Store Connect platform are terse, usually citing a rule, but not elaborating on what specifically an app maker should do to fix the problem — for example, Apple might say the app has a “metadata problem” or uses a banned application programming interface.
Musk also chafes under Apple’s platform fees, which are between 15% and 30% of total digital sales, like the $8 Twitter Blue subscription that Musk has said could be a major product for the company. Musk said it was a “de facto global tax” on the internet before he took over Twitter, but in his new role as an app owner, he has attacked it with increasing vigor.
This week, he tweeted and deleted a meme that suggested he would rather “go to war” than pay 30% to Apple.
Apple earlier this week declined to comment on the alleged threat of suspension or Apple’s ad spend with Twitter.
A long history of competition
Tesla and Apple are neighbors in the San Francisco Bay Area, which means that they have competed for talent for more than a decade. Now that competition has extended into Texas.
Both companies need mechanical engineers, industrial designers, materials science and battery experts, and skilled software engineers.
Apple has also invested heavily in developing its own electric autonomous vehicle technology. If the so-called “Apple Car” ever came to market, Tesla and Apple would be direct competitors.
In that context, early examples of Musk tweaking Apple could be seen as friendly rivalry.
When Tesla was still an underdog and upstart, Musk used to call Apple the “Tesla graveyard,” according to multiple former Tesla employees who spoke with CNBC. Internally, he would encourage unhappy Tesla workers to go apply for a cushy job at Apple.
He eventually brought this up in a public interview, saying that Apple hired people who were fired from Tesla.
In 2018, dozens of former Tesla employees landed at Apple, including some who were laid off and others who simply jumped ship from Tesla. At that time, the EV maker’s North American PR team told CNBC, “Tesla is the hard path. We have 100 times less money than Apple, so of course they can afford to pay more.”
Last summer, Musk laid out some of his problems with the way Apple does business on a Tesla earnings call, although he was careful not to name the company at first.
He started by criticizing the amount of cobalt, a mineral linked to human rights abuses, which Apple uses to make batteries in its devices. In 2018, Musk pledged to eliminate Tesla’s use of cobalt in its production entirely. Tesla has shifted a significant portion of its vehicles to a type of battery called an LFP, or lithium iron phosphate battery. However, it has not managed to eliminate need of cobalt completely yet.
In its most recent Impact Report, Tesla wrote, “we expect our absolute cobalt demand to increase over the coming years because our vehicle and cell production growth rate is forecasted to outpace the overall rate of cobalt reduction on a per cell basis.”
On the charging front, Tesla is experimenting with ways to give other EV drivers access to its network. But the company hasn’t opened up charging on a mainstream basis yet.
Later in the earnings call, Musk criticized Apple’s “walled garden” business model when answering a question about when Tesla chargers might be able to charge other vehicle makes.
“I think we do want to emphasize that our goal is to support the advent of sustainable energy,” Musk said. “It is not to create a walled garden and use that to bludgeon our competitors, which is used by some companies.”
In case anybody missed the reference to Apple’s App Store, which Apple maintains as the exclusive way to distribute apps to its devices, Musk then faked a cough and said, “Apple.”
Musk also has used Apple’s name to generate buzz. In September, when Apple announcedsatellite connectivity in its new iPhone 14 models (with satellites being operated by GlobalStar) Musk suggested that Apple had looked into using Starlink, which uses different technology.
“We’ve had some promising conversations with Apple about Starlink connectivity,” Musk tweeted, complimenting the iPhone team. Apple has never acknowledged any negotiations or even discussion with SpaceX.
Cook and Musk
Have Apple CEO Tim Cook and Musk ever spoken in depth?
According to Cook, the answer is no.
The Apple chief said in a 2021 podcast that he has “great admiration and respect” for Tesla, but that he had never spoken with Elon Musk. The two were photographed feet apart with other business leaders at a 2016 meeting with former President Donald Trump at Trump Tower.
But Musk claims that Apple declined his proposal to acquire Tesla years ago, when the EV maker’s market cap stood at a fraction of its current value.
“During the darkest days of the Model 3 program, I reached out to Tim Cook to discuss the possibility of Apple acquiring Tesla (for 1/10 of our current value). He refused to take the meeting,” Musk tweeted in 2020.
Another version of the story comes from “Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century,” a book by business journalist Tim Higgins.
Around 2016, according to the book, Musk and Cook spoke about Apple potentially acquiring Tesla. It was struggling with high costs and issues shipping its Model 3 car at the time. Apple, with its expertise in manufacturing and large amounts of cash, would have been a perfect acquirer.
Except, in Higgins’ telling, Musk had one condition: He wanted to become CEO of the combined Apple-Tesla.
Brad Smith, president of Microsoft Corp., at the Web Summit conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on Wednesday, May 28, 2025. The annual conference gathers key industry figures in technology.
James MacDonald | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Microsoft asked police to remove people who improperly entered a building at its headquarters in protest of the Israeli military’s alleged use of the company’s software as part of the invasion of Gaza.
On Tuesday, current and former Microsoft employees affiliated with the group No Azure for Apartheid started protesting inside a building on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington, and gained entry into the office of Brad Smith, the company’s president. The protesters delivered a court summons notice at his office, according to a statement from the group.
“Obviously, when seven folks do as they did today — storm a building, occupy an office, block other people out of the office, plant listening devices, even in crude form, in the form of telephones, cell phones hidden under couches and behind books — that’s not OK,” Smith told reporters during a briefing.
“When they’re asked to leave and they refuse, that’s not OK. That’s why for those seven folks, the Redmond police literally had to take them out of the building.”
Smith said that out of the seven people who entered his office, two were employees.
While the company doesn’t retaliate against employees who express their views, Smith said, it’s different if they make threats. Microsoft will look at whether to discipline the employees who participated in the protest, Smith said.
Once inside Microsoft’s building 34, the No Azure For Apartheid protesters demanded that the company cut its ties with Israel and ask for an end to the country’s alleged genocide.
Tech’s megacap companies are doing more work with defense agencies, particularly as demand increases for advanced artificial intelligence technologies. Many of those activities were already controversial, but the issue has gotten more intense as Israel has escalated its military offensive in Gaza.
Last year Google fired 28 employees after some trespassed at the company’s facilities. Some employees gained access to the office of Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google’s cloud unit, which had a contract with Israel’s government.
No Azure for Apartheid has held a series of actions this year, including at Microsoft’s Build developer conference and at a celebration of the company’s 50th anniversary. A Microsoft director reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation as the protests continued, Bloomberg reported earlier on Tuesday.
Last week, No Azure For Apartheid mounted protests around the company’s campus, leading to 20 arrests in one day. Of the 20, 16 have never worked at Microsoft, Smith said.
The Guardian reported earlier this month that Israel’s military used Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure to store Palestinians’ phone calls, leading the company to authorize a third-party investigation into whether Israel has drawn on the company’s technology for surveillance.
“I think the responsible step from us is clear in this kind of situation: to go investigate and get to the truth of how our services are being used,” Smith said on Tuesday.
Most of Microsoft’s work with the Israeli Defense Force involves cybersecurity for Israel, he said. He added that the company cares “deeply” about the people in Israel who died from the terrorist attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and the hostages who were taken, as well as the tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza who have died since from the war.
Microsoft intends to provide technology in an ethical way, Smith said.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the Federal Reserve’s Integrated Review of the Capital Framework for Large Banks Conference in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 22, 2025.
Ken Cedeno | Reuters
OpenAI is detailing its plans to address ChatGPT’s shortcomings when handling “sensitive situations” following a lawsuit from a family who blamed the chatbot for their teenage son’s death by suicide.
“We will keep improving, guided by experts and grounded in responsibility to the people who use our tools — and we hope others will join us in helping make sure this technology protects people at their most vulnerable,” OpenAI wrote on Tuesday, in a blog post titled, “Helping people when they need it most.”
Earlier on Tuesday, the parents of Adam Raine filed a product liability and wrongful death suit against OpenAI after their son died by suicide at age 16, NBC News reported. In the lawsuit, the family said that “ChatGPT actively helped Adam explore suicide methods.”
The company did not mention the Raine family or lawsuit in its blog post.
OpenAI said that although ChatGPT is trained to direct people to seek help when expressing suicidal intent, the chatbot tends to offer answers that go against the company’s safeguards after many messages over an extended period of time.
The company said it’s also working on an update to its GPT-5 model released earlier this month that will cause the chatbot to deescalate conversations, and that it’s exploring how to “connect people to certified therapists before they are in an acute crisis,” including possibly building a network of licensed professionals that users could reach directly through ChatGPT.
Additionally, OpenAI said it’s looking into how to connect users with “those closest to them,” like friends and family members.
When it comes to teens, OpenAI said it will soon introduce controls that will give parents options to gain more insight into how their children use ChatGPT.
Jay Edelson, lead counsel for the Raine family, told CNBC on Tuesday that nobody from OpenAI has reached out to the family directly to offer condolences or discuss any effort to improve the safety of the company’s products.
“If you’re going to use the most powerful consumer tech on the planet — you have to trust that the founders have a moral compass,” Edelson said. “That’s the question for OpenAI right now, how can anyone trust them?”
Raine’s story isn’t isolated.
Writer Laura Reiley earlier this month published an essay in The New York Times detailing how her 29-year-old daughter died by suicide after discussing the idea extensively with ChatGPT. And in a case in Florida, 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III died by suicide last year after discussing it with an AI chatbot on the app Character.AI.
As AI services grow in popularity, a host of concerns are arising around their use for therapy, companionship and other emotional needs.
But regulating the industry may also prove challenging.
On Monday, a coalition of AI companies, venture capitalists and executives, including OpenAI President and co-founder Greg Brockman announced Leading the Future, a political operation that “will oppose policies that stifle innovation” when it comes to AI.
If you are having suicidal thoughts or are in distress, contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor.
Okta CEO Todd McKinnon appears on CNBC in September 2018.
Anjali Sundaram | CNBC
Okta shares rose 4% in extended trading on Tuesday after the identity software maker reported fiscal results that exceeded Wall Street projections.
Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: 91 cents adjusted vs. 84 cents expected
Revenue: $728 million vs. $711.8 million expected
Okta’s revenue grew about 13% year over year in the fiscal second quarter, which ended on July 31, according to a statement. Net income of $67 million, or 37 cents per share, was up from $29 million, or 15 cents per share, in the same quarter last year.
In May, Okta adjusted its guidance to reflect macroeconomic uncertainty. But business has been going well, said Todd McKinnon, Okta’s co-founder and CEO, in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday.
“It was much better than we thought,” McKinnon said. “Yeah, the results speak for themselves.”
U.S. government customers are being more careful about signing up for deals after President Donald Trump launched the Department of Government Efficiency in January.
“But even under that additional review, we did really well,” McKinnon said.
Net retention rate, a metric to show growth with existing customers, came to 106% in the quarter, unchanged from three months ago.
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Companies will need to buy software to manage the identities of artificial intelligence agents working in their environments, which should lead to expansions with customers, McKinnon said. Selling suites of several kinds of Okta software should also boost revenue growth, he said.
Management called for 74 cents to 75 cents in adjusted earnings per share and $728 million to $730 million in revenue for the fiscal third quarter. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had expected earnings of 75 cents per share, with $722.9 million in revenue. Okta expects $2.260 billion to $2.265 billion in current remaining performance obligation, a measurement of subscription backlog to be recognized in the next 12 months, just above StreetAccount’s $2.26 billion consensus.
The company bumped up its fiscal 2026 forecast. It sees $3.33 to $3.38 in full-year adjusted earnings per share, with $2.875 billion to $2.885 billion in revenue. The LSEG consensus showed $3.28 in adjusted earnings per share on $2.86 billion in revenue. Okta’s full fiscal year guidance from May included $3.23 to $3.28 per share and $2.850 billion to $2.860 in revenue.
“Palo Alto is going to be like, ‘You have to buy security from us, and your endpoint from us and your SIEM [security information and event management] from us and your network from us,’ ” McKinnon said. “We just think that’s wrong, because customers need choice. It’s very unlikely they’re going to get every piece of technology or every piece of security from one vendor.”
A Palo Alto spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Earlier on Tuesday, Okta said it had agreed to acquire Israeli startup Axiom Security, which sells software for managing data access. The companies did not disclose terms of the deal.
As of Tuesday’s close, Okta shares were up 16%, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq was up 11%.
Executives will discuss the results with analysts on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.