Elon Musk tries to explain why Tesla shares are tanking
Shares in electric vehicle maker Tesla sank to a new 52-week low on Tuesday, closing around $138 per share, or 8% lower for the day in an otherwise mixed day for stocks.
CEO Elon Musk tried to blame the sinking price partly on macroeconomic factors.
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Long-time Tesla bull Ross Gerber wrote in a tweet, “Tesla stock price now reflects the value of having no CEO. Great job tesla BOD – Time for a shake up. $tsla.” Gerber has launched an informal campaign to have fellow shareholders vote to appoint him to Tesla’s board of directors.
Musk replied, in a tweet, “As bank savings account interest rates, which are guaranteed, start to approach stock market returns, which are not guaranteed, people will increasingly move their money out of stocks into cash, thus causing stocks to drop.”
Elon Musk speaks during a press conference at SpaceX’s Starbase facility near Boca Chica Village in South Texas on February 10, 2022.
Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images
But Tesla’s stock has dropped more than other larger automakers since Musk announced his plans to buy Twitter in Apr. 2022. Since that date, Tesla shares are down 59%, versus 26% for Ford and 12% for GM. The S&P 500 is down 14%.
The Tesla chief has a lot of distractions, as Gerber notes: Musk has been stirring controversy as the new owner and CEO of Twitter, the social media giant which he acquired in a leveraged buyout in late October, and is also the CEO of a major defense contractor, SpaceX.
Musk sold billions of dollars of his Tesla holdings to finance the Twitter deal, including a $3.6 billion sale earlier this month.
He told Twitter employees he sold Tesla shares to “save” their business while proceeding to cut more than half of staff at the company and rolling out a host of policy changes, some of which he later reverses.
While Musk has been focused on his new role as “Chief Twit” since late October, Tesla has been offering discounts and incentives to sell cars in China, where it operates a major factory in Shanghai; fighting to make its new factories in Austin, Texas, and Brandenburg, Germany, efficient; and facing persistent supply chain challenges endemic to the auto industry, along with soaring energy prices in Europe which may reduce the appeal of a battery electric vehicle for many drivers.
Those, among other challenges, led Mizuho Securities and Evercore ISI to reduce their Tesla price targets on Tuesday.
Mizuho Securities analysts wrote in a note, that “near-term, we see potential weakness in Tesla sales as macro headwinds and a weaker consumer could drive lower demand for higher-priced EVs.” The firm is still bullish Tesla long-term, citing the company’s new factories as a competitive advantage, and new electric vehicle tax credits on the horizon in the US which could “accelerate demand” domestically. In China, some EV credits are expiring as of the start of 2023. The firm has a price target of $285 and a buy rating on shares of Tesla.
A Vanderbilt University assistant professor, Joshua White, who formerly worked as an economist for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, told CNBC, “Only some of the drop in Tesla’s value can be blamed on interest rates. Twitter overhang is one important component. China is another huge component. We still don’t know if China will be open all the way, and we see there is supply and demand pressure here in light of the increase in covid cases, and disruptions.”
He also said Elon Musk may have lost shareholders’ trust when he said in April that he didn’t plan to sell more of his Tesla shares, but went ahead and sold billions of dollars’ more.
“He seems to sell equity in really large blocks, say ‘I’m done and I’m not selling anymore.’ But talk is cheap. He says that and then sells more shares. So the more you say that and investors think he’s probably not done? The less confident they will be that the price is going to bounce back.”
A Tesla robotaxi drives on the street along South Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas, on June 22, 2025
Joel Angel Juarez | Reuters
Tesla was contacted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Monday after videos posted on social media showed the company’s robotaxis driving in a chaotic manner on public roads in Austin, Texas.
Elon Musk’s electric vehicle maker debuted autonomous trips in Austin on Sunday, opening the service to a limited number of riders by invitation only.
In the videos shared widely online, one Tesla robotaxi was spotted traveling the wrong way down a road, and another was shown braking hard in the middle of traffic, responding to “stationary police vehicles outside its driving path,” among several other examples.
A spokesperson for NHTSA said in an e-mail that the agency “is aware of the referenced incidents and is in contact with the manufacturer to gather additional information.”
Tesla Vice President of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy, and regulatory counsel Casey Blaine didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The federal safety regulator says it doesn’t “pre-approve new technologies or vehicle systems.” Instead, automakers certify that each vehicle model they make meets federal motor vehicle safety standards. The agency says it will investigate “incidents involving potential safety defects,” and take “necessary actions to protect road safety,” after assessing a wide array of reports and information.
NHTSA previously initiated an investigation into possible safety defects with Tesla’s FSD-Supervised technology, or FSD Beta systems, following injurious and fatal accidents. That probe is ongoing.
The Tesla robotaxis in Austin are Model Y SUVs equipped with the company’s latest FSD Unsupervised software and hardware. The pilot robotaxi service, involving fewer than two-dozen vehicles, operates during daylight hours and only in good weather, with a human safety supervisor in the front passenger seat.
The service is now limited to invited users, who agree to the terms of Tesla’s “early access program.” Those who have received invites are mostly promoters of Tesla’s products, stock and CEO.
While the rollout sent Tesla shares up 8% on Monday, the launch fell shy of fulfilling Musk’s many driverless promises over the past decade.
In 2015, Musk told shareholders Tesla cars would achieve “full autonomy” within three years. In 2016, he said a Tesla EV would be able to make a cross-country drive without needing any human intervention before the end of 2017. And in 2019, on a call with institutional investors that helped him raise more than $2 billion, Musk said Tesla would have 1 million robotaxi-ready vehicles on the road in 2020, able to complete 100 hours of driving work per week each, making money for their owners.
None of that has happened.
Meanwhile, Alphabet-owned Waymo says it has surpassed 10 million paid trips last month. Competitors in China, including Baidu’s Apollo Go, WeRide and Pony.ai, are also operating commercial robotaxi fleets.
WATCH: Tesla launches robotaxis in Austin as robotaxi race heats up
Mustafa Hatipoglu | Anadolu | Getty Images
Meta spoke with artificial intelligence startup Runway about a potential takeover ahead of its multibillion-dollar investment in Scale AI, CNBC confirmed Monday.
Runway is best known for its AI video-generation tools and earned a spot on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list earlier this month.
The deal talks between Meta and Runway did not progress far and dissolved, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to the confidential nature of the discussions.
Bloomberg earlier reported the talks. Meta declined to comment.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been aggressively pushing to bolster his company’s AI efforts in recent months. The social media giant invested $14.3 billion into Scale AI in June, and it has also approached the startups Safe Superintelligence and Perplexity AI about potential acquisitions this year.
Meta agreed to a 49% stake in Scale AI and hired away founder Alexandr Wang along with a few other employees from the company.
While Meta was unsuccessful in its efforts to buy Superintelligence outright, Daniel Gross, the company’s CEO, and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman are joining Meta’s AI efforts, where they will work on products under Wang.
A woman walks past a logo of WhatsApp during a Meta event in Mumbai, India, on Sept. 20, 2023.
Niharika Kulkarni | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Meta is pushing back against a ban on WhatsApp from government devices.
The chief administrative officer, or CAO, of the U.S. House of Representatives told staffers on Monday that they are not allowed to use Meta’s popular messaging app. The CAO cited a lack of transparency about WhatsApp’s data privacy and security practices as the reason for the ban, according to a report by Axios that cited an internal email from the government office.
The CAO told House staff members in the email that they are not allowed to download WhatsApp on their government devices or access the app on their smartphones or desktop computers, the report said. Staff members must remove WhatsApp from their devices if they have the app installed on their devices, the report said.
“Protecting the People’s House is our topmost priority, and we are always monitoring and analyzing for potential cybersecurity risks that could endanger the data of House Members and staff,” U.S. House Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Szpindor told CNBC in a written statement.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone on Monday responded to the report via a post on X, saying the company disagrees “with the House Chief Administrative Officer’s characterization in the strongest possible terms.”
“We know members and their staffs regularly use WhatsApp and we look forward to ensuring members of the House can join their Senate counterparts in doing so officially,” Stone said.
In a separate X post, Stone said WhatsApp’s encrypted nature provides a “higher level of security than most of the apps on the CAO’s approved list that do not offer that protection.”
Some of the messaging apps the CAO said are acceptable alternatives to WhatsApp include Microsoft Teams, Signal and Apple’s iMessage, the Axios report said.
Meta is currently embroiled in an antitrust case with the Federal Trade Commission over the social media company’s acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram.
Last week, Meta debuted ads in WhatsApp in an effort to monetize the app that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has deemed “the next chapter” for his company’s history.
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