U.S. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) talks to reporters as he arrives on the first day of the new Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, January 3, 2023.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
Twitter CEO Elon Musk discussed how to make the social media site “fair on all sides” in a meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., the lawmaker told reporters on Friday.
“He wants to have a level playing field” and for everybody to have a voice, McCarthy said of the meeting in remarks reported by NBC News. “He’s really defending the First Amendment. And we had a really good discussion.”
Musk shared on Twitter Thursday evening that he had met with McCarthy and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., “to discuss ensuring that this platform is fair to both.” On Thursday, McCarthy only shared that Musk came to wish him a happy birthday.
On Friday, McCarthy also confirmed that Jeffries was in the Thursday meeting and that he had not previously met Musk.
An aide to Jeffries told The Washington Post his encounter with Musk was only coincidental and happened as Musk was leaving his meeting with McCarthy. Jeffries’ office confirmed the Washington Post anecdote to CNBC.
McCarthy also confirmed to reporters on Friday that he had convened a meeting in his office that day with Musk and several top Republicans: Majority Leader Steve Scalise R-La., Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., and Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash.
McCarthy said he wanted to “continue to have that discussion” of fairness on tech platforms with the other lawmakers as they seek to move legislation and make sure “American has an even voice,” NBC News reported.
According to documents posted to NHTSA’s website on Thursday, the agency’s Office of Defects Investigation had “identified numerous incident reports” from Tesla concerning crashes that had “occurred several months or more before the dates of the reports” to the agency.
The delayed reports were likely “due to an issue with Tesla’s data collection, which, according to Tesla, has now been fixed,” according to NHTSA’s explanation for the probe.
Automakers must report on collisions that occurred on publicly accessible roads in the U.S. that involved the use of either partially or fully automated driving systems in their cars within five days of the companies becoming aware of any crash.
The agency will now conduct an “audit query” to figure out if Tesla is in compliance with its reporting requirements, and to “evaluate the cause of the potential delays in reporting, the scope of any such delays, and the mitigations that Tesla has developed to address them.”
NHTSA will also investigate whether Tesla neglected to report any prior relevant collisions, and whether its reports submitted to the safety regulator “include all of the required and available data.”
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Tesla stock was little changed Thursday.
The company sells electric vehicles equipped with a standard Autopilot system, or premium Full Self-Driving Supervised option, which is also known as FSD, in the U.S. Both require a driver at the wheel ready to steer or brake at any time.
A site that tracks Tesla-involved collisions drawing on news reports, police records and federal data, TeslaDeaths.com, has found at least 59 fatalities resulting from crashes where Tesla Autopilot or FSD were a factor.
The new NHTSA probe comes as Musk, Tesla’s CEO, is trying to persuade investors that the company can become a global leader in autonomous vehicles, and that its self-driving systems are safe enough to operate fleets of robotaxis on public roads in the U.S.
A manned Tesla Robotaxi service launched in Austin, Texas in June, and the company is running another manned car service in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Riders can book trips via the company’s Tesla Robotaxi app.
Tesla has not begun driverless ride-hailing operations that would make it directly comparable to Alphabet-owned Waymo, or Baidu’s Apollo Go and other autonomous vehicle competitors yet.
The company is facing a sales and profit decline, due, in part, to a consumer backlash against Musk’s incendiary political rhetoric, his work to re-elect President Donald Trump, and his work leading the Department of Government Efficiency to slash federal spending and its workforce.
Still, many Wall Street analysts and shareholders remain optimistic about Musk’s vision.
“We think it is a positive that Tesla has begun robotaxi operations which puts it on the path to addressing a large market (we estimate that the US robotaxi market will be $7 bn in 2030 as discussed in our recent AV deep dive report),” Goldman Sachs autos industry analysts wrote in a note Wednesday.
Musk and Tesla have not given investors a sense of what they expect in terms of Robotaxi-related revenue or the technical performance of vehicles in its rideshare fleet, so a “debate on the pace of robotaxi growth will continue,” the research note said.
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Apple is taking a cue from some of its competitors.
The technology giant’s Apple TV+ monthly subscription is now $12.99, starting Thursday in the U.S. and other countries.
Apple said the new price will hit current subscribers 30 days after their next renewal date. The annual subscription price will not change.
For new subscribers, the $12.99 monthly price begins after a seven-day trial period.
The change marks Apple’s first price hike for its streaming service since 2023. At the time, Apple lifted its monthly price to about $9.99 from $6.99. The company raised the price in 2022 from $4.99.
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Apple TV+ is one of the company’s most popular services, but Apple does not release viewership numbers. A report from The Information earlier this year said the streaming service is losing more than $1 billion annually as subscriptions rocketed toward 45 million, citing people familiar with the matter.
Apple isn’t the only streaming company hiking prices this year to either fund new content or reap returns on their investments. Earlier this year, both Netflix and NBCUniversal’s Peacock boosted prices. Music streaming platform Spotify also raised prices in multiple markets.
Earlier this year, Apple introduced its streaming service to Android phones in a move that could open the company to more people worldwide.
The company is fresh off the release of its highest-grossing theatrical film, “F1: The Movie.”
Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.
President Donald Trump‘s dealings with Intel and Nvidia amount to a “scattershot method of crony capitalism,” Walter Isaacson said Thursday.
“That state capitalism often evolves into crony capitalism, where you have favored companies and industries that pay tribute to the leader, and that is a recipe for not only disaster, but just sort of a corrupt sense of messiness,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
The Tulane University professor, widely known for his recent Elon Musk biography, argued that this method won’t succeed in reviving American manufacturing.
Isaacson’s comments come as the Trump administration wades further into influencing the way companies operate in the U.S.
The White House is pushing for a stake in embattled chipmaker Intel after Trump called CEO Lip-Bu Tan “highly CONFLICTED” and said he should resign.
Earlier this month, both Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices agreed to pay 15% of their China revenues to the U.S. government for export licenses to sell certain chips there.
Isaacson said he’s always been “dubious” of public-private partnerships. He highlighted Trump’s push for Coca-Cola to use cane sugar in its namesake soda as another example of “crony capitalism.”