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Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his staff met Wednesday with California Governor Gavin Newsom to tour Tesla’s new engineering headquarters.

Sources close to the governor told CNBC the meeting at Tesla’s engineering office in Palo Alto, California focused on the company’s efforts to create jobs and expand in the state.

The expansion will focus on hiring engineers proficient in research development and artificial intelligence. Tesla is taking over the lease for the office space, previously occupied by Hewlett-Packard. The plans will help accelerate efforts to produce autonomous driving and robot technology.

“This was HP’s original headquarters, and so I think it’s a poetic transition from the founders of Silicon Valley to Tesla and we’re very excited to make this our global engineering headquarters,” Musk told CNBC. “And we’re a California-Texas company.”

Tesla initiated the meeting after several previous attempts to set up talks between the state’s most well-known politician and the most outspoken billionaire failed to materialize.

Musk said the new facility is “effectively a headquarters of Tesla” and that it’s “kind of a dual-headquartered company.” Tesla’s main headquarters is in Austin, Texas.

It comes as Tesla faces regulatory scrutiny in the state. The California Department of Motor Vehicles has formally accused Tesla of engaging in deceptive marketing and advertising practices where its driver assistance programs, brand-named Autopilot and Full Self-Diving, are concerned. And the state’s civil rights agency has sued Tesla alleging racist harassment of, and discrimination against, Black workers that has persisted for years at the company’s car assembly plant and other facilities in California.

Meanwhile, according to Tesla’s most recent annual financial filing with the SEC, district attorneys in different California counties are “conducting an investigation into Tesla’s waste segregation practices,” for hazardous waste-related code violations.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

California and its strong climate initiatives have been integral to Tesla’s success. California leads the nation’s zero-emission vehicle market with nearly 1.4 million ZEVs sold and it’s home to 55 ZEV-related manufacturing companies.

But Musk’s views on California have not been so friendly when it comes to his business.

As the pandemic hit in March 2020, Musk and state officials clashed over reopening the Tesla plant in Fremont, California. At the time, Musk was pushing for his employees to return to work while covid was affecting businesses across the country. Musk mischaracterized California’s health-related covid restrictions as “fascist.”

In 2021, following repeated threats to leave the state, Musk moved Tesla’s headquarters to Austin, Texas. The company owns and operates two Megafactories in Fremont and Lathrop, Texas.

Musk talked with CNBC about his current thoughts on California.

“I think California should be cautious about taxes and over regulations going too far,” he said. “Objectively, Tesla has done nothing but increase its footprint in California. Both in terms of manufacturing and engineering and personnel. Every year we’ve grown our headcount in California without exception.”

Since then, Musk has made his political stance clear, characterizing California as a one-party state that is burdened with overregulation and high taxes. Despite those comments, Governor Newsom has praised Musk in multiple interviews with CNBC, calling him “one of the greatest innovators of our time.”

Musk, meanwhile, has emphasized that Tesla is still a major employer in the state and is expanding its operations. In the fourth quarter of 2022, for example, Tesla boasted about a new Megapack factory in Lathrop, California.

“I’m not anti-California,” he told CNBC. “One has to strike a balance and say there’s a lot of good things about California and there are some challenges. California could make it easier to do manufacturing but we encourage legislators to consider their actions long-term.”

Tesla said it had 47,000 employees in California in 2022, according to a January 2023 blog post. As of Dec. 31, 2022, the company and its subsidiaries had 127,855 employees worldwide. The company said its wages resulted in $16.6 billion in economic activity for the state “or $44.4 million injected into California’s economy each day.”

CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

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Navan, corporate travel and expense startup, files for initial public offering

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Navan, corporate travel and expense startup, files for initial public offering

By year-end there should be around 20 tech IPOS, says Barclays' Kristin DeClark

Navan, the business travel, payments, and expense management startup, filed on Friday afternoon to go public.

Its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicates that the company plans to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “NAVN.”

Navan reported trailing 12-month revenue of $613 million (up 32%) across over 10,000 customers, and gross bookings of $7.6 billion (up 34%), according to the S-1 filing.

Goldman Sachs and Citigroup will act as lead book-running managers for the proposed offering.

Navan ranked No. 39 on this year’s CNBC Disruptor 50 list, and also made the 2024 list.

The IPO market has bounced back this year, with deal activity up 56% across 156 deals (roughly 200 IPO filings in all) and $30 billion in proceeds, up over 23% year over year, according to IPO tracker Renaissance Capital. It has been the best year for IPOs since 2021, though still far below the Covid offering boom years, when over $142 billion (2021) and $78 billion (2020) was raised by IPOs.

This year’s deal flow has been highlighted by hot AI names like Coreweave, as well as some of the startup world’s most highly valued firms from the past decade, such as fintech Klarna and design firm Figma, crypto companies Circle, Bullish and Gemini, and some long-awaited IPO candidates finally hitting the market, such as Stubhub this week, though its shares have slumped since the first day of trading. Top Amazon reseller Pattern went public on Friday.

Other startups are expected to pursue deals given the increased investor appetite.

The Renaissance IPO ETF is up 20% this year.

Launched by CEO Ariel Cohen and co-founder Ilan Twig in 2015, Navan set out to disrupt a business travel sector where incumbents relied on clunky legacy tools and fragmented workflows.

The Palo Alto-based company, formerly called TripActions, refers to itself as an “all-in-one super app” for corporate travel and expenses.

Customers include Unilever, Adobe, Christie’s, Blue Origin and Geico.

It has also been pushing further into AI, with a virtual assistant named Ava handling approximately 50% of user interactions during the six months ended July 31, according to the filing, and a proprietary AI framework called Navan Cognition supporting its platform, as well as proprietary cloud infrastructure.

“We built Navan for the road warriors, for CEOs and CFOs who understand travel’s critical importance to their strategy, the finance teams who demand precision and control, the executive assistants juggling itineraries, and the program admins ensuring seamless events,” the co-founders wrote in an IPO filing letter.

“We saw firsthand the frustration of clunky, outdated systems. Travelers were forced to cobble together solutions, wait for hours on hold to book or change travel, and negotiate with travel agents. They struggled to adhere to company policies, with little visibility into those policies, and after all that, they spent even more time on tedious expense reports after a trip. We felt the pain of finance teams struggling to gain visibility into fragmented travel spending and to enforce policies, and the frustration of suppliers unable to connect directly with the high-value business travelers they sought to serve,” they wrote in the filing.

Revenue grew 33% year-over-year from $402 million in fiscal 2024 to $537 million in fiscal 2025, according to the S-1 filing. The company reported a net loss that decreased 45% year-over-year from $332 million in fiscal 2024 to $181 million in fiscal 2025. Gross margin improved from 60% in fiscal 2024 to 68% in fiscal 2025.

The business travel and expense space is crowded, with fellow Disruptors Ramp and Brex, and TravelPerk, as well as incumbents like SAP Concur and American Express Global Business Travel.

Sign up for our weekly, original newsletter that goes beyond the annual Disruptor 50 list, offering a closer look at list-making companies and their innovative founders.

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Microsoft raises Xbox prices in U.S. due to economic environment

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Microsoft raises Xbox prices in U.S. due to economic environment

A gamer plays soccer title Pro Evolution Soccer 2019 on an Xbox console.

Sezgin Pancar | Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Microsoft said on Friday that it will increase the recommended retail price of several Xbox consoles in the U.S. starting in October because of “changes in the macroeconomic environment.”

The company said it would not increase prices for accessories such as controllers and headsets, and that prices in other countries would stay the same.

While Microsoft didn’t explicitly attribute the increase to the Trump administration’s tariffs, many consumer companies have been warning for months that higher prices are on the way. President Donald Trump has issued tariffs this year on multiple countries with a stated goal to bring more manufacturing to the U.S.

“We understand that these changes are challenging, and they were made with careful consideration,” Microsoft said on its website.

It’s the second time Microsoft has raised prices on its consoles in the U.S. this year. Rivals Sony and Nintendo have also raised console prices in the U.S. as Trump’s tariffs went into effect.

Here are the changes, according to a PDF posted on Microsoft’s website:

  • Xbox Series S will start at $399, up from $379 previously. A version with 1TB of storage costs $449.
  • Xbox Series X Digital console now costs $599, a $50 increase. The Xbox Series X with a disc drive also got a $50 increase to $649.
  • The most expensive version, with 2TB of storage, costs $799, up from $729.

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StubHub’s stock plunges 10% in third day on NYSE as post-IPO slump deepens

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StubHub's stock plunges 10% in third day on NYSE as post-IPO slump deepens

Ticket reseller StubHub signage on display at the New York Stock Exchange for the company’s IPO on Sept. 17, 2025.

NYSE

After a long wait to get public, StubHub has had a rough start to life on the New York Stock Exchange.

Shares of the online ticket vendor dropped 10% on Friday, falling for a third straight day since debuting on Wednesday. At $18.46, the stock is now down 21% from its IPO price of $23.50.

StubHub, trading under ticker symbol “STUB,” has lagged behind fellow market newcomers like online lender Klarna, design software company Figma and stablecoin issuer Circle, which delivered early returns for investors following their recent IPOs. Shares of cybersecurity firm Netskope also rose 10% on Friday in their second trading day, after an initial pop on Thursday.

StubHub had been trying to go public for the past several years, but delayed its debut twice. The most recent stall came in April after President Donald Trump’s announcement of sweeping tariffs roiled markets. The company filed an updated prospectus in August, effectively restarting the process to go public, and has since seen its market cap slip to about $6.8 billion from $8.6 billion at its IPO.

Founded in 2000, StubHub primarily generates revenue from connecting buyers with ticket resellers. In the first quarter, revenue rose 10% from a year earlier to $397.6 million. The company’s net loss widened to $35.9 million from $29.7 million a year ago.

StubHub CEO Eric Baker told CNBC on Wednesday that the company expects recently introduced federal regulations around transparent ticket pricing to cause a “one-time” hit to its financial results.

Regulators are zeroing in on online ticket sellers over their pricing mechanisms and whether the companies are doing enough to keep automated purchasing bots in check. The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday sued StubHub rival Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster, accusing it of illegal resale tactics.

While StubHub has failed to excite Wall Street, its struggles haven’t seeped into other deals as the tech IPO market continues to show signs of a resurgence after an extended dry spell. Amazon reseller Pattern Group saw its stock rise 12% on Friday, though shares initially slipped 6%.

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