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A group of mostly Democratic senators pressured Tesla CEO Elon Musk to end the company’s use of forced arbitration clauses in employee and customer contracts, in a letter on Monday.

Like most large companies, Tesla requires workers to sign an arbitration agreement upon employment wherever it is legal to do so. That means to speak freely in court, where their speech will become part of a public record, workers need to get an exemption from the arbitration agreement from a judge first.

The senators wrote that such clauses have allowed workers’ complaints of racist discrimination and other bad working conditions to remain hidden from public view. The group included Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Ed Markey, D-Mass., Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

The letter references details from discrimination lawsuits against Tesla, in which Black workers said they regularly faced racist discrimination at work, and women who worked at Tesla reported blatant objectification and harassment by male co-workers, with little to no support from management. The EEOC, a federal agency responsible for enforcing civil rights laws against workplace discrimination, has previously issued a cause finding against Tesla, the company disclosed in June last year.

The senators wrote that workers at Tesla’s Fremont, Calif. factory seem to have brought at least five times as many discrimination lawsuits last year than workers at comparable plants run by other companies.

“Only a few of these cases, however, have managed to survive in court, with most being forced out of court following Tesla’s motions to compel arbitration,” the lawmakers wrote. “The details these cases allege – some of which we noted above – raise significant concerns about not only Tesla management’s complicity and participation in the discriminatory conditions, but also the untold number of other complaints that remain confidential.”

Forced arbitration clauses in consumer contracts have similarly obscured important details about Tesla’s vehicle safety and business practices from the public, the lawmakers wrote.

“The public deserves the full record of safety complaints about Tesla vehicles,” they said, adding that while clauses in customer contracts can theoretically let customers opt out of forced arbitration, they rarely do so, making the difference basically moot.

Of particular concern to the senators were consumer complaints of phantom braking that occurred in Tesla vehicles.

“Beyond flawed design choices, Tesla’s vehicles appear to be plagued by myriad hardware and software issues: steering wheels in two Tesla vehicles fell off during operation because of a missing retaining bolt, which NHTSA recently opened an investigation into, while another vehicle appeared to spontaneously combust,” they wrote. “But because Tesla drivers, as a practical reality, are subject to confidential arbitration agreements, we and the public – including would-be buyers – have no visibility into what complaints may have already been made and what other potential safety issues with Tesla vehicles may exist.”

Beyond asking Tesla to commit to ending arbitration clauses in employee and consumer contracts and to stop filing motions to compel arbitration in court, the lawmakers asked Tesla for detailed information on its arbitration practices.

For example, senators asked how many racial harassment, discrimination and retaliation complaints Tesla received from workers since 2012 and how many were settled or went to arbitration. They asked for the same details about sexual harassment complaints from Tesla workers.

They also asked for more information on when Tesla added the ability for consumers to opt-out of forced arbitration, and how many had actually been able to do so historically.

The senators also sought detailed information on the types of vehicle related complaints they received from customers, which hardware and software factored into those complaints, how many were settled prior to arbitration and how many that went to arbitration were found in favor of the consumer.

Mandatory arbitration is a common practice among new- and used-car dealerships, says Paul Bland, executive director at Public Justice, the consumer advocacy group. However, Tesla makes and sells its cars direct to consumers so its forced arbitration clauses cover more than the norm where auto sales are concerned.

Bland said, “It makes a lot of sense to me that senators would focus on this. Tesla uses arbitration clauses as a tactic to shunt people into a forum that’s pretty rigged for the corporation.”

The long-time consumer advocate views arbitration as a secretive system that makes it harder for consumers to find out what happened to people in previous related cases. Bland also said arbitration makes it harder for consumers to form class action lawsuits, or even to make informed choices about where they want to take their business.

Read the full letter here.

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AI chipmaker Cerebras withdraws IPO

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AI chipmaker Cerebras withdraws IPO

AI chipmaker Cerebras pulls IPO after raising $1 billion

Artificial intelligence chipmaker Cerebras Systems said on Friday that it’s withdrawing plans for an IPO, days after announcing that it raised over $1 billion in a fundraising round.

In a filing with the SEC, Cerebras said it does not intend to conduct a proposed offering “at this time,” but didn’t provide a reason. A spokesperson told CNBC on Friday that the company still hopes to go public as soon as possible.

Cerebras filed for an IPO just over a year ago, as it was ramping up to take on Nvidia in an effort to create processors for running generative AI models. The filing revealed a heavy reliance on a single customer in the United Arab Emirates, Microsoft-backed G42, which is also a Cerebras investor.

In its prospectus, Cerebras said it had given voluntary notice to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States about selling shares to G42. In March, the company announced that the committee had provided clearance.

Since its initial filing to go public on the Nasdaq, Cerebras has shifted its focus away from selling systems and more toward providing a cloud service for accepting incoming queries to models that use its chips underneath.

The announced withdrawal comes three days into a U.S. government shutdown that’s left agencies like the SEC operating with a small staff. In a plan for a shutdown published in August, the SEC said its electronic system EDGAR “is operated pursuant to a contract and thus will remain fully functional as long as funding for the contractor remains available through permitted means.”

On Tuesday, Cerebras said it had raised $1.1 billion at a valuation of $8.1 billion in a private funding round. At the time, CEO Andrew Feldman said that the company still wanted to go public, rather than continue to raise venture capital.

“I don’t think this is an indication of a preference for one or the other,” he told CNBC in an interview. “I think we have tremendous opportunities in front of us, and I think it’s good practice, when you have enormous opportunities, not to let them fall by the wayside for lack of capital.”

Feldman thought the original prospectus from last year was out of date, especially considering developments in AI, the spokesperson said on Friday.

Well heeled technology companies have been quickly signing up for additional infrastructure to handle demand. On Tuesday CoreWeave, which rents out Nvidia chips through a cloud service, said it had signed a $14.2 billion agreement with Meta. ChatGPT operator OpenAI said last week that it had committed to spending $300 billion on cloud services from Oracle.

The government shutdown did not factor into Cerebras’ decision, the spokesperson said.

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Amazon shutters 4 Fresh stores in Southern California as grocery strategy keeps shifting

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Amazon shutters 4 Fresh stores in Southern California as grocery strategy keeps shifting

An employee arranges a salad dressing display at an Amazon Fresh grocery store on December 12, 2024 in Federal Way, Washington.

David Ryder | Getty Images

Amazon is closing four more Fresh supermarkets in Southern California as the e-commerce giant continues to focus its grocery strategy around Whole Foods and delivery.

The closures will take place in the coming weeks, Amazon confirmed to CNBC. They follow the shuttering of four other U.S. locations in recent months, in Washington, Virginia, New York and a Los Angeles suburb.

“Certain locations work better than others, and after an assessment, we’ve made the decision to close these Amazon Fresh locations,” Amazon spokesperson Griffin Buch said in a statement. “We’re working closely with affected employees to help them find new roles within Amazon wherever possible.”

At one Fresh supermarket in La Verne, California, employees were told to gather for an all-hands meeting on Wednesday, according to an internal message viewed by CNBC. They learned at the meeting that the store would close in mid-November, and that employees would receive a severance package, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the details were confidential.

The other three stores that are closing are in cities of Mission Viejo, La Habra and Whittier.

Last week, Amazon said it intends to close 14 Fresh grocery stores in the U.K. and convert its five other locations there into Whole Foods markets.

Amazon said it regularly evaluates its store portfolio, which can lead to opening, reopening, relocating or closing certain locations. In the U.S., the company has more than 60 remaining Fresh stores. Last year, the company removed its “Just Walk Out” cashierless technology from the stores. It’s also been culling its footprint of Go cashierless convenience stores.

Amazon has been determined to become a major grocery player for nearly two decades. The company launched Amazon Fresh in 2007, then a pilot project for fresh food delivery, before acquiring upscale chain Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017, its biggest purchase on record.

Amazon debuted its Fresh grocery chain in 2020, with an eye toward mass-market shoppers. The rollout has been turbulent since its early days.

The company opened a flurry of Fresh locations by 2022, but the expansion plans ran into CEO Andy Jassy’s widespread cost-cutting efforts as the company reckoned with the impact of rising interest rates and soaring inflation. In 2023, Amazon announced it would shut some Fresh stores and halt further openings temporarily as it evaluated how to make the chain stand out for shoppers.

While it’s closing Fresh stores, Amazon continues to “innovate and invest in making grocery shopping easier, faster, and more affordable,” Buch said. The company still maintains 500 Whole Foods locations and has opened mini “daily shop” Whole Foods stores in New York City.

On Wednesday, Amazon also launched a new “price-conscious” grocery brand that will be offered online and in its physical stores. And last month, Amazon expanded same-day delivery of fresh foods to more pockets of the U.S.

Jassy and other company executives have touted the success of sales of “everyday essentials” within its online grocery business, which refers to items such as canned goods, paper towels, dish soap and snacks. Jassy told investors at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in May that he remains “bullish” on grocery, calling it a “significant business” for Amazon.

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Quantum stocks Rigetti Computing and D-Wave surged double-digits this week. Here’s what’s driving the big move

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Quantum stocks Rigetti Computing and D-Wave surged double-digits this week. Here's what's driving the big move

Inside Google’s quantum computing lab in Santa Barbara, California.

CNBC

Quantum computing stocks are wrapping up a big week of double-digit gains.

Shares of Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Quantum and Quantum Computing have surged more than 20%. Rigetti and D-Wave Quantum have more than doubled and tripled, respectively, since the start of the year. Arqit Quantum skyrocketed more than 32% this week.

The jump in shares followed a wave of positive news in the quantum space.

Rigetti said it had purchase orders totalling $5.7 million for two of its 9-qubit Novera quantum computing systems. The owner of drugmaker Novo Nordisk and the Danish government also invested 300 million euros in a quantum venture fund.

In a blog post earlier this week, Nvidia also highlighted accelerated computing, which it argues can make “quantum computing breakthroughs of today and tomorrow possible.”

Investors have piled into quantum computing technology this year, as tech giants Microsoft, Nvidia and Amazon have embraced the technology with a wave of new chip announcements, multi-million dollar investments and research plans.

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