Tesla 2023 shareholder meeting: Musk says Tesla will deliver production Cybertrucks this year

Published

3 years ago

May 16, 2023

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk addressed shareholders at the company’s annual meeting on Tuesday, predicting the economy would pick up after 12 months and promising the company would deliver production Cybertrucks later this year.

Addressing the long delays to the angular-looking electric pickup truck, Musk lamented some of the manufacturing challenges and said, “Sorry for the delay. We’re finally going to start delivering production Cybertrucks later this year.” He said it would be the vehicle he drives on a daily basis.

Musk also said that he expects a challenging economic environment to persist for the next twelve months, and that many companies will go bankrupt. But after that, he believes, the economy will recover and Tesla will be well-positioned.

He also predicted that the Tesla Model Y would be “the number one best-selling car on Earth this year.”

Earlier, shareholders voted to add former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, who is now the CEO of Redwood Materials, to the automaker’s board of directors. Redwood Materials recycles electronic waste and batteries, and last year struck a multi-billion dollar deal with Tesla supplier Panasonic.

After the shareholder vote, CEO Elon Musk kicked off his portion of the meeting with a commitment to conduct a third-party audit of Tesla’s cobalt supply chain, namely to ensure there is no child labor within any of Tesla’s cobalt suppliers.

Cobalt is a critical ingredient for production of batteries that go into Tesla’s electric cars and backup battery packs used at homes and for utility-scale energy projects. “Even for the small amount of cobalt that we do us, we will make sure six weeks til Sunday that no child labor is being exploited,” Musk said to the cheers of investors in attendance in person.

Musk also announced that Tesla plans to produce a new kind of drive unit, which he said will require less silicon carbide than prior drive trains, and no rare earth elements. He added that Tesla will also switch to a new, low voltage architecture in its cars which should require less copper.

Later in his presentation, Musk boasted about the company’s energy storage business and said growth in the sales of “big batteries” was faster than growth in the company’s core automotive segment.

Since the electric vehicle maker’s last annual meeting in August 2022, Tesla’s largest retail shareholder, Leo Koguan, has criticized Musk for selling billions of dollars worth of his Tesla holdings to finance a $44 billion buyout of Twitter, the social media company.

Koguan, who is a billionaire and founder of the IT services firm SHI International, called for the company’s board to “perform shock therapy to resuscitate stock price,” namely by way of a share buyback late last year.

Musk is now serving as CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter concurrently, but recently announced that he has hired a new CEO for Twitter, Linda Yaccarino, the former head of advertising at NBC Universal. Musk plans to stay on at Twitter in the role of CTO.

Some institutional Tesla investors have admonished Musk for being too distracted with his new role as Twitter CEO to perform optimally at the helm of Tesla. They have also criticized the Tesla board, led by chairwoman Robyn Denholm, for failing to rein him in and protect shareholders’ interests.

Shares in Tesla closed at $228.52 on October 28, 2022, after Musk officially took over Twitter. They closed at $166.52 on May 16, 2023, as the meeting kicked off.

At the 2022 annual shareholders meeting for Tesla, Musk predicted an 18-month recession, teased the possibility of share buybacks, and told investors that electric vehicle business was aiming to produce 20 million vehicles annually by 2030, which he thought would require a dozen factories total with each one producing 1.5 million to 2 million units per year.

At that time, Musk also told investors the long-delayed Cybertruck would not have the same specifications and pricing that were originally promised when the company unveiled the angular pickup in 2019.

This is a developing story, please check back for updates.

Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.

Technology

Tesla obtains permit to operate ride-hail service in Arizona

Published

5 hours ago

November 19, 2025

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Tesla obtains permit to operate ride-hail service in Arizona

A Tesla Inc. robotaxi on Oltorf Street in Austin, Texas, on June 22, 2025.

Tim Goessman | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Tesla has obtained a permit to operate a ride-hailing service in Arizona, the state’s department of transportation said.

The electric vehicle company applied for a “transportation network company” permit on Nov. 13, and was approved on Monday, ADOT said in an emailed statement. Additional permits will be required before Tesla can operate a robotaxi service in Arizona.

In July, Tesla applied to conduct autonomous vehicle testing and operations in Phoenix, with and without human safety drivers on board. A month earlier, Tesla started a robotaxi pilot in Austin, Texas, with safety valets and remote operators. Tesla also operates a more traditional car service in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tesla plans to take human safety drivers out of its cars in Austin before the end of this year. The company is aiming to operate a commercial robotaxi service in Phoenix and several other U.S. cities before the end of 2026.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website, Tesla cars equipped with automated driving systems were involved in seven reported collisions following the launch of the company’s pilot in Texas.

Competitors including Alphabet’s Waymo in the U.S. and Baidu’s Apollo Go in China are way ahead in the nascent robotaxi ride-hailing market. In the Phoenix area, Waymo operates a sizable commercial business, with at least 400 autonomous vehicles, the company previously told CNBC. In May, Waymo said it had surpassed 10 million driverless trips served to riders across the U.S.

Baidu said in an earnings update on Tuesday that its Apollo Go service “provided 3.1 million fully driverless operational rides in the third quarter of 2025,” representing year-over-year growth of 212%.

Musk has been promising that Tesla will “solve” autonomy for years without reaching its goals. The world’s richest person has continued with the lofty pronouncements.

At the company’s 2025 shareholder meeting earlier this month, Musk said the “killer app” for self-driving technology is when people can “text and drive,” or “sleep and drive.”

“Before we allow the car to be driven without paying attention, we need to make sure it’s very safe,” Musk said. “We’re on the cusp of that. I know I’ve said that a few times. We really are at this point.”

WATCH: Baidu to ramp up global exports as robotaxi service grows in China

Technology

CNBC Daily Open: The flow of money in AI appears one-way at this point

Published

8 hours ago

November 19, 2025

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CNBC Daily Open: The flow of money in AI appears one-way at this point

The Anthropic website on Friday, Aug. 22, 2025.

Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Money keeps flowing into artificial intelligence companies but out of AI stocks.

In what looks like — once again — a scenario of the left hand scratching the right, Microsoft and Nvidia will be investing a combined $15 billion into Anthropic, while the OpenAI competitor has committed to buying compute power from its two newest stakeholders. At this point, it seems as if a big proportion of AI news can be summarized as: “Company X invests in Company Y, and Company Y will buy things from Company X.”

Okay, that’s unfair. There are a lot of developments in the AI world that are not about investments but, well, development. Google unveiled the third version of Gemini, its AI model, which Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google’s AI unit DeepMind, said “will be “trading cliché and flattery for genuine insight.” (But I still want an AI chatbot to compliment me on my curiosity when I ask how to cut a pear, so I’m not sure if that’s a pro for me.)

Investors, however, still appear skeptical about AI. Major names such as Nvidia, Amazon and Microsoft tumbled Tuesday stateside, giving the S&P 500 its fourth straight session in the red — the longest decline since August.

And if Nvidia — “the top company within the top industry within the top sector,” as CFRA’s chief investment strategist Sam Stovall puts it — fails to satisfy investors’ expectations when it reports earnings Wednesday, we might be seeing the S&P 500’s slide extend.

What you need to know today

The S&P 500 falls for a fourth consecutive day. Other major indexes also moved lower Tuesday stateside, while bitcoin prices dropped below $90,000 before recovering. Europe’s regional Stoxx 600 sank 1.72% and touched its lowest level in a month.

Anthropic signs deal with Microsoft and Nvidia. Microsoft announced Tuesday it will invest up to $5 billion in the startup, while Nvidia will put in up to $10 billion. That puts Anthropic’s valuation around $350 billion, according to a source.

Google announces its latest AI model Gemini 3. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said Tuesday it will require “less prompting” for desired answers. The update comes eight months after Google introduced Gemini 2.5, and will be rolled out in the coming weeks.

U.S. Senators urge investigation into Trump-linked crypto firm. World Liberty Finance, heavily owned and run by the Trump family, sold tokens to a North Korean hacking organization, an Iranian crypto exchange and others, according to a corporate watchdog.

[PRO] Potentially resilient stocks amid AI slump. There are some global stocks and non-equity assets that could weather the turbulence in U.S. tech names happening recently, strategists told CNBC.

And finally…

Oleksii Liskonih | Istock | Getty Images

Diplomatic spat between Tokyo and Beijing threatens Japan’s already fragile economy

Miffed over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comments related to Taiwan, China on Friday advised its citizens against travelling to the country. Japanese tourism-exposed stocks fell in the aftermath of that warning, while experts caution the impact could be more severe over a longer duration.

Takahide Kiuchi, executive economist at Nomura Research Institute, said tensions between the two Asian powers could result in a 1.79 trillion yen drop in Japan’s GDP over the course of one year — a 0.29% decline in the country’s GDP.

— Lim Hui Jie