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Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his security detail depart the company’s local office in Washington, January 27, 2023.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

Elon Musk‘s multiple ventures and the relationships between them are facing increased scrutiny as the Tesla CEO continues to add more to his plate.

During Tesla’s second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, Truist analyst William Stein asked Musk about yet another tech venture he has started up and incorporated in Nevada: xAI. Musk recently said that the artificial intelligence startup aims to compete with Google Bard or OpenAI’s ChatGPT someday, and plans to collaborate with Tesla on software and silicon alike.

Stein asked him, “For investors that think there might be quite a bit of value in the AI features and products of Tesla, it might be concerning to see you pursuing another endeavor where AI is the focus. Can you talk about how xAI might overlap, might perhaps compete with Tesla or in other ways perhaps it enhances the value of what Tesla does?”

Musk claimed that xAI and its focus artificial general intelligence on would bring some value to Tesla, and talked about recruiting as an example.

“There were just some of the world’s best AI engineers and scientists that were willing to join a startup but they were not willing to join a large, sort of relatively established company like Tesla.” He added, “So I was like, OK well, better it’s a startup that I run than they go work somewhere else. That’s kind of the genesis of xAI.”

In addition to the xAI example, he said he was only able to entice a top materials science engineer away from his job at Apple by promising the engineer could work concurrently for SpaceX and Tesla. The engineer in question, Charles Kuehmann, joined Tesla in late 2015 and now holds the title of vice president of SpaceX and Tesla materials engineering, reporting directly to the CEO.

The issue of Musk and his multiple ventures also came up earlier this month, when Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., urged the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate its Twitter ties and related corporate governance issues.

Musk led a $44 billion buyout of the social media company last year and appointed himself CEO there temporarily. He is now the controlling shareholder, CTO and executive chair of Twitter while holding down the CEO role both at Tesla and at his aerospace and defense company, SpaceX. He’s also the founder and funder at the brain-computer interface startup Neuralink and tunneling venture The Boring Co.

Tesla is the only public company among the bunch. And it has never disclosed to shareholders exactly how much talent, time and money it has spent helping Musk at his other ventures, or why sending people over to Twitter would comprise a reasonable use of Tesla resources. Musk previously enlisted Tesla, SpaceX and The Boring Co. employees to assist him with his Twitter takeover, as CNBC reported.

At least one senior Tesla employee has jumped ship to Musk’s X Corp., the parent company of Twitter. Court filings revealed that Dhruv Batura, who had worked at Tesla since late 2013 and was a senior manager of business operations finance there, is now a senior director of finance at X Corp. Batura was posting job ads for X Corp. on Twitter on the day of Tesla’s second-quarter earnings report.

In a May 2023 proxy filing, Tesla did disclose a few details about its related party transactions. Among these, Tesla revealed that “Twitter is party to certain commercial and support agreements with Tesla. Under these agreements, Twitter incurred expenses of approximately $1.0 million in the aggregate in 2022 and $0.4 million in 2023 through February.” Tesla hasn’t said what, exactly, Twitter is buying from the company.

Risks include lack of focus, employee burnout

According to London School of Economics professor of organizational behavior, Randall S. Peterson, “Musk is making a convoluted argument in saying ‘I am helping Tesla by keeping these great people from joining a competitor.’ It’s a counter-factual you cannot ever really test or challenge in an investigation.”

Most startups fail, Peterson noted, and people who want to create startups were probably not likely to join Tesla’s direct competitors in the automotive industry.

Peterson said Musk’s many ventures can create risks for Tesla, and shareholders should seek more details.

“It’s hard to focus on and excel at any one thing when you run multiple companies,” Peterson said. “That’s a risk around the CEO himself. Would most companies’ shareholders tolerate their CEO running several other companies at the same time? The answer to that is probably no. So that raises a question of what the Tesla board is doing, whether they are independent at any level, or are so enamored of Musk that they not only tolerate his unusual way of working, but might be missing significant fundamental problems as long as the money keeps coming.”

Boards at companies that have ended up in crisis, like Enron and the Royal Bank of Scotland, failed to rein in their CEOs despite signs of problems for many quarters, he noted.

Another risk, Peterson said, is that Musk’s employees may feel pressure to work on many projects at once for him concurrently, outside of Tesla. In a quest to please him or rack up new work experience, employees may fail to recuperate from their work and burnout. Burnout, he said, can lead to high attrition or poor performance.

Finally, the professor noted, Musk may be creating distractions that impede focus among his employees, even if his intention is to cross-pollinate among his businesses.

“You need to be super-focused to be the best at something, both as an individual and as a corporation. That’s the reason we have seen a trend away from conglomerates which were big in the 70s to companies that are more focused today,” the professor said.

Still, Musk appears to be doubling down on unapologetic collaborations between companies in his growing empire.

On Wednesday’s call, he was asked to give an update on Tesla’s progress developing a humanoid robot dubbed Optimus. Musk waxed on in a futuristic vein, saying that Tesla may one day collaborate with Neuralink to make robotic, prosthetic arms and legs to help amputees return to full mobility or dexterity.

Tesla did not immediately respond for a request for comment. Twitter responded with an automated reply containing a crude symbol.

— CNBC’s Rohan Goswami contributed reporting.

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OpenAI in talks to sell around $6 billion in stock at roughly $500 billion valuation

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OpenAI in talks to sell around  billion in stock at roughly 0 billion valuation

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI attends the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference at the Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, U.S., on July 8, 2025.

David A. Grogan | CNBC

OpenAI is preparing to sell around $6 billion in stock as part of a secondary sale that would value the company at roughly $500 billion, CNBC confirmed Friday.

The shares would be sold by current and former employees to investors including SoftBank, Dragoneer Investment Group and Thrive Capital, according to a person familiar with the negotiations who asked not to be named due to the confidential nature of the discussions. The talks are still in early stages and the details could change.

Bloomberg was first to report the discussions. All three firms are existing investors in OpenAI, but Thrive Capital could lead the round, as CNBC previously reported. SoftBank, Dragoneer and Thrive Capital did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

OpenAI’s valuation has grown exponentially since the artificial intelligence startup launched its generative AI chatbot ChatGPT in late 2022.

The company announced a $40 billion funding round in March at a $300 billion, by far the largest amount ever raised by a private tech company. Earlier this month, OpenAI announced its most recent $8.3 billion in fresh capital tied to that funding round.

Last week, OpenAI announced GPT-5, its latest and most advanced large-scale AI model. OpenAI said the model is smarter, faster and “a lot more useful,” particularly across domains like writing, coding and health care. But it’s been a rocky roll out, as some users complained about losing access to OpenAI’s prior models.

“We for sure underestimated how much some of the things that people like in GPT-4o matter to them, even if GPT-5 performs better in most ways,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a post on X.

WATCH: OpenAI staffer reportedly to sell $6 billion in stock to SoftBank and other investors

OpenAI staffer reportedly to sell $6 billion in stock to SoftBank and other investors

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Tech IPOs are roaring after ‘years of Prohibition’ — it may be too good

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Tech IPOs are roaring after 'years of Prohibition' — it may be too good

Brendan Blumer, Chairman of of Bullish and Tom Farley, CEO of Bullish, Bullish a cryptocurrency exchange operator, pose with staffs during the company’s IPO at the New York Stock Exchange in New York City, U.S., August 13, 2025.

NYSE

The Bullish IPO this week took on added significance, perhaps because of the company name.

When shares of the Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange more than doubled out of the gate on Wednesday before finishing the day up 84%, it was the latest sign that the tech IPO bulls are back in business.

In July, design software vendor Figma more than tripled in its New York Stock Exchange debut, and a month earlier shares of crypto firm Circle soared 168% in their first day on the Big Board.

Wall Street has been waiting a long time for this.

Three years ago, steep inflation and soaring interest effectively closed the market for public offerings. Tech stocks tanked and private capital dried up, forcing cash-burning startups to turn their attention away from growth and toward efficiency and profitability.

The roadblock appeared to be loosening earlier this year, when companies like StubHub and Klarna filed their prospectuses, but then President Donald Trump roiled the markets in April with his plans for sweeping tariffs. Roadshows were put on indefinite hold.

The president’s tariff agenda has since stabilized a bit, and investor money is pouring into tech, pushing the Nasdaq to record levels, up more than 40% from this year’s low in April. Optimism is growing that the hefty backlog of high-valued startups will continue to clear as CEOs and venture capitalists gain confidence that the public markets will welcome their top-tier companies.

Ahead of Figma’s debut, NYSE president Lynn Martin told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” that immense demand for that offering could “open the floodgates” for the rest of the market. And earlier this week, Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman told “Fast Money” that there’s a “very healthy list” of companies looking to IPO in the second half of this year, ahead of the holiday season.

“I’ve been meeting a lot of CEOs, getting them prepared to think about what they want in the public markets and where they’re going,” Friedman said.

There are more than two-dozen venture-backed U.S. tech companies valued at $10 billion or more, according to CB Insights. StubHub has updated its prospectus, suggesting an offering is coming soon.

“The IPO window is open,” said Rick Heitzmann, a partner at venture firm FirstMark, in an interview with CNBC’s “Closing Bell” this week. “You’ve seen across industry, broad-based support for IPOs, and therefore, we’re advising companies we’re investing in to get ready and go public.”

IPO window is open and we're advising companies to go public: FirstMark Capital's Rick Heitzmann

Another big topic among VCs and bankers is the regulatory environment.

The Biden administration took heat from startup investors for cracking down on big acquisitions, mostly attributable to Lina Khan’s perceived heavy hand at the Federal Trade Commission, while also failing to ease restrictions that they say make it less appealing for companies to go public than to stay private.

Paul Atkins, the new head of the SEC, said in July he wants to “make IPOs great again,” by removing some of the impediments around the complexity of disclosures and litigation risk. He hasn’t offered many specific recommendations.

Friedman told CNBC that the first conversation she had with Atkins after he took the job was about making it easier and more attractive for companies to go public.

“The conversation was constructive along many fronts, looking at disclosure requirements, the proxy process, other things that really make it harder for companies to be public and navigate the public markets,” Friedman said. “He’s as interested as we are, so hopefully we’ll turn that into great action.”

In addition to the big gains notched by Bullish, Figma and Circle, the public markets welcomed online banking provider Chime with a 37% gain last month and trading app eToro with a 29% pop in May. The health-tech market has seen two IPOs: Hinge Health and Omada Health.

But it was the roaring debuts of Circle and Figma that sparked chatter of a new bull market for IPOs. Figma jumped 250% on IPO day after pricing shares a dollar ahead of an updated range. Circle’s value more than doubled after the stablecoin issuer also priced above the expected range.

Figma celebrates its initial public offering at the New York Stock Exchange on July 31, 2025.

NYSE

That sort of price action reignited a debate ahead of the last IPO boom in 2020 and 2021, when venture capitalist Bill Gurley made the case that big first-day pops suggest intentionally mispriced offerings that hurt the company and hand easy money to new investors. Gurley has advocated for direct listings, where companies list shares at a price that effectively matches demand.

As Figma was hitting the market, Gurley was back at it, referring to the big gains as an “expected & fully intentional” outcome benefitting clients of major investment banks

“They bought it at $33 last night and can sell it today for over $90,” he wrote. In a follow-up post, he said, “I would have loved to see DLs replace IPOs — it just makes sense to match supply/demand. But Wall Street may just be too addicted to the massive customer give-aways.”

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Lise Buyer, founder of IPO advisory firm Class V Group, wrote on LinkedIn that the company gets to make the call on where it prices the stock and that plenty of thought gets put into the process. Also, in the IPO, companies are selling only a small percentage of outstanding shares — in Figma’s case roughly 7% — so if they deliver on results, “there will very likely be plenty of future opportunities to sell more shares at higher prices.”

That’s already happening.

Circle said this week that it’s offering another 10 million shares in a secondary offering. And on Friday’s, CNBC’s Leslie Picker reported that bankers for CoreWeave, which is up 150% since its March IPO, orchestrated some block trades this week.

But Buyer warns that tech markets have a history of overheating. While there’s always a difference between what institutions are willing to pay in an IPO and what exuberant retail investors will pay, it’s currently “a gap like we haven’t really seen since 1999, 2000,” Buyer told CNBC, adding “and, of course, we know how that ended.”

Compared to the dot-com bubble, businesses that are going public now have sizable revenue and actual fundamentals, but that doesn’t mean the IPO pops are sustainable, she said.

“It’s almost like we had several years of Prohibition,” Buyer said, referring to a period a century ago when alcohol was banned in the U.S. “Folks, in some cases, are drinking to excess in the IPO market.”

WATCH: Bankers lead block trades in CoreWeave

Sources say J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley managed several CoreWeave blocks

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Sen. Hawley to probe Meta AI bot policies for children following damning report

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Sen. Hawley to probe Meta AI bot policies for children following damning report

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg departs after attending a Federal Trade Commission trial that could force the company to unwind its acquisitions of messaging platform WhatsApp and image-sharing app Instagram, at U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 15, 2025.

Nathan Howard | Reuters

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said Friday that he will investigate Meta following a report that the company approved rules allowing artificial intelligence chatbots to have certain “romantic” and “sensual” conversations with children.

Hawley called on Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to preserve relevant materials, including emails, and said the probe would target “whether Meta’s generative-AI products enable exploitation, deception, or other criminal harms to children, and whether Meta misled the public or regulators about its safeguards.”

“Is there anything – ANYTHING – Big Tech won’t do for a quick buck?” Hawley said in a post on X announcing the investigation.

Meta declined to comment on Hawley’s letter.

Hawley noted a Reuters report published Thursday that cited an internal document detailing acceptable behaviors from Meta AI chatbots that the company’s staff and contract workers should permit as part of developing and training the software.

The document acquired by Reuters noted that a chatbot would be permitted to hold a romantic conversation with an eight-year-old, telling the child that “every inch of you is a masterpiece – a treasure I cherish deeply.”

The Meta guidelines said: “It is acceptable to describe a child in terms that evidence their attractiveness (ex: ‘your youthful form is a work of art’),” according to the Reuters report.

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The Meta chatbots would not be permitted to engage in more explicit conversations with children under 13 “in terms that indicate they are sexually desirable,” the report said.

“We intend to learn who approved these policies, how long they were in effect, and what Meta has done to stop this conduct going forward,” Hawley wrote.

A Meta spokesperson told Reuters that “The examples and notes in question were and are erroneous and inconsistent with our policies, and have been removed.”

“We have clear policies on what kind of responses AI characters can offer, and those policies prohibit content that sexualizes children and sexualized role play between adults and minors,” the Meta spokesperson told Reuters.

Hawley said Meta must produce documents about its Generative AI-related content risks and standards, lists of every product that adheres to those policies, and other safety and incident reports.

Meta should also provide various public and regulatory communications involving minor safety and documents about staff members involved with the AI policies to determine “the decision trail for removing or revising any portions of the standard.”

Hawley is chair of the Senate Committee Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, which will carry out the investigation.

Meta has until Sep. 19 to provide the documents, the letter said.

WATCH: Robby Starbuck on Meta lawsuit.

Robby Starbuck on Meta lawsuit: We don't want AI putting its thumb on the scale in politics

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