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 thatDhruv 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.
Amazon’s new MK30 Prime Air drone is displayed during Amazon’s “Delivering the Future” event at the company’s BFI1 Fulfillment Center, Robotics Research and Development Hub in Sumner, Washington on Oct. 18, 2023.
Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images
Amazon is facing a federal probe after one of its delivery drones downed an internet cable in central Texas last week.
The probe comes as Amazon vies to expand drone deliveries to more pockets of the U.S., more than a decade after it first conceived the aerial distribution program, and faces stiffer competition from Walmart, which has also begun drone deliveries.
The incident occurred on Nov. 18 around 12:45 p.m. Central in Waco, Texas. After dropping off a package, one of Amazon’s MK30 drones was ascending out of a customer’s yard when one of its six propellers got tangled in a nearby internet cable, according to a video of the incident viewed and verified by CNBC.
The video shows the Amazon drone shearing the wire line. The drone’s motor then appeared to shut off and the aircraft landed itself, with its propellers windmilling slightly on the way down, the video shows. The drone appeared to remain in tact beyond some damage to one of its propellers.
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the incident, a spokesperson confirmed. The National Transportation Safety Board said the agency is aware of the incident but has not opened a probe into the matter.
Amazon confirmed the incident to CNBC, saying that after clipping the internet cable, the drone performed a “safe contingent landing,” referring to the process that allows its drones to land safely in unexpected conditions.
“There were no injuries or widespread internet service outages. We’ve paid for the cable line’s repair for the customer and have apologized for the inconvenience this caused them,” an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC, noting that the drone had completed its package delivery.
The incident comes after federal investigators last month opened a separate probe into a crash involving two of Amazon’s Prime Air drones in Arizona. The two aircrafts collided with a construction crane in Tolleson, a city west of Phoenix, prompting Amazon to temporarily halt drone deliveries in the area.
For over a decade, Amazon has been working to realize founder Jeff Bezos’ vision of drones whizzing toothpaste, books and other goods to customers’ doorsteps in 30 minutes or less. The company began drone deliveries in 2022 in College Station, Texas, and Lockeford, California.
But progress has been slowed by a mix of regulatory hurdles, missed deadlines and layoffs in 2023 that coincided with broader cost-cutting efforts by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.
The company has previously said its goal is to deliver 500 million packages by drone per year by the end of the decade.
The hexacopter-shaped MK30, the latest generation of Amazon’s Prime Air drone, is meant to be quieter, smaller and lighter than previous versions.
Amazon says the drones are equipped with a sense-and-avoid system that enables them to “detect and stay away from obstacles in the air and on the ground.” The company recommends that customers maintain “about 10 feet of open space” on their property so drones can complete deliveries
The company began drone deliveries in Waco earlier this month for customers within a certain radius of its same-day delivery site who order eligible items weighing 5 pounds or less. The drone deliveries are supposed to drop packages off in under an hour.
Amazon has brought other locations online in recent months, including Kansas City, Missouri, Pontiac, Michigan, San Antonio, Texas, and Ruskin, Florida. Amazon has also announced plans to expand drone deliveries to Richardson, Texas.
Walmart began offering drone deliveries in 2021, and currently partners with Alphabet’s Wing and venture-backed startup Zipline to make drone deliveries in a number of states, including in Texas.
Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., during the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) sports day event in Hsinchu, Taiwan, on Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025.
Lam Yik Fei | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.
Shares of artificial intelligence czar Nvidia fell 2.6% on Tuesday as signs of unrest continued rippling through its kingdom.
Over the month, Nvidia has been contending with concerns over lofty valuations and an argument from the “The Big Short” investor Michael Burry that companies may be overestimating the lifespan of Nvidia’s chips. That accounting choice inflates profits, he alleged.
The pressure intensified last week in the form of a potential challenger to the crown. Google on Nov. 18 announced the release of its new AI model Gemini 3 — so far so good, given that Nvidia isn’t in the business of designing large language models — powered by its in-house AI chips — uh–oh.
And on Monday stateside, Meta, a potential kingmaker, appeared to signal that it is considering not just leasing Google’s custom AI chips, but also using them for its own data centers. It seemed like Nvidia felt the need to address some of those rumblings.
The chipmaker said on the social media platform X that its technology is more powerful and versatile than other types of AI chips, including the so-called ASIC chips, such as Google’s TPUs. Separately, Nvidia issued a private memo to Wall Street that disputed Burry’s allegations.
Power, whether in politics or semiconductors, requires a delicate balance.
Remaining silent may shroud those in power in a cloak of untouchability, projecting confidence in their authority — but also aloofness. Deigning to address unrest can soothe uncertainty, but also, paradoxically, signal insecurity.
For now, the crown is Nvidia’s to wear — and the weight of it is, too.
What you need to know today
And finally…
Lights on in skyscrapers and commercial buildings on the skyline of the City of London, UK, on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. U.K. business chiefs urged Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves to ease energy costs and avoid raising the tax burden on corporate Britain as she prepares this year’s budget.
The run-up to this year’s U.K. Autumn Budget has been different from the norm because so many different tax proposals have been floated, flagged, leaked and retracted in the weeks and months leading up to Wednesday’s statement.
It has also made it harder to gauge what we’re actually going to get when Finance Minister Rachel Reeves finally unveils her spending and taxation plans for the year ahead.
Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach, right, walks to the morning session during the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 11, 2025.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Workday shares slid more than 5% in extended trading Tuesday after the finance and human resources software maker issued quarterly margin guidance that came in below Wall Street projections.
Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: $2.32 adjusted vs. $2.18 expected
Revenue: $2.43 billion vs. $2.42 billion expected
The company forecast a fourth-quarter adjusted operating margin of at least 28.5% and $2.355 billion in subscription revenue, according to a statement. The StreetAccount consensus was a 28.7% margin and $2.35 billion in subscription revenue.
Workday’s revenue grew about 13% year over year in the quarter, which ended on Oct. 31. Net income of $252 million, or 94 cents per share, was up from $193 million, or 72 cents per share, in the same quarter a year ago.
Subscription revenue in the third quarter totaled $2.24 billion, with an adjusted operating margin of 28.5%. Analysts polled by StreetAccount had anticipated $2.24 billion in subscription revenue and a 28.1% margin.
During the fiscal third quarter, Workday announced artificial intelligence agents for analyzing employee performance testing financial health, and the company revealed plans to buy AI and learning software startup Sana for $1.1 billion. Also, activist investor Elliott Management said it had built a Workday stake worth over $2 billion.
Workday has seen its stock decline this year as pundits discuss the risk of generative AI tools threatening the growth prospects for cloud software incumbents. Company shares have fallen 9% so far in 2025, while the Nasdaq Composite index has gained 19%.