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Dave Clark (L) and Ryan Petersen (R)

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On Sept. 13, Flexport founder Ryan Petersen took the stage at North America’s premier supply chain conference in Phoenix. It was exactly a week after he’d forced out his hand-picked successor as CEO, ex-Amazon executive Dave Clark, so Petersen could once again run the show.

Sitting in the first few rows of attendees was Clark, the man he’d ousted just a year into the job. Petersen was surprised that he showed up, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Days earlier, Petersen had excoriated Clark, alleging he’d secretly expanded the company’s headcount and taken on unnecessary leases without Petersen or the board’s knowledge. On X, formerly known as Twitter, Petersen wrote, “Strategic Plan, Day 1: Make better decisions!”

With Clark sitting a few feet away, Petersen struck a different tone.

“I think we’re going to look back and go, ‘Wow I’d probably do that all over again because of the progress that we’ve made,'” Petersen said, in an interview on stage.

Doing it over again would seem to suggest hiring Clark wasn’t a bad decision. Petersen went even further, personally commending Clark for orchestrating the $1.3 billion purchase of Deliverr from Shopify, picking up supply chain technology for last-mile deliveries. That deal was announced in May.

“I’m very, very lucky because I wouldn’t have had the courage to go and do that acquisition, but I give all the credit in the world to Dave Clark,” Petersen said. “There’s no one probably in the world who would be better at running that last-mile e-com fulfillment network. Personally, I don’t have any experience and I would’ve been pretty intimidated to try and go pull that off.”

The mixed messaging from the 43-year-old Flexport founder underscores the dysfunction surrounding the sudden firing of Clark, who previously spent 23 years at Amazon and built its mammoth logistics network on the way to becoming one of Jeff Bezos‘ top deputies. It’s also indicative of a bigger challenge facing Flexport, whose software is designed to simplify the process of transporting goods. The company was valued at $8 billion by private investors in early 2022, just as the economy was turning and the 10-year tech bull market was coming to an end.

As a high-valued company backed by powerful VCs, Flexport has been trying to simultaneously operate in Silicon Valley startup growth mode while also restraining expenses to reflect the new economic realities and to cope with supply chain bottlenecks.

This account is based on conversations with people close to Clark and Petersen. They requested anonymity to discuss confidential interactions. Their perspectives have been corroborated by internal documents and communications reviewed by CNBC.

Petersen has publicly said Clark overspent, overhired and overpromised, something his allies echoed to CNBC. He burned through cash and kept Petersen in the dark about key financials and an ambitious expansion into providing end-to-end supply chain tools for small and medium-sized businesses. People close to Petersen pointed to a number of previously unreported incidents that eroded his confidence in Clark.

But documents viewed by CNBC and sources close to Clark undermine those claims. They show that Clark, who arrived when the company was struggling to bill customers and track containers, worked closely with the board and Petersen to implement decisions that Flexport now suggests were ill-advised.

Evidence to support Flexport’s claims of financial mismanagement is lacking, raising questions about whether that narrative was put forward to justify Clark’s exit. 

A Flexport spokesperson rejected that characterization.

“Ryan Petersen returned as CEO in order to restore Flexport’s culture of customer engagement, and drive the growth and cost discipline required to return the company to profitability,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Get IPO ready

Clark arrived last year as the perfect hire for a tech startup trying to disrupt the age-old logistics industry. He’d built Amazon’s logistics unit into a juggernaut that rivaled carriers like UPS and FedEx.

Ryan Petersen, chief executive officer of Flexport, participates in a panel discussion during the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., on Wednesday, May 4, 2022.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Since 2021, Petersen had been seeking a successor for Flexport’s then-operating chief, Sanne Manders, in part to address what several ex-employees described as lingering issues with the company’s troubled billing processes. Fixing that was Clark’s job.

Petersen and Clark worked together as co-CEOs for the first six months. In March, Petersen transitioned to executive chairman.

The co-CEO arrangement would free Petersen up to do what he loved – “getting beers with customers,” in the words of two former Flexport employees. Clark, a self-described “builder at heart,” was at the wheel.

Among Clark’s goals was to help Petersen prepare Flexport for an IPO, something the company had discussed doing within a two- to three-year window, according to a person familiar with the matter and documents viewed by CNBC.

“There’s a perfect complement of skill sets,” Petersen told Forbes in June 2022. “Mine are much more creative, zero-to-one founder time, and Dave is the supreme executor and a legend in the supply chain world.”

Buying Deliverr was meant to be the first step in turning Flexport into a more full-scale logistics service for its customers.

Shopify had acquired Deliverr in May 2022 for $2.1 billion. But the e-commerce software company was getting hammered by Wall Street as its Covid pandemic pop faded. By January 2023, CEO Tobias Lutke knew he needed to get rid of Deliverr. Around that time, Lutke first approached Petersen to float the possibility of a deal, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Petersen told Clark he should engage with Shopify’s team, according to a person with direct knowledge of the negotiations. Initial talks fell apart, but resumed when Flexport executives learned that Shopify was about to execute deep cost cuts and was eager to sell Deliverr.

Clark and Petersen flew to Miami to meet with Shopify’s leadership. As a transaction was nearing, Clark, who had a reputation as a deft negotiator, got Shopify, which was already an investor in Flexport, to sweeten it with $40 million in cash and the framework for a $260 million convertible note that could help Flexport on its path to an IPO, according to an internal document analyzing the deal.

The sale would be announced alongside Shopify’s first-quarter earnings report on May 4.

“We did not change the terms of a deal or rush it just to have it line up with an earnings call,” Shopify said in a statement. With Flexport, “we are tightly mission-aligned to ensure the success of our merchants, which is why we chose to deepen our partnership with them earlier this year.”

The night before the announcement, Petersen appeared at a “Tech Talk” at Flexport’s Bellevue, Washington, office to pitch the “Flexport vision” to hundreds of people. An attendee asked Petersen whether Flexport would ever get into last-mile logistics.

Petersen paused, glanced at his watch, and said to keep an eye on the morning news, according to a Flexport employee who witnessed the exchange and by a person who was told independently.

The comment alarmed Clark and Flexport executives, who were concerned that Petersen had disclosed material nonpublic information about a publicly traded company, according to people familiar with the matter.

Petersen didn’t respond to calls or messages from CNBC, and the company declined to make him available for an interview. A Flexport spokesperson didn’t respond to CNBC’s question about whether Petersen was aware of concerns about his statement at the event.

The ‘whistleblower’

Bob Swan, then-interim chief executive officer and chief financial officer of Intel Corp., reacts during the inauguration of the company’s research and development facility in Bengaluru, India, on November 15, 2018.

Samyukta Lakshmi | Bloomberg | Getty Images

For much of the summer, Clark had pushed then-CFO Kenny Wagers and his financial planning and analysis team to realign Flexport’s year-end and 18-month forecasts, according to a person close to the situation.

The reasons were obvious. At the beginning of 2022, it cost around $14,500 to move a single container across the Pacific. By late 2022, prices of ocean freight from Asia to the U.S. West Coast were down 90% from a year earlier, due largely to weakening global demand. Because Flexport makes money by charging fees for the transportation of goods, the company’s business was getting hammered.

But Wagers and Stuart Leung, a Flexport finance executive and a close Petersen ally, were reluctant to pare back forecasts, frustrating Clark, who felt those projections were overly optimistic.

Wagers and Leung did not respond to CNBC’s interview requests.

Clark ultimately prevailed, but the revised forecasts distressed Petersen. Clark, Petersen and Wagers met in Texas in mid-August to fine-tune the forecasts.

A source close to Petersen told CNBC that the meeting went poorly for Clark because a so-called whistleblower — identified as a senior finance executive — stepped forward shortly before it began and told Petersen that the numbers being presented were “not real.”

The source referred to the senior finance executive as a whistleblower because of the information he disclosed to Petersen about Clark.

Documents seen by CNBC and conversations with people with direct knowledge of the board meeting make it clear that there were no substantiated whistleblower actions or allegations of financial impropriety.

Flexport’s spokesperson told CNBC in a statement: “There was no whistleblower nor was there any financial misconduct. Any allegations to the contrary are completely false.”

On Sept. 15, shortly after CNBC spoke with the Petersen source, legal counsel for Clark sent a cease-and-desist letter to Flexport. The letter, viewed by CNBC, instructed the company to preserve and retain all communications involving Clark’s departure. The letter disputes the existence of a whistleblower and lists specific allegations as false and defamatory, including Petersen’s claims that Clark was an unfit CEO because he overextended the company’s lease obligations.

Five hours after the letter was sent, the source close to Petersen contacted CNBC and asked to retract their statements and all details related to Clark’s firing or about the so-called whistleblower. CNBC declined to retract his statements.

Petersen has since deleted several of his posts criticizing Clark.

Dave Clark, Amazon’s former senior vice president of worldwide operations.

Lindsey Wasson | Reuters

The letter cited two documents that had been presented to the board. Both were viewed by CNBC. The first was a pre-acquisition financial analysis of the Deliverr deal, and the second was a review of Flexport’s first-quarter numbers. The Deliverr analysis was presented by the co-CEOs to the board for their approval and was shaped by multiple prior board meetings.

Clark’s camp suggested that other factors may have led to the abrupt firing.

For example, politics.

Days after Clark was ousted, Petersen sent him a message — seen by CNBC — blasting one of his key female executives for wasting her days at the company on “far left-wing political activism.” The executive is a registered Republican.

Stephens, the Founders Fund partner, also shared his contempt for that executive weeks before Clark’s departure, a person familiar with the board told CNBC. Stephens did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Petersen is also a venture partner at Founders Fund, the firm started by Peter Thiel, who was a prominent supporter of President Trump’s 2016 campaign and more recently bankrolled Senate candidates in Ohio and Arizona. Many of Thiel’s closest confidantes at Founders Fund and elsewhere in the venture industry are outspoken conservatives.

Petersen’s sole public political contribution in 2023 was to a Democratic political action committee associated with Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. He doesn’t talk much about politics on social media or in interviews.

Clark has donated to candidates on both sides of the aisle. Upon his departure, The Wall Street Journal reported that he was considering running for governor of Texas, but two people familiar with his thinking say it’s not happening anytime soon.

Flexport told CNBC that an employee’s politics are not relevant in personnel decisions.

“Ryan Petersen does not care at all about anyone’s political or personal affiliations. That is their business,” the spokesperson said. “It is inappropriate for any employee to spend an excessive amount of time during work hours on activities unrelated to their role.”

A person familiar with the female executive said her noncorporate endeavors were largely related to charitable organizations. 

Clark has largely remained silent since he was forced to resign on Sept. 5, though in private he’s expressed frustration at how his former team was being treated by Flexport, according to people close to him. Many of his allies at Amazon who joined him at Flexport were summarily fired by Petersen shortly after his departure.

On Sept. 13, Flexport’s chief legal counsel, Chris Ferro, contacted Clark. Ferro told him that his resignation a week prior had not been accepted, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

Instead, Ferro told Clark that Flexport’s board met the day after Clark resigned and voted to fire him for cause, the person familiar said. Ferro said the board minutes didn’t yet reflect why Clark had been fired, the person said.

Ferro allegedly told Clark that Flexport would be willing to give him a block of 2 million shares — worth millions of dollars — if he signed a separation agreement that included nondisclosure and nondisparagement clauses.

Clark declined, the person said. Shortly after Flexport reached out with the offer, Clark took the stage at the same supply chain conference in Phoenix that Petersen spoke at earlier in the day.

He didn’t hold back.

“The only thing I really regret from the past year was I sort of picked the wrong founder,” Clark said. “Basically, it was a place of extending my reputational halo to a group that, in my opinion, didn’t deserve it. Largely, because about half the team was let go last week on Friday, the most brutal nonseverance packages I’ve ever seen in my life. It was about as disrespectful a way as humanly possible.”

Amazon showdown

On top of the public relations fallout from the Clark saga and any legal wrangling that may follow, Flexport faces staffing turnover and a growing threat from Clark’s former employer.

Flexport recently ousted Wagers as CFO and lost its human resources chief. More layoffs are expected soon, sources said, after the company cut 20% of its staff in January.

On Sept. 12, almost a week after Clark was fired, Flexport executives convened in Seattle to launch an end-to-end supply chain service that would allow sellers to move their products from factories to customers’ doorsteps through integrations with major online marketplaces.

The project was spearheaded by Parisa Sadrzadeh, an executive vice president at Flexport who Clark had poached from Amazon’s logistics unit.

Earlier in the day, and just up the street from Flexport’s event, Amazon had unveiled a strikingly similar service in front of approximately 2,200 attendees at its annual Accelerate seller conference. Flexport had planned to have a booth onsite but was told it couldn’t be an exhibitor, which some staffers suspected was due to the competing supply chain products, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Flexport discussed securing exhibit space at Accelerate months earlier but didn’t meet all the requirements to participate, and its launch wasn’t mentioned in those conversations, Amazon said.

Flexport’s event was underwhelming. In a conference room, about 50 people looked on as Sadrzadeh debuted Flexport’s service and then introduced Petersen, who spoke for roughly 20 minutes, according to Burak Yolga, co-founder of a digital freight forwarding company who was in attendance.

“Flexport announced pretty much the same thing that Amazon announced,” Yolga said in an interview. He said he left after about a half-hour.

The company paid rapper Nelly $150,000 to perform at the event. But in the days leading up to the launch, Petersen opted to squash the performance because the optics were bad after his post about rescinding job offers, a person familiar with the matter said. Despite canceling the event, Flexport still paid the artist.

WATCH: Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen on reinvesting profits

Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen: We are looking to reinvest profits to compound capital

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DoorDash CEO Tony Xu is taking on the role of industry consolidator in food delivery

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DoorDash CEO Tony Xu is taking on the role of industry consolidator in food delivery

Tony Xu, co-founder and CEO of DoorDash Inc., smiles during the Wall Street Journal Tech Live conference in Laguna Beach, California, on Oct. 22, 2019.

Martina Albertazzi | Bloomberg | Getty Images

During the depths of the Covid pandemic, with restaurants around the country facing an existential crisis, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu had an unconventional proposal. He wanted to cut commissions.

Chief Business Officer Keith Yandell worried that such a move would result in a massive hit to profits ahead of the company’s planned IPO. But Xu made a persuasive case.

“If restaurants don’t thrive, we cannot,” Yandell told CNBC in a recent interview, recalling Xu’s perspective at the time. “We need to take a leadership position.”

The company ended up sacrificing over $100 million in fees, Xu later said.

Since starting DoorDash on the campus of Stanford University in 2013, the now 40-year-old CEO has navigated the notoriously cutthroat and low-margin business of food delivery, building a company that Wall Street today values at close to $90 billion. The stock has emerged as a tech darling this year, jumping 23%, while the Nasdaq is still down for the year largely on tariff concerns.

More than four years after its IPO, net profits remain slim. But that’s not getting in the way of Xu’s mission to become an industry consolidator, using a combination of cash and new debt to fuel an acquisition spree at a time when big tech deals remain scarce. Earlier this month, DoorDash scooped up British food delivery startup Deliveroo for about $3.9 billion and restaurant technology company SevenRooms for $1.2 billion.

“What we’ve delivered for a customer yesterday probably isn’t good enough for what we will deliver for them today,” Xu told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” after the deals were announced.

This week DoorDash announced the pricing of $2.5 billion in convertible debt, and said the proceeds could be used in part for acquisitions.

Doordash food delivery service in New York City on Feb. 13, 2025. 

Danielle DeVries | CNBC

The San Francisco-based company has a history with scooping up competitors to grow market share. In 2019, it bought food delivery competitor Caviar for $410 million from Square, now known as Block. About two years later, DoorDash said it was paying $8.1 billion for international delivery platform Wolt. The deal was its last big transaction until this month.

When DoorDash entered the food delivery market, it had to face off against the likes of GrubHub and Seamless, which later joined forces. That combined entity was bought late last year by restaurant owner Wonder Group. In 2014, Uber launched Uber Eats, which is now DoorDash’s biggest competitor in the U.S.

“It’s a very competitive market, and I think merchants do have choice,” Xu said in the CNBC interview. “What we’re focused on is always trying to innovate and bring new products to match increasing standards and expectations from customers.”

DoorDash didn’t make Xu available for an interview for this story, but provided a statement about the company’s acquisition strategy.

“We’re very picky, very patient, and conscious that, for most companies, deals don’t work out in hindsight,” the company said. “When we see an opportunity that brings value to customers, expands our potential to empower local economies around the world, and has a path to strong long-term returns on capital, we tend to push our chips in.”

Taking on the suburbs

DoorDash differentiated itself early on by cornering suburban markets that had fewer delivery options, while other players attacked city centers. When Covid shut down restaurant dining in early 2020, DoorDash capitalized on the booming demand for deliveries. Revenue more than tripled that year, and grew 69% in 2021.

Colleagues and early investors credit a customer-first focus for much of Xu’s success. Gokul Rajaram, who joined DoorDash through its Caviar acquisition, described Xu as “the best operational leader in the U.S.” after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Restaurants haven’t universally viewed DoorDash as an ally. Commissions can reach as high as 30%, which is a hefty cut to fork over. Many restaurants have reluctantly paid the high fees because of DoorDash’s dominant market share, which reached an estimated 67%. In 2021, the company introduced three tiers of pricing, with a basic option at 15% for more price-sensitive businesses.

DoorDash needs the high fees in order to stay in the black. The company’s contribution profit as a percentage of total marketplace volume hovers below 5%.

DoorDash CFO: We are focused on scaling the business to drive profitability

Colleagues who have known Xu for decades say the food delivery entrepreneur hasn’t changed much since the early days of the company.

Yandell said Xu once took advice from his young daughter, who complained about a routing issue while accompanying him on food delivery orders. All employees, including Xu, are required to complete orders and handle support calls every year as part of the company’s WeDash program.

In a part of the country known for the pomp of its wealthy founders, Xu has a very different reputation.

Early workers recall memories of Xu pulling up in a dilapidated green 2001 Honda Accord to team events, or participating in company knockout basketball games referred to as “knockys,” next to the animal hospital in Palo Alto, which DoorDash briefly called its headquarters. Xu also personally approved every offer for the company’s first 4,000 employees.

Xu spends many mornings answering customer service complaints. He often drops his kids off at school and, after tucking them in at night, hops on calls with international regions, colleagues say. Xu is an avid Gold State Warriors basketball fan but has a soft spot for the Chicago Bulls, having spent many years in Illinois. Once or twice a week, Xu squeezes in a morning run, and will often do so while traveling to explore different neighborhoods and stores.

Xu was born in China and moved with his family to Champaign, Illinois, in 1989. Growing up, he played basketball and mowed lawns to save up for a Nintendo. He told Stanford’s View From the Top podcast in 2021 that the experience, and watching his parents hustle, taught him how to “earn your way into better things.”

His “characteristics became the company’s values,” said Alfred Lin, an early DoorDash investor and partner at venture firm Sequoia.

Xu often attributes his entrepreneurial spirit to his parents. His mother worked as a doctor in China, and juggled three jobs in the U.S. for over a decade, saving up enough to eventually open a medical clinic. His father worked as a waiter while pursuing a Ph.D. Xu said on the podcast that watching his mom gave him a deep understanding of what it takes to run a small business, which came in handy in DoorDash’s early years as he was trying to convert restaurants into customers.

‘Ten times harder’

Employees say Xu has a reputation for detecting hidden talents among his colleagues. Jessica Lachs, the company’s chief analytics officer, was working as a general manager assisting with DoorDash’s Los Angeles launch when Xu guided her toward her passion for data.

“He believes in leaning into the things you’re really good at, rather than trying to be mediocre at a lot of things,” she said.

After Toby Espinosa, DoorDash’s ads vice president, lost a deal with a major fast food company during his early years at the startup, Xu told him to work “10 times harder” and become an expert in his field. A few years later, the company secured the partnership, Espinosa said.

Grit and struggle defined the early years of DoorDash. The founding team of four managed deliveries around Stanford and Palo Alto though a Google Voice number directed to their cellphones.

DoorDash emerged out of a Stanford business school course known as Startup Garage, taught by Professor Stefanos Zenios. The class requires students to present a business idea, test it, and then pitch it to investors.

Zenios said Xu stood out with his data-driven approach and natural leadership qualities. The team tested two different ideas, including a platform that helped small businesses better track the effectiveness of their marketing, he recalls. Zenios called the idea to target suburban areas a “brilliant insight.”

Xu and his team entered Y Combinator in the summer of 2013. The three-month startup accelerator program is known for spawning companies like Airbnb, Stripe and Reddit. Every session culminates with a demo day in front of some of Silicon Valley’s biggest investors.

The DoorDash idea excited Paul Buchheit, creator of Gmail and a partner at Y Combinator. But like many other potential investors, Buchheit was skeptical about the economic model.

“You had a talented team of founders working on what I thought was an idea that had potential,” he said. “That’s basically the formula for a good startup.”

On pitch day, the company failed to lure any venture firms, but Buchheit later participated as a seed investor.

Shortly after demo day, DoorDash encountered Saar Gur of Charles River Ventures. Gur had been looking for a food delivery platform to back and was conducting due diligence on another company when a friend led him to DoorDash.

By the end of their first meeting, they were “finishing each other’s sentences,” Gur said.

Sequoia’s Lin initially passed on DoorDash after the Y Combinator pitch, but kept in touch with the team. Lin said he wanted to see data that showed the platform could penetrate beyond Stanford and Palo Alto, and retain customers. He ended up leading two institutional rounds, attaining a 20% stake for Sequoia at the time of the IPO.

“Tony always believed that his company would succeed, or they’ll find a way to succeed,” Lin said.

A food delivery messenger is seen in Manhattan. 

Luiz C. Ribeiro | New York Daily News | Tribune News Service | Getty Images

Shortly after its Y Combinator stint, DoorDash hit an early roadblock. Following a Stanford football game, a rush of orders bombarded its delivery system causing massive delays, Xu told Y Combinator’s CEO Garry Tan in an interview this year.

The founders refunded the orders and spent the night baking cookies, then driving them to customers early the next morning.

Oren’s Hummus co-owner Mistie Boulton said DoorDash still takes that approach. The team comes to meet with her every quarter and she serves as a beta tester for new products.

The restaurant, which started in Palo Alto and has since expanded to a half-dozen locations across the Bay Area, was one of DoorDash’s first clients, latching onto the opportunity to reach more customers beyond its small establishment that frequently had lines snaking out the door. 

“We just fell in love with the idea,” Boulton said. “The number one thing that encouraged and enticed me to want to work with them was Xu’s passion. He really is one of those people that you can count on.”

Wall Street is now counting on Xu’s ability to execute big deals, even with the company having this month surpassed $10 billion in delivery orders worldwide.

The acquisition of Deliveroo, based in London, marks a renewed effort by DoorDash to expand its presence overseas, following the purchase of Finland’s Wolt three years ago.

The cash deal for SevenRooms, a New York City-based data platform for restaurants and hotels to manage booking information, takes DoorDash into an entirely new category. Xu told CNBC that DoorDash is a “multi-product company now that’s operating on a global scale.”

Following the acquisition announcements, which coincided with a disappointing earnings report in March, analysts at Piper Sandler reiterated their hold recommendation on the stock.

One reason for concern, they said, was that “integrating multiple acquisitions at once may create some noise near-term.”

 WATCH: DoorDash CEO Tony Xu: Deliveroo & SevenRooms deals make us a multi-product company on a global scale

DoorDash CEO Tony Xu: Deliveroo & SevenRooms deals make us a multi-product company on a global scale

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Tesla shares set to wrap strong May as Elon Musk ends time with Trump’s DOGE

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Tesla shares set to wrap strong May as Elon Musk ends time with Trump's DOGE

Elon Musk is interviewed on CNBC from the Tesla headquarters in Texas.

CNBC

Shares of the Elon Musk-led automaker Tesla have rallied in May despite recent poor car sales numbers for the company in China and Europe, as the billionaire CEO promised to focus more on his businesses than politics.

Tesla shares are on track for an increase of more than 20% for the month.

The stock is still down about 12% for the year. Apple is down about 21% year-to-date, the worst of all the megacaps.

The bounceback in May comes as President Donald Trump marks the end of Musk’s time as a “special government employee” at the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency.

“This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Elon is terrific!”

Musk said on the most recent Tesla earnings call that his time spent running DOGE would drop significantly by the end of May, but that he plans to spend a “day or two per week” on government work until the end of Trump’s term.

Musk also planned to keep his office at the White House.

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Tesla year to date stock chart

The New York Times reported Friday that while Musk was campaigning for Trump last year, he had been taking drugs “well beyond occasional use” and was “facing an increasingly turbulent family life.”

The Times noted it was unclear if that habit carried over to his time in the White House, when he was also juggling Tesla and the other companies in his business empire — including SpaceX and X owner xAI, his artificial intelligence company.

Tesla’s European sales dropped by half, year-over-year for April.

Tesla sales in China, another massive market for battery electric vehicles, were down by about 25% year over year in the first eight weeks of the current quarter.

The carmaker has faced protests in reaction to Musk’s ties with Trump, and his endorsement of Germany’s far-right extremist party AfD.

Pension fund leaders recently called out Tesla’s board in a letter, demanding that they rein in Musk, and require him to work a minimum of 40 hours a week on Tesla to fix what they called the current “crisis.”

Read more CNBC tech news

Musk and Tesla have tried to re-focus on the company’s prospects in autonomous vehicle tech, humanoid robotics and artificial intelligence.

Bloomberg reported this week that Tesla plans to launch its long-delayed and much anticipated autonomous vehicle ride-hailing service in Austin, Texas, on June 12th.

Tesla has not confirmed that start date, but has been promising to launch a robotaxi ride-hailing service in Austin before the end of June.

Musk told CNBC’s David Faber in a recent interview that Tesla would start with a small fleet of Model Y Tesla vehicles equipped with the company’s newest, Unsupervised Full Self Driving hardware and software.

Musk has been promising investors a robotaxi vehicle for years, and the company has ceded ground to Waymo in the U.S. The Alphabet-owned robotaxi venture recently surpassed 10 million paid, driverless ridehailing trips.

Shares of Tesla have also benefitted from the company’s stronger position, relative to other U.S. automakers when it comes to weathering tariffs.

Tesla operates two massive vehicle assembly plants domestically, one in Fremont, California and another in Austin, Texas, and has more North American-made parts in its cars than most of its competitors.

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China calls out Trump for ‘abuse’ of semiconductor export controls

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China calls out Trump for 'abuse' of semiconductor export controls

Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Dan Kitwoodnicholas Kamm | Afp | Getty Images

China is calling out the U.S. for “discriminatory restrictions” in its use of export controls in the chip industry, after the Trump administration accused the world’s second-largest economy of violating a preliminary trade deal between the two countries.

“Recently, China has repeatedly raised concerns with the U.S. regarding its abuse of export control measures in the semiconductor sector and other related practices,” China U.S. embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told NBC News.

It’s the latest escalation in the simmering trade war between the U.S. and China, particularly as it pertains to artificial intelligence and the infrastructure needed to develop the most advanced technologies.

China’s response comes after President Donald Trump said early Friday in a social media post that China had violated a trade agreement. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told CNBC in an interview that the “Chinese are slow rolling its compliance.”

On May 12, the U.S. and China agreed to a 90-day suspension on most tariffs imposed by either side. That agreement followed an economic and trade meeting between the two countries in Geneva, Switzerland.

“China once again urges the U.S. to immediately correct its erroneous actions, cease discriminatory restrictions against China and jointly uphold the consensus reached at the high-level talks in Geneva,” the embassy spokesperson said.

The statement didn’t specify any actions taken by the U.S. Earlier this month, China said the U.S. was “abusing” export controls after the U.S. banned American companies from importing or even using Huawei’s AI chips.

The U.S. has limited exports of some chips and chip technology to China as part of a national defense strategy dating back to the first Trump administration.

In 2019, President Trump cut off Huawei’s access to U.S. technology, which forced it to essentially exit the smartphone business for a few years before it could develop its own chips without use of U.S intellectual property or infrastructure. In 2022, the Biden administration first moved to cut off Chinese access to the fastest AI chips made by Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices.

The restrictions have intensified of late, and earlier this week, chip software makers, including Synopsys and Cadence Design Systems, said they had received letters from the U.S. Commerce Department telling them to stop selling to China.

Nvidia, which makes the most advanced semiconductors for AI applications, has vocally opposed the U.S. export controls, saying that they would merely force China to develop its own chip ecosystem instead of building around U.S. standards.

Nvidia was told earlier this year that it could no longer sell its H20 chip to China, a restriction that the company said this week would cause it to miss out on about $8 billion in sales in the current quarter. The H20 chip was specifically designed by Nvidia to comply with 2022 restrictions, but the Trump administration said in April that the company needed an export license. Nvidia said it was left with $4.5 billion in inventory it couldn’t reuse.

“The U.S. has based its policy on the assumption that China cannot make AI chips,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told investors on the company’s earnings call. “That assumption was always questionable, and now it’s clearly wrong.”

The Trump administration did rescind an expansive chip export control rule that was implemented by the Biden administration called the “AI diffusion rule,” which would have placed export caps on most countries. A new and simpler rule is expected in the coming months.

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