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Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and owner of X, arrives for the Inaugural AI Insight Forum in Russell Building on Capitol Hill, on Wednesday, September 13, 2023.

Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

Tesla, SpaceX, and X Corp. leader Elon Musk issued a spate of arguably bigoted tweets on Wednesday that spurred a critical backlash online.

First, Musk drew attention to and agreed with an antisemitic conspiracy theory, and then directly accused “Jewish communities,” the nonprofit Anti-Defamation League, and minorities of what he called “anti-white” messaging and views, without giving examples to support his accusations.

Musk, who is the richest person in the world with a net worth around $225 billion according to Bloomberg, leads several companies that collectively employ around 150,000 people worldwide, including SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Co., Neuralink, X Corp. and his latest artificial intelligence startup, xAI.

Musk, who has never reserved his social media posts for business matters alone, drew attention to a tweet that said Jewish people “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.”

Musk replied to that tweet in emphatic agreement, “You have said the actual truth.”

“This exchange would have languished in obscurity had Musk not replied to this bigoted bromide,” wrote Yair Rosenberg in The Atlantic.

In response to Musk’s tweet, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter), “At a time when antisemitism is exploding in America and surging around the world, it is indisputably dangerous to use one’s influence to validate and promote antisemitic theories. #NeverIsNow.”

Among other things, the Jewish-led nonprofit works to fight antisemitic incidents, racist discrimination and hate crimes in the U.S.

After Musk began to face a backlash for endorsing the antisemitic tweet, he took aim more specifically at the ADL.

He wrote, without providing any evidence for these claims, “The ADL unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel. This is because they cannot, by their own tenets, criticize the minority groups who are their primary threat. It is not right and needs to stop.”

CNBC reached out to Musk and X Corp. for comments and to clarify which “minority groups” Musk sees as a “primary threat” to the Jewish people and Israel, but received no comment except an apparent auto-response message that said, “Busy now, please check back later.”

In subsequent tweets, after a follower told Musk he was not being fair or truthful, the billionaire replied, “You [sic] right that this does not extend to all Jewish communities, but it is also not just limited to ADL.” He added, “And, at the risk of being repetitive, I am deeply offended by ADL’s messaging and any other groups who push de facto anti-white racism or anti-Asian racism or racism of any kind. I’m sick of it. Stop now.”

Musk has posted incendiary tweets for a long time and his companies, especially Tesla, have faced lawsuits over alleged civil and workers’ rights violations. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Tesla over alleged racist discrimination and harassment of Black workers this year.

Musk previously threatened to sue the ADL, alleging that they tried to “kill” his social network’s business. He has blamed the ADL, rather than his own business decisions, for a 60% drop in revenue at X and said he had “no choice” but to file a defamation lawsuit against the group. However, no lawsuit has yet materialized.

The ADL declined to offer further comment on Thursday morning.

Hate crimes expert Brian Levin, who is a professor emeritus at California State University, San Bernardino, told CNBC that law enforcement is already tracking generational spikes in anti-Jewish hate crime in North America and elsewhere. He said, “Elon Musk piles on by amplifying neo-Nazi type Jew hatred about them being anti-white by invoking immigration, just as the convicted Tree of Life massacre killer did.” As a result, anti-semitic incidents and crimes could spike further.

“Notorious antisemites are celebrating what they see as Musk’s complete conversion to blatant expressions of Jew hatred. When we saw similar rants from Ye last October, anti-Jewish hate crime spiked across the country,” Levin said.

Meredith Benton at Whistle Stop Capital told CNBC the move could affect Musk’s business interests.

“For Mr. Musk to amplify this type of rhetoric on Twitter, indicates his disinterest in turning that platform into a cash-positive business; I expect many corporate advertisers who had decided to stay on Twitter are now looking at their last straw.””

Benton added, “It appears, unfortunately, that the current leadership may be the source, not the solution, to the harassment and discrimination problems we have seen at Tesla’s factories. Tesla investors (a majority in 2022, if you exclude Elon’s shares) have already made clear that they hold deep concerns over the allegations of racism and retaliation at Tesla factories alongside the company’s continued use of concealment clauses. This will be a very interesting proxy season; there is no sideline for investors to sit on where a CEO decides to be this polarizing.”

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Here’s how fusion energy could power your home or an AI data center

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Here's how fusion energy could power your home or an AI data center

Clean Start: Fusion energy gets new look from startup Type One Energy

The artificial intelligence boom has sent energy demand soaring. Some of the supercomputers sucking up all that power are helping to find new energy sources.

Fusion energy is the process of forcing two hydrogen atoms to combine and form one helium atom, which releases huge amounts of power. It uses a stellarator, a type of fusion reactor invented in the 1950’s that produces heat.

Until now, the technology was too difficult to deploy commercially.

But this old concept has brand new potential. Type One Energy, a startup based in Tennessee, claims to have proven that fusion energy will be able to produce electricity in the next decade.

“It’s going to create heat that’s going to boil water, make steam, run a turbine and put fusion electrons on the power grid on a 24/7 reliable basis,” said Type One Christofer Mowry.

AI has made it all practical.

“Things have really accelerated remarkably over the last five or six years,” Mowry said. “The supercomputers have allowed industry, academia and large institutions to develop now and actually test at large scale the science machines that demonstrate the process.”

Dozens of other companies are working on different approaches to fusion energy, but Mowry said Type One is so far the only one with the proven stellarator technology to implement at existing power plants. It will soon be tested with the Tennessee Valley Authority.

TDK Ventures is betting that Mowry is right.

“With Type One Energy solutions, we expect outsized return potential,” said Nicola Sauvage, president of TDK Ventures. “Fusion is no longer science fiction, and Type One Energy’s technology is catching up fast to the vision of this low-cost, continuous green energy.”

Type One is also backed by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Centaurus Capital, GD1, Foxglove Capital, and SeaX Ventures, and has raised a total of $82.4 million.

Fusion energy is different from nuclear power, and there’s no risk of a nuclear accident. The power source has no long-term radioactive waste, and, according to Mowry, can’t be weaponized.

But for handling AI, it could be a critical solution. Fusion energy can be deployed anywhere, whether it’s next to a data center or near a large industrial park that needs clean, reliable energy.

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CoreWeave shares soar 19% after $2 billion debt offering

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CoreWeave shares soar 19% after  billion debt offering

Michael Intrator, Founder & CEO of CoreWeave, Inc., Nvidia-backed cloud services provider, gestures during the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq Market, in New York City, U.S., March 28, 2025. 

Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters

CoreWeave shares popped 19% after announcing a $2 billion debt offering.

The renter of artificial intelligence data centers powered by Nvidia chips said it had priced the notes at 9.25%, with a June 2030 maturity date. The deal represents a $500 million increase from its initial announcement.

CoreWeave said it plans to use the capital to pay off outstanding debt. The company confirmed to CNBC that the debt offering was five times oversubscribed.

In its first-quarter earnings report last week, CoreWeave said that it raised a total of $17.2 billion in equity and debt “to support its strategy to drive the next generation of cloud computing for the future of AI.” The company topped revenues expectations but posted wider-than-expected net loss and said it plans to spend big on capital expenditures to support infrastructure demand.

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During an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” last week, CEO Michael Intrator defended CoreWeave’s spending plans after some investors cast doubt on its debt, and demand durability. He said the company is meeting “demand signals” from some of its major clients.

In a call with analysts, CoreWeave said it has no debt maturities until 2028 other than payments related to vendor financing and “self-amortizing debt through committed contract payments.” The company said it had about $3.8 billion in current debt and $4.9 billion in non-current debt at the end of the quarter.

A year ago, CoreWeave announced that it had raised $7.5 billion in debt, led by Blackstone and Magnetar, to more heavily invest in its cloud data centers. CoreWeave said in its IPO prospectus that it was “one of the largest private debt financings in history and signals the confidence that debt investors have in funding our company to build and scale the next generation AI cloud.”

CoreWeave counts Nvidia and Microsoft among its biggest customers and has signed two seperate deals with OpenAI, totaling nearly $16 billion.

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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says tariffs haven’t dented consumer spending

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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says tariffs haven't dented consumer spending

Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, speaks during an unveiling event in New York on Feb. 26, 2025.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Wednesday that the company hasn’t seen any signs of consumers tightening their wallets in the face of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

Jassy’s comments came during Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting, which was held virtually on Wednesday.

“We have not seen any attenuation of demand at this point,” Jassy said during a question-and-answer portion of the meeting. “We also haven’t yet seen any meaningful average selling price increases.”

Amazon and other retailers continue to digest the impact of Trump’s tariffs. Rival retailer Walmart warned last week that consumers could start seeing price hikes from tariffs later this month and in June. Within days, that sparked the ire of Trump, who urged the company to “EAT THE TARIFFS.”

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Target said Wednesday it will likely need to hike prices on some items, while Home Depot said it expects to maintain its current pricing levels.

Jassy said last month the company made some “strategic forward inventory buys” to stock up on goods and is “pretty maniacally focused” on keeping prices low for shoppers.

Some third-party sellers, which account for roughly 60% of products sold, have increased prices on certain items, while others have opted to keep prices steady, Jassy said on Wednesday.

“I think that the diversity and the size of our marketplace really helps customers have the best selection of the best prices,” Jassy said.

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