Tesla and SpaceX’s CEO Elon Musk reacts during an in-conversation event with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London on Nov. 2, 2023.
Kirsty Wigglesworth | Reuters
Tesla filed a lawsuit against the Swedish Transport Agency on Monday after postal workers began to block deliveries of license plates for the company’s cars.
Swedish postal workers blocked Tesla license plate deliveries as a show of solidarity with striking workers. Swedish unions have pressured Tesla with strikes and blockades over the company’s refusal so far to sign a collective bargaining agreement with employees in its service division, including technicians and mechanics who repair and maintain customers’ cars.
Tesla claims the Swedish government has a “constitutional obligation to provide registration plates to vehicle owners,” according to the documents. The suit was filed with the Norrköping district court Monday. It also sued the postal service, according to Bloomberg.
The lawsuit filing said Tesla delivered 9,167 cars to Sweden in 2022 and that the Model Y is the best-selling car in the country so far in 2023. Tesla delivered 435,059 cars in Q3, according to its vehicle production and delivery report on Oct. 2.
A Tesla spokesperson wasn’t immediately available for comment.
“This seizure of license plates constitutes a discriminatory attack without any support in law directed at Tesla. This measure cannot be described in any other way than as a unique attack on a company operating in Sweden,” Tesla said in the filing, which CNBC translated to English.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Thursday, “This is insane,” in a post on X, the site he owns formerly known as Twitter, in reference to a story about the blocked plates.
The lawsuit claims Tesla should be able to collect license plates directly “into Tesla’s possession” instead of receiving them by mail, according to the filing.
Shares of Tesla were down less than 1% Monday.
Representatives for the Swedish government did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he hosts a Rose Garden Club lunch at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 21, 2025.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
President Donald Trump said in a post on Thursday that the National Guard was preparing to “surge” San Francisco, but he was swayed by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Salesforce Marc Benioff and others to hold off on the deployment.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he also spoke with Democratic Mayor Daniel Lurie, who “was making substantial progress” on crime.
“Great people like Jensen Huang, Marc Benioff, and others have called saying that the future of San Francisco is great,” Trump wrote.
The reversal marks a major political win for the city of San Francisco and Lurie, who is in his first term.
“The president told me clearly that he was calling off any plans for a federal deployment in San Francisco,” Lurie said in a statement. “Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem reaffirmed that direction in our conversation this morning.”
Read more CNBC tech news
Lurie, a moderate Democrat, has taken a different approach with Trump than other California officials, like Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Governor Gavin Newsom, who publicly fire back at the president’s administration. Instead, Lurie consistently does not evoke Trump by name publicly or privately.
In recent addresses on the potential for a deployment, Lurie has touted the city’s progress on business development and crime, often citing data that shows San Franciscans feel the city is on the right track.
“We have work to do, and we would welcome continued partnerships with the FBI, DEA, ATF, and U.S. Attorney to get drugs and drug dealers off our streets, but having the military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery,” Lurie said.
The potential Guard deployment became a larger flashpoint when Benioff told the New York Times that he’d support Trump’s call for federal troops to be sent to San Francisco.
His sentiments were publicly supported by Elon Musk and David Sacks, high-profile techies with close ties to the Trump administration.
On Friday, facing mounting criticism, Benioff backtracked.
“Having listened closely to my fellow San Franciscans and our local officials, and after the largest and safest Dreamforce in our history, I do not believe the National Guard is needed to address safety in San Francisco,” he posted on X.
A U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent fires a non-lethal round at protesters as they clear a path for vehicles to enter Coast Guard Island on October 23, 2025 in Oakland, California. Federal agents have arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area for immigration operations.
Crime rates are down 30% from 2024, homicide levels hit their lowest levels in 70 years and car break-ins haven’t been at current levels in 22 years.
Meanwhile, event bookings and tourism are on the rise, residential real estate is becoming more scarce and the office market is heating up.
Business momentum in the city is largely built on the AI boom, post-pandemic. New CBRE data show venture funding in 2025 is expected to surpass the record reached in 2021, thanks in large part to AI investments in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.
US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick speaks at a business reception at Lancaster House in central London, with attendees including government ministers from both the UK and US and representatives from major UK companies, as part of the second state visit to the UK by US President Donald Trump. Picture date: Thursday Sept. 18, 2025.
Jordan Pettitt | Via Reuters
The U.S. government is not in talks with quantum computing companies to take equity stakes in the firms in exchange for federal funding, a Commerce Department official told CNBC.
“The Commerce Department is not currently negotiating equity stakes with quantum computing companies,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The denial comes after the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, said that the Trump administration was in talks with companies including IonQ, Rigetti Computing, and D-Wave Quantum.
The Trump administration has taken recent equity stakes in companies and industries seen as vital to U.S. national security.
In August, it took a 10% stake in Intel, the nation’s leading semiconductor manufacturer. It also took a 15% stake in MP Materials, which mines rare earth elements. China has restricted exports of rare earths.
Experts say that the U.S. government’s growing interest in taking stakes in private companies is unprecedented in recent decades.
Trump administration officials such as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have argued that the government should benefit from a company’s success, especially where federal funds are involved.
Read more CNBC tech news
Quantum computing has attracted significant attention in recent years, with some of the most powerful institutions in the world spending millions in a race to develop and build the first useful and practical quantum computer, which could be completed in the next five years, according to optimistic predictions.
When there is a useful quantum computer, it would be able to do tasks that would require so much computing time on a traditional computer that it would be infeasible, such as discovering molecules that could be useful medicines or factoring large numbers.
Right now, there isn’t anything useful that quantum computers can do. The machines are purely for research.
But governments keep a close eye on the technology because it has military implications, including the potential to be able to decipher encrypted military communications.
Although the industry is attracting billions in investments, including from the federal government, it has not generated significant revenue yet.
Quantum computing companies generated under $750 million in revenue in 2024, according to a McKinsey report.
On Wednesday, Google claimed a quantum breakthrough in which it conducted research that showed that a quantum computer can run an algorithm over 13,000 times faster than a traditional computer, and that it could be verified by a second quantum computer, an advancement over past research.
Super Micro Computer shares fell 6% on Thursday after the company released weak preliminary results for its fiscal first quarter of 2026.
The server maker said it expects to report $5 billion in revenue for the quarter, down from the $6 billion to $7 billion guidance that the company had previously issued.
Super Micro said “design win upgrades” pushed some expected first-quarter revenue to the second quarter.
“We see customer demand accelerating, and we are gaining AI share, reiterating revenue of at least $33B for FY 2026 with the expectation of delivering more.” Super Micro CEO Charles Liang said in a statement.
Super Micro said it has had “recent design wins” of more than $12 billion, and that delivery has been requested during its fiscal second quarter.
The company will provide further updates on its expected second-quarter deliveries and revenues during its earnings call on Nov. 4, when it will officially report its first-quarter results.