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A Cruise self-driving car, which is owned by General Motors, is seen outside the company’s headquarters in San Francisco.

Heather Somerville | Reuters

General Motors’ Cruise autonomous vehicle unit has dismissed nine “key leaders” amid ongoing safety investigations sparked by an October accident in San Francisco, according to an internal message obtained by CNBC.

The departures include leaders from Cruise’s legal, government affairs, commercial operations and safety and systems teams, according to the company-wide message, which GM and Cruise spokespeople confirmed was authentic.

The message said “new leadership is necessary” for the company to regain trust and operate “with the highest standards when it comes to safety, integrity, and accountability.”

Cruise’s troubles are the latest for the self-driving vehicle industry. Commercializing autonomous vehicles has been far more challenging than many predicted even a few years ago. The challenges have led to a consolidation in the autonomous vehicle sector after years of enthusiasm touting the technology as the next multitrillion-dollar market for transportation companies.

The shakeup at Cruise, which was first reported by Reuters, follows an initial analysis of the company’s response to an Oct. 2 accident involving one of Cruise’s robotaxis, which dragged a pedestrian after the person was struck by another vehicle.

Following the accident, the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended the deployment and testing permits for its autonomous vehicles in late-October. Cruise then followed up with pausing all roadway operations in the U.S.

GM CEO Mary Barra on $10 billion stock buyback, Cruise challenges and China market

The company also faces regulatory pressure and fines for potentially misleading or withholding information about the accident. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and California Public Utilities Commission are probing Cruise and the incident.

GM CEO Mary Barra, who serves as chair of Cruise, last week in Detroit said the company is “very focused on righting the ship” at Cruise. Its actions include two ongoing external safety reviews that will guide the company’s path forward. They are expected to be completed in early 2024, she said. 

“The personnel decisions made today are a necessary step for Cruise to move forward as it focuses on accountability, trust and transparency. GM remains committed to supporting Cruise in these efforts,” GM said in an emailed statement Wednesday.

The additional departures come roughly a month after Cruise CEO and co-founder Kyle Vogt and co-founder and Chief Product Officer Dan Kan both resigned.

This is also a setback for an industry dependent on public trust and the cooperation of regulators. The unit had in recent months touted ambitious plans to expand to more cities, offering fully autonomous taxi rides.

GM purchased Cruise in 2016. It then brought on investors such as Honda Motor, SoftBank Vision Fund, and, more recently, Walmart and Microsoft. However, last year, GM acquired SoftBank’s equity ownership stake for $2.1 billion.

GM executives, including Barra, had hoped the startup would be ramping up a driverless transportation network this year, and hoped Cruise would play a notable role in doubling the company’s revenue by 2030.

But thus far, Cruise has cost GM more than $8 billion since the company acquired it in 2016, according to public filings. The losses have been increasing annually, including $1.9 billion through the third quarter of this year.

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South Korea announces over $23 billion for chip sector as Trump tariffs on semiconductor imports loom

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South Korea announces over  billion for chip sector as Trump tariffs on semiconductor imports loom

Visitors look at the display of SK Hynix Inc. 12-layer HBM3E memory chips at the Semiconductor Exhibition (SEDEX) in Seoul, South Korea, on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

South Korea announced Tuesday a support package of 33 trillion won ($23.25 billion) for its vital semiconductor industry, as heightened uncertainty over U.S. tariffs threatens domestic companies.

This comes after U.S. president Donald Trump reportedly said he would be announcing the tariff rate on imported semiconductors soon, after exempting them from his steep “reciprocal” tariffs last Friday.

In a social media post Monday, Trump vowed to investigate the “whole electronics supply chain” on national security grounds.

The U.S. Department of Commerce also released a notice saying it will initiate an investigation “to determine the effects on national security of imports of semiconductors, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and their derivative products.”

South Korea’s funding support was about a quarter more than the 26 trillion committed last year, according to a press release from the finance ministry.

As part of the measures, the government will subsidize the construction of underground power transmission lines to semiconductor clusters, as well as increase the funding ratio for infrastructure in advanced industrial complexes to 50% from 30%.

A total of 20 trillion won of low-interest loans to semiconductor companies will be offered between 2025 and 2027, up from the current 17 trillion won.

Other measures include introducing training and research programs for domestic master’s and doctoral students as well as global joint research programs for foreign talent.

South Korea is home to some of the world’s top chipmakers, including Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, with semiconductors a key export of the country.

On Tuesday, the South Korean Kospi was up 0.68%, with Samsung climbing 1.07% and SK Hynix up 0.17%.

In 2024, South Korea’s exports of semiconductors stood at $141.9 billion, just over 20% of the country’s $683.6 billion exports.

The U.S. is the second largest export destination for South Korea, with exports rising 10.5% year-on-year to $127.8 billion in 2024, reaching a new annual high for the seventh consecutive year.

On Monday, acting South Korean president Han Duck-soo reportedly said that Trump had “apparently” instructed his administration to conduct immediate tariff negotiations with South Korea, according to local media outlet Yonhap.

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Online trading platform Webull soars 375% in second day on market after SPAC merger

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Online trading platform Webull soars 375% in second day on market after SPAC merger

Anthony Denier, CEO fo Webull, speaks during an interview on CNBC on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., June 1, 2022. 

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Shares of Webull soared nearly 375% on Monday, the second day on the market for the stock-trading app, which completed its merger last week with SK Growth Opportunities Corp., a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

The rally gives Webull a market cap of almost $30 billion.

Webull competes with Robinhood, Charles Schwab and E-Trade. The app lets investors buy and sell shares and options in individual securities, exchange-traded funds and cryptocurrencies, and offers charts, watchlists, screening tools and paper trading.

The company says it has over 23 million registered users and operates in 15 regions globally. In addition to charging fees on trades, Webull has a premium tier with real-time data that costs $40 per year.

In an investor presentation last month, the company said it was expecting $390.2 million in 2024 revenue, which would be roughly flat from 2023.

Former Alibaba and Xiaomi manager Wang Anquan founded Webull in 2016, and he remains the company’s global CEO. Investors include Coatue, General Atlantic and Lightspeed. The app gained popularity during the Covid pandemic, as U.S. citizens used stimulus checks to invest, Anthony Denier, the company’s group president and U.S. CEO, told CNBC in 2021. Webull users are “much more intellectual” than Robinhood’s, Denier has said.

In November, the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party sent a letter to Denier inquiring about the company’s ties to China. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The rise of blank-check companies such as SK Growth Opportunities peaked in 2021, with 613 IPOs completed, according to SPAC Insider. The market fell apart the following year as soaring inflation and rising interest rates pushed investors out of risky assets. So far this year there have been 23 SPAC IPOs.

Webull said last year that it was planning for its market debut to take place in the second half of 2024.

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Apple regains $3 trillion market cap after Trump exempts tariffs on iPhones

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Apple regains  trillion market cap after Trump exempts tariffs on iPhones

Apple CEO Tim Cook greets former President Barack Obama at the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2025.

Julia Demaree Nikhinson | Getty Images

Apple shares rose more than 2% on Monday, pushing the company’s market cap back above $3 trillion, as Wall Street expressed some level of relief that the iPhone maker will be able to withstand President Donald Trump’s widespread tariffs.

Late Friday, the Trump administration announced that phones, computers and chips were exempted from new tariffs. Apple is among the most exposed companies to Trump’s tariffs because the majority of its iPhones, iPads and MacBooks are manufactured in China and other Asian countries. Trump has called for Apple to make its products in the U.S.

Most of Apple’s critical imports were exempted from the tariffs, a move that Wall Street analysts said could save Apple billions in costs. However, administration officials warned over the weekend that the exemptions were temporary and could change over the coming weeks.

“I speak to Tim Cook. I helped Tim Cook, recently, and that whole business,” Trump said Monday in a briefing with reporters in the Oval Office, referring to Apple’s CEO. “I don’t want to hurt anybody, but the end result is we’re going to get to the position of greatness for our country.”

Uncertainty about what the future holds helps explain Apple’s relatively muted gain on Friday. The stock is still down almost 9% in April after falling more than 8% in March. The 11% drop in the first quarter marked Apple’s worst performance since 2023.

Apple is the most valuable publicly traded U.S. company once again, edging out Microsoft.

Apple fell below the $3 trillion mark on April 4, two days after Trump announced “reciprocal tariffs” that would place significant duties on China and countries where the company does manufacturing.

The stock rallied last week after Trump announced his administration was dropping new tariff rates to 10% on imports from countries other than China, which would face tariffs as high as 145%.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley wrote in a note Monday that the latest news from the White House brings Apple’s “annualized tariff cost burden” to $7 billion, down from $44 billion as of Thursday.

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