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A driverless robotaxi autonomous vehicle developed by Baidu Apollo driving along a street in Beijing.

Jade Gao | Afp | Getty Images

SHANGHAI — Chinese tech company Baidu said Wednesday its Apollo Go robotaxi arm expects to turn profitable next year.

The projection comes as Elon Musk has emphasized his plans to build up Tesla’s robotaxi efforts amid a decline in revenue. 

Baidu is one of the major players in China’s nascent robotaxi market and received permission from a Beijing city district to begin charging fares in November 2021.

While most of the cars still have a human staff worker inside for safety, the same Beijing district officially let Baidu and start-up Pony.ai charge fares for robotaxi rides with no staff in the vehicle in September 2023. 

Apollo Go operated about 839,000 rides in the last three months of 2023, according to Baidu’s latest earnings report. The company is due to release quarterly results Thursday.

About 45% of the orders in the fourth quarter in Wuhan were fully driverless, up from 40% the prior quarter, the company said.

In addition to growing usage and reducing labor costs per ride, Baidu is making the cars cheaper.

Baidu on Wednesday announced Apollo’s 6th generation robotaxi will cost around 200,000 yuan ($28,169) — or less than half that of the prior generation, the company said.

This year, Baidu plans to deploy 1,000 of those 6th generation robotaxis in the city of Wuhan, where the company already operates a number of vehicles without any human staff inside.

“With decreasing costs and increasing orders, Apollo Go’s unit economics (UE) is nearing break-even, expected to achieve balance in the fourth quarter of 2024 and turn profitable by 2025,” Baidu said in a press release.

Rival robotaxi operator Pony.ai is preparing for a listing outside mainland China, according to the China Securities Regulatory Commission website in late April.

Others in the auto industry remain more skeptical about fully driverless cars, which require broad regulatory approval in order to operate.

Xpeng Vice Chairman Brian Gu told reporters last month he didn’t expect robotaxis to be a real business for at least five years.

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Trump to host Jensen Huang at White House as Nvidia tops $4 trillion market cap

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Trump to host Jensen Huang at White House as Nvidia tops  trillion market cap

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivers remarks next to U.S. President Donald Trump at an ‘Investing in America’ event in Washington, D.C., on April 30, 2025.

Leah Millis | Reuters

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will meet with President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday, CNBC’s Megan Cassella reported.

The meeting comes as Nvidia rose slightly on Thursday, becoming the first company to close a trading day with a market cap over $4 trillion, beating Apple and Microsoft to the symbolic milestone. Nvidia touched the mark briefly on Wednesday during trading.

Trump praised Nvidia stock in a social media post Thursday morning.

“NVIDIA IS UP 47% SINCE TRUMP TARIFFS. USA is taking in Hundreds of Billions of Dollars in Tariffs,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “COUNTRY IS NOW ‘BACK.'”

An Nvidia representative declined to comment, and it was unclear what the meeting is about, but Nvidia has been grappling with export controls on its artificial intelligence chips implemented by the Trump administration in April for national security reasons.

At the time, the U.S. government told Nvidia that its previously-approved H20 processor — intended exclusively for the Chinese market — would require an export license. Huang previously told investors that requirement effectively cut off Nvidia’s sales to China with “no grace period.” The AI chipmaker said that it would miss $8 billion in planned orders for the chip in the company’s July quarter.

“The $50 billion China market is effectively closed to U.S. industry,” Huang told investors on an earnings call in May.

Nvidia also faces another potential restriction on AI chip exports after the Trump administration cancelled a planned rule by former President Joe Biden called the “AI diffusion rule.” The Trump administration promised newer, simpler restrictions later this year on which countries could receive Nvidia’s technology.

WATCH: Fundstrat’s Tom Lee: Nvidia being the most valuable company in the S&P makes a lot of sense

Fundstrat's Tom Lee: Nvidia being the most valuable company in the S&P makes a lot of sense

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Musk, X to face trial in Don Lemon lawsuit alleging breach of contract

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Musk, X to face trial in Don Lemon lawsuit alleging breach of contract

Elon Musk (L) & Don Lemon

Reuters (L) | Getty Images (R)

Ex-CNN anchor Don Lemon‘s lawsuit against tech billionaire Elon Musk and his social network X over the cancellation of their partnership can proceed to trial, a San Francisco judge ruled this week.

Musk’s team had tried to get the case moved to a Texas court and tried to convince the judge to strike the complaint altogether.

Attorneys for Musk and X didn’t respond to a request for comment.

In an order Tuesday, Judge Harold Kahn said Lemon and his attorneys plausibly alleged, among other claims, that X and Musk had committed “fraud by false promise” and that there was “an implied contract” between them.

Lemon filed the suit in August 2024 after X canceled a partnership with the broadcast journalist a few hours after he taped a tense interview with Musk, who owns X. The interview preceded a planned premiere of Lemon’s new show on Musk’s social network.

During the interview, Lemon pressed Musk on several contentious topics he had posted about or amplified on X. Musk had boosted the so-called “great replacement theory,” and other bigoted tropes and falsehoods, including posts that claimed there was a “Hispanic invasion” of immigrants to the U.S.

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Lemon also pressed Musk about content moderation on X, and a reported surge in antisemitic content on the platform that occurred after Musk acquired it as Twitter in a $44 billion leveraged buyout in late 2022.

Musk made sweeping changes after taking over the site, firing huge numbers of personnel and reversing account bans for users who had been booted from the platform after posting hate speech or inciting violence.

Musk, who characterized himself as a free speech “absolutist” also restored the account of President Donald Trump. The site had permanently banned Trump from the platform in January 2021 following the attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol.

Lemon’s case against Musk and X Corp. is in San Francisco Superior Court. A date has not been set for the trial.

Musk and X have faced a litany of other lawsuits over non-payment to vendors and over failure to provide severance as promised to laid-off employees from Twitter.

Lemon was fired from CNN in 2023 following reports that he mistreated coworkers and made sexist remarks on-air, including about politician Nikki Haley. Lemon later apologized for the Haley comments.

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Bitcoin sets another record above $113,000 as investors jump into risk assets, liquidate shorts

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Bitcoin sets another record above 3,000 as investors jump into risk assets, liquidate shorts

Nurphoto | Getty Images

Bitcoin climbed to new all-time high on Thursday, building on its previous record reached just a day earlier, as investors jumped into risk assets and liquidated short positions.

The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by about 2% at $113,459.16. Earlier, it rose as high as $113,863.18.

On Thursday afternoon, bitcoin saw about $318 million in short liquidations across centralized exchanges in a 24 hour period, according to CoinGlass. When traders use leverage to short bitcoin and the cryptocurrency’s price rises, they buy bitcoin back from the market to close their positions, which pushes the price up and causes more positions to be liquidated.

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