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A mockup of Tesla Inc.’s planned humanoid robot Optimus on display during the Seoul Mobility Show in Goyang, South Korea, on Thursday, March 30, 2023. The motor show will continue through April 9. Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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The entire value of the S&P 500 currently stands at $45.5 trillion, according to FactSet. Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed on Thursday that his company’s Optimus humanoid robots could eventually make the automaker worth more than half of that.

Musk, who characterized himself as “pathologically optimistic” at the 2024 annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas, said Tesla is embarking on not just a “new chapter” in its life, but is about to write an entirely “new book.” Optimus appears to be one of the main characters.

Tesla first revealed its plans to work on humanoid robots in 2021 at an AI Day event, trotting out a dancer in a unitard that looked like a sleek, androgynous robot.

In January, Tesla showed off Optimus robots folding laundry in a demo video that was immediately criticized by robotics engineers for being deceptive. The robots were not autonomous, but were rather being operated with humans at the controls.

At the shareholder event on Thursday, Musk didn’t divulge exactly what Optimus can do today. He suggested the robots some day will perform like R2-D2 and C-3PO in Star Wars. They could cook or clean for you, do factory work, or even teach your children, Musk suggested.

As for shareholder value, Musk said Optimus could be the catalyst for lifting Tesla’s market cap to $25 trillion someday.

Speaking to a crowd consisting mostly of fawning fanboys in an auditorium at the Gigafactory, Musk promised Tesla would move into “limited production” of Optimus in 2025 and test out humanoid robots in its own factories next year.

The company, he predicted, will have “over 1,000, or a few thousand, Optimus robots working at Tesla” in 2025.

This is all far-out stuff even for Musk, who is notorious for making ambitious promises to investors and customers that don’t pan out — from developing software that can turn an existing Tesla into a self-driving vehicle with an upload, to EV battery swapping stations.

Getting to a $25 trillion market cap would mean that Tesla would be worth about eight times Apple’s value today. The iPhone maker is currently the world’s biggest company by market cap, just ahead of Microsoft.

At Thursday’s close, Tesla was valued at about $580 billion, making it the 10th most valuable company in the S&P 500.

Musk didn’t provide a timeframe for reaching $25 trillion. He did say that autonomous vehicles could get the company to a market cap of $5 trillion to $7 trillion.

ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood on $2600 Tesla price target: An autonomous taxi platform has to happen

Musk said he agreed with numbers from long-time Tesla bull Cathie Wood, the CEO of ARK Invest. This week, ARK put a $2,600 price target on Tesla’s stock by 2029, betting on a commercial robotaxi business that the company has yet to enter.

Wood’s price target equals a market cap for Tesla of over $8 trillion.

Musk’s comments at the annual meeting followed the shareholder vote to reinstate the CEO’s $56 billion pay plan, five months after a Delaware court ordered the company to rescind the package. The crowd cheered when the proposal was read aloud, and when preliminary results were announced.

Taking the stage following the readout of the shareholder votes, Musk said, “I just want to start off by saying hot d—! I love you guys.”

Tesla shares have dropped 27% this year as the company reckons with a sales decline that’s tied in part to an aging lineup of electric vehicles and increased competition in China. The company has also implemented steep layoffs. Musk has encouraged investors to look past the current state of the business and more toward a future of autonomous driving, robots and artificial intelligence.

Among his boldest claims on Thursday was Musk’s declaration that Tesla had advanced so far in developing silicon that it’s surpassed Nvidia when it comes to inference, or the process that trained machine learning models use to draw conclusions from new data.

Nvidia shares have soared almost nine-fold since the end of 2022, driven by demand for its AI chips. The company is now worth about $3.2 trillion.

One concern swirling around Musk is his focus on Tesla given all of his other commitments. He owns and runs social media company X, is CEO of SpaceX, and founded The Boring Co. and Neuralink. He launched another startup, xAI, in March last year and the company recently raised $6 billion in venture funding.

Musk was asked by a shareholder at the meeting how important he is, personally, to the future of Tesla.

“I’m a helpful accelerant to that future,” he said, emphasizing his role in innovation.

He said that, when it comes to humanoid robots, other companies, including tech startups, are going after the market. Competitors include Boston Dynamics, Agility, Neura and Apptronik.

“What really matters is, can we be much faster than everyone else and our product be done a few years before theirs and be better,” Musk said.

WATCH: Tesla shareholders approve Musk’s $56 billion pay package

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Elon Musk’s X will be allowed back online in Brazil after paying one more fine

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Elon Musk's X will be allowed back online in Brazil after paying one more fine

The Federal Supreme Court (STF) in Brazil suspends Elon Musk’s social network after it fails to comply with orders from Minister Alexandre de Moraes to block accounts of those being investigated by the Brazilian justice system. 

Cris Faga | Nurphoto | Getty Images

X has to pay one last fine before the social network owned by Elon Musk is allowed back online in Brazil, according to a decision out Friday from the country’s top justice, Alexandre de Moraes.

The platform was suspended nationwide at the end of August, a decision upheld by a panel of judges on Sept. 2. Earlier this month, X filed paperwork informing Brazil’s supreme court that it is now in compliance with orders, which it previously defied.

As Brazil’s G1 Globo reported, X must now pay a new fine of 10 million reals (about $2 million) for two additional days of non-compliance with the court’s orders. X’s legal representative in Brazil, Rachel de Oliveira, is also required to pay a fine of 300,000 reals.

The case dates back to April, when de Moraes, the minister of Brazil’s supreme court, known as Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), initiated a probe into Musk and X over alleged obstruction of justice.

Musk had vowed to defy the court’s orders to take down certain accounts in Brazil. He called the court’s actions “censorship,” and railed online against de Moraes, describing the judge as a “criminal” and encouraging the U.S. to end foreign aid to Brazil.

In mid-August, Musk closed down X offices in Brazil. That left his company without a legal representative in the country, a federal requirement for all tech platforms to do business there.

By Aug. 28, de Moraes’ court threatened a ban and fines if X didn’t appoint a legal representative within 24 hours, and if it didn’t comply with takedown requests for accounts the court said had engaged in plots to dox or harm federal agents, among other things.

Earlier this month, the STF froze the business assets of Musk companies, including both X and satellite internet business Starlink, operating in Brazil. The STF said in court filings that it viewed Starlink parent SpaceX and X as companies that worked together as related parties.

Musk wrote in a post on X at that time that, “Unless the Brazilian government returns the illegally seized property of and SpaceX, we will seek reciprocal seizure of government assets too.”

On August 29, 2024, in Brazil, the Minister of the Supreme Court, STF Minister Alexandre de Moraes, orders the blocking of the accounts of another company, Starlink, of Elon Musk, to guarantee the payment of fines imposed by the STF due to the lack of representatives of X in Brazil. 

Ton Molina | Nurphoto | Getty Images

As head of the STF, de Moraes has long supported federal regulations to rein in hate speech and misinformation online. His views have garnered pushback from tech companies and far-right officials in the country, along with former President Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters.

Bolsonaro is under investigation, suspected of orchestrating a coup in Brazil after losing the 2022 presidential election to current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

While Musk has called for retribution against de Moraes and Lula, he has worked with and praised Bolsonaro for years. The former president of Brazil authorized SpaceX to deliver satellite internet services commercially in Brazil in 2022.

Musk bills himself as a free speech defender, but his track record suggests otherwise. Under his management, X removed content critical of ruling parties in Turkey and India at the government’s insistence. X agreed to more than 80% of government take-down requests in 2023 over a comparable period the prior year, according to analysis by the tech news site Rest of World.

X faces increased competition in Brazil from social apps like Meta-owned Threads, and Bluesky, which have attracted users during its suspension.

Starlink also faces competition in Brazil from eSpace, a French-American firm that gained permission this year from the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) to deliver satellite internet services in the country.

Lukas Darien, an attorney and law professor at Brazil’s Facex University Center, told CNBC that the STF’s enforcement actions against X are likely to change the way large technology companies will view the court.

“There is no change to the law here,” Darien wrote in a message. “But specifically, big tech companies are now aware that the laws will be applied regardless of the size of a business and the magnitude of its reach in the country.”

Musk and representatives for X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Late Thursday, X Global Government Affairs posted the following statement:

“X is committed to protecting free speech within the boundaries of the law and we recognize and respect the sovereignty of the countries in which we operate. We believe that the people of Brazil having access to X is essential for a thriving democracy, and we will continue to defend freedom of expression and due process of law through legal processes.”

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OpenAI sees roughly $5 billion loss this year on $3.7 billion in revenue

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OpenAI sees roughly  billion loss this year on .7 billion in revenue

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, at the Hope Global Forums annual meeting in Atlanta on Dec. 11, 2023.

Dustin Chambers | Bloomberg | Getty Images

OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, expects about $5 billion in losses on $3.7 billion in revenue this year, CNBC has confirmed.

The company generated $300 million in revenue last month, up 1,700% since the beginning of last year, and expects to bring in $11.6 billion in sales next year, according to a person close to OpenAI who asked not to be named because the numbers are confidential.

The New York Times was first to report on OpenAI’s financials earlier on Friday after viewing company documents. CNBC hasn’t seen the financials.

OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft, is currently pursuing a funding round that would value the company at more than $150 billion, people familiar with the matter have told CNBC. Thrive Capital is leading the round and plans to invest $1 billion, with Tiger Global planning to join as well.

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told investors in an email Thursday that the funding round is oversubscribed and will close by next week. Her note followed a number of key departures, most notably technology chief Mira Murati, who announced the previous day that she was leaving OpenAI after six and a half years.

Also this week, news surfaced that OpenAI’s board is considering plans to restructure the firm to a for-profit business. The company will retain its nonprofit segment as a separate entity, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. The structure would be more straightforward for investors and make it easier for OpenAI employees to realize liquidity, the source said.

OpenAI’s services have exploded in popularity since the company launched ChatGPT in late 2022. The company sells subscriptions to various tools and licenses its GPT family of large language models, which are powering much of the generative AI boom. Running those models requires a massive investment in Nvidia’s graphics processing units.

The Times, citing an analysis by a financial professional who reviewed OpenAI’s documents, reported that the roughly $5 billion in loses this year are tied to costs for running its services as well as employee salaries and office rent. The costs don’t include equity-based compensation, “among several large expenses not fully explained in the documents,” the paper said.

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Alibaba, Tencent rally as Beijing stimulus plans push China’s tech stocks to 13-month high

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Alibaba, Tencent rally as Beijing stimulus plans push China's tech stocks to 13-month high

The Alibaba office building is seen in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, China, Aug 28, 2024. 

CFOTO | Future Publishing | Getty Images

Chinese tech stocks, including beaten-down names like Alibaba, rallied this week, hitting highs not seen in more than a year after China’s central bank announced measures to stimulate the world’s second-largest economy.

The Hang Seng Tech Index in Hong Kong, which contains most of the big Chinese tech stocks, closed up nearly 6% at its highest level since early August 2023. The index is up 20% this week.

Alibaba closed above $100 per share for the first time since August last year in the U.S. on Thursday, after surging 10% during the session. On Friday, the company’s Hong Kong-listed stock reached its highest close since February 2023, up nearly 5% to 102.50 Hong Kong dollars. The e-commerce giant’s shares in Hong Kong are around 18% higher this week.

Tencent, the owner of China’s biggest messaging app WeChat and one of the largest gaming firms in the world, closed up nearly 2% at 437.80 Hong Kong dollars per share. This is the firm’s highest close in more than two-and-a-half years and comes after Tencent’s stock rallied around 49 % this year amid a recovery in its core gaming business.

Food delivery giant Meituan meanwhile ended the session 8% higher at 164.60 Hong Kong dollars a share, the company’s highest close level since February last year.

The market uptick comes after the People’s Bank of China this week announced a cut to the amount of cash that banks need to have on hand. The central bank outlined plans to further support the struggling property market, including extending measures for two years and cutting the interest rates on existing mortgages.

These measures have been declared in the hope of boosting the Chinese economy. Prior to the cuts, investors had been cautious on Chinese tech stocks like Alibaba and Meituan which are sensitive to the economy and consumer in China.

However, big-name investor have started to strike a bullish tone on Chinese stocks. Billionaire hedge fund founder David Tepper told CNBC on Thursday that, after the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates this month, he bought more Chinese stocks including names like Alibaba and Baidu.

Other names including JD.com and Baidu also logged share increases this week.

Despite the latest upswing, Chinese tech stocks remain significantly off their all-time highs hit in 2021.

CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.

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