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.
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.
White House trade advisor Peter Navarro chastised Apple CEO Tim Cook on Monday over the company’s response to pressure from the Trump administration to make more of its products outside of China.
“Going back to the first Trump term, Tim Cook has continually asked for more time in order to move his factories out of China,” Navarro said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “I mean it’s the longest-running soap opera in Silicon Valley.”
CNBC has reached out to Apple for comment on Navarro’s criticism.
President Donald Trump has in recent months ramped up demands for Apple to move production of its iconic iPhone to the U.S. from overseas. Apple’s flagship phone is produced primarily in China, but the company has increasingly boosted production in India, partly to avoid the higher cost of Trump’s tariffs.
Trump in May warned Apple would have to pay a tariff of 25% or more for iPhones made outside the U.S. In separate remarks, Trump said he told Cook, “I don’t want you building in India.”
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Analysts and supply chain experts have argued it would be impossible for Apple to completely move iPhone production to the U.S. By some estimates, a U.S.-made iPhone could cost as much as $3,500.
Navarro said Cook isn’t shifting production out of China quickly enough.
“With all these new advanced manufacturing techniques and the way things are moving with AI and things like that, it’s inconceivable to me that Tim Cook could not produce his iPhones elsewhere around the world and in this country,” Navarro said.
Apple currently makes very few products in the U.S. During Trump’s first term, Apple extended its commitment to assemble the $3,000 Mac Pro in Texas.
In February, Apple said it would spend $500 billion within the U.S., including on assembling some AI servers.
CoreWeave founders Brian Venturo, at left in sweatshirt, and Mike Intrator slap five after ringing the opening bell at Nasdaq headquarters in New York on March 28, 2025.
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Artificial intelligence hyperscaler CoreWeave said Monday it will acquire Core Scientific, a leading data center infrastructure provider, in an all-stock deal valued at approximately $9 billion.
Coreweave stock fell about 4% on Monday while Core Scientific stock plummeted about 20%. Shares of both companies rallied at the end of June after the Wall Street Journal reported that talks were underway for an acquisition.
The deal strengthens CoreWeave’s position in the AI arms race by bringing critical infrastructure in-house.
CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said the move will eliminate $10 billion in future lease obligations and significantly enhance operating efficiency.
The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025, pending regulatory and shareholder approval.
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The deal expands CoreWeave’s access to power and real estate, giving it ownership of 1.3 gigawatts of gross capacity across Core Scientific’s U.S. data center footprint, with another gigawatt available for future growth.
Core Scientific has increasingly focused on high-performance compute workloads since emerging from bankruptcy and relisting on the Nasdaq in 2024.
Core Scientific shareholders will receive 0.1235 CoreWeave shares for each share they hold — implying a $20.40 per-share valuation and a 66% premium to Core Scientific’s closing stock price before deal talks were reported.
After closing, Core Scientific shareholders will own less than 10% of the combined company.
Two young men stand inside a shopping mall in front of a large illuminated Apple logo seen through a window in Chongqing, China, on June 4, 2025.
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Apple on Monday appealed what it called an “unprecedented” 500 million euro ($586 million) fine issued by the European Union for violating the bloc’s Digital Markets Act.
“As our appeal will show, the EC [European Commission] is mandating how we run our store and forcing business terms which are confusing for developers and bad for users,” the company said in a statement. “We implemented this to avoid punitive daily fines and will share the facts with the Court.”
Apple recently made changes to its App Store‘s European policies that the company said would be in compliance with the DMA and would avoid the fines.
The Commission, which is the executive body of the EU, announced its fine in April, saying that Apple “breached its anti-steering obligation” under the DMA with restrictions on the App Store.
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“Due to a number of restrictions imposed by Apple, app developers cannot fully benefit from the advantages of alternative distribution channels outside the App Store,” the commission wrote. “Similarly, consumers cannot fully benefit from alternative and cheaper offers as Apple prevents app developers from directly informing consumers of such offers.”
Under the DMA, tech giants like Apple and Google are required to allow businesses to inform end-users of offers outside their platform — including those at different prices or with different conditions.
Companies like Epic Games and Spotify have complained about restrictions within the App Store that make it harder for them to communicate alternative payment methods to iOS users.
Apple typically takes a 15%-30% cut on in-app purchases.