Connect with us

Published

on

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk speaks with former president Donald Trump during a campaign event at the Butler Farm Show, Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024, in Butler, Pa. 

Jabin Botsford | The Washington Post | Getty Images

As Tesla prepares for quarterly results Wednesday, many investors have one big issue on their minds: Donald Trump.

On a forum Tesla uses to solicit investor questions online in advance of its earnings calls, dozens of inquiries poured in from retail shareholders about Elon Musk’s politics, his incendiary commentary on X, and his efforts to get Trump back in the White House.

“Elon Musk has the right to express his political views, but his public activism seems at odds with his responsibility as CEO to protect shareholder value,” an anonymous retail investor wrote on the forum. “How does Tesla address this, and can it confirm Musk’s actions are not harming sales or growth?”

The comment received 168 upvotes. Another question, which received 527 upvotes, asked if Tesla’s board is doing anything to ensure Musk’s “political engagement doesn’t detract from Tesla’s core mission and protects shareholder value and brand integrity.”

Third-quarter results are scheduled to hit after the close of regular trading Wednesday.

Musk, the world’s richest person, is concurrently the CEO of Tesla and defense contractor SpaceX and the owner of social network X. He also started a company, xAI, in 2023 to develop artificial intelligence products outside Tesla, and he’s the founder of brain computer interface company Neuralink and tunneling venture The Boring Co.

Adding to what Musk has called his “17 jobs,” he has also floated the idea to Trump that he should form a “government efficiency commission” to cut spending and slash regulations. Trump has promised to do it and to let Musk effectively lead it.

In his effort to try to push the Republican nominee and ex-president past the finish line in a deadlocked race, Musk embarked on a speaking tour in Pennsylvania to drive voter registration. He called the state the “linchpin” in this election, and Saturday he said he would randomly award $1 million a day to registered voters who sign a petition for his pro-Trump PAC.

While Musk has attracted plenty of media scrutiny for his political views, they’ve rarely been discussed at company shareholder meetings or in Wall Street analysts’ notes.

According to analyst notes compiled by FactSet, which doesn’t include all sell-side firms, the topic of Trump and the election has been almost absent from the discussion.

I find Elon Musk's foray into politics 'really off-putting', says Musk biographer Walter Isaacson

The financial impact of Musk’s politics can be hard to quantify.

But at least one venture capitalist and Tesla bull, Deepwater Asset Management’s Gene Munster, has given it a shot.

Munster wrote in a note on Oct. 5 that Musk’s heightened “political commentary” in the past four months “may have reduced deliveries by 5-10k during the quarter.” Munster said that means the company’s U.S. numbers would have been 4% higher and total numbers almost 2% higher “if not for the political dynamic.”

Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Brand consultancy Interbrand, which has been running a Best Global Brands study for 25 years, found that Tesla’s brand value declined 9% this year. Tesla fell in the rankings to the 12th spot, behind automakers Toyota, Mercedes Benz and BMW, which all cracked the top 10.

“Most car manufacturers are grappling with the shift to EVs, and although Tesla was born in that territory, its changing focus is causing market confusion about the strategies it is executing,” Interband Global CEO Gonzalo Brujo said in an email to CNBC. “This has not been helped by recent introductions, like the truck falling short as competitors deliver better cars.”

The top five brands ranked by Interbrand were all tech companies that compete with Tesla for talent and, in some cases, on products: Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Samsung.

Tesla’s vehicle lineup is full of models that have been around for years, including the still popular Model 3 sedans and Model Y SUV. And the company has been asking investors to focus on its plans for dedicated robotaxis, driverless software, humanoid robots and supercomputers, instead of its core automotive business.

Brujo said Musk’s antics could represent a major distraction from all of that.

“A CEO or brand aligning with anything political is taking a risk,” he wrote. “It can be polarizing, and the business or brand could risk losing customers as a result.”

Tesla shares are down 14% for the year due to an 18% slide in October. The Nasdaq is about flat for the month and up almost 22% this year.

WATCH: Musk gives $75 million to pro-Trump PAC

Elon Musk gives $75 million to pro-Trump PAC

Continue Reading

Technology

Cybersecurity firm Netskope files to go public on the Nasdaq

Published

on

By

Cybersecurity firm Netskope files to go public on the Nasdaq

Sanjay Beri, chief executive officer and founder of Netskope Inc., listens during a Bloomberg West television interview in San Francisco, California.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Cloud security platform Netskope will go public on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “NTSK,” the company said in an initial public offering filing Friday.

The Santa Clara, California-based company said annual recurring revenue grew 33% to $707 million, while revenues jumped 31% to about $328 million in the first half of the year.

But Netskope isn’t profitable yet. The company recorded a $170 million net loss during the first half of the year. That narrowed from a $207 million loss a year ago.

Netskope joins an increasing number of technology companies adding momentum to the surge in IPO activity after high inflation and interest rates effectively killed the market.

So far this year, design software firm Figma more than tripled in its New York Stock Exchange debut, while crypto firm Circle soared 168% in its first trading day. CoreWeave has also popped since its IPO, while trading app eToro surged 29% in its May debut.

Read more CNBC tech news

Netskope’s offering also coincides with a busy period for cybersecurity deals.

The year’s two biggest technology deals include Alphabet’s $32 billion acquisition of Wiz and Palo Alto Networksambitious plan to buy Israeli identity security company CyberArk for $25 billion.

Founded in 2012, Netskope made a name for itself in its early years in the cloud access security broker space. The company lists Palo Alto Networks, Cisco, Zscaler, Broadcom and Fortinet as its major competitors.

Netskope’s biggest backers include Accel, Lightspeed Ventures and Iconiq, which recently benefited from Figma’s stellar debut.

Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan are leading the offering. Netskope listed 13 other Wall Street banks as underwriters.

Continue Reading

Technology

Meta set to unveil first consumer-ready smart glasses with a display, wristband next month

Published

on

By

Meta set to unveil first consumer-ready smart glasses with a display, wristband next month

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech at the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Sept. 25, 2024.

Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters

Meta is planning to use its annual Connect conference next month to announce a deeper push into smart glasses, including the launch of the company’s first consumer-ready glasses with a display, CNBC has learned.

That’s one of the two new devices Meta is planning to unveil at the event, according to people familiar with the matter. The company will also launch its first wristband that will allow users to control the glasses with hand gestures, the people said.

Connect is a two-day conference for developers focused on virtual reality, AR and the metaverse. It was originally called Oculus Connect and obtained its current moniker after Facebook changed its parent company name to Meta in 2021.

The glasses are internally codenamed Hypernova and will include a small digital display in the right lens of the device, said the people, who asked not to be named because the details are confidential.

The device is expected to cost about $800 and will be sold in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, the people said. CNBC reported in October that Meta was working with Luxottica on consumer glasses with a display.

Meta declined to comment. Luxottica, which is based in France and Italy, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Meta began selling smart glasses with Luxottica in 2021 when the two companies released the first-generation Ray-Ban Stories, which allowed users to take photos or videos using simple voice commands. The partnership has since expanded, and last year included the addition of advanced AI features that made the second generation of the product an unexpected hit with early adopters. 

Luxottica owns a number of glasses brands, including Ray-Ban, and licenses many others like Prada. It’s unclear what brand Luxottica will use for the glasses with AR, but a Meta job listing posted this week said the company is looking for a technical program manager for its “Wearables organization,” which “is responsible for the Ray-Ban AR glasses and other wearable hardware.”

In June, CNBC reported that Meta and Luxottica plan to release Prada-branded smart glasses. Prada glasses are known for having thick frames and arms, which could make them a suitable option for the Hypernova device, one of the people said. 

Meta Connect 2024 kicks off

Last year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg used Connect to showcase the company’s experimental Orion AR glasses.

The Orion features AR capabilities on both lenses, capable of blending 3D digital visuals into the physical world, but the device served only as a prototype to show the public what could be possible with AR glasses. Still, Orion built some positive momentum for Meta, which since late 2020 has endured nearly $70 billion in losses from its Reality Labs unit that’s in charge of building hardware devices.

With Hypernova, Meta will finally be offering glasses with a display to consumers, but the company is setting low expectations for sales, some of the sources said. That’s because the device requires more components than its voice-only predecessors, and will be slightly heavier and thicker, the people said.

Meta and Ray-Ban have sold 2 million pairs of their second-generation glasses since 2023, Luxottica CEO Francesco Milleri said in February. In July, Luxottica said that revenue from sales of the smart glasses had more than tripled year over year.

As part of an extension agreement between Meta and Luxottica announced in September, Meta obtained a stake of about 3% in the glasses company according to Bloomberg. Meta also gets exclusive rights to Luxottica’s brands for its smart glasses technology for a number of years, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC in June.

Although Hypernova will feature a display, those visual features are expected to be limited, people familiar with the matter said. They said the color display will offer about a 20 degree field of view — meaning it will appear in a small window in a fixed position — and will be used primarily to relay simple bits of information, such as incoming text messages. 

Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s technology chief, said earlier this month that there are advantages to having just one display rather than two, including a lower price.

“Monocular displays have a lot going for them,” Bosworth said in an Instagram video. “They’re affordable, they’re lighter, and you don’t have disparity correction, so they’re structurally quite a bit easier.”

‘Interact with an AI assistant’

Other details of Meta’s forthcoming glasses were disclosed in a July letter from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol to a lawyer representing Meta. While the letter redacted the name of the company and the product, a person with knowledge of the matter confirmed that it was in reference to Meta’s Hypernova glasses.

“This model will enable the user to take and share photos and videos, make phone calls and video calls, send and receive messages, listen to audio playback and interact with an AI assistant in different forms and methods, including voice, display, and manual interactions,” according to the letter, dated July 23.

The letter from CBP was part of routine communication between companies and the U.S. government when determining the country of origin for a consumer product. It refers to the product as “New Smart Glasses,” and says the device will feature “a lens display function that allows the user to interface with visual content arising from the Smart Features, and components providing image data retrieval, processing, and rendering capabilities.”

CBP didn’t provide a comment for this story.

The Hypernova glasses will also come paired with a wristband that will use technology built by Meta’s CTRL Labs, said people familiar with the matter. CTRL Labs, which Meta acquired in 2019, specializes in building neural technology that could allow users to control computing devices using gestures in their arms. 

The wristband is expected to be a key input component for the company’s future release of full AR glasses, so getting data now with Hypernova could improve future versions of the wristband, the people said. Instead of using camera sensors to track body movements, as with Apple’s Vision Pro headset, Meta’s wristband uses so-called sEMG sensor technology, which reads and interprets the electrical signals from hand movements.

One of the challenges Meta has faced with the wristband involves how people choose to wear it, a person familiar with the product’s development said. If the device is too loose, it won’t be able to read the user’s electrical signals as intended, which could impact its performance, the person said. Also, the wristband has run into issues in testing related to which arm it’s worn on, how it works on men versus women and how it functions on people who wear long sleeves.

The CTRL Labs team published a paper in Nature in July about its wristband, and Meta wrote about it in a blog post. In the paper, the Meta team detailed its use of machine learning technology to make the wristband work with as many people as possible. The additional data collected by the upcoming device should improve those capabilities for future Meta smart glasses.

“We successfully prototyped an sEMG wristband with Orion, our first pair of true augmented reality (AR) glasses, but that was just the beginning,” Meta wrote in the post. “Our teams have developed advanced machine learning models that are able to transform neural signals controlling muscles at the wrist into commands that drive people’s interactions with the glasses, eliminating the need for traditional—and more cumbersome—forms of input.”

Bloomberg reported the wristband component in January.

Meta has recently started reaching out to developers to begin testing both Hypernova and the accompanying wristband, people familiar with the matter said. The company wants to court third-party developers, particularly those who specialize in generative AI, to build experimental apps that Meta can showcase to drum up excitement for the smart glasses, the people said.

In addition to Hypernova and the wristband, Meta will also announce a third-generation of its voice-only smart glasses with Luxottica at Connect, one person said.

That device was also referenced by CBP in its July letter, referring to it as “The Next Generation Smart Glasses.” The glasses will include “components that provide capacitive touch functionality, allowing users to interact with the Smart Glasses through touch gestures,” the letter said.

WATCH: Elon Musk asked Zuckerberg to join xAI bit for OpenAI

Elon Musk asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to join xAI bid to buy OpenAI

Continue Reading

Technology

Google shares rise on report of Apple using Gemini for Siri

Published

on

By

Google shares rise on report of Apple using Gemini for Siri

Google CEO Sundar Pichai gestures to the crowd during Google’s annual I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California on May 20, 2025.

Camille Cohen | Afp | Getty Images

Alphabet shares rose on a Friday report that Apple is in early discussions to use Google’s Gemini AI models for an updated version of the iPhone-maker’s Siri assistant.

The company’s shares rose more than 3% on the Bloomberg report, which said Apple recently inquired of Google about the potential for the search giant to build a custom AI model that would power a new Siri that could launch next year. Google’s flagship AI models Gemini have consistently been atop key benchmarks for artificial intelligence advancements while Apple has struggled to define its own AI strategy.

The reported talks come as Google faces potential risk to its lucrative search deals with Apple. This month, a U.S. judge is expected to rule on the penalties for Google’s alleged search monopoly, in which the Department of Justice recommending eliminating exclusionary agreements with third parties. For Google, that refers to its search position on Apple’s iPhone and Samsung devices — deals that cost the company billions of dollars a year in payouts.

The Android maker has said its Gemini models will become the default assistant on Android phones. Google this year has showed Gemini doing capabilities that go beyond Siri’s capabilities, such as summarizing videos. 

Craig Federighi, who oversees Apple’s operating systems, said at last year’s developer conference that the iPhone maker would like to add other AI models for specific purposes into its Apple Intelligence framework. Federighi specifically mentioned Google, whose Gemini can now hold conversations with users and handle input that comes from photos, videos, voice or text. Apple is also exploring partnerships with Anthropic and OpenAI as it tried to renew its AI roadmap, according to a June Bloomberg report.

Documents revealed during Google’s remedy trial showed executives from Apple were involved in the negotiations over using Google’s Gemini for a potential search option.

Google declined to comment. 

WATCH: Apple explores using Google Gemini AI to power revamped Siri, reports say

Apple explores using Google Gemini AI to power revamped Siri, reports say

Continue Reading

Trending