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
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.
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.
Elon Musk listens as reporters ask U.S. President Donald Trump and South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa questions during a press availability in the Oval Office at the White House on May 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images
Tesla shares gained about 5% on Tuesday after CEO Elon Musk over the weekend reiterated his intent to home in on his businesses ahead of the latest SpaceX rocket launch.
The billionaire wrote in a post to his social media platform X that he needs to be “super focused” on X, artificial intelligence company xAI and Tesla as they launch “critical technologies” on the heels of a temporary outage.
“As evidenced by the uptime issues this week, major operational improvements need to be made,” he wrote, adding that he would return to “spending 24/7” at work. “The failover redundancy should have worked, but did not.”
An outage over the weekend briefly shuttered the social media platform formerly known as Twitter for thousands of users, according to DownDetector. Earlier in the week, the platform suffered a data center outage. X has suffered a series of outages since Musk purchased the platform in 2022.
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Musk has previously indicated plans to step away from his political work and prioritize his businesses.
During Tesla’s April earnings call he said that he would “significantly” reduce his time running President Donald Trump‘s Department of Government Efficiency.
In the last election cycle, Musk devoted time and billions of dollars to political causes and toward electing Trump in 2024. However, a story over the weekend from the Washington Post, citing sources familiar with the matter, said that Musk has grown disillusioned with politics and wants to return to managing his businesses.
Last week, Musk said in an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum that he planned to spend “a lot less” on campaign donations going forward.
The comments from Musk precede SpaceX’s Starship rocket Tuesday evening. Pressure is on for the company after two Starship rockets exploded in January and March.
Ahead of the launch, Musk announced an all hands livestream on X at 1 p.m.
Tesla is still facing fallout from Musk’s political foray, with protests at showrooms and other brand damage.
In April, Tesla sold 7,261 cars in Europe, down 49% from last year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said Tuesday that the Trump administration does not want to “harm Apple” with tariffs.
“Everybody is trying to make it seem like it’s a catastrophe if there’s a tiny little tariff on them right now, to try to negotiate down the tariffs,” Hassett told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday. “In the end, we’ll see what happens, we’ll see what the update is, but we don’t want to harm Apple.”
Hassett’s comments come after President Donald Trump said in a social media post that Apple will have to pay a tariff of 25% or more for iPhones made outside the U.S. Apple has historically manufactured its products in foreign countries including China, India and Vietnam.
“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump wrote in the post. “If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S. Thank your for your attention to this matter!”
By some estimates, a U.S.-made iPhone could cost as much as $3,500.
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“If you think that Apple has a factory some place that’s got a set number of iPhones that it produces and it needs to sell them no matter what, then Apple will bear those tariffs, not consumers, because it’s an elastic supply,” Hassett said.
Hasset’s comments continue the administration’s push to pressure companies to shoulder the cost burden of Trump’s tariffs, instead of raising prices for consumers.
Earlier this month, Trump told retail giant Walmart to “EAT THE TARIFFS” after the company warned it would have to pass those added costs on.
Shares of Apple were up more than 1% Tuesday.
Apple did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Dr. Priti Patel, CMIO at John Muir Health, uses Ambience before starting a patient encounter.
Courtesy of Ambience Healthcare
Artificial intelligence startup Ambience Healthcare on Tuesday announced a new medical coding model that outperforms doctors by 27%.
Ambience uses AI to draft clinical notes in real-time as doctors consensually record their visits with patients. The company used tools from OpenAI to build the new model.
The startup is part of a fiercely competitive market that has taken off as health-care executives search for solutions to help reduce staff burnout and daunting administrative workloads.
The company’s new model can listen to patient encounters and identify ICD-10 codes, which are internationally standardized classifications for different diseases and conditions. There are about 70,000 ICD-10 codes that are regularly updated and used to facilitate billing and other reporting processes in health care.
Ambience said its new ICD-10 model can reduce billing mistakes and help clinicians and professional coders work more efficiently. The model notched a “27% relative improvement over physician benchmarks,” according to a release on Tuesday.
“We’re not replacing doctors or coders,” Brendan Fortuner, Ambience’s head of engineering, told CNBC in an interview.“What we’re doing is we’re liberating them from administration, and we’re fixing mistakes that help make health care better, safer, more cost-effective.”
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Documenting ICD-10 codes has traditionally been a labor-intensive task in health care, but it’s a crucial way to track outcomes, mortalities and morbidities in a standardized way, said Dr. Will Morris, the chief medical officer of Ambience.
“If you think about it from a data perspective, it’s how you can compare and contrast clinician A to B, or health system A to B,” Morris said in an interview. “It’s the cornerstone for quality.”
Ambience’s technology is used at more than 40 health-care organizations, like Cleveland Clinic and UCSF Health. It has raised more than $100 million, according to PitchBook, from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz and the OpenAI Startup Fund.
The company is reportedly seeking fresh capital at a valuation of over $1 billion, according to a report from The Information. Ambience declined to comment on the report.
Ambience trained its new AI model using OpenAI’s reinforcement fine-tuning technology. This technology allows companies to tune OpenAI’s best reasoning models for very specific domains, like health care.
To validate the model, Ambience tested it against a “gold panel” set of labels, the company said. The labels were established by a group of expert clinicians who evaluated complex clinical cases and came to an agreement on what the right codes were.
Ambience’s AI platform for compliant documentation, CDI, and coding.
Courtesy of Ambience Healthcare
The company then recruited 18 different board-certified doctors and compared their performance on ICD-10 coding accuracy to the model’s performance. That comparison showed the Ambience technology performed 27% better than the physician baseline.
“It shows for the first time that an AI system can actually surpass clinician experts at a very, very important administrative task, especially in coding,” Fortuner said.
Ambience already has similar capabilities available for other medical codes like Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes, and Fortuner said it’s exploring how to tackle other areas like prior authorizations, utilization management and clinical trial matching.
The company’s new ICD-10 model will roll out to customers over the summer.
“Getting it right at the point of care is a fundamental change,” Morris said.