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On the road to electrifying vehicles, cars and small trucks are getting there. Big rigs, however, pose bigger hurdles.

The trouble with electrifying tractor-trailer trucks is that the tractor component needs more power than the current charging infrastructure can handle and the necessary charging time is long.

Major truck manufacturers like Volvo, Freightliner and Tesla are introducing electric tractor-trailer trucks, but that is still a tiny and inefficient market. Big rigs make up just 10% of the vehicles on the road, but they account for nearly 30% of total vehicle carbon emissions.

Now one startup, California-based Range Energy, is focused not on the tractor but the trailer. They are introducing electrified trailers that power and propel themselves so the tractor has less to pull.

“Everything that is built into the tractor is really built to manage the load of the trailer properly, and what we’re saying is, ‘Well, why don’t we do that directly through our Range system by electrifying the trailer in a way that has never been done before?'” said Ali Javidan, CEO of Range Energy.

The Range Energy system incorporates batteries, a motor that powers one of the trailer’s dual axles and what Javidan refers to as a ‘smart kingpin’ to improve the truck’s efficiency.

“When I push this button to activate the system, the trailer follows me,” Javidan said as he demonstrated the system. “It doesn’t matter if I’m an old Peterbilt semi-truck or a brand new Tesla semi or just me pulling on it with the system activated. The trailer’s mission is to make itself feel weightless.”

The electrified trailer can also refrigerate itself as well as power onboard communications and security systems. It does all of that at a fraction of the cost of diesel. 

“If we were to take one of these fleets that runs 3,000 trailers and run it through the range system and essentially incorporate the range system into their fleet, we’re looking at 100 million pounds of CO2 saved per year,” Javidan said. “But even better than that, it equates to about $50 million in fuel savings alone.”

Northern Refrigerated Transportation is piloting the Range trailers in California. The company has previously tried electric tractors but the long charging times were a hurdle, said Ricky Souza, COO at Northern Refrigerated Transportation.

Range Energy’s “trailers seem more of a natural fit because we have to load them, and we load them at night” while the trailers charge, Souza said. “So it’s not more dependent on a driver waiting for it.”

There are, however, some major roadblocks that Northern Refrigerated Transportation must overcome before the company can electrify its entire fleet of more than 300 trucks.

“There’s definitely some infrastructure challenges, like power to the buildings or properties and getting it, and the cost of the unit is more,” Souza said. “That’s part of doing the due diligence to see if you’ll make it back into fuel savings.”

Range Energy has raised $31.5 million so far, and it is backed by R7, UP.Partners, Trousdale Ventures and Yamaha Motor Ventures.

The appeal of Range Energy’s technology is the startup’s different approach to tackling the challenge of electrifying tractor-trailers, said Tyler Engh, R7’s founder and general manager.

“Seventy percent of all freight in the United States is done by trucks, and there’s no one touching a trailer, so if we can electrify the trailer, we could accelerate mass adoption for hybridization or electrification on current fleets that have diesel semis,” Engh said. “The size of what this company could become is exactly what venture capital is set up to do. It could be a humongous return for us.”

As in the EV market for cars, charging infrastructure is still not where it needs to be, but Javidan says trucking companies can leverage the power that’s available at loading docks, as Northern Refrigerated Transportation is doing. Javidan added that Range Energy is able to size the battery pack much closer to what you see in a passenger vehicle than what you see in the large commercial vehicles that are coming out from other big rig companies.

CNBC producer Lisa Rizzolo contributed to this piece.

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Mark Zuckerberg says Meta AI has 1 billion monthly active users

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Mark Zuckerberg says Meta AI has 1 billion monthly active users

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears at the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Meta’s AI assistant now has 1 billion monthly active users across the company’s family of apps, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday at the company’s annual shareholder meeting.

The “focus for this year is deepening the experience and making Meta AI the leading personal AI with an emphasis on personalization, voice conversations and entertainment,” Zuckerberg said.

The artificial intelligent assistant’s 1 billion milestone comes after the company in April released a standalone app for the tool.

The plan is for Meta to keep growing the product before building a business around it, Zuckerberg said on Wednesday. As Meta AI improves overtime, Zuckerberg said “there will be opportunities to either insert paid recommendations” or offer “a subscription service so that people can pay to use more compute.”

In February, CNBC reported that Meta was planning to debut a standalone Meta AI app during the second quarter and test a paid-subscription service akin to rival chat apps like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

“It may seem kind of funny that a billion monthly actives doesn’t seem like it’s at scale for us, but that’s where we’re at,” Zuckerberg told shareholders.

During the Meta shareholder meeting, investors voted on 14 different items related to the company’s business, nine of which were shareholder proposals covering topics such as child safety, greenhouse gas emissions and a proposed bitcoin treasury assessment.

Shareholder proposal 8, for example, was submitted by JLens, which is an investment advisor and affiliate of the Anti-Defamation League, and called for Meta to prepare an annual report detailing and addressing hate content, including antisemitism, on its services following January policy changes that relaxed content-moderation guidelines.

Early voting results on Wednesday showed the proposals that Meta’s board did not recommend were unlikely to pass, including one calling for the company to end its dual-class share structure, which gives Zuckerberg significant voting power. Meanwhile, the voting items that the board favored, including those pertaining to approving the company’s board of director nominees and an equity incentive plan, were likely to pass, based on the preliminary results.

Meta said final polling results will be released within four business days on the company’s website and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

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Salesforce turns in strong results and optimistic forecast

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Salesforce turns in strong results and optimistic forecast

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff participates in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, 2025.

Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Salesforce shares were volatile in extended trading on Wednesday after the sales and customer service software maker reported upbeat fiscal first-quarter results and guidance.

Here’s how the company performed relative to LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: $2.58 adjusted vs. 2.54 expected
  • Revenue: $9.83 billion vs. $9.75 billion expected

Salesforce’s revenue grew 7.6% year over year in the quarter, which ended on April 30, according to a statement. Net income of $1.54 billion, or $1.59 per share, was basically flat compared with $1.53 billion, or $1.56 per share, a year ago.

President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on goods imported into the U.S. in early April. Co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff sounded positive about the company’s results for the quarter anyway, pointing to its plan, announced on Tuesday, to buy data management company Informatica for $8 billion.

It would be Salesforce’s priciest acquisition since the $27.1 billion Slack deal in 2021. Slack marked the top end of the buyouts Salesforce had made under Benioff. Activist investors raised concerns about all the spending, in addition to slowing revenue growth.

Salesforce sprung into action, slashing 10% of its headcount. Benioff proclaimed that the board’s mergers and acquisitions committee had been disbanded. The company’s finance chief at the time said it would reach a margin expansion goal two years early. And Salesforce started paying dividends to shareholders.

Initial reception to the Informatica announcement was generally favorable. “Salesforce is paying a reasonable multiple for the asset, in our view, and the deal should be more easily digested by investors than some of the company’s large deals in the past (i.e. Slack),” Stifel analysts led by J. Parker Lane wrote in a note to clients. The investment bank has a buy rating on Salesforce shares.

During the fiscal first quarter, Salesforce introduced the AgentExchange marketplace for artificial intelligence agents.

Management sees $2.76 to $2.78 in adjusted earnings per share on $10.11 billion to $10.16 billion in revenue for the fiscal second quarter. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected $2.73 in adjusted earnings per share on $10.01 billion in revenue.

Salesforce bumped up its full-year forecast. It called for $11.27 to $11.33 in adjusted earnings per share and $41.0 billion to $41.3 billion in revenue, implying revenue growth between 8% and 9%. The LSEG consensus included net income of $11.16 per share and $40.82 billion in revenue. The guidance in February was $11.09 to $11.17 in adjusted earnings per share, with $40.5 billion to $40.9 billion in revenue.

As of Wednesday’s close, the stock had slipped about 18% so far in 2025, while the S&P index was unchanged.

Executives will discuss the results with analysts on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

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HP sinks 15% as company misses on earnings, guidance due to ‘added cost’ from tariffs

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HP sinks 15% as company misses on earnings, guidance due to 'added cost' from tariffs

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

HP reported second-quarter results that beat analysts’ estimates for revenue but missed on earnings and guidance, in part due to President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs. Shares sank 15% after the report.

Here’s how the company did versus analysts’ estimates compiled by LSEG:

  • Earnings per share: 71 cents adjusted vs. 80 cents expected
  • Revenue: $13.22 billion vs. $13.14 billion expected.

Revenue for the quarter increased 3.3% from $12.8 billion in the same period last year. HP reported net income of $406 million, or 42 cents per share, down from $607 million, or 61 cents per share, a year ago.

For its third quarter, HP said it expects to report adjusted earnings of 68 cents to 80 cents per share, missing the average analyst estimate of 90 cents, according to LSEG. Full-year adjusted earnings will be within the range of $3 to $3.30 per share, while analysts were expecting $3.49 per share.

HP said its outlook “reflects the added cost driven by the current U.S. tariffs,” as well as the associated mitigations.

“While results in the quarter were impacted by a dynamic regulatory environment, we responded quickly to accelerate the expansion of our manufacturing footprint and further reduce our cost structure,” HP CEO Enrique Lores said in a statement.

Lores told CNBC’s Steve Kovach that HP has increased production in Vietnam, Thailand, India, Mexico and the U.S. By the end of June, Lores said the company expects nearly all of its products sold in North America will be built outside of China.

“Through our actions, we expect to fully mitigate the increased trade-related costs by Q4,” Lores said in the interview.

HP will hold its quarterly call with investors at 5 p.m. ET.

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