A Tesla Cybertruck is parked outside of a dealership on November 14, 2024 in Austin, Texas.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
Tesla shares sank more than 8% on Wednesday, notching their steepest drop since before Donald Trump’s election victory last month, which sparked a sharp rally in the stock.
Tesla closed at $440.13, and is still up 75% since Election Day on Nov. 5. Last week, the stock climbed to a record, surpassing its prior high reached in 2021. Ahead of Wednesday’s drop, it had continued going up, closing at a high of $479.86 on Tuesday.
“Most investors we speak to have been stunned by the magnitude of the rally, and are increasingly confused on how to handle the stock given how widely disconnected it appears to be from fundamentals,” analysts at Barclays wrote in a report on Wednesday. They have the equivalent of a hold rating on the stock and a $270 price target.
The pullback coincided with a steep drop in the broader market, including a 3.6% plunge in the Nasdaq, the second-worst day of the year for the tech-heavy index.
Tesla is coming off a 38% rally in November, its best monthly performance since January 2023 and its 10th best on record. CEO Elon Musk was a major Trump backer, pouring in $277 million primarily into his campaign effort, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
Now Musk, the world’s richest person, is set to to lead the Trump administration’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” which is expected to function as an advisory office, alongside onetime Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
His new role could give Musk, who also runs SpaceX and owns social media company X, influence over federal agencies’ budgets, staffing and the ability to push for the elimination of inconvenient regulations. Musk said during a Tesla earnings call in October that he intended to use his sway with Trump to establish a “federal approval process for autonomous vehicles.”
While Tesla still doesn’t produce robotaxis or operate driverless ride-hailing services, its major domestic competitor Waymo on Wednesday said it conducted over 4 million paid robotaxi trips in 2024 as it scaled its commercial operations in the U.S.
“Tesla is the only Elon Musk company that is publicly traded and it has often served as a proxy for an investment in Musk himself,” the Barclays analysts wrote. “This value has understandably increased, but this further exacerbates the already-high key man risk in Tesla stock, in our view.”
On Wednesday, a Quinnipiac poll found 53% of voters in the U.S. do not approve of Musk “playing a prominent role in the Trump administration.” The split was massive across party and gender lines — only 31% of women surveyed said they approved of Musk taking a big role in the next administration, and only 5% of Democrats approved.
Musk has also complained in recent days that the SEC has issued a “settlement demand” tied to his sale of Tesla shares in 2022 as he was pursuing the purchase of Twitter, now known as X.
A spokesperson for the SEC declined to discuss the matter, telling CNBC that the agency conducts probes “on a confidential basis to preserve the integrity of its investigative process.”
Tesla is due to report its fourth-quarter and year-end vehicle deliveries in January. Without a major new vehicle added to its lineup since Cybertruck deliveries began in November 2023, Tesla has been working to drive sales of its EVs with an array of incentives, like 0% financing.
Klarna is synonymous with the “buy now, pay later” trend of making a purchase and deferring payment until the end of the month or paying over interest-free monthly installments.
Nikolas Kokovlis | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Swedish fintech Klarna — primarily known for its popular “buy now, pay later” services — is launching its own Visa debit card, as it looks to diversify its business beyond short-term credit products.
The company on Tuesday announced that it’s piloting the product, dubbed Klarna Card, with some customers in the U.S. ahead of a planned countrywide rollout. Klarna Card will launch in Europe later this year, the firm added.
The move highlights an ongoing effort from Klarna ahead of a highly anticipated initial public offering to shift its image away from the poster child of the buy now, pay later (BNPL) trend and be viewed as more of an all-encompassing banking player. BNPL products are interest-free loans that allow people to pay off the full price of an item over a series of monthly installments.
“We want Americans to start to associate us with not only buy now, pay later, but [with] the PayPal wallet type of experience that we have, and also the neobank offering that we offer,” Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told CNBC’s “The Exchange” last month. “We are basically a neobank to a large degree, but people associate us still strongly with buy now, pay later.”
Klarna’s newly announced card comes with an account that can hold Federal Insurance Deposit Corporation (FDIC)-insured deposits and facilitate withdrawals — similar to checking accounts offered by mainstream banks.
Notably, Klarna Card is powered by Visa Flexible Credential, a service from the American card network that lets users access multiple funding sources — like debit, credit and BNPL — from a single payment card. It’s a debit card by default, but users can also toggle to one of Klarna’s “pay later” products, including “Pay in 4” and “Pay in 30 Days.”
Klarna is pushing deeper into a fiercely competitive consumer banking market. The U.S. banking industry is dominated by heavyweights such as JPMorgan Chase & Co and Bank of America, while fintech challengers like Chime have also attracted millions of customers.
While Klarna has a full banking license in the European Union, it does not have its own U.S. bank license. However, the firm says it’s able to offer FDIC-insured accounts through a partnership with WebBank, a small financial institution based in Salt Lake City, Utah.
SXSW had branding all around the neighbourhood of Shoreditch in London.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
South by Southwest (SXSW) may be a well-known event in the United States, but it certainly hasn’t reached the same level of recognition in Britain.
“What’s that?” asked a pedestrian who was passing by a SXSW London sign.
SXSW is a festival held in Austin, Texas, every year that brings together big names in music, film, art and technology. The organizers have brought the event to London for the first time this week, and CNBC took at look at what’s going on.
CNBC’s Tania Bryer moderated a discussion with London Mayor Sadiq Khan who during an opening speech made the pitch for the city as a “hub for talent, trade, tech and innovation.”
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan speaks with moderator Tania Bryer during the “Opening Remarks – Welcome to SXSW London” panel discussion on the first day of SXSW London 2025 at The Truman Brewery on June 2, 2025.
Jack Taylor | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
Khan took veiled swipes at the U.S. President Donald Trump and his trade policies and pitched London as open for business.
“So at the time when there’s so much uncertainty and political turmoil across the pond, defined by an inward looking mentality, I’m going to reach out to international investors, businesses and creators to say that London offers you the opposite,” Khan said, according to Deadline.
SXSW is being held in various venues across the creative neighborhood of Shoreditch which is also close to Old Street, a key tech hub in the early days of London’s startup scene. Shoreditch was taken over by SXSW London branding, from murals to signs on lampposts.
SXSW had murals all over Shoreditch, London, which advertised the event.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
Big names are in attendance, such as “Game of Thrones” star Sophie Turner and actor and musician Idris Elba. On the tech front, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis spoke, as did Thomas Wolf, co-founder of artificial intelligence firm Hugging Face.
$24 socks and free chocolate
So what was the experience like? The day started with me picking up my press pass and receiving an SXSW tote bag. There was a schedule and map in there and bar of SXSW-branded Tony’s Chocolonely.
I made my way to Shoreditch Electric, a venue I just found out is home to the National Centre for Circus Arts. I watched a session where Thomas Wolf of Hugging Face discussed the progress of open-source artificial intelligence models and the future of robotics. Open source is a big deal in AI right now because of the strong performance of those models, especially out of China, which are free to use.
Shoreditch Electric hosted some talks during SXSW London. The courtyard was a place for attendees to sit in the sun.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
The venue was an industrial-style, exposed brick building. Just outside was a coffee bar, which was perfect for the sunny weather in London on Monday.
I then walked over to the Truman Brewery, where the main stage of the conference was. Outside the entrance were lots of food trucks and, of course, big brand displays from sunglasses firm Ray-Ban and electric car company Polestar, which had live music performances throughout the day.
Polestar and Ray-Ban took the chance to advertise their products during SXSW London, 2025.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
Then there was the official merchandise store which was selling a pair of SXSW-branded socks for £18 ($24) and a T-shirt for £30.
After a quick security check, I was in the Truman Brewery in time for a session from Hassabis. I decided to try to watch it on stage but the line to get in was long, even about half an hour before the talk. So I decided to watch it on a screen in the media lounge, which had pretty decent sandwiches.
The entrance to the Truman Brewery where the main stage of SXSW London was located.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
AI everywhere
AI was certainly a big theme, with companies like Hugging Face, Google DeepMind and even Wayve, a U.K. driverless car startup backed by SoftBank, discussing the future of the technology.
Hassabis spoke about artificial general intelligence (AGI), which is generally understood as AI that is smarter than humans. He said AGI would be “bigger” than the Industrial Revolution and the internet in terms of its impact on society. He also warned about the need to develop this technology responsibly.
The DeepMind founder also said that over the next five to 10 years, AI tools are going to “supercharge technically savvy people who are at the forefront of using these technologies, but combining it with creativity and other skills.”
“I think they’re going to be able to achieve superhuman things,” Hassabis said.
There was a long queue of attendees waiting to get into the next session where Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis was about to speak at SXSW London, 2025.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
There are lots of big names performing throughout the week, including R&B star Tems — but they’re far too late in the evening and don’t sync up with my 5 a.m. wake-up call. So you’ll have to look on social media to see what kind of vibe those events have.
Uber said Monday that Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, one of the company’s longest-tenured top executives and the head of is delivery business is leaving after almost 13 years.
Gore-Coty joined Uber as a general manager in France in 2012, and worked his way up to become vice president of mobility for the Europe and Middle East region four years later, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was named senior vice president of delivery in 2021.
“It’s hard to imagine Uber without Pierre, because there hasn’t been much Uber without Pierre,” CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a statement that was part of a regulatory filing. “As one of our first employees, he was a driving force behind our global Mobility expansion and stepped up to run Uber Eats just weeks before the first Covid lockdowns.”
The company didn’t say what Gore-Coty plans to do next.
Uber also said that Andrew Macdonald, the company’s senior vice president of mobility and business operations, will become chief operating officer, reporting to Khosrowshahi. Macdonald, 41, will oversee the company’s global mobility, delivery and autonomous businesses in addition to “key cross-platform functions like membership, customer support, safety, and more,” the filing said.
Gore-Coty is one of 11 people listed on Uber’s executive team page. Macdonald is the only one who has worked at the company longer. He joined in May 2012, four months before Gore-Coty, according to LinkedIn.
“These last nearly 13 years have been the ride of a lifetime,” Gore-Coty said in the statement. “It was a true team effort, and I’m so proud of what we’ve built and the impact we’ve had on daily life in cities around the world.”
Uber shares were little changed in extended trading after closing on Monday at $83.64. The stock is up 39% this year, while the Nasdaq is about flat.
Last month, the company reported first-quarter results that beat on earnings but missed on revenue. A month earlier, the Federal Trade Commission sued Uber, alleging that the company engaged in “deceptive billing and cancellation practices” related to its Uber One subscription service.
In an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Khosrowshahi characterized the lawsuit as “a bit of a head-scratcher for us.”