SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster is seen on the launch pad, without the Starship atop, as it is prepared for launch from the company’s Boca Chica launchpad on an uncrewed test flight, near Brownsville, Texas, U.S. Feb. 27, 2025.
Joe Skipper | Reuters
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has attained authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly its massive Starship rocket once again, the space regulator announced Friday.
The Starship rocket broke up during the company’s seventh test flight in January. The explosion caused debris to rain down over Turks and Caicos, and forced several commercial flights to be diverted or delayed, CNBC previously reported.
The FAA granted the modified license to SpaceX, which has a $350 billion private market valuation, even though the company has yet to complete its mishap investigation, required after the January explosion. The space regulator has previously authorized flights by companies including SpaceX and Rocket Lab while mishap investigations were still underway, a spokesperson told CNBC by email.
After those fines, Musk threatened to sue the FAA for “regulatory overreach” but never filed a complaint.
Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, contributed nearly $300 million to help propel President Donald Trump back to the White House, and is now a central figure in the administration.
Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla and the owner of social media company X, leads the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which is implementing draconian staffing and budget cuts across the federal government, and targeting regulatory agencies that oversee Musk’s businesses.
Orange balls of light fly across the sky as debris from a SpaceX rocket launched in Texas is spotted over Turks and Caicos Islands on Jan. 16, 2025.
Marcus Haworth@marcusahaworth | Marcus Haworth Via Reuters
The role has afforded Musk and his DOGE staffers unprecedented access to federal computer systems and data including within the FAA. SpaceX has been selected to help overhaul the FAA’s air traffic control system, Trump’s Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy previously announced.
Senators Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., sent a letter on Friday to FAA’s acting administrator Chris Rocheleau, raising concerns about conflicts of interest.
SpaceX did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Starship, the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched, is critical to SpaceX’s ambitions. When it is stacked on the Super Heavy booster, Starship stands 403 feet tall and is about 30 feet in diameter. SpaceX has flown the full Starship rocket system on seven spaceflight tests so far since April 2023.
The company wrote in a social media post that it aims to conduct its eighth Starship test flight as soon as Monday, March 3.
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., during a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, not pictured, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, May 21, 2025.
Jim Lo Scalzo | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Tesla shares have dropped 7% from Friday’s closing price of $323.63to the $300.71 close on Tuesday ahead of the company’s second-quarter deliveries report.
Wall Street analysts are expecting Tesla to report deliveries of around 387,000 — a 13% decline compared to deliveries of nearly 444,000 a year ago, according to a consensus compiled by FactSet. Prediction market Kalshi told CNBC on Tuesday that its traders forecast deliveries of around 364,000.
Shares in the electric vehicle maker had been rising after Tesla started a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in late June and CEO Elon Musk boasted of its first “driverless delivery” of a car to a customer there.
The stock price took a turn after Musk on Saturday reignited a feud with President Donald Trump over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the massive spending bill that the commander-in-chief endorsed. The bill is now heading for a final vote in the House.
That legislation would benefit higher-income households in the U.S. while slashing spending on programs such as Medicaid and food assistance.
Musk did not object to cuts to those specific programs. However, Musk on X said the bill would worsen the U.S. deficit and raise the debt ceiling. The bill includes tax cuts that would add around $3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.
The Tesla CEO has also criticized aspects of the bill that would cut hundreds of billions of dollars in support for renewable energy development in the U.S. and phase out tax credits for electric vehicles.
Such changes could hurt Tesla as they are expected to lower EV sales by roughly 100,000 vehicles per year by 2035, according to think tank Energy Innovation.
The bill is also expected to reduce renewable energy development by more than 350 cumulative gigawatts in that same time period, according to Energy Innovation. That could pressure Tesla’s Energy division, which sells solar and battery energy storage systems to utilities and other clean energy project developers.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that Musk was, “upset that he’s losing his EV mandate,” but that the tech CEO could “lose a lot more than that.” Trump was alluding to the subsidies, incentives and contracts that Musk’s many businesses have relied on.
SpaceX has received over $22 billion from work with the federal government since 2008, according to FedScout, which does federal spending and government contract research. That includes contracts from NASA, the U.S. Air Force and Space Force, among others.
Tesla has reported $11.8 billion in sales of “automotive regulatory credits,” or environmental credits, since 2015, according to an evaluation of the EV maker’s financial filings by Geoff Orazem, CEO of FedScout.
These incentives are largely derived from federal and state regulations in the U.S. that require automakers to sell some number of low-emission vehicles or buy credits from companies like Tesla, which often have an excess.
Regulatory credit sales go straight to Tesla’s bottom line. Credit revenue amounted to approximately 60% of Tesla’s net income in the second quarter of 2024.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos leaves Aman Venice hotel, on the second day of the wedding festivities of Bezos and journalist Lauren Sanchez, in Venice, Italy, June 27, 2025.
Yara Nardi | Reuters
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos unloaded more than 3.3 million shares of his company in a sale valued at roughly $736.7 million, according to a financial filing on Tuesday.
The stock sale is part of a previously arranged trading plan adopted by Bezos in March. Under that arrangement, Bezos plans to sell up to 25 million shares of Amazon over a period ending May 29, 2026.
Bezos, who stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021 but remains chairman, has been selling stock in the company at a regular clip in recent years, though he’s still the largest individual shareholder. He adopted a similar trading plan in February 2024 to sell up to 50 million shares of Amazon stock through late January of this year.
Bezos previously said he’d sell about $1 billion in Amazon stock each year to fund his space exploration company, Blue Origin. He’s also donated shares to Day 1 Academies, his nonprofit that’s building a chain of Montessori-inspired preschools across several states.
The most recent stock sale comes after Bezos and Lauren Sanchez tied the knot last week in a lavish wedding in Venice. The star-studded celebration, which took place over three days and sparked protests from some local residents, was estimated to cost around $50 million.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai addresses the crowd during Google’s annual I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California on May 20, 2025.
Camille Cohen | AFP | Getty Images
The Google Doodle is Alphabet’s most valuable piece of real estate, and on Tuesday, the company used that space to promote “AI Mode,” its latest AI search product.
Google’s Chrome browser landing pages and Google’s home page featured an animated image that, when clicked, leads users to AI Mode, the company’s latest search product. The doodle image also includes a share button.
The promotion of AI Mode on the Google Doodle comes as the tech company makes efforts to expose more users to its latest AI features amid pressure from artificial intelligence startups. That includes OpenAI which makes ChatGPT, Anthropic which makes Claude and Perplexity AI, which bills itself as an “AI-powered answer engine.”
Google’s “Doodle” Tuesday directed users to its search chatbot-like experience “AI Mode”
AI Mode is Google’s chatbot-like experience for complex user questions. The company began displaying AI Mode alongside its search results page in March.
“Search whatever’s on your mind and get AI-powered responses,” the product description reads when clicked from the home page.
AI Mode is powered by Google’s flagship AI model Gemini, and the tool has rolled out to more U.S. users since its launch. Users can ask AI Mode questions using text, voice or images. Google says AI Mode makes it easier to find answers to complex questions that might have previously required multiple searches.
In May, Google tested the AI Mode feature directly beneath the Google search bar, replacing the “I’m Feeling Lucky” widget — a place where Google rarely makes changes.