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White House Senior Advisor, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attends a cabinet meeting held by U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on March 24, 2025 in Washington, DC. 

Win McNamee | Getty Images

Tesla’s stock just wrapped up its worst quarter since 2022 and suffered its third-steepest drop in the company’s 15 years on the public market.

Shares of the electric vehicle maker plunged 36% in the first three months of the year.

The last time Tesla had a worse stretch was at the end of 2022, when the stock cratered 54%. That quarter included CEO Elon Musk’s sale of more than $22 billion worth of Tesla shares to finance his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, later renamed X. On Friday, Musk said his artificial intelligence startup xAI has acquired X in a deal valuing the social media company at $33 billion.

Tesla’s first-quarter drop wiped out over $460 billion in market cap. The majority of the quarter overlaps with Musk’s time in the second Trump administration, leading an effort to slash government spending and regulations, and terminating tens of thousands of federal employees.

Musk is leading what’s known as the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. As of Monday, the DOGE website claimed that, through March 24, the program had notched $140 billion in federal spending reductions, a number equal to less than one-third of Tesla’s valuation loss in the first quarter.

“My Tesla stock and the stock of everyone who holds Tesla has gone, went roughly in half,” Musk said on Sunday night at a rally he held in Green Bay, Wisconsin, to promote the right-wing judge he’s backing for Tuesday’s state supreme court election. “This is a very expensive job is what I’m saying.”

DOGE’s website contained numerous errors previously, causing the group to revise its own claims about its savings. And many of Musk’s allegations about waste, fraud and abuse in the federal budget have also been shown to be misleading or false.

Musk recently said on a Fox News interview with Bret Baier, that he and DOGE plan to slash $1 trillion from total federal spending levels by May.

Musk’s role in the White House is one factor weighing on Tesla’s stock, as it’s contributing to waves of protests, boycotts and violent attacks on Tesla stores and vehicles around the world. President Trump’s automotive tariffs are also a concern as they involve Tesla’s key suppliers, notably Mexico and China. Tariff fears sparked a broader selloff in tech stocks, with the Nasdaq closing the quarter down 10%, its biggest drop since 2022.

Tesla faces other headwinds, such as a steep decline in new vehicle sales, and pressure to deliver on Musk’s promises for robotaxis while rivals extend their lead in the market.

Musk has said Tesla will launch a driverless ride-hailing business in Austin, Texas in June, but some analysts are voicing skepticism about the company’s ability to meet that deadline.

For about a decade, Musk has promised that existing Tesla cars can be turned into robotaxi-ready vehicles with one more software upgrade. On the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, Musk said that a forthcoming version of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software will require a hardware upgrade as well.

While the first-quarter stock drop has been painful for shareholders, they’ve experienced similar volatility in the recent past. In the first quarter of 2024, the shares plunged 29% due to declining auto sales and increased competition. But the stock rallied the rest of the year to finish up 63%.

“Long term, I think Tesla stock is going to do fine,” Musk said at the Green Bay rally. “So, you know, maybe it’s a buying opportunity.”

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Google promotes ‘AI Mode’ on home page ‘Doodle’

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Google promotes ‘AI Mode’ on home page 'Doodle'

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.

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How a beer-making process is used to make cleaner disposable diapers

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How a beer-making process is used to make cleaner disposable diapers

Clean Start: Startup focuses on making diapers renewable

Disposable diapers are a massive environmental offender. Roughly 300,000 of them are sent to landfills or incinerated every minute, according to the World Economic Forum, and they take hundreds of years to decompose. It’s a $60 billion business.

One alternative approach has been compostable diapers, which can be made out of wood pulp or bamboo. But composting services aren’t universally available and some of the products are less absorbent than normal nappies, critics say.

A growing number of parents are also turning to cloth diapers, but they only make up about 20% of the U.S. market.

ZymoChem is attacking the diaper problem from a different angle. Harshal Chokhawala, CEO of ZymoChem, said that 60% to 80% of a typical diaper consists of fossil-based plastics. And half of that is an ingredient called super absorbent polymer, or SAP.

“What we have created is a low carbon footprint bio-based and biodegradable version of this super absorbent polymer,” Chokhawala said.

ZymoChem, with operations in San Leandro, California, and Burlington, Vermont, invented this new type of absorbent by using a fermentation process to convert a renewable resource — sugar — from corn into biodegradable materials. It’s similar to making beer.

“We’re at a point now where we’re very close to being at cost parity with fossil based manufacturing of super absorbents,” said Chokhawala.

The company’s drop-in absorbents can be added into other diapers, which makes it different from environmentally conscious companies like Charlie Banana, Kudos and Hiro, which sell their own brand of diapers.

ZymoChem doesn’t yet have a diaper product on the market. But Lindy Fishburne, managing partner at Breakout Ventures and an investor in the company, says it’s a scalable model.

“Being able to build and grow with biology allows us to unlock a circular economy and a supply chain that is no longer petro-derived, which opens up the opportunities of where you can manufacture and how you secure supply chains,” Fishburne said.

Other investors include Toyota Ventures, GS Futures, KDT Ventures, Cavallo Ventures and Lululemon.  The company has raised a total of $35 million.

The Lululemon partnership shows that it’s not just about diapers. ZymoChem’s bio-based materials can also be used in other hygiene products and in bio-based nylon. Lululemon recently said it will use it in some of its leggings, which were traditionally made with petroleum.

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Figma files for IPO on NYSE, plans to ‘take big swings’ with acquisitions

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Figma files for IPO on NYSE, plans to 'take big swings' with acquisitions

Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO of Figma, appears at the Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco on May 9, 2024.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Design software company Figma filed for an IPO on Tuesday, and plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker symbol “FIG.”

The offering would be one of the hotly anticipated IPOs in recent years given Figma’s growth rate and its high private market valuation. In late 2023, a $20 billion acquisition agreement with Adobe was scrapped due to regulatory concerns in the U.K. That led Adobe to pay Figma a $1 billion termination fee.

Revenue in the first quarter increased 46% to $228.2 million from $156.2 million in the same period a year ago, according to Figma’s prospectus. The company recorded a net income of $44.9 million, compared to $13.5 million a year earlier.

As of March 31, Figma had around 450,000 customers. Of those, 1,031 were contributing at least $100,000 a year to annual revenue, up 47% from a year earlier. Clients include Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Netflix. More than half of revenue comes from outside the U.S.

Figma didn’t say how many shares it plans to sell in the IPO. The company was valued at $12.5 billion in a tender offer last year, and in April it announced that it had confidentially filed for an IPO with the SEC.

Wall Street banks predicted a rush of IPOs after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election in November following a dry spell dating back to late 2021, when soaring inflation and rising interest rates pushed investors out of risky assets. While President Trump’s announcement of sweeping tariffs in April roiled markets and led a number of companies to delay their plans, activity has been picking up of late.

Stablecoin issuer Circle doubled in value in its early June debut and is now up more than sixfold from its IPO price for a market cap of almost $43 billion. Online banking company Chime also debuted in June, following Hinge Health’s IPO in May. Artificial infrastructure provider CoreWeave, which went public in March, jumped 46% in June and has quadrupled since its offering.

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Buy now, pay later company Klarna, based in the U.K., filed for a U.S. IPO in March, as did ticket marketplace StubHub.

Figma was founded in 2012 by CEO Dylan Field, 33, and Evan Wallace, and is based in San Francisco. The company had 1,646 employees as of March 31.

Before establishing Figma, Field spent over two years at Brown University, where he met Wallace. Field then took a Thiel Fellowship “to pursue entrepreneurial projects,” according to the filing. The two-year program that Founders Fund partner Peter Thiel established in 2011 gives young entrepreneurs a $200,000 grant along with support from founders and investors, according to an online description.

Field is the biggest individual owner of Figma, with 56.6 million Class B shares and 51.1% of voting power ahead of the IPO. He said in a letter to investors that it was time for Figma to buck the “trend of many amazing companies staying privately indefinitely.”

Databricks, SpaceX and Stripe are among high-valued companies that are still private.

“Some of the obvious benefits such as good corporate hygiene, brand awareness, liquidity, stronger currency and access to capital markets apply,” he wrote, explaining the decision. “More importantly, I like the idea of our community sharing in the ownership of Figma — and the best way to accomplish this is through public markets.”

Field added that as a public company, investors should “expect us to take big swings,” including through acquisitions. In April Figma bought the assets and team of an unnamed technology company for $14 million, according to the filing.

The IPO will also mark another much-needed win for Silicon Valley venture firms, which are in need of returns after the multi-year slump. Index Ventures is the largest outside shareholder, with a 17% stake before the offering, according to the filing. Greylock owns 16%, Kleiner Perkins controls 14% and Sequoia has a stake of 8.7%.

Figma said it faces “intense competition” and that loss of market share would “adversely affect our business,” but didn’t name any specific competitors.

Over 13 million people use Figma per month, and only one-third of them are designers, according to the filing. In March the company announced Figma Sites, a tool that turns designs into working websites. It’s one of a few new products that diversify the company away from its collaborative service for crafting app and website designs.

As of March 31, Figma had $1.54 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities.

Using its cash, Figma has begun investing in digital currencies. In 2024, Figma’s board authorized a $55 million investment into a Bitwise Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. As of March 31, the holding was worth $69.5 million, according to the filing. In May, the board approved a $30 million investment in Bitcoin, and Figma spent the money on USD Coin, which is a stablecoin.

Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are leading the deal along with Allen and Co. and JPMorgan Chase.

Correction: A prior version of this story had the incorrect stock exchange in the headline.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy and Jonathan Vanian contributed to this report.

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