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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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Britain at risk of losing ground to rival fintech and crypto hubs, execs warn

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Britain at risk of losing ground to rival fintech and crypto hubs, execs warn

Workers cross a junction near the Bank of England (BOE) in the City of London, UK, on Tuesday, April 8, 2025. 

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

LONDON — Britain is at risk of losing budding fintech and cryptocurrency entrepreneurs to rival hubs if it doesn’t address pressing regulation and funding challenges, according to industry leaders.

Several crypto bosses told CNBC this week that the U.K. has created an unfavorable environment for fintech and crypto. They argued that the local regulator takes too strict an approach to registering new firms, and that pension funds managing trillions of pounds are too risk-averse

Whereas a decade ago the U.K. was seen as being at “the forefront in terms of promoting competitiveness and innovation,” today things “have shifted more towards prioritizing safety and soundness to an extent where growth has been held behind,” according to Jaidev Janardana, CEO of British digital bank Zopa.

“If I look at the speed of innovation, I do feel that the U.S. is ahead — although they have their own challenges. But look at Singapore, Hong Kong — again, you see much more rapid innovation,” Janardana told CNBC. “I think we are still ahead of the EU, but we can’t remain complacent with that.”

Zopa CEO: Fintechs face challenges when it comes to scaling in the UK

Tim Levene, CEO of venture capital firm Augmentum Fintech, said entrepreneurs face challenges attracting funding in the U.K. and could be tempted to start their founding journeys in other regions, like Asia and the Middle East.

“We’re scrambling around looking for pots of capital in the U.K., where currently it would be more fruitful to go to the Gulf, to go to the U.S., to go to Australia, or elsewhere in Asia, and that that doesn’t feel right,” Levene told CNBC.

Lisa Jacobs, CEO of business lending platform Funding Circle, said that the negative impacts of Brexit are still being felt by the U.K. fintech industry — particularly when it comes to attracting overseas talent.

“I think it is right that we’re paranoid about other locations,” she told CNBC. “It is right that we are trying to — as an industry, as government — make the U.K. still that great place to set up. We have all the ingredients there, because we’ve got the ecosystem, we do have this talent setting up new businesses. But it needs to continue. We can’t rest on our laurels.”

Crypto rules unclear

The U.K. is home to a vibrant financial technology sector, with firms like Monzo and Revolut among those scaling to become challengers to traditional banks.

Industry insiders attribute their rapid rise in part to innovation-friendly rules that allowed tech startups to apply for — and secure — licenses to offer banking and electronic money services with greater ease.

Businesses operating in the world of crypto are frustrated that the same hasn’t happened yet for their industry.

“Other jurisdictions have started to seize the opportunity,” Cassie Craddock, U.K. and Europe managing director at blockchain firm Ripple, told CNBC.

The U.S., for example, has adopted a more pro-crypto stance under President Donald Trump, with the Securities and Exchange Commission dropping several high-profile legal cases against major crypto businesses.

The EU, meanwhile, has led the way when it comes to laying out clear rules for the industry with its Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation.

“The U.S. is driving global tailwinds for the industry,” Craddock said, adding: “MiCA came into force in the EU at the end of last year, while Singapore, Hong Kong and the UAE are moving full steam ahead with pro-industry reforms,” she added.

The U.K. on Tuesday laid out draft proposals for regulating crypto firms — however, industry insiders say the devil will be in the detail when it comes to addressing more complex technical issues, such as reserve requirements for stablecoins.

Rules on stablecoins unclear

Coinbase UK boss: Crypto industry needs 'smart' regulation

Another issue faced by crypto companies is that of being “debanked” by high street banks, according to Keith Grose, head of U.K. at Coinbase.

“Debanking is a huge issue — you can’t get bank accounts if you’re a company or individual who works in crypto,” Keith Grose, Coinbase’s U.K. head, told CNBC. “You can’t build the future of the financial system here if we don’t have that level playing field.”

A survey by Startup Coalition, Global Digital Finance and the U.K. Cryptoasset Business Council of more than 80 crypto firms published in January found that half were denied bank accounts or had existing ones closed by major banks.

“I think the U.K. will get it right — but there is a risk if you get it wrong that you drive innovation to other markets,” Coinbase’s Grose told CNBC.

“This is such a fast developing space — stablecoins grew 300% last year. They’re already doing more volume than Visa and Mastercard,” he added. “I think if you deliver smart regulation here, stablecoins can be a foundational part of our payment ecosystem in the U.K. going forward.”

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Satya Nadella says as much as 30% of Microsoft code is written by AI

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Satya Nadella says as much as 30% of Microsoft code is written by AI

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg (L) speaks with Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella after posing for a family picture with guests who attend the “Tech for Good” Summit at the Elysee Palace in Paris, on May 23, 2018.

Charles Platiau | AFP | Getty Images

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Tuesday said that as much as 30% of the company’s code is now written by artificial intelligence.

“I’d say maybe 20%, 30% of the code that is inside of our repos today and some of our projects are probably all written by software,” Nadella said during a conversation before a live audience with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The pair of CEOs were speaking at Meta’s inaugural LlamaCon AI developer event in Menlo Park, California. Nadella added that the amount of code being written by AI at Microsoft is going up steadily. 

Nadella asked Zuckerberg how much of Meta’s code was coming from AI. Zuckerberg said he didn’t know the exact figure off the top of his head, but he said Meta is building an AI model that can in turn build future versions of the company’s Llama family of AI models.

“Our bet is sort of that in the next year probably … maybe half the development is going to be done by AI, as opposed to people, and then that will just kind of increase from there,” Zuckerberg said.

Microsoft and Meta together employ tens of thousands of software developers, but they’re the latest companies to discuss how AI is replacing some of the work written by human software developers. 

Since OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, people have turned to AI for a number of tasks, including customer service work, generating sales pitches and software development itself. 

Google CEO Sundar Pichai in October said that more than 25% of new code was written by AI. Earlier this month, Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke told employees that they will have to prove AI cannot do a job before asking for more headcount. Similarly, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn on Monday announced in a memo that the language-teaching company will gradually turn to AI in lieu of human contractors. 

Earlier this month CNBC and other outlets reported that OpenAI was in talks to acquire Windsurf, a startup with “vibe coding” software that spits out whole programs with a few words of input. The dream is that with machines helping to write code, organizations will be able to produce more and better software.

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Samsung flags uncertain economic climate after smartphone, chip sales power quarterly results beat

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Samsung flags uncertain economic climate after smartphone, chip sales power quarterly results beat

Photo illustration showing the Samsung Group company logo displayed on a smartphone screen.

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Samsung Electronics‘ operating profit and revenue beat analysts’ estimates Wednesday, as sales of its flagship Galaxy S25 smartphones as well as memory chips rose.

The South Korean company posted a record quarterly revenue, up 10% from a year earlier, while its first-quarter operating profit climbed 1.5%.

Here are Samsung’s first-quarter results compared with LSEG SmartEstimates, which are weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate:

  • Revenue: 79.1 trillion Korean won ($55.4 billion) vs. 78.1 trillion Korean won
  • Operating profit: 6.7 trillion Korean won vs. 6.4 trillion Korean won

First-quarter revenue marginally topped Samsung’s forecast of 79 trillion Korean won, while operating profit also came in higher than the company’s expectations of 6.6 trillion Korean won.

Samsung is a leading manufacturer of memory chips, which are utilized in devices such as laptops and servers, and is also the world’s second-largest smartphone maker.

The company flagged macroeconomic uncertainties due to trade tensions and a slowdown in global growth. Samsung expects performance to improve in the second half of the year, “assuming that the uncertainties are diminished.”

South Korea-listed shares of Samsung Electronics were trading down about 0.4%.

Memory business

A report from Counterpoint Research earlier this month said that SK Hynix had overtaken Samsung in overall DRAM market revenue for the first time, with a 36% global market share as compared to Samsung’s 34%.

The report added that this had resulted, in part, from SK Hynix’s dominance in high bandwidth memory or HBM — a type of DRAM used in artificial intelligence servers in which chips are vertically stacked to save space and reduce power consumption.

SK Hynix last week topped quarterly revenue and operating profit estimates on strong demand for its high bandwidth memory offerings.

In its first quarter earnings, Samsung said it experienced deferred HBM demand from customers anticipating the rollout of its latest HBM products.

For the current quarter, Samsung anticipates continued strong demand for AI servers and will seek to strengthen its position in high-value-added products, including HBM. 

Smartphones 

Samsung’s mobile experience and networks businesses, tasked with developing and selling smartphones, tablets, wearables and other devices, reported a increase in sales and profit from the prior year and quarter.

The company credited the growth to the launch of its latest Galaxy S25 smartphone series, which includes AI features.

In the current quarter, the company plans to sustain sales through the launch of a new Galaxy S25 Edge smartphone and said it will continue to expand the AI-powered features offered on its smartphone lineup.

Correction: This story has been revised to reflect that operating profit in the chip segment declined both on a quarter-on-quarter as well as year-on-year basis.

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