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Tesla CEO Elon Musk wears a ‘Trump Was Right About Everything!’ hat, as he, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe attend a cabinet meeting at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 24, 2025. 

Carlos Barria | Reuters

Tesla is set to report first-quarter earnings on Tuesday after market close.

Here’s what Wall Street is expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

  • Earnings per share: 39 cents
  • Revenue: $21.11 billion

Tesla is expected to report a slight revenue decline from $21.3 billion in the same quarter a year earlier. However, investors are going to be more focused on what the future holds after concerns about tariffs and CEO Elon Musk’s close ties to the White House pushed the stock price down 44% so far this year as of Monday’s close.

Earlier this month, Tesla reported a 13% decline in deliveries to 336,681. Tesla blamed the lower deliveries, in part, on the need to suspend production temporarily at its factories while it upgraded lines to start manufacturing a refreshed version of its popular Model Y electric SUVs.

Deliveries are the closest approximation of vehicle sales reported by Tesla but are not precisely defined in the company’s shareholder communications.

At an all-hands meeting with employees last month, Musk tried to reassure staffers that they were still in good hands, and to “hang onto your stock.” He pointed to the popularity of the Model Y, and Tesla’s potential in robotics, artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicle technology.

At the meeting, Musk also made light of the backlash against Tesla elicited by his work for President Donald Trump to reduce the size of the federal government, and his endorsements of Germany’s anti-immigrant AfD party, along with other political rhetoric and antics.

“If you read the news it feels like, you know, Armageddon,” Musk said on a livestream of the employees meeting. “It’s like, I can’t walk past the TV without seeing a Tesla on fire.” He followed up saying, “This is psycho, stop being psycho!”

That was before Trump’s announcement earlier this month of widespread tariffs, the one area where Musk has publicly broken with the Trump administration. On X, he called Peter Navarro, Trump’s top trade advisor and tariff proponent, a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks.”

Tesla stands to take a significant hit from the president’s proposed tariffs, assuming they don’t get rolled back. Tesla manufactures cars in the U.S. for domestic sales so it’s not subject to the 25% tariff on imported autos, but the hefty levies on other components and materials could be severe.

Tesla relies on suppliers in Mexico and China for items like automotive glass, printed circuit boards and battery cells, among other parts essential for the production of its cars. The company has sought an exemption from the U.S. trade representative for equipment imported from China that it uses in its factories.

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Figure AI sued by whistleblower who warned that startup’s robots could ‘fracture a human skull’

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Figure AI sued by whistleblower who warned that startup's robots could 'fracture a human skull'

Startup Figure AI is developing general-purpose humanoid robots.

Figure AI

Figure AI, an Nvidia-backed developer of humanoid robots, was sued by the startup’s former head of product safety who alleged that he was wrongfully terminated after warning top executives that the company’s robots “were powerful enough to fracture a human skull.”

Robert Gruendel, a principal robotic safety engineer, is the plaintiff in the suit filed Friday in a federal court in the Northern District of California. Gruendel’s attorneys describe their client as a whistleblower who was fired in September, days after lodging his “most direct and documented safety complaints.”

The suit lands two months after Figure was valued at $39 billion in a funding round led by Parkway Venture Capital. That’s a 15-fold increase in valuation from early 2024, when the company raised a round from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, and Microsoft.

In the complaint, Gruendel’s lawyers say the plaintiff warned Figure CEO Brett Adcock and Kyle Edelberg, chief engineer, about the robot’s lethal capabilities, and said one “had already carved a ¼-inch gash into a steel refrigerator door during a malfunction.”

The complaint also says Gruendel warned company leaders not to “downgrade” a “safety road map” that he had been asked to present to two prospective investors who ended up funding the company.

Gruendel worried that a “product safety plan which contributed to their decision to invest” had been “gutted” the same month Figure closed the investment round, a move that “could be interpreted as fraudulent,” the suit says.

The plaintiff’s concerns were “treated as obstacles, not obligations,” and the company cited a “vague ‘change in business direction’ as the pretext” for his termination, according to the suit.

Gruendel is seeking economic, compensatory and punitive damages and demanding a jury trial.

Figure didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did attorneys for Gruendel.

The humanoid robot market remains nascent today, with companies like Tesla and Boston Dynamics pursuing futuristic offerings, alongside Figure, while China’s Unitree Robotics is preparing for an IPO. Morgan Stanley said in a report in May that adoption is “likely to accelerate in the 2030s” and could top $5 trillion by 2050.

Read the filing here:

AI is turbocharging the evolution of humanoid robots, says Agility Robotics CEO

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Here are real AI stocks to invest in and speculative ones to avoid

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Here are real AI stocks to invest in and speculative ones to avoid

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The Street’s bad call on Palo Alto – plus, two portfolio stocks reach new highs

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The Street's bad call on Palo Alto – plus, two portfolio stocks reach new highs

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