Twenty years ago today when Jawed Karim uploaded a grainy 19-second clip titled “Me at the Zoo” to his new platform, YouTube, he ushered in a new era in online video.
The video of Karim visiting the San Diego Zoo was the first to appear on YouTube, the video platform founded by him, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley. The trio sold the service to Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion, and in the nearly two decades since, YouTube has evolved from a simple video-sharing site into a global media juggernaut.
If it was a stand-alone business, YouTube would be worth between $475 billion and $550 billion, according to analysts at MoffettNathanson. YouTube is the second-most visited website in the world, according to Similarweb, behind only Google, and more than 20 trillion videos — including music, Shorts, podcasts and more — have been uploaded to the site as of April, YouTube said Wednesday.
“This is the streaming winner,” MoffettNathanson founding partner Michael Nathanson told CNBC. “They don’t have to invest in content. They just hope that the creator community comes to them and builds their business.”
YouTube is on track to be the biggest media company by revenue in 2025, beating Disney, Nathanson said. Nielsen’s latest Media Distributor Gauge put YouTube in first place in total TV viewership by company, taking up 12% of time watched, ahead of Disney, Fox and Netflix.
Brad Erickson, RBC Capital Markets internet services senior analyst, agreed with Nathanson’s YouTube valuation, but he said that a sum-of-the-parts viewpoint is not always the best way to value aspects of internet companies on its own.
“YouTube benefits from the fact that it’s inside of Google’s business,” Erickson said. “They have contextual data about their user base from other parts of the business that massively benefit their ability to target and drive value with their advertising.”
YouTube remains a key pillar of Google’s business at a time when its core moneymaker, Search, is facing new pressure from the rise of artificial intelligence chatbots, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, and the company comes under fire from U.S. regulators pursuing antitrust cases.
Along with Google Cloud, YouTube is a critical driver of the company’s near- to medium-term growth, and could be a hedge if and when search ever slows down, Nathanson said. Together, they contribute more than 30% of Alphabet‘s total revenue and are its fastest-growing scaled businesses, according to MoffettNathanson.
The video service’s growth is primarily driven by its Premium, Music and YouTube TV subscription offerings. Nathanson estimates that YouTube Premium and Music have roughly 107 million paid subscribers collectively, and that is expected to grow to 145 million by the end of 2027. YouTube TV, meanwhile, will have roughly 11.5 million subscribers by the end of 2027, according to Nathanson’s estimates.
Neal Mohan, chief executive officer of YouTube Inc., at the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, US, on Wednesday, July 12, 2023.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
The threat of TikTok and antitrust
One of YouTube’s key competitors is TikTok, which gained popularity in the U.S. as a result of pandemic lockdowns in 2020. In response, Google invested in the development of YouTube Shorts, a short-form, vertical video feature within the video platform. Shorts competes with TikTok and also offers an ad-share program for creators.
Though Shorts has helped Google stay competitive in the short-form video market, Nathanson said the format has been a drag on YouTube’s overall revenue due to the ongoing challenges of monetization.
“It’s probably helping them drive engagement, but I don’t think it’s an added benefit to revenues,” said Nathanson.
Despite TikTok’s rise, YouTube continues to play a key role in the creator economy. Between 2021 and 2024, YouTube paid $70 billion to creators, with payouts rising each year, according YouTube CEO Neal Mohan.
Among those creators is Jacklyn Dallas, 23, who has been posting videos to YouTube since 2015 when she was 13 years old. Dallas has amassed nearly a quarter million subscribers since then.
“I think being a YouTuber is the greatest thing of all time,” said Dallas, whose full time job since graduating college is making videos for her NothingButTech channel. “There are all these doors and paths that would never be open previously that you now get to do and it’s all enabled, not only by YouTube, but also by the audience that watches the videos.”
Dallas has posted more than 500 videos to YouTube. Her videos include breakdowns about innovations in tech and interviews with tech executives, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
In her 10 years as a creator, Dallas says YouTube has significantly changed how creators can connect with their audiences, how YouTubers are perceived by the media and the value of a subscriber. Looking ahead, Dallas said she’s excited about new features the Google video service could implement to make it easier for creators to reach viewers that have yet to be announced.
“I feel like YouTube is like a knowledge game, and so anyone could become a creator if they put in the repetitions of learning what makes a great video,” Dallas said. “Data gives you the ability to do that.”
A key challenge for YouTube will be how Google parent company Alphabet fares in federal court.
A federal judge last week ruled that Google held illegal monopolies in online advertising markets. It’s unclear what remedies the Justice Department will seek in that case, but YouTube is a key focus and potential asset that Google could be forced to divest.
“Google will have incentives to encourage more competition possibly by loosening certain restrictions on certain media it controls, YouTube being one of them,” Gartner’s Andrew Frank said.
— CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.
A Samsung flag flies outside the company office in Seoul, South Korea on February 05, 2024.
Chung Sung-jun | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Samsung Electronics has entered into a $16.5 billion contract for supplying semiconductors to a major company, a regulatory filing by the South Korean company showed Monday.
The memory chipmaker, which did not name the counterparty, mentioned in its filing that the effective start date of the contract was July 26, 2024 — receipt of orders — and its end date was Dec. 31, 2033.
Samsung declined to comment on details regarding the counterparty.
The company said that details of the deal, including the name of the counterparty, will not be disclosed until the end of 2033, citing a request from the second party “to protect trade secrets,” according to a Google translation of the filing in Korean.
“Since the main contents of the contract have been not been disclosed due to the need to maintain business confidentiality, investors are advised to invest carefully considering the possibility of changes or termination of the contract,” the company said. Its shares were up nearly 3% in early trading.
Local South Korean media outlets have said that American chip firm Qualcomm could potentially place an order for Samsung’s 2 nanometer chips.
While Qualcomm is a possibility, given its potential 2 nanometer project with Samsung, Tesla seems the more probable customer, Ray Wang, research director of semiconductors, supply chain and emerging technology at The Futurum Group, told CNBC
Samsung’s foundry service manufactures chips based on designs provided by other companies. It is the second largest provider of foundry services globally, behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
The company said in April that it was aiming for its foundry business to start mass production of its next-generation 2 nanometer and secure major orders for the advanced product. In semiconductor technology, smaller nanometer sizes signify more compact transistor designs, which lead to greater processing power and efficiency.
Samsung, which is set to deliver earnings on Thursday, expects its second-quarter profit to more than halve. An analyst previously told CNBC that the disappointing forecast was due to weak orders for its foundry business and as the company has struggled to capture AI demand for its memory business.
The company has fallen behind competitors SK Hynix and Micron in high-bandwidth memory chips — an advanced type of memory used in AI chipsets.
SK Hynix, the leader in HBM, has become the main supplier of these chips to American AI behemoth Nvidia. While Samsung has reportedly been working to get the latest version of its HBM chips certified by Nvidia, a report from a local outlet suggests these plans have been pushed back to at least September.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks alongside U.S. President Donald Trump to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images
At Tesla, vehicle sales are slumping, profits are thinning and revenue from regulatory credit sales are poised to dry up due to Republican-led policy changes.
In the past, CEO Elon Musk’s futuristic promises have convinced investors to look past top and bottom line numbers.
Not now.
Following another fairly dismal earnings report this week, Musk told analysts on the call that Tesla’s electric vehicles will soon become driverless, making money for owners while they sleep. He also said Tesla’s robotaxi service, which the company recently started testing in a limited capacity in Austin, Texas, will expand to other states, with a goal of being able to reach half the U.S. population by year-end, “assuming we have regulatory approvals.”
It didn’t matter.
Tesla shares plummeted 8% on Thursday as investors focused on the immediate challenges facing the company, including the rapid rise of lower-cost EV competitors, particularly in China, and a political backlash against Musk that harmed Tesla’s brand in the U.S. and Europe.
Automotive sales declined 16% year-over-year in the second quarter for the EV maker, with weak sales numbers continuing in Europe and California. Musk said there could be a “few rough quarters” ahead because of the EV credits expiring and President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
The stock bounced back some on Friday, gaining 3.5%, but still ended the week down and has now fallen 22% this year, the worst performance among tech’s megacaps. The Nasdaq rose 1% for the week and is up more than 9% in 2025, closing at a record on Friday.
“Look, we love robotaxis. And robots,” wrote analysts at Canaccord Genuity, who recommend buying Tesla’s stock, in a note after the earnings report. “Over time, Tesla is well positioned to benefit from these future-forward opportunities.”
The analysts, however, said that they’re focused on the profit and loss statement, writing: “But we love growth too, in the here and now. We need the P&L dynamics to turn.”
Analysts at Jefferies described the earnings update as “a bit dull.” And Goldman Sachs said Tesla’s robotaxi effort is “still small” with limited technical data points.
Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Musk, who has previously called himself “pathologically optimistic,” has been able to sway shareholders and send the stock soaring at times with promises of self-driving cars, humanoid robots and more affordable EVs.
But after a decade of missed self-imposed deadlines on autonomous driving, Wall Street is watching Tesla fall behind Alphabet’s Waymo in the U.S. and Baidu’s Apollo Go in China.
In Tesla’s shareholder deck, the company said the second quarter marked the start of its “transition from leading the electric vehicle and renewable energy industries to also becoming a leader in AI, robotics and related services.” The company didn’t offer any new guidance for growth or profits for the year ahead.
Regulatory hurdles
Business Insider reported on Friday that Tesla told staff its robotaxi service could launch in the San Francisco Bay Area as soon as this weekend.
But Tesla hasn’t applied for permits that would be required to run a driverless ridehailing service in California, CNBC confirmed. The company would first need authorizations from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).
The CPUC told CNBC on Friday, that under existing permits, Tesla can only operate a human-driven chartered vehicle service, not carry passengers in robotaxis.
Waymo driverless vehicles wait at a traffic light in Santa Monica, California, on May 30, 2025.
Daniel Cole | Reuters
On the earnings call, Musk and other Tesla execs claimed the company was working on regulatory approvals to launch in Nevada, Arizona, Florida and other markets, in addition to San Francisco, but offered no details about what would be required.
Within Austin, the company said its robotaxi service had driven 7,000 miles, and that Tesla has been restricting its robotaxis’ to roads with a speed limit of 40 miles per hour. The Austin service involves a small fleet of about 10 to 20 Model Y vehicles equipped with the company’s latest self-driving systems.
The Tesla robotaxis rely on remote supervision by employees in a customer service center, and a human safety supervisor in the front passenger seat, ready to intervene if needed.
Compare that to what Alphabet said on its second-quarter earnings call the same day as Tesla’s results.
“The Waymo Driver has now autonomously driven over 100 million miles on public roads, and the team is testing across more than 10 cities this year, including New York and Philadelphia,” Alphabet said. Meanwhile, Waymo has become significant enough that Alphabet added a category to its Other Bets revenue description in its latest quarterly filing.
“Revenues from Other Bets are generated primarily from the sale of autonomous transportation services, healthcare-related services and internet services,” the filing said. The Other Bets segment remains relatively small, with revenue coming in at $373 million in the quarter.
Regardless of investor skepticism, Musk is more bullish than ever.
On Friday, the world’s richest person posted on his social network X that he thinks Tesla will someday be worth $20 trillion. On the earnings call earlier in the week, he said that when it comes to AI for cars and robots, “Tesla is actually much better than Google by far” and “much better than anyone at real world AI.”
CORRECTION: The Waymo Driver has now autonomously driven over 100 million miles on public roads, according to Alphabet. A previous version misstated the number of miles.
A vehicle Tesla is using for robotaxi testing purposes on Oltorf Street in Austin, Texas, US, on Sunday, June 22, 2025.
Tim Goessman | Bloomberg | Getty Images
In an earnings call this week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk teased an expansion of his company’s fledgling robotaxi service to the San Francisco Bay Area and other U.S. markets.
But California regulators are making clear that Tesla is not authorized to carry passengers on public roads in autonomous vehicles and would require a human driver in control at all times.
“Tesla is not allowed to test or transport the public (paid or unpaid) in an AV with or without a driver,” the California Public Utilities Commission told CNBC in an email on Friday. “Tesla is allowed to transport the public (paid or unpaid) in a non-AV, which, of course, would have a driver.”
In other words, Tesla’s service in the state will have to be more taxi than robot.
Tesla has what’s known in California as a charter-party carrier permit, which allows it to run a private car service with human drivers, similar to limousine companies or sightseeing services.
The commission said it received a notification from Tesla on Thursday that the company plans to “extend operations” under its permit to “offer service to friends and family of employees and to select members of the public,” across much of the Bay Area.
But under Tesla’s permit, that service can only be with non-AVs, the CPUC said.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles told CNBC that Tesla has had a “drivered testing permit” since 2014, allowing the company to operate AVs with a safety driver present, but not to collect fees. The safety drivers must be Tesla employees, contractors or designees of the manufacturer under that permit, the DMV said.
In Austin, Texas, Tesla is currently testing out a robotaxi service, using its Model Y SUVs equipped with the company’s latest automated driving software and hardware. The limited service operates during daylight hours and in good weather, on roads with a speed limit of 40 miles per hour.
Robotaxis in Austin are remotely supervised by Tesla employees, and include a human safety supervisor in the front passenger seat. The service is now limited to invited users, who agree to the terms of Tesla’s “early access program.”
On Friday, Business Insider, citing an internal Tesla memo, reported that Tesla told staff it planned to expand its robotaxi service to the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment on that report.
In a separate matter in California, the DMV has accused Tesla of misleading consumers about the capabilities of its driver assistance systems, previously marketed under the names Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (or FSD).
Tesla now calls its premium driver assistance features, “FSD Supervised.” In owners manuals, Tesla says Autopilot and FSD Supervised are “hands on” systems, requiring a driver at the wheel, ready to steer or brake at all times.
But in user-generated videos shared by Tesla on X, the company shows customers using FSD hands-free while engaged in other tasks. The DMV is arguing that Tesla’s license to sell vehicles in California should be suspended, with arguments ongoing through Friday at the state’s Office of Administrative Hearings in Oakland.
Under California state law, autonomous taxi services are regulated at the state level. Some city and county officials said on Friday that they were out of the loop regarding a potential Tesla service in the state.
Stephanie Moulton-Peters, a member of the Marin County Board of Supervisors, said in a phone interview that she had not heard from Tesla about its plans. She urged the company to be more transparent.
“I certainly expect they will tell us and I think it’s a good business practice to do that,” she said.
Moulton-Peters said she was undecided on robotaxis generally and wasn’t sure how Marin County, located north of San Francisco, would react to Tesla’s service.
“The news of change coming always has mixed results in the community,” she said.
Brian Colbert, another member of the Marin County Board of Supervisors, said in an interview that he’s open to the idea of Tesla’s service being a good thing but that he was disappointed in the lack of communication.
“They should have done a better job about informing the community about the launch,” he said.
Alphabet’s Waymo, which is far ahead of Tesla in the robotaxi market, obtained a number of permits from the DMV and CPUC before starting its driverless ride-hailing service in the state.
Waymo was granted a CPUC driverless deployment permit in 2023, allowing it to charge for rides in the state. The company has been seeking amendments to both its DMV and CPUC driverless deployment permits as it expands its service territory in the state.