NXP Semi shares sink on tariff concerns, CEO Kurt Sievers to step down

Published

7 months ago

April 28, 2025

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Kurt Sievers, chief executive officer of NXP Semiconductors NV, during the Federation of German Industries (BDI) conference in Berlin, Germany, on Monday, June 19, 2023.

Liesa Johannssen-Koppitz | Bloomberg | Getty Images

NXP Semiconductor Inc. fell about 8% on Monday after the chip company announced that CEO Kurt Sievers will step down as part of its latest earnings.

Here’s how the company did, versus LSEG consensus estimates:

Earnings per share: $2.64 adjusted vs. $2.58 expected
Revenue: $2.84 billion vs. $2.83 billion expected

Sievers will retire at the end of the year, with Rafael Sotomayor stepping in as president on April 28, 2025.

The company beat expectations on the top and bottom lines but cited a “challenging set of market conditions” looking forward.

“We are operating in a very uncertain environment influenced by tariffs with volatile direct and indirect effects,” Sievers said in an earnings release.

Sales in NXP’s first quarter declined 9% year over year.

The company posted $1.67 billion in auto sales during the first quarter, trailing analyst estimates of $1.69 billion.

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

Published

6 hours ago

November 21, 2025

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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: