Elon Musk interviews on CNBC from the Tesla headquarters in Texas.
CNBC
Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the company will have robotaxis on the streets of Austin, Texas, by the end of June.
In an interview with CNBC’s David Faber on Tuesday at the company’s headquarters in Austin, Musk said Tesla aims to bring its robotaxis to Los Angeles and San Francisco following the planned Austin debut.
Musk said a Tesla robotaxi service will start with about 10 vehicles in Austin, and rapidly expand to thousands of vehicles should the launch go well with no incidents.
Since 2016, Musk has been promising Tesla investors, customers and fans that the company is about a year away from delivering a self-driving car that’s capable of transporting passengers safely without human interventions, or a human at the steering wheel. However, Tesla does not yet offer a vehicle safe to use without human supervision.
“It’s prudent for us to start with a small number, confirm that things are going well and then scale it up,” Musk said.
To start, Tesla has said its robotaxis will be Model Y vehicles equipped with a forthcoming version of FSD, or full self-driving, known as FSD Unsupervised.
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Alphabet’s Waymo is currently operating commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in various U.S. markets. On a recent earnings call, Alphabet said Waymo already conducts 250,000 paid trips per week.
Musk said Tesla “will geofence” its robotaxis in Austin to start, meaning the company will limit where those Model Y vehicles can drive. But there won’t be a human safety driver in the cars, Musk promised.
Tesla employees will be remotely monitoring the fleet, he said.
“We’ll be watching what the cars are doing very carefully and as confidence grows, less of that will be needed,” Musk said.
Musk has previously claimed Tesla’s “generalized” approach to robotaxis is more ambitious than Waymo’s. Tesla relies on camera-based systems and computer vision primarily instead of using sophisticated sensors including lidar and radar in its vehicles.
Musk has said those sensors were expensive and could impede high-volume robotaxi production and scaling of a global fleet.
“What will actually work best for the road system is artificial intelligence, digital neural nets and cameras,” Musk said Tuesday.
Faber pressed Musk on the political backlash that Tesla has faced in response to his involvement with President Donald Trump’s administration, and in German politics. Tesla saw declining EV sales, including a 20% drop in automotive revenue in the first quarter of 2025.
Musk attributed the sales decline to the company needing to retool its factories to begin production of a refreshed version of its most popular car, the Model Y.
“We can’t make cars if the factories are retooling. But we’ve seen a major rebound in demand at this point,” Musk said, without providing numbers. “When you buy a product, how much do you care about the political views of the CEO or even care what they are?”
While remaining at the helm of Tesla and also running SpaceX and xAI, Musk is serving as a key advisor to Trump after spending nearly $300 million to propel him back to the White House.
Musk founded the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, which brought sweeping changes to Washington with a slash-and-burn campaign to gut agencies and purge the federal workforce. President Donald Trump has supported the Musk-led cuts.
Musk’s holdings in Tesla and SpaceX make him the world’s wealthiest individual, with an estimated net worth of around $376 billion today, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Earlier Tuesday, Musk said he is committed to leading Tesla for the next five years.
“Yes, no doubt about that at all,” Musk said in a video interview during Bloomberg’s Qatar Economic Forum in Doha.
Two Amazon Prime Air MK30 drones collided with a crane on Oct. 2, 2025 in Tolleson, Arizona.
Courtesy: 12News
Amazon is facing federal probes after two of its Prime Air delivery drones collided with a crane in Arizona, prompting the company to temporarily pause drone service in the area.
The incident occurred on Wednesday around 1 p.m. EST in Tolleson, Arizona, a city west of Phoenix. Two MK30 drones crashed into the boom of a stationary construction crane that was in a commercial area just a few miles away from an Amazon warehouse.
One person was evaluated on the scene for possible smoke inhalation, said Sergeant Erik Mendez of the Tolleson Police Department.
“We’re aware of an incident involving two Prime Air drones in Tolleson, Arizona,” Amazon spokesperson Terrence Clark said in a statement. “We’re currently working with the relevant authorities to investigate.”
Both drones sustained “substantial” damage from the collision on Wednesday, which occurred when the aircraft were mid-route, according to preliminary FAA crash reports.
The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the incident. The NTSB didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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The drones were believed to be flying northeast back-to-back when they collided with the crane that was being used for roof work on a distribution facility, Tolleson police said in a release. The drones landed in the backyard of a nearby building, according to the release.
The probes come just a few months after Amazon, in January, paused drone deliveries in Tolleson and College Station, Texas, temporarily following two crashes at its Pendleton, Oregon, test site. Those crashes also prompted investigations by the FAA and NTSB. The company resumed deliveries in March after it said it had resolved issues with the drone’s software, CNBC previously reported.
Amazon says its delivery drones are equipped with a sense-and-avoid system that enables them to “detect and stay away from obstacles in the air and on the ground.” The system also allows the aircraft to operate without visual observers over greater distances, the company said.
For over a decade, Amazon has been working to bring to life founder Jeff Bezos’ vision of drones whizzing toothpaste, books and batteries to customers’ doorsteps in 30 minutes or less. But progress has been slow, as Prime Air has only been made available in a handful of U.S. cities.
Amazon has set a goal to deliver 500 million packages by drone per year by the end of the decade.
Aravind Srinivas, chief executive officer Perplexity AI, during a news conference at the SK Telecom Co. headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, on Wednesday, Sept.4, 2024.
SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Perplexity AI on Thursday announced that its artificial-intelligence-powered web browser Comet is available worldwide, and will be free to users.
The Comet browser is designed to serve as a personal assistant that can search the web, organize tabs, draft emails, shop and more, according to Perplexity. The startup initially launched Comet in July to Perplexity Max subscribers for $200 a month, and the waitlist has ballooned to “millions” of people, the company said.
Tune in at 8:10 a.m. ET Friday as Perplexity co-founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas joins CNBC TV to discuss the release of its AI browser Comet to users for free. Watch in real time on CNBC+ or the CNBC Pro stream.
Perplexity’s decision to provide Comet for free could help it attract more users as it works to fend off rivals like Google, OpenAI and Anthropic that have their own AI browser offerings.
In September, Google rolled out Gemini in its Chrome browser, Anthropic announced a browser-based AI agent in August and OpenAI announced Operator, an agent that uses a browser to complete tasks, in January. Perplexity made an unsolicited $34.5 billion bid for Google’s Chrome browser in August.
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Perplexity is best known for its AI-powered search engine that gives users simple answers to questions and links out to the original source material on the web. After the company was accused of plagiarizing content from media outlets, it launched a revenue-sharing model with publishers last year.
The company also introduced Comet Plus in August, which is a subscription that gives users access to content from “trusted publishers and journalists,” according to a blog post. Perplexity said Tuesday that CNN, Condé Nast, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Le Monde, and Le Figaro are its inaugural publishing partners.
Perplexity said additional features are also on the way. The company teased a mobile version of Comet and a feature called Background Assistant, which can work on multiple tasks simultaneously and asynchronously.