Connect with us

Published

on

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

In the three trading days since Elon Musk’s war of words with President Donald Trump last week sank Tesla’s market cap by 14% in a single session, the stock has rallied almost all the way back.

Tesla shares rose 5.7% on Tuesday to close at $326.09 on Tuesday, leaving the stock about $6 short of where it was trading last Wednesday, before the Musk-Trump brouhaha exploded across social media.

The latest jump came after Musk shared a video on X showing that Tesla was testing driverless vehicles on the roads of Austin, Texas, without a human safety supervisor behind the wheel. The eight-second clip showed the latest version of the Model Y SUV, painted black with a white “Robotaxi” graffiti-style logo painted on it, navigating an intersection and pausing to allow pedestrians to traverse a crosswalk.

After years of delays and unfulfilled promises left Tesla well behind rivals like Alphabet’s Waymo in the robotaxi market, Musk’s company finally appears poised to put its autonomous driving technology on public streets, even if in a very limited capacity to start. Bloomberg previously reported that Tesla is expected to officially launch its “pilot” for a driverless ride-hailing service in Austin on June 12, though the company hasn’t confirmed the timing beyond saying that it’s coming in June.

Musk recently told CNBC’s David Faber that Tesla will start with a very small rollout, including about 10 to 20 of its robotaxis, with a new, “unsupervised” version of the company’s FSD or “Full Self-Driving” technology installed. The tests will involve the Model Y, not the futuristic looking CyberCab that Tesla plans to produce next year.

Musk said Tesla will “geofence” the service, limiting where the robotaxis can initially operate, and that employees will remotely monitor the fleet.

A Tesla automobile owned by President Trump (he does not drive it but some staffers do) is parked in a lot next to the White House fence in Washington, D.C. on June 05, 2025.

Michael S. Williamson | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Tesla is now listed as “testing” on an official website for the city of Austin, EV fan blog Teslarati first reported. The site shares information about autonomous vehicle companies operating in Austin.

Waymo, which operates a commercial fleet in the Texas capital, is the only autonomous vehicle maker listed with a “deployment” designation, rather than “mapping” or “testing” on the Austin site. The company also has commercial robotaxi services running in parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, and Los Angeles.

In Austin, Amazon’s Zoox is listed as testing, as is AVRide, a self-driving vehicle developer that spun out of Russian tech firm Yandex.

Sawyer Merritt, a Tesla promoter and fan, originally posted the clip of the Model Y operating on FSD-Unsupervised in Austin.

“BREAKING: First ever Tesla Model Y robotaxi with no-one in the drivers seat spotted testing on public roads in Austin, Texas!” Merritt wrote on X.

Last week’s spat

Musk shared the post, adding, “Beautifully simple design.” He later wrote, “These are unmodified Tesla cars coming straight from the factory, meaning that every Tesla coming out of our factories is capable of unsupervised self-driving!”

Musk, the world’s richest person, is coming off a bruising week. After his term running the Trump Administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) officially came to an end, Musk and the president began feuding, partly due to the contents of the spending bill that’s being debated in congress. The spat turned personal on Thursday, with both men hurling insults at each other from their respective social media platforms.

The stock was already getting hit but took a sharp turn lower after Trump said Musk had gone “CRAZY” and threatened to end government contracts and cut off subsidies for his companies. In addition to Tesla, Musk also runs defense contractor SpaceX, artificial intelligence startup xAI (which owns X), health tech company Neuralink and drilling venture The Boring Company.

While Trump said he “would assume” his relationship with Musk is over, the president is known to for his transactional approach. The stock bump early this week may be in part a reaction to a more contrite Musk, who has deleted some of the most pointed insults that he previously lobbed at Trump, and has appeared to endorse the president on other policy matters like immigration.

Trump-Musk spat a "clash of the titans," says market strategist

Tesla investors have been urging Musk to refocus his attention on the electric car maker after a brutal first quarter that saw automotive revenue plunge 20% due to increased competition from lower-cost EV makers in China and a consumer backlash to Musk’s political activities and rhetoric. In key markets throughout Europe and China, Tesla’s year-over-year sales declined in the first two months of the second quarter.

In a report to clients on Tuesday, analysts at Piper Sandler wrote, regarding driverless cars being spotted in Austin, that “a key component of our TSLA thesis has officially begun playing out.” The firm has a buy rating on the stock.

Philip Koopman, an auto safety researcher and associate professor of computer engineering, told CNBC that investors shouldn’t get too carried away at the sight of Tesla running driverless vehicles on public roads.

“We don’t know enough from the company, or from this clip, to know if these vehicles are going to be safe, how they operate and what it costs,” Koopman said, referring to the video shared by Musk. He said he expects Tesla to rely heavily on so-called “remote assistants,” or people who watch the company’s robotaxis from a computer in a service center, with the ability to take over control if needed.

WATCH: Tesla faces a lot of short-term challenges

Tesla faces a lot of short-term challenges, says fmr. Ford CEO Mark Fields

Continue Reading

Technology

Mark Zuckerberg names ex-OpenAI employee chief scientist of new Meta AI lab

Published

on

By

Mark Zuckerberg names ex-OpenAI employee chief scientist of new Meta AI lab

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech during the Meta Connect annual event, at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.

Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday said Shengjia Zhao, the co-creator of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, will serve as the chief scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs.

Zuckerberg has been on a multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence hiring blitz in recent weeks, highlighted by a $14 billion investment in Scale AI. In June, Zuckerberg announced a new organization called Meta Superintelligence Labs that’s made up of top AI researchers and engineers. 

Zhao’s name was listed among other new hires in the June memo, but Zuckerberg said Friday that Zhao co-founded the lab and “has been our lead scientist from day one.” Zhao will work directly with Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI who is acting as Meta’s chief AI officer.

“Shengjia has already pioneered several breakthroughs including a new scaling paradigm and distinguished himself as a leader in the field,” Zuckerberg wrote in a social media post. “I’m looking forward to working closely with him to advance his scientific vision.”

Read more CNBC tech news

In addition to co-creating ChatGPT, Zhao helped build OpenAI’s GPT-4, mini models, 4.1 and o3, and he previously led synthetic data at OpenAI, according to Zuckerberg’s June memo.

Meta Superintelligence Labs will be where employees work on foundation models such as the open-source Llama family of AI models, products and Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research projects.

The social media company will invest “hundreds of billions of dollars” into AI compute infrastructure, Zuckerberg said earlier this month.

“The next few years are going to be very exciting!” Zuckerberg wrote Friday.

WATCH: Meta announces massive ‘Prometheus’ & ‘Hyperion’ data center plans

Meta announces massive 'Prometheus' & 'Hyperion' data center plans

Continue Reading

Technology

Palantir joins list of 20 most valuable U.S. companies, with stock more than doubling in 2025

Published

on

By

Palantir joins list of 20 most valuable U.S. companies, with stock more than doubling in 2025

Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies, speaks on a panel titled Power, Purpose, and the New American Century at the Hill and Valley Forum at the U.S. Capitol on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images

Palantir has hit another major milestone in its meteoric stock rise. It’s now one of the 20 most valuable U.S. companies.

The provider of software and data analytics technology to defense agencies saw its stock rise more than 2% on Friday to another record, lifting the company’s market cap to $375 billion, which puts it ahead of Home Depot and Procter & Gamble. The company’s market value was already higher than Bank of America and Coca-Cola.

Palantir has more than doubled in value this year as investors ramp up bets on the company’s artificial intelligence business and closer ties to the U.S. government. Since its founding in 2003 by Peter Thiel, CEO Alex Karp and others, the company has steadily accrued a growing list of customers.

Revenue in Palantir’s U.S. government business increased 45% to $373 million in its most recent quarter, while total sales rose 39% to $884 million. The company next reports results on Aug. 4.

Earlier this year, Palantir soared ahead of Salesforce, IBM and Cisco into the top 10 U.S. tech companies by market cap.

Buying the stock at these levels requires investors to pay hefty multiples. Palantir currently trades for 273 times forward earnings, according to FactSet. The only other company in the top 20 with a triple-digit ratio is Tesla at 175.

With $3.1 billion in total revenue over the past year, Palantir is a fraction the size of the next smallest company by sales among the top 20 by market cap. Mastercard, which is valued at $518 billion, is closest with sales over the past four quarters of roughly $29 billion.

WATCH: Palantir’s Mike Gallagher: Enforcing a ceasefire will require a greater investment of American power

Palantir's Mike Gallagher: Enforcing a ceasefire will require a greater investment of American power

Continue Reading

Technology

Inside Tesla’s new retro-futuristic Supercharger diner

Published

on

By

Inside Tesla's new retro-futuristic Supercharger diner

Tesla has opened the doors to its first diner Supercharger station in Los Angeles.

CEO Elon Musk first teased the concept of building a drive-in themed charging station in 2018. On Monday, that vision was finally realized. Tesla describes the two-story restaurant, constructed of a steel exterior inspired by the Cybertruck, as retro-futuristic. It features 80 charging stalls and two 66-foot megascreens playing a rotation of short films, feature-length movies and Tesla videos.

The diner operates 24/7 serving classic American comfort food, such as burgers, grilled cheese sandwiches and milkshakes, to both electric vehicle owners charging their cars and the general public. CNBC visited the site and spoke with early patrons, who praised both the design and the food.

“It’s pretty cool. It has a very vintage vibe, but futuristic vibe at the same time” said Taju, who stopped by with a friend who drives a Tesla.

“I would bring friends from out of town, they would be very impressed coming to a place like this” said Don, a Model 3 owner who visited with his wife and neighbor.

Also on display for a limited time was Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot, which served popcorn and interacted playfully with guests. Less than 24 hours after opening, the line to order food stretched around the block.

Musk has said that if the concept proves successful, Tesla may open similar diner Supercharger stations in other major cities.

Watch the video to see what it’s like inside Tesla’s first diner charging station. 

Continue Reading

Trending