Model Y cars are pictured during the opening ceremony of the new Tesla Gigafactory for electric cars in Gruenheide, Germany, March 22, 2022.
Patrick Pleul | Pool | Via Reuters
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Tuesday that his company’s robotaxi service is “tentatively” set to launch in Austin, Texas, on June 22.
In a post on X, Musk indicated that he’s flying from Los Angeles to Austin for the kickoff, which he previously said would occur sometime in June. When a commenter asked when public rides will start, Musk said the current plan is for June 22, and that the first driverless trip from the Tesla factory to a customer’s house will take place on his birthday, June 28.
“We are being super paranoid about safety, so the date could shift,” Musk wrote.
Earlier on Tuesday, Musk shared a video on X showing that Tesla was testing driverless vehicles on the roads of Austin 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.
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 Model Y robotaxis can initially operate, and that employees will remotely monitor the fleet.
While running Tesla, Musk is also the CEO of defense contractor SpaceX and leads artificial intelligence company xAI, which has merged with his social network X (formerly Twitter.) He is also the richest person in the world, and spent nearly $300 million to propel President Donald Trump back to the White House.
Musk recently concluded a stint leading the Department of Government Efficiency, which made sweeping cuts to federal agencies, regulations and offices tasked with oversight of Tesla and his other companies.
While fans of Musk and Tesla have expressed enthusiasm for the company’s robotaxi service pilot in Austin, others with automotive safety concerns and who stand against Musk’s political ideology and activity are planning protests.
The Dawn Project, in partnership with anti-Musk activists including Tesla Takedown and Resist Austin, said in an e-mailed statement that they plan to host a demonstration on June 12 in downtown Austin to show off safety issues with Tesla’s electric vehicles and driver assistance features which are currently marketed as Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Supervised).
Dan O’Dowd, who is CEO of both Green Hills Software and The Dawn Project, has described the latter as a tech-safety and security education business in prior interviews with CNBC. Green Hills Software makes products which are used by direct competitors of Tesla including Ford and Toyota.
Thomas Fuller | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Ambarella shares popped 19% after a report that the chip designer is currently working with bankers on a potential sale.
Bloomberg reported the news, citing sources familiar with the matter.
While no deal is imminent, the sources told Bloomberg that the firm may draw interest from semiconductor companies looking to improve their automotive business. Private equity firms have already expressed interest, according to the report.
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The Santa Clara, California-based company is known for its system-on-chip semiconductors and software used for edge artificial intelligence. Ambarella chips are used in the automotive sector for electronic mirrors and self-driving assistance systems.
Shares have slumped about 18% year to date. The company’s market capitalization last stood at nearly $2.6 billion.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attends a roundtable discussion at the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 11, 2025.
The sales are worth nearly $15 million at Tuesday’s opening price.
The transactions are the first sale in Huang’s plan to sell as many as 600,000 shares of Nvidia through the end of 2025. It’s a plan that was announced in March, and it’d be worth $873 million at Tuesday’s opening price.
The Nvidia founder still owns more than 800 million Nvidia shares, according to Monday’s SEC filing. Huang has a net worth of about $126 billion, ranking him 12th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Nvidia stock is up more than 800% since December 2022 after OpenAI’s ChatGPT was first released to the public. That launch drew attention to Nvidia’s graphics processing units, or GPUs, which were needed to develop and power the artificial intelligence service.
The company’s chips remain in high demand with the majority of the AI chip market, and Nvidia has introduced two subsequent generations of its AI GPU technology.
Nvidia continues to grow. Its stock is up 9% this year, even as the company faces export control issues that could limit foreign markets for its AI chips.
In May, the company reported first-quarter earnings that showed the chipmaker’s revenue growing 69% on an annual basis to $44 billion during the quarter.
Dario Amodei, Anthropic CEO, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 21st, 2025.
Gerry Miller | CNBC
Anthropic‘s use of books to train its artificial intelligence model Claude was “fair use” and “transformative,” a federal judge ruled late on Monday.
Amazon-backed Anthropic’s AI training did not violate the authors’ copyrights since the large language models “have not reproduced to the public a given work’s creative elements, nor even one author’s identifiable expressive style,” wrote U.S. District Judge William Alsup.
“The purpose and character of using copyrighted works to train LLMs to generate new text was quintessentially transformative,” Alsup wrote. “Like any reader aspiring to be a writer.”
The decision was a significant win for AI companies as legal battles play out over the use and application of copyrighted works in developing and training LLMs. Alsup’s ruling begins to establish the legal limits and opportunities for the industry going forward.
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A spokesperson for Anthropic said in a statement that the company was “pleased” with the ruling and that the decision was, “Consistent with copyright’s purpose in enabling creativity and fostering scientific progress.”
CNBC has reached out to the plaintiffs for comment.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, was brought by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson in August. The suit alleged that Anthropic built a “multibillion-dollar business by stealing hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books.”
Alsup did, however, order a trial on the pirated material that Anthropic put into its central library of content, even though the company did not use it for AI training.
“That Anthropic later bought a copy of a book it earlier stole off the internet will not absolve it of liability for the theft, but it may affect the extent of statutory damages,” the judge wrote.