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In an aerial view, a Tesla showroom at 12845 N. US 183 Highway Service Road is seen after police were called for a suspicious device in Austin, Texas, on March 24, 2025.

Brandon Bell | Getty Images

With Elon Musk looking to June 22 as his tentative start date for Tesla’s pilot robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, protesters are voicing their opposition.

Public safety advocates and political protesters, upset with Musk’s work with the Trump administration, joined together in downtown Austin on Thursday to express their concerns about the robotaxi launch. Members of the Dawn Project, Tesla Takedown and Resist Austin say that Tesla’s partially automated driving systems have safety problems.

Tesla sells its cars with a standard Autopilot package, or a premium Full Self-Driving option (also known as FSD or FSD supervised), in the U.S. Automobiles with these systems, which include features like automatic lane keeping, steering and parking, have been involved in dozens of collisions, some fatal, according to data tracked by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Tesla’s robotaxis, which Musk showed off in a video clip on X earlier this week, are new versions of the company’s popular Model Y vehicles, equipped with a future release of Tesla’s FSD software. That “unsupervised” FSD, or robotaxi technology, is not yet available to the public.

Tesla critics with The Dawn Project, which calls itself a tech-safety and security education business, brought a version of Model Y with relatively recent FSD software (version 2025.14.9) to show residents of Austin how it works.

In their demonstration on Thursday, they showed how a Tesla with FSD engaged zoomed past a school bus with a stop sign held out and ran over a child-sized mannequin that they put in front of the vehicle.

Dawn Project CEO Dan O’Dowd also runs Green Hills Software, which sells technology to Tesla competitors, including Ford and Toyota.

Stephanie Gomez, who attended the demonstration, told CNBC that she didn’t like the role Musk had been playing in the government. Additionally, she said she has no confidence in Tesla’s safety standards and said there’s been a lack of transparency from Tesla regarding how its robotaxis will work.

Another protester, Silvia Revelis, said she also opposed Musk’s political activity, but that safety is the biggest concern.

“Citizens have not been able to get safety testing results,” she said. “Musk believes he’s above the law.”

Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

— Todd Wiseman contributed to this report.

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Figma stock pops in second day of trading after colossal debut

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Figma stock pops in second day of trading after colossal debut

Figma celebrates its initial public offering at the New York Stock Exchange on July 31, 2025.

NYSE

Shares of design software vendor Figma popped 6% on Friday, a day after the stock more than tripled in its New York Stock Exchange debut. 

Figma opened at $85 on Thursday under the ticker FIG, and shares closed at $115.50 for a 250% gain. On Friday, the stock traded above $120.

Figma is the latest tech company to hit the public markets after an extended IPO drought. Artificial intelligence infrastructure provider CoreWeave debuted in March, followed by the digital physical therapy company Hinge Health in May.

The stablecoin issuer Circle, virtual chronic care company Omada Health and the online banking services provider Chime all went public in June.

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In an update to its prospectus last week, Figma said it would price shares at $25 to $28 each. On Monday, it issued another update and said it expected pricing between $30 and $32. The company ultimately priced shares $1 above that range.

Figma, founded in 2012, almost had a very different story.

Adobe tried to buy the company for $20 billion in 2022, but after U.K. regulators said the acquisition would likely harm competition, the deal fell apart the following year.

The San Francisco-based company ranked 45th on CNBC’s 2025 Disruptor 50 list of private companies.

–CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this report

WATCH: Figma more than triples in NYSE debut after selling shares at $33

Figma more than triples in NYSE debut after selling shares at $33

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Amazon stock sinks 7% after earnings: Here are the key takeaways

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Amazon stock sinks 7% after earnings: Here are the key takeaways

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy looks on during an Amazon Devices launch event in New York City, U.S., February 26, 2025. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters

Amazon on Thursday reported second-quarter earnings that beat expectations on most metrics, but the results weren’t good enough to please Wall Street.

Amazon stock slid following the release and throughout the conference call. Shares were down about 7% Friday.

Profit guidance was weaker than expected, while cloud growth underwhelmed investors.

That overshadowed an otherwise upbeat report that included strong revenue and profits, steady retail growth and a 23% increase in advertising sales. Amazon also offered a rosy revenue forecast for the current quarter.

Here are three key takeaways from Amazon’s earnings:

AI spending boost

Amazon reported that it spent $31.4 billion on capital expenses in the last quarter, and the company expects that to be “reasonably representative” of its spending in the second half of the year. In the first quarter, Amazon’s capital expenditures exceeded $24 billion.

Taken together, it means that Amazon could spend an upwards of $118 billion on capital expenditures this year, up from its previous forecast of $100 billion. Amazon’s capex, which hit $83 billion a year ago, is primarily going toward building out tech infrastructure to support artificial intelligence demand.

Amazon’s competitors are also throwing big money at AI.

On Wednesday, Meta lifted its forecast for capital spending to a range of $66 billion to $72 billion. Google parent Alphabet raised its capital spend last week to $85 billion this year.

The question on investors’ minds is when these big AI bets will begin to pay off in revenue or profit.

Amazon boosts capex to more than $118 billion as AI cloud arms race heats up

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy hinted the company’s progress on AI has improved its “operational efficiency and business growth,” but offered few specifics beyond that.

Amazon has also said previously that generative AI is contributing revenue to AWS at an annualized rate equivalent to “multiple billions of dollars.”

On a conference call with investors, Jassy pointed to Alexa+, an upgraded version of its digital assistant, as a way it could monetize AI. The service, which launched in early access in late March, is $19.99 a month, or free for Prime members.

“I think over time, you could also imagine, as we keep adding functionality that there could be some sort of subscription element beyond what there is today,” Jassy said.

Jassy reiterated that it’s “very early days” in AI development and adoption.

Cloud rivals

Amazon Web Services continues to lead the cloud infrastructure market, but it’s facing steeper competition from Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, which posted stronger growth rates in their latest quarterly results.

AWS grew its revenue by 18% year over year, which just beat Wall Street’s estimates. That trailed the big gains reported by Microsoft and Alphabet. The companies recorded cloud growth rates of 39% and 32%, respectively.

Analysts asked Amazon leadership on the call why its cloud business isn’t growing as quickly as its rivals.

“There is a Wall Street finance person narrative right now that AWS is falling behind in generative AI with concerns about share loss to peers, etcetera,” said Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak. The firm has an overweight rating on Amazon’s stock.

Attendees walk through an exposition hall at AWS re:Invent, a conference hosted by Amazon Web Services, in Las Vegas on Dec. 3, 2024.

Noah Berger | Getty Images

JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth said there’s been “significantly faster cloud growth among the number two and number three players in the space.”

Jassy said sometimes the company is growing faster than rivals, and vice versa, but AWS still has a “meaningfully larger” cloud business.

“I think the second player is about 65% of the size of AWS,” he said.

Jassy also appeared to take a swipe at Microsoft over a recent worldwide attack on its SharePoint collaboration software, saying AWS customers see a “very big difference” in security.

“You could just look at what’s happened the last couple months, you can just see kind of adventures at some of these players almost every month,” Jassy said.

The comments failed to sway some investors.

Bernstein analysts said Friday that the “tone wasn’t great” and Amazon’s explanation for its competitive positioning and trajectory “sounded less constructive than peers.”

“Words matter…but numbers matter more,” the analysts wrote.

Tariff risk better than feared

In May, Amazon warned it was bracing for potential uncertainty ahead linked to President Donald Trump‘s shifting tariff and trade policies.

At the time, products imported from China were subject to a steep 145% levy. That threatened to drive up costs for Amazon vendors and its millions of third-party sellers, raising concerns of price increases and a drop-off in consumer demand.

Since then, the U.S. and China have reached a truce, with China now facing a 30% combined tariff rate.

Amazon’s latest earnings showed the company seems to be navigating the tariffs and shifting trade policies better than Wall Street had feared.

Sales in its online store topped analysts projections and grew 11% year over year, while seller services revenue also beat expectations. The number of items sold in Amazon’s online and physical stores jumped 12%, indicating that the consumer remains “healthy” despite tariffs and economic uncertainty, analysts at Citizens wrote in a Friday note to clients.

Amazon’s third-quarter sales forecast, which implies 13% growth at the high end, suggests “tariffs appear to have been effectively absorbed by suppliers, merchants and customers,” Citizens analysts wrote. They have an outperform rating on the company’s shares.

Jassy struck a positive but cautious tone on the call, saying it’s “hard to know” where the tariffs will settle, especially when it comes to China.

“We’re unsure at this point who’s going to end up absorbing those higher costs,” he said.

A deal between the U.S. and China hasn’t been finalized, and the two countries have until Aug. 12 to reach a final agreement.

So far, Amazon has been able to weather Trump’s trade war.

“We just haven’t seen diminished demand, and we haven’t seen any kind of broad scale [average selling price] increases,” Jassy said on the call. “So that could change in H2. There are a lot of things that we don’t know, but that’s what we’ve seen so far.”

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Joby, L3Harris partner on hybrid defense craft that can be piloted or autonomous

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Joby, L3Harris partner on hybrid defense craft that can be piloted or autonomous

An electric air taxi by Joby Aviation sits at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport in New York City, Nov. 12, 2023.

Roselle Chen | Reuters

Joby Aviation and defense manufacturing giant L3Harris announced a partnership Friday to develop a next-generation military craft that can be piloted or fly autonomously.

The partnership brings together Joby’s hybrid vertical take-off and landing, or VTOL, aircraft and L3’s expertise in military systems and certification.

The companies expect to begin testing this fall, followed by operational demonstrations in 2026, according to the release.

“Conflicts like Russia, Ukraine, are really changing how people think about, you know, low altitude aviation generally,” Joby executive chairman Paul Sciarra told CNBC’s Morgan Brennan. “Getting something out there that can move very quickly from demonstration to deployability felt especially important.”

Jon Rambeau, president of Integrated Mission Systems at L3Harris, said initially the project will focus on use cases like airborne surveillance, reconnaissance and contested logistics applications.

“We’re going to target … the broader government exercises that the military services hold periodically, and see if we can fit some of those use cases into those larger exercises,” Rambeau told Brennan.

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The announcement comes as government spending is under scrutiny and the U.S. military works to bolster the technology in battlefield operations, adding artificial intelligence with autonomous vehicles and drones.

“I think the branches are questioning whether or not you know the right approach for low altitude support is, you know, $30 million crude Apaches, or whether or not it’s something that is smaller, cheaper and autonomous — it has the ability to adapt to flexible payloads,” Sciarra said.

Joby is known for its commercial air taxis, which are electric. The company delivered its first electric vertical takeoff and landing, or eVTOL, aircraft to the United Arab Emirates at the end of June, where it is working toward a 2026 launch.

The new military vehicle with L3, based on Joby’s S4 craft, will be developed with a gas turbine, according to the release.

Joby, which is still working on Federal Aviation Administration approval for its aircraft, recently announced an expansion of manufacturing and hopes to double production at its California hub.

Shares of Joby are up more than 100% this year. L3Harris stock is up 30% so far in 2025.

The Army is testing 40+ new technologies on the battlefield

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