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CNBC spotted a Tesla robotaxi in Austin, Texas, on June 24, 2025

Katie Tarasov

Elon Musk’s Tesla has applied to test and eventually deploy its Robotaxi vehicles in Phoenix, Arizona, following in the footsteps of market leader Waymo.

Tesla has applied to conduct autonomous vehicle testing and operations, with and without human safety drivers on board, in Arizona, a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Transportation told CNBC on Thursday. A decision on the application is expected at the end of July, and Tesla has “expressed interest in operating within the Phoenix Metro area,” the spokesperson said via email.

Reuters first reported Tesla’s Arizona ambitions.

The effort to expand to Arizona comes after Tesla in June began a pilot test of its robotaxis in Austin, Texas. Tesla’s Austin fleet includes Model Y SUVs that are equipped with the company’s newest, automated driving systems. Those vehicles are remotely supervised by employees in an undisclosed operations center, and they each include a human safety supervisor who rides with passengers.

The safety supervisor sits in the front passenger seat, accompanying riders, who are invited fans of Tesla. The supervisor can intervene should the Tesla Robotaxis get into trouble.

Waymo, owned by Google parent Alphabet, opened up a driverless robotaxi service to the public in the Phoenix area in 2020, and now operates a fleet of 400 robotaxis there, the company told CNBC on Thursday.

Tesla, which was once seen as a self-driving pioneer, is now working to catch up to Waymo. The companies have distinct approaches to self-driving technology. Tesla claims its choice to mostly use cameras instead of expensive sensors like lidar will make its autonomous vehicles more economically viable.

The Musk company’s initial efforts in Austin have run into issues.

One invited passenger, who runs a Tesla-focused YouTube channel called Dirty Tesla, captured an incident on camera where his Robotaxi dinged a parked car outside of a restaurant.

Other incidents where Tesla Robotaxis violated rules of the road in Austin have also been captured on camera and circulated on social media, drawing regulatory scrutiny from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal vehicle safety agency.

Tesla is scheduled to hold a second-quarter earnings call on July 23, during which executives are expected to discuss the initial Robotaxi pilot.

Separately, Musk on Wednesday said on X that Tesla’s Robotaxi service will expand to the San Francisco Bay Area “probably in a month or two.”

California Public Utilities Commission and the California Department of Motor Vehicles told CNBC on Thursday that Tesla has not yet applied for approvals to begin driverless testing or commercial deployment of its Robotaxis in the state.

The California DMV sued Tesla in 2022 alleging that the company made false claims in marketing and advertising about its vehicles’ self-driving capabilities.

WATCH: We went to Texas for Tesla’s robotaxi launch. Here’s what we saw

We went to Texas for Tesla's robotaxi launch. Here's what we saw

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Peter Thiel just bought a big stake in Tom Lee’s ether company and the shares are surging

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Peter Thiel just bought a big stake in Tom Lee's ether company and the shares are surging

Peter Thiel, president and founder of Clarium Capital Management LLC, holds hundred dollars bills as he speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, Florida, U.S., on Thursday, April 7, 2022. 

Eva Marie Uzcategui | Bloomberg | Getty Images

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Bitmine (BMNR) 1-month

The current wave of interest in Ethereum and related assets follows an announcement by Robinhood that it will enable trading of tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs across Europe, and a groundswell of interest in stablecoins throughout June following Circle’s wildly successful IPO and ongoing progress in Congress on the Senate’s proposed stablecoin bill, the GENIUS Act.

The price of ether itself also continued its rally, up more than 4% Wednesday. The coin has doubled in price in the past three months.

Thiel is a venture capitalist and hedge fund manager best known as a cofounder of both PayPal and Palantir and an early investor in Facebook. Founders Fund was an investor in Tagomi, the crypto brokerage acquired by Coinbase in 2020, and Polymarket, the prediction market built on Ethereum.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sells another $37 million worth of stock

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sells another  million worth of stock

NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang speaks during the NVIDIA GTC Paris keynote, part of the 9th edition of the VivaTech technology startup and innovation fair, held at the Dôme de Paris in the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 11, 2025.

Mustafa Yalcin | Anadolu | Getty Images

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sold another 225,000 shares of the chipmaker, totaling about $37 million, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The sale comes as part of a plan adopted in March for Huang to sell up to 6 million shares of the leading artificial intelligence company. Huang began trading stock last month. His most recent sale, disclosed last Friday, totaled 225,000 shares, or about $36 million.

Since he began selling stock this year, Huang has unloaded 1.2 million shares, totaling about $190 million, according to InsiderScore. In last year’s prearranged plan, Huang cashed in over $700 million.

AI demand and the need for graphics processing units powering large language models have spiked Huang’s net worth and propelled Nvidia past a $4 trillion market capitalization, making it the most valuable company.

That surge in value has put Huang above Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett in net worth on Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.

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In another significant win, Nvidia said this week that it plans to soon restart sales of its H20 chips to China after the Trump administration indicated that it would approve export licenses.

Earlier this year, the administration said Nvidia would need a license approval to ship the chips, designed specifically for China.

“The U.S. government has assured NVIDIA that licenses will be granted, and NVIDIA hopes to start deliveries soon,” the company said in a statement Tuesday.

Huang said during a press conference on Wednesday in Beijing, China, that he wants to sell chips more advanced than the H20 to China at some point.

Huang wasn’t the only stakeholder to unload Nvidia shares. Board member Brooke Seawell sold $16 million worth of stock.

WATCH: H20 news should add 10% to Nvidia’s street estimates, says Deepwater’s Gene Munster

H20 news should add 10% to Nvidia’s street estimates, says Deepwater's Gene Munster

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wants to sell more advanced chips to China after H20 ban is lifted

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wants to sell more advanced chips to China after H20 ban is lifted

Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., speaks to members of the media in Beijing, China, on Wednesday, July 16, 2025.

Na Bian | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Nvidia is looking to ship more advanced chips to China than its current generation, CEO Jensen Huang said on Wednesday, as he looks to revitalize sales in the world’s second-largest economy.

The comments come after Nvidia said on Monday that it will resume sales of its H20 artificial intelligence chip to China, reversing a previous ban. The H20 is a less-advanced semiconductor designed for AI workloads that comply with U.S. export restrictions to China.

“I hope to get more advanced chips into China than the H20,” Huang said during a press conference in Beijing, China, in response to a CNBC question.

“And the reason for that is because technology is always moving on … today Hopper’s terrific but some years from now we will have more and more and better and better technology, and I think it’s sensible that whatever we’re allowed to sell in China will continue to get better and better over time as well,” he said referencing Hopper, Nvidia’s chip architecture that the H20 is built on.

Nvidia has been caught in the crosshairs of U.S.-China tensions over trade and technology. The tech giant has faced several rounds of restrictions that have forced it to restrict access of its most advanced chips to China. In response, Nvidia has developed semiconductors that comply with export restrictions, such as the H20.

Nvidia took a $4.5 billion writedown on the unsold H20 inventory in May and said sales in its last financial quarter would have been $2.5 billion higher without any export curbs.

Huang has trod a fine line between praising U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies regarding reshoring chip manufacturing to America while also lobbying for change on curbs to China.

If all the AI developers are in China, the China stack is going to win, Nvidia CEO tells CNBC

The Nvidia boss has argued the Chinese AI market could be worth $50 billion in the next two-to-three years and that it would be a “tremendous loss” for American firms not to be part of that. Huang also told CNBC this year that Nvidia’s Chinese rival Huawei has “got China covered” if U.S. firms can’t participate in the market.

“Export control are things that are outside of our control and they can be quite disruptive to our business. It is our job only to inform the governments of the nature and the unintended consequences of the policies that they make,” Huang said during his visit to Beijing.

Nvidia has also laid out a roadmap to release more advanced chips, though it remains unclear if the U.S. government would allow Nvidia to sell more advanced products to Chinese companies. However, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested on Tuesday that the government would continue to allow chip sales to China so that companies in the market rely on American technology.

“The idea is the Chinese are more than capable of building their own,” Lutnick told CNBC. “You want to keep one step ahead of what they can build, so they keep buying our chips.”

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