Tesla has filed a motion to appeal the verdict in a product liability and wrongful death lawsuit that could cost the company $242.5 million if it is not reduced or overturned.

Elon Musk‘s automaker has asked for the verdict to be tossed or for a new trial in Florida’s Southern district court.

Gibson Dunn, which is representing Tesla in the appeal, argued that compensatory damages in the case should be steeply reduced from $129 million to $69 million at most. That would result in Tesla having to pay a $23 million award if the prior verdict holding the company partially liable for the crash stands up.

The firm also argued that punitive damages should be eliminated or reduced to, at most, three times compensatory damages due to a statutory cap in the state of Florida.

The suit focused on a fatal crash that occurred in 2019 in Key Largo, Florida, in which George McGee was driving his Tesla Model S sedan while using the company’s Enhanced Autopilot, a partially automated driving system.

While driving, McGee dropped his mobile phone and scrambled to pick it up. He said during the trial that he believed Enhanced Autopilot would brake if an obstacle was in the way.

McGee’s Model S accelerated through an intersection at just over 60 miles per hour, hitting a nearby empty parked car and its owners, who were standing on the other side of their vehicle.

The collision killed 22-year-old Naibel Benavides and severely injured her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo.

A jury in a Miami federal court earlier this month said that Tesla should compensate the family of the deceased and the injured survivor, paying a $242.5 million portion of a total $329 million in damages that they decided were appropriate.

In their motion to appeal, Tesla’s lawyers argue that the Model S vehicle had no design defects, and that even alleged design defects could not be blamed for the crash, which they say was caused entirely by the driver.

“For as long as drivers remain at the wheel, any safety feature may embolden a few reckless drivers while enhancing safety for countless others,” the appeal states. “Holding Tesla liable for providing drivers with advanced safety features just because a reckless driver overrode them cannot be reconciled with Florida law.”

Tesla did not respond to a request for additional comment.

Brett Schreiber, lead trial counsel for the plaintiffs in this case, said in a statement that he believes the court will uphold the prior verdict, which should not be seen as “an indictment of the autonomous vehicle industry, but of Tesla’s reckless and unsafe development and deployment of its Autopilot system.”  

“The jury heard all the facts and came to the right conclusion that this was a case of shared responsibility but that does not discount the integral role Autopilot and the company’s misrepresentations of its capabilities played in the crash,” he said.

Ambarella stock roared 20% higher Friday as the chip designer reported better-than-expected second-quarter results and issued strong guidance.

Here’s how the company did compared to LSEG expectations:

• Earnings: 15 cents per share adj. vs 5 cents per share expected
• Revenue: $96 million vs $90 million expected

Ambarella, which is known for its system-on-chip semiconductors and software used for edge artificial intelligence, said it expects third-quarter revenue between $100 million and $108 million, beating the LSEG estimate of $91 million.

The company boosted its fiscal year revenue growth outlook to a range of 31-35%, to $379 million at the midpoint, which topped the $350 million expected by LSEG.

“After a multi-year period of significant edge AI R&D investment, our broad product portfolio enable us to address a rising breadth of edge AI applications,” CEO Fermi Wang said in a call with analysts Thursday.

Wang singled out strength in “portable video, robotic aerial drones and edge infrastructure.”

Edge computing refers to the direct processing and storing of data at the device level instead of those actions being handled remotely in the cloud at a data center.

Ambarella had a net loss of $20 million, a loss of 47 cents per share in the second quarter. That narrowed from the same quarter a year ago, when the company had a net loss of $35 million, a loss of 85 cents per share.

The company said stock-based compensation and the amortization of acquisition-related costs weighed on earnings.

In June, Bloomberg reported that the company was considering a sale and had held talks with banks. Shares climbed 20% higher on the news.

Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries on Friday announced new partnerships with Google and Meta to accelerate the company’s push into artificial intelligence.

Speaking at an annual shareholders’ meeting on Friday, Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani also disclosed ambitions to list Reliance Jio, India’s largest mobile network, in the first half of 2026.

“A decade ago, digital services became a new growth engine for Reliance — the opportunity before us with AI is just as large, if not larger,” Ambani said, as he revealed a new fully owned subsidiary called Reliance Intelligence.

In a pre-recorded video played during the AGM, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that Reliance would leverage the internet giant’s AI and cloud computing capabilities to boost innovation across sectors like energy, retail, telecommunications and financial services.

The pair will establish a dedicated cloud region in India, powered by clean energy provided by Reliance Industries and connected through Jio’s network.

Separately, Ambani also announced a new joint venture with Meta to make use of the tech group’s open-source AI models and deliver “sovereign, enterprise-ready AI for India.”

Under the new venture, Reliance Industries and Meta have committed an initial investment of $100 million to capitalize the unit in a ratio of 70% and 30% respectively, the two companies said in a joint statement Friday.

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg hailed the partnership as “a key step forward towards ensuring that everyone has access to AI and eventually super intelligence.”

The partnerships signal a deeper push from U.S. tech names into India at a time when the country is seeing significant economic growth. It is not the first time that either Google and Meta has shown an interest in Reliance.

In 2020, Meta invested $5.7 billion into Jio Platforms, which is the parent company of Reliance Jio. Google separately announced a $4.5 billion investment in Jio Platforms that same year.

Jio Platforms owns a number of brands, including its telecommunications business Reliance Jio, which has grown rapidly over the past decade thanks to competitive pricing.

Reliance’s deeper pacts with Google and Meta come at a precarious time for U.S.-India relations. U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed hefty tariffs on India over its purchases of Russian oil.