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The Tesla logo is captured on a sign outside a shops in Zurich on Nov. 13, 2023.

Joan Cros | Nurphoto | Getty Images

An Indiana jury found that electric vehicle maker Tesla and one of its employees were partially liable in a 2017 crash between a company-owned Ford truck and a motorcycle that left the motorcyclist with a partial amputation, permanent disfigurement and a traumatic brain injury.

Tesla and the employee, Kyle Kaszuba, must pay more than $42 million in damages to the victim, Christopher Dugan, a Marion County jury said in a Wednesday verdict. 

The jury found that Dugan was 30% liable for the crash, reducing the award from $60 million to $42 million. Dugan’s attorneys had reportedly been seeking an award of $191 million.

The crash occurred while Kaszuba was operating a 2014 Ford vehicle owned by Tesla either with the permission of Tesla or while working in his capacity as a Tesla employee, Dugan alleged in his initial complaint. 

Dugan had exited an Indianapolis gas station and was in the “right-hand traffic lane” when Kaszuba, operating the Tesla-owned Ford Super Duty, “carelessly” drove the vehicle across two lanes of traffic while attempting to turn into a parking lot near the gas station, according to the complaint.

Kaszuba allegedly crashed the truck into Dugan’s motorcycle, throwing Dugan off the motorcycle and causing Dugan to sustain devastating injuries, “a direct and proximate result of the negligence of the Defendants, Tesla, Inc., and Kyle Kaszuba,” per the complaint.

Tesla’s attorneys from Quinn Emanuel had argued that Kaszuba was not negligent in his actions and that Dugan was closely following a vehicle that made it difficult for the Tesla employee to see him, according to Courtroom View Network. An attorney for Dugan, Nick Rowley, argued that Kaszuba was in a rush to get to work, according to CVN.

The gas station near where the crash occurred is located just outside of a ramp to I-465, the ring road that encircles Indianapolis.

Tesla did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

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Oracle warns that a TikTok ban would hurt business

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Oracle warns that a TikTok ban would hurt business

Oracle CEO Safra Catz, center, departs following a meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 18, 2024. Chief executives from major companies including Palantir Technologies and Oracle Corp. met with senators at the Capitol Tuesday to press for US support of Israel amid its invasion of Gaza, while seeking a way to release hostages held by Hamas.

Graeme Sloan | Bloomberg | Getty Images

A U.S. ban of TikTok might hurt Oracle‘s business, the software company acknowledged in its annual report on Monday.

In April, President Joe Biden signed a bill demanding that China’s ByteDance sell TikTok in nine months, or one year if an extension is approved, if the short-video company wants to avoid a ban in the U.S. TikTok’s ownership structure has long been a source of tension in the U.S. due to concerns about user data making its way to China.

Oracle provides cloud infrastructure for TikTok, which has over 150 million users in the U.S.

“If we are unable to provide those services to TikTok, and if we cannot redeploy that capacity in a timely manner, our revenues and profits would be adversely impacted,” Oracle said in its annual report for the fiscal year ended May 31.

Concern over TikTok and its Chinese ownership dates back to 2020, when Donald Trump, who was then president, pushed for a sale or divestiture of the U.S. assets. That pressure prompted deal talks with Microsoft. Weeks later, Oracle announced that it was part of ByteDance’s proposal to the U.S. Treasury Department to provide cloud services that could help TikTok remain available in the U.S.

TikTok moved forward with an initiative called Project Texas, designed to keep TikTok services for U.S. users running on Oracle cloud infrastructure located inside the country. TikTok said Oracle would also be responsible for compiling the app and delivering it to third-party app stores.

“The one thing I can tell you is we have an excellent relationship with the folks at TikTok,” Oracle CEO Safra Catz said on a 2022 conference call with analysts.

Following the bipartisan legislation this year targeted at TikTok, and Biden’s signing of the bill mandating its sale, TikTok filed a lawsuit arguing that the law violates First Amendment free speech protections.

Real estate investor Frank McCourt and former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have expressed interest in buying TikTok, but no deal has materialized.

Oracle hasn’t disclosed details of its financial ties to TikTok. Evercore analysts estimated in April that if TikTok is generating sales of $16 billion in the U.S. annually, it could be spending 3% to 5% as a percentage of revenue on cloud infrastructure, which would work out to $480 million to $800 million. Oracle’s cloud infrastructure revenue for the fiscal year came to $6.9 billion.

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

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Nvidia slides 13% in three days after briefly becoming most valuable company

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Nvidia slides 13% in three days after briefly becoming most valuable company

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang makes a speech at an event at COMPUTEX forum in Taipei, Taiwan June 4, 2024. 

Ann Wang | Reuters

Since briefly becoming the world’s most valuable company last week, Nvidia has dropped for three consecutive trading days and is now down 13% from its peak.

Monday’s slide was the chipmaker’s second-steepest drop of the year, as the stock fell 6.7% to $118.11. Nvidia’s decline brought with it a slide in chipmakers and other tech companies that have been tied to the artificial intelligence boom.

Super Micro Computer, which sells servers packed with Nvidia’s AI chips, slid 8.7 percent, and Dell, which competes in that market, fell 5.2%.

Chip designer Arm dropped 5.8%, while semiconductor giants Qualcomm and Broadcom dropped 5.5% and 3.7%, respectively.

Many of those companies have been some of the biggest gainers in the last couple years as investors bet heavily that they’ll be the prime beneficiaries of a wave of AI spending.

Nvidia’s value has nearly tripled in the past year even after the three-day slump. Last week, it topped Apple and Microsoft as the most valuable U.S. company with a market capitalization over $3 trillion before giving up some of those gains. Nvidia was the fourth-biggest loser in the S&P 500 on Monday. Super Micro is still up almost 200% in 2024.

Investors may be taking an opportunity to lock in gains after a few hot months.

“I don’t think the party is over, but it’s had a heck of a run and there are so many other places in technology that offer better attractive risk/reward,” Hightower’s Stephanie Link told CNBC on Friday, calling Nvidia shares “overloved.”

Nvidia says demand for its prized AI graphics processing units (GPUs) remains high, as companies including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Oracle, and Meta buy billions of dollars worth of the chips to power their data centers and cloud services.

Later this year, Nvidia will start shipping its next-generation AI chips, called Blackwell, that some analysts say could kick off another cycle with significant growth for the chipmaker and its partners.

Nvidia’s performance “is going to continue for the next 18-24 months,” Constellation Research founder Ray Wang said on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Monday. “I think it’s a good time to buy the dip.”

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OpenAI walks back controversial stock sale policies, will treat current and former employees the same

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OpenAI walks back controversial stock sale policies, will treat current and former employees the same

OpenAI has reversed its policies towards secondary share sales, and will now allow current and former employees to participate equally in annual tender offers, CNBC has learned.

The artificial intelligence startup has taken a restrictive approach in the past, with rules allowing the company to determine who gets to participate in stock sales, CNBC reported earlier this month. That led to concern among many shareholders about their ability to get liquidity for some of the millions of dollars worth of equity they own.

In a document shared last week through OpenAI’s equity administration software, the company altered its policy and said that “all sellers (current and former service providers) will have the same sales limit.” Service providers include employees and advisors, OpenAI said in the document, which was viewed by CNBC.

An OpenAI spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tender offers have become a particularly sensitive subject of late due to OpenAI’s skyrocketing valuation, which followed the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, and a relatively dormant IPO market for well over two years. With no public offering on the horizon and a price tag that makes the company prohibitively expensive for would-be acquirers, secondary stock sales are the only way in the near future for shareholders to pocket a portion of their paper wealth.

Current and former OpenAI employees previously told CNBC that there was growing concern about access to liquidity after reports that the company had the power to claw back vested equity. OpenAI, backed by roughly $13 billion from Microsoft, has been valued at over $80 billion.

Earlier documents indicated that, for former employees, secondary sales typically took place months after transactions for current staffers. And sales limits could differ significantly. In at least two tender offers, the limit for former employees was $2 million, compared to $10 million for current employees.

The change announced last week included the walking back of a provision that some worried could allow the company to forcibly repurchase shares at its “sole and absolute discretion” for the “fair market value.” Previous documents said that “the Company may, at any time and in its sole and absolute discretion, redeem (or cause the sale of) the Company interest of any Assignee for cash equal to the Fair Market Value of such interest.”

OpenAI said in the updated document that it “will not enforce any provision in employee equity documents that forces equity redemption at fair market value, and will revise our documents to reflect the same.”

Former employees who now work at competitors will also no longer be excluded from official tender offers, and will be included in the same category as other former employees, the internal document stated.

The one area where current employees will still be higher in line, OpenAI said, is if a future tender offer is oversubscribed, meaning that stakeholders want to sell more shares than investors have agreed to purchase. In that case, “we will prioritize giving liquidity to current service providers over former service providers,” resulting in a potential “cutback” for those no longer at the company, OpenAI said.

In reversing its tender offer policies, OpenAI has taken a further step to assuage employee fears. Following reports of potential clawbacks, OpenAI recently circulated a document, obtained by CNBC, titled, “Overview and Recap of OpenAI’s Tender Process,” detailing how the company has conducted equity purchases in the past and how it plans to handle them in the future.

Last month, OpenAI announced it would backtrack on a controversial decision to make former employees choose between signing a non-disparagement agreement that would never expire and keeping their vested equity in the company.

However, one notable issue regarding employee equity was not addressed in the latest change. In the past, OpenAI has opened up “donation rounds” to current employees, allowing them to donate a certain amount of their vested equity to charity, which brings with it tax incentives. Former employees could be excluded, as the donation rounds would likely be offered “to active employees only and are not guaranteed to happen,” according to messages viewed by CNBC earlier this month. The new document did not detail whether the policy is still in place.

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