Meta‘s chief artificial intelligence scientist Yann LeCun has spent much of the past week sparring with Elon Musk over the Tesla CEO’s treatment of scientists and news organizations, and for spreading false conspiracies on social media.
“I like his cars (I own a 2015 S, and 2023 S), his rockets, his solar energy systems, and his satellite communication systems,” LeCun wrote about Musk on Sunday in a Post on X, the social media site that Musk owns. “But I very much disagree with him on a number of issues.”
The spat began days earlier, on May 27, after Musk took to X to encourage people to apply for roles at his AI startup, xAI. The company, which last week announced it had raised $6 billion, is in a battle for AI engineers with high-profile startups, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as top tech companies, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta.
Meta is trying to differentiate itself in the world of large language models, or LLMs, which have powered the recent boom in generative AI product development. While LLMs from xAI, OpenAI and Google are closed and proprietary for now, Meta is touting its Llama family of models as open source, meaning other researchers can copy, tweak or otherwise use them for their own AI initiatives.
In response to Musk’s promotional post, LeCun wrote, “Join xAI if you can stand a boss who makes promises that can’t be met, claims AI will ‘kill everyone’ and spews wild ‘conspiracy theories on his own social platform.'”
They continued going at it on Monday after Dr. Anthony Fauci testified publicly for the first time since leaving the government in 2022. Fauci appeared before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, facing broad criticism from Republicans who have long claimed he lied about the genesis of Covid-19.
Musk, who has previously called for the prosecution of Fauci, posted on X, “Why do Dems love Fauci so much.” He also unfollowed LeCun.
In response to being unfollowed, LeCun wrote, “Must have been my tweet in defense of Anthony Fauci.”
He followed by writing, “Elon’s call for Fauci to be prosecuted and imprisoned is pretty high up on the scale of anti-science a–holery.”
While Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have engaged in a yearslong public dispute and were even goading each other for months last year about a possible cage match, few tech leaders have been willing to criticize Musk in the open or bet against his companies.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates previously shorted Tesla stock. Investor Mark Cuban criticized Musk over his opposition to corporate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts. And Meta co-founder Dustin Moskovitz has accused Tesla of consumer fraud.
In posts on X and LinkedIn over the weekend, LeCun said he disagrees with Musk’s secrecy when it comes to developing new technology and products and the “blatantly false” predictions he shares with the public, in addition to how he chooses to share “dangerous political opinions” and conspiracy theories.
Musk said in a post on X Monday that LeCun has been “out of touch with AI for a long time.” A Google Scholar link shared by LeCun indicates he has published 80 technical papers since January 2022.
LeCun and Musk didn’t respond to requests for comment on Monday.
The “blatantly false” predictions LeCun referenced included Musk’s claims that artificial general intelligence would arrive next year and that Tesla would bring 1 million robotaxis to market by 2020.
The latter promise came on a call with investors in 2019. At the time, Musk said robotaxis would make Tesla a company worth $500 billion. Tesla’s market cap topped $1 trillion in 2021, but the company still hasn’t delivered a single robotaxi.
Musk has also shared lofty goals for his brain implant startup Neuralink. He’s claimed Neuralink’s devices could enable “superhuman cognition” and “solve” autism and schizophrenia. During a “show and tell” recruitment event in late 2022, Musk said he plans to get an implant himself.
The company has implanted its flagship system in one human patient so far and has not received FDA approval for its technology.
LeCun was also critical of how Musk takes credit for the work of others. He pointed out that Musk’s only technical publication on Google Scholar is related to Neuralink. It was published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research in 2019. Musk is listed as the lead author, while the blanket term “Neuralink” is listed as the second author.
“I’m sure the scientists who hide behind this collective name are super happy about that,” LeCun said on X. “I just hope they won’t die bitter and forgotten.”
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev says it’s not “entirely relevant” that the trading platform’s so-called tokenized shares of OpenAI and SpaceX aren’t technically equity in the companies.
It comes after OpenAI raised concerns about the product, which is designed to give users in the European Union exposure to various U.S. stocks — including private companies, which are less liquid than publicly listed firms.
OpenAI last week warned that Robinhood’s stock tokens do not represent equity in the company and said in a post on X that, “any transfer of OpenAI equity requires our approval — we did not approve any transfer.”
Robinhood says its OpenAI stock tokens are “enabled by Robinhood’s ownership stake in a special purpose vehicle.”
“It is true that these are not technically equity,” Tenev, who co-founded Robinhood in 2013 with fellow entrepreneur Baiju Bhatt, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” Tuesday, echoing his initial response to OpenAI’s concerns.
Tenev said that OpenAI’s complex company structure enables institutional investors to gain exposure to the company through “various instruments, like equity upon the event of a conversion to a for-profit at a later date.”
OpenAI was initially founded as a non-profit organization. However, it has since evolved to include a for-profit entity, which is owned by the non-profit.
“In and of itself, I don’t think it’s entirely relevant that it’s not technically an equity instrument,” he said. “What’s important is that retail customers have an opportunity to get exposure to this asset” — even if it’s a private company — due to the disruptive nature of AI, he added.
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On Monday, the Bank of Lithuania, which is Robinhood’s lead authority in the European Union, told CNBC it was “awaiting clarifications” regarding the structure of the company’s stock tokens following OpenAI’s statement last week.
“Only after receiving and evaluating this information will we be able to assess the legality and compliance of these specific instruments,” Bank of Lithuania spokesman Giedrius Šniukas told CNBC. “The information for investors must be provided in clear, fair, and non-misleading language.”
Tenev said in response to the Lithuanian regulator’s comments that Robinhood is “happy to continue to answer questions from our regulators.”
“Since this is a new thing, regulators are going to want to look at it, and we’ve built this program in a way that we believe will withstand scrutiny — and we expect to be scrutinized as a large, innovative player in this space,” he told CNBC.
A woman holds a cell phone featuring the DeepSeek logo, with the Nvidia logo displayed in the background.
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As China and the U.S. compete in artificial intelligence, Southeast Asia should draw from the best of both countries while building its own technologies, panelists said at CNBC’s East Tech West 2025 conference on June 27 in Bangkok, Thailand.
Julian Gorman, head of Asia-Pacific at mobile network trade organization GSMA, said it would be a negative development if Southeast Asia was forced to choose between either superpower.
“Southeast Asia is very dependent on both economies, both China and America. I think it’s pretty hard to consider that they would go one way or the other,” Gorman said.
“It’s very important that we continue to focus on not fragmenting the technology, standardizing it, and working so that technology transcends geopolitics and ultimately is used for good,” he added.
The spread of U.S. and Chinese AI companies into new global markets has been a big trend this year as both Beijing and Washington seek more global influence in advanced technologies.
U.S. and China offerings
According to George Chen, managing director and co-chair of digital practice for The Asia Group, Southeast Asia had initially been leaning towards AI models from the U.S., such as those from Google and Microsoft.
However, the emergence of China’s DeepSeek has propelled the popularity of the company’s models in Southeast Asia due to its low cost and open-source licensing, which can be used to build on and adapt models to regional priorities.
Open-source generally refers to software in which the source code is made freely available, allowing anyone to view, modify and redistribute it. Large language model players in China have been leaning into this business model since DeepSeek’s debut.
Previous panels at East Tech West have flagged open-source models as an important tool for regions outside of China and the U.S. to build their own sovereign AI capabilities.
Meanwhile, on the hardware side, the U.S. remains a leader in AI processors through chip giant Nvidia. While the U.S. has restricted China’s access to these chips, they remain on the market for Southeast Asia – which Chen suggested the region continue to take advantage of.
However, Chen noted that there is a possibility that the AI landscape could change dramatically in a decade, with China being able to provide more affordable alternatives to Nvidia.
“Don’t take a side easily and too quickly. Think about how to maximize your economic potential,” he suggested.
GSMA’s Gorman pointed out that facing this “balancing act” between the superpowers is not new for Southeast Asia. For example, the region’s mobility industry heavily relies on Chinese tech manufacturing and hardware, as well as the U.S. in other areas such as telecommunications.
Southeast Asia’s edge
Though the U.S. and China are clearly ahead in building advanced AI models, Southeast Asia has its own edge in the global AI space, panelists said.
“If you think about AI as a technology, eventually you need to apply it to a real product or service. That’s how people can use it,” said The Asia Group’s Chen.
The region has a strong app environment which offers “great potential,” he added. “The demographic is young, which means the potential for talent is always there, and R&D cost is relatively cheaper than other places.”
Still, Southeast Asia should aim to bring in companies with advanced capabilities that domestic industries can learn from and benefit from – a strategy that China employed to catch up to the West in advanced technologies, said Chen.
Leader in AI regulation?
According to GSMA’s Gorman, Southeast Asia can serve as a neutral ground between China and the U.S., where the two sides can come together and engage in high-level dialogues on how to apply AI responsibly.
Southeast Asia can also play a proactive role in AI regulation itself, he said, citing recent examples of regulatory leadership from the region, such as Singapore’s Shared Responsibility Framework for tackling international scams and fraud.
So far, there have been few global regulations on AI. While the EU has adopted a policy, the U.S. and ASEAN countries have yet to follow suit.
Chen added that the region will need to band together and adopt common frameworks to gain a more prominent seat at the table of global AI development and regulation.
Almost 600 people have signed an open letter to leaders at venture firm Sequoia Capital after one of its partners, Shaun Maguire, posted what the group described as a “deliberate, inflammatory attack” against the Muslim Democratic mayoral candidate in New York City.
Maguire, a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, posted on X over the weekend that Zohran Mamdani, who won the Democratic primary last month, “comes from a culture that lies about everything” and is out to advance “his Islamist agenda.”
The post had 5.3 million views as of Monday afternoon. Maguire, whose investments include Elon Musk’s SpaceX and X as well as artificial intelligence startup Safe Superintelligence, also published a video on X explaining the remark.
Those signing the letter are asking Sequoia to condemn Maguire’s comments and apologize to Mamdani and Muslim founders. They also want the firm to authorize an independent investigation of Maguire’s behavior in the past two years and post “a zero-tolerance policy on hate speech and religious bigotry.”
They are asking the firm for a public response by July 14, or “we will proceed with broader public disclosure, media outreach and mobilizing our networks to ensure accountability,” the letter says.
Sequoia declined to comment. Maguire didn’t respond to a request for comment, but wrote in a post about the letter on Wednesday that, “You can try everything you want to silence me, but it will just embolden me.”
Among the signees are Mudassir Sheikha, CEO of ride-hailing service Careem, and Amr Awadallah, CEO of AI startup Vectara. Also on the list is Abubakar Abid, who works in machine learning Hugging Face, which is backed by Sequoia, and Ahmed Sabbah, CEO of Telda, a financial technology startup that Sequoia first invested in four years ago.
At least three founders of startups that have gone through startup accelerator program Y Combinator added their names to the letter.
Sequoia as a firm is no stranger to politics. Doug Leone, who led the firm until 2022 and remains a partner, is a longtime Republican donor, who supported Trump in the 2024 election. Following Trump’s victory in November, Leone posted on X, “To all Trump voters: you no longer have to hide in the shadows…..you’re the majority!!”
By contrast, Leone’s predecessor, Mike Moritz, is a Democratic megadonor, who criticized Trump and, in August, slammed his colleagues in the tech industry for lining up behind the Republican nominee. In a Financial Times opinion piece, Moritz wrote Trump’s tech supporters were “making a big mistake.”
“I doubt whether any of them would want him as part of an investment syndicate that they organised,” wrote Moritz, who stepped down from Sequoia in 2023, over a decade after giving up a management role at the firm. “Why then do they dismiss his recent criminal conviction as nothing more than a politically inspired witch-hunt over a simple book-keeping error?”
Neither Leone nor Moritz returned messages seeking comment.
Roelof Botha, Sequoia’s current lead partner, has taken a more neutral stance. Botha said at an event last July that Sequoia as a partnership doesn’t “take a political point of view,” adding that he’s “not a registered member of either party.” Boelof said he’s “proud of the fact that we’ve enabled many of our partners to express their respected individual views along the way, and given them that freedom.”
Maguire has long been open with his political views. He said on X last year that he had “just donated $300k to President Trump.”
Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, has gained the ire of many people in tech and in the business community more broadly since defeating former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the June primary.