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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk watch the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket in Brownsville, Texas, on Nov. 19, 2024.

Brandon Bell | Via Reuters

Tesla shares jumped to an all-time high on Wednesday, surpassing their prior record reached in 2021, sparked by a post-election rally and Wall Street’s increased enthusiasm for Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company.

The stock rose to an intraday high of $415, which is 50 cents above its previous peak, and was on pace to close ahead of its highest finish, which was $409.97 on Nov. 4, 2021.

Tesla’s market value has swelled by about 66% this year, with almost all of those gains coming since Donald Trump’s election victory early last month. The stock’s 38% rally in November marked its best monthly performance since January of 2023 and its 10th best on record.

Musk poured $277 million into a pro-Trump campaign effort, according to Federal Election Commission filings, and turned his support for the Republican nominee into another full-time job ahead of the election, funding a swing-state operation to register voters and using his social media platform X to constantly tout his preferred candidate, frequently with misinformation.

The world’s richest person, who’s seen his net worth swell to over $360 billion, is set to lead the Trump administration’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” alongside onetime Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

His new role could give Musk power over federal agencies’ budgets, staffing and the ability to push for the elimination of inconvenient regulations. Musk said during a Tesla earnings call in October that he intended to use his sway with Trump to establish a “federal approval process for autonomous vehicles.” Currently, approvals happen at the state level.

“The stock is responding to the Trump bump,” Craig Irwin, an analyst at Roth MKM, told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” last week. Irwin had just increased his price target to $380 from $85, writing in a report that “Musk’s authentic support for Trump likely doubled Tesla’s pool of enthusiasts and lifted credibility for a demand inflection.”

On Wednesday, analysts at Goldman Sachs boosted their price target on Tesla, joining a parade of firms that have lifted their price expectation or their rating on the stock. The Goldman analysts wrote that “the market is taking a more forward-looking approach to Tesla, including with respect to its AI opportunity.”

Analysts at Morgan Stanley and Bank of America have also issued bullish reports of late.

Since Trump’s victory, Musk has been accompanying the president-elect in meetings with world leaders, and began advising him and members of Congress as to which federal agencies, regulations and budget items the billionaire would like to eliminate or greatly reduce.

Tesla’s surge to a record marks a dramatic turn from its performance to start the year. The company’s shares plunged 29% in the first three months of 2024, the worst quarter for the stock since the end of 2022 and the third worst since Tesla went public in 2010. At the time, investors were concerned about Tesla’s core business, which reported declining revenue in the first quarter in part due to increased competition from China.

In its third-quarter earnings report in October, Tesla reported a year-over-year revenue increase of 8%, which fell just shy of estimates. However, the company reported better-than-expected profit, and Musk said on the earnings call that his “best guess” is that “vehicle growth” will reach 20% to 30% next year, due to “lower cost vehicles” and the “advent of autonomy.” That forecast was ahead of analysts’ predictions.

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Bitcoin rises to fresh record above $112,000, helped by Nvidia-led tech rally

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Bitcoin rises to fresh record above 2,000, helped by Nvidia-led tech rally

The logo of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin can be seen on a coin in front of a Bitcoin chart.

Silas Stein | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

Bitcoin hit a fresh record on Wednesday afternoon as an Nvidia-led rally in equities helped push the price of the cryptocurrency higher into the stock market close.

The price of bitcoin was last up 1.9%, trading at $110,947.49, according to Coin Metrics. Just before 4:00 p.m. ET, it hit a high of $112,052.24, surpassing its May 22 record of $111,999.

The flagship cryptocurrency has been trading in a tight range for several weeks despite billions of dollars flowing into bitcoin exchange traded funds. Bitcoin purchases by public companies outpaced ETF inflows in the second quarter. Still, bitcoin is up just 2% in the past month.

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Bitcoin climbs above $112,000

On Wednesday, tech stocks rallied as Nvidia became the first company to briefly touch $4 trillion in market capitalization. In the same session, investors appeared to shrug off the latest tariff developments from President Donald Trump. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite notched a record close.

While institutions broadly have embraced bitcoin’s “digital gold” narrative, it is still a risk asset that rises and falls alongside stocks depending on what’s driving investor sentiment. When the market is in risk-on mode and investors buy growth-oriented assets like tech stocks, bitcoin and crypto tend to rally with them.

Investors have been expecting bitcoin to reach new records in the second half of the year as corporate treasuries accelerate their bitcoin buying sprees and Congress gets closer to passing crypto legislation.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

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Perplexity launches AI-powered web browser for select group of subscribers

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Perplexity launches AI-powered web browser for select group of subscribers

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Perplexity AI on Wednesday launched a new artificial intelligence-powered web browser called Comet in the startup’s latest effort to compete in the consumer internet market against companies like Google and Microsoft.

Comet will allow users to connect with enterprise applications like Slack and ask complex questions via voice and text, according to a brief demo video Perplexity released on Wednesday.

The browser is available to Perplexity Max subscribers, and the company said invite-only access will roll out to a waitlist over the summer. Perplexity Max costs users $200 per month.

“We built Comet to let the internet do what it has been begging to do: to amplify our intelligence,” Perplexity wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.

Perplexity is best known for its AI-powered search engine that gives users simple answers to questions and links out to the original source material on the web. After the company was accused of plagiarizing content from media outlets, it launched a revenue-sharing model with publishers last year.

In May, Perplexity was in late-stage talks to raise $500 million at a $14 billion valuation, a source familiar confirmed to CNBC. The startup was also approached by Meta earlier this year about a potential acquisition, but the companies did not finalize a deal.

“We will continue to launch new features and functionality for Comet, improve experiences based on your feedback, and focus relentlessly–as we always have–on building accurate and trustworthy AI that fuels human curiosity,” Perplexity said Wednesday.

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Retailers log $7.9 billion in online sales in first 24 hours of Prime Day

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Retailers log .9 billion in online sales in first 24 hours of Prime Day

A worker sorts packages on Amazon Prime Day in New York on July 8, 2025.

Klaus Galiano | Bloomberg | Getty Images

U.S. online sales jumped 9.9% year over year to $7.9 billion on Tuesday, the kickoff of Amazon‘s Prime Day megasale, according to Adobe Analytics.

At that level, it marks the “single biggest e-commerce day so far this year,” Adobe said. It also eclipsed total online spending during Thanksgiving last year, when sales on the holiday reached $6.1 billion.

Amazon’s Prime Day bargain blitz began on Tuesday and lasts through Friday. The event, first launched in 2015 as a way to hook new Prime members, has pushed other retailers to launch counterprogramming.

Walmart‘s six-day deals event also started Tuesday, while Target Circle Week kicked off on Sunday and Best Buy launched a Black Friday in July promotion that began Monday.

Home and outdoor goods showed signs of strong demand during the first day of Amazon’s discount event, said Kashif Zafar, CEO of Xnurta, an advertising platform that serves more than 20,000 online businesses.

Read more CNBC Amazon coverage

Other historically well-performing categories such as beauty and household essentials saw softer demand early on, but could see demand pick up as Prime Day continues, he added.

“Early Prime Day numbers might look soft compared to last year’s surge, but it’s too early to call the event a miss,” Zafar said in an email. “With four days instead of two, we’re seeing a different rhythm, consumers are spreading out their purchases.”

Adobe expects online sales to reach $23.8 billion across all retailers during the 96-hour event, a level that’s “equivalent to two Black Fridays.”

U.S. online shoppers spent $14.2 billion during the 48-hour Prime Day event last year, according to Adobe.

This year’s Prime Day is landing at an uncertain time for retailers and consumers as they grapple with the fallout of President Donald Trump‘s unpredictable tariff policies.

U.S. consumer confidence worsened in June after improving in May as Americans remained concerned about the tariffs’ effect on the economy and prices, according to the Conference Board.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said last month the company hasn’t seen prices “appreciably go up” on its site as a result of tariffs.

Some third-party sellers previously told CNBC they were considering raising or had already raised the price of some of their products manufactured in China as the cost of tariffs became burdensome.

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