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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump greets Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk during a rally the day before Trump is scheduled to be inaugurated for a second term, in Washington, U.S., January 19, 2025. 

Brian Snyder | Reuters

Tesla’s fourth-quarter earnings report lands just over a week after President Donald Trump began his second term in the White House, with Elon Musk right by his side.

Now that the Tesla CEO is firmly planted in Washington, D.C., in a high-profile advisory role, shareholders in the electric vehicle maker have some questions.

On the forum Tesla uses to solicit investor inquiries in advance of its earnings calls, more than 100 poured in from shareholders about Musk’s politics, including his official role at Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and his endorsement of far-right candidates.

“How much time does Elon Musk devote to growing Tesla, solving product issues, and driving shareholder value vs. his public engagements with Trump, DOGE, and political activities?” one retail investor asked, adding, “Do you believe he’s providing Tesla the focus it needs?”

In addition to contributing $270 million to help Trump and other Republican candidates and causes, Musk spent weeks on the campaign trail during the fourth quarter working to propel Trump back into the White House. After Trump’s election victory, Musk then spent considerable time far away from Tesla’s factory floor at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

One of the top-voted questions about Musk asked how much time he intends to spend “at the White House and on government activities vs time and effort dedicated to Tesla.”

Musk and Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Elon Musk's America PAC sees mixed election results

Musk has also involved himself in German politics, giving a full-throated endorsement of the country’s far-right, anti-immigrant party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) in December ahead of the February election.

According to research and consulting firm Brand Finance, the value of Tesla’s brand fell by 26% last year, with factors including Musk’s “antagonism,” Tesla’s aging lineup of EVs and more. The researchers found that fewer consumers would recommend or consider buying a Tesla now than in previous years.

During public remarks following last week’s inauguration, Musk repeatedly used a gesture that was viewed by many historians and politicians as a Nazi salute. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, whose scholarship has focused on fascism, described it as “a Nazi salute and a very belligerent one,” while neo-Nazis praised Musk for his antics.

A shareholder on Say asked, “Will you apologize for the misunderstanding that occurred when you made the hand gesture thanking folks for their support. It would go a long way with your investors and the American public at large. Thanking you in advance Elon!”

In response to the criticism, Musk said anyone calling the salute a hateful gesture was pushing a “hoax.” But after that, he engaged in Nazi-themed word play on X, prompting the Anti-Defamation League to rebuke him, writing it is “inappropriate and offensive to make light” of the “singularly evil” Holocaust. And Musk later appeared via video at a rally for the AfD in Halle, Germany.

Some investors asked whether Tesla had “sales lost due to political activities of Elon,” how the company plans “to respond to Musk’s now infamous Nazi salute,” and how Tesla “is addressing the negative impacts of Elon’s public views and activities.”

But Tesla is under no obligation to bring any of these topics up on the earnings call. Ahead of the third-quarter call in October, investors had a lot of questions and concerns about similar issues regarding Musk’s involvement in politics, though that was before Trump’s election victory.

Trump was never mentioned on that call.

WATCH: Here’s why Bank of America downgraded Tesla

Tesla: Here's why Bank of America downgraded the stock to neutral

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Navan sets price range for IPO, expects market cap of up to $6.5 billion

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Navan sets price range for IPO, expects market cap of up to .5 billion

FILE PHOTO: Ariel Cohen during a panel at DLD Munich Conference 2020, Europe’s big innovation conference, Alte Kongresshalle, Munich.

Picture Alliance for DLD | Hubert Burda Media | AP

Navan, a developer of corporate travel and expense software, expects its market cap to be as high as $6.5 billion in its IPO, according to an updated regulatory filing on Friday.

The company said it anticipates selling shares at $24 to $26 each. Its valuation in that range would be about $3 billion less than where private investors valued Navan in 2022, when the company announced a $300 million funding round.

CoreWeave, Circle and Figma have led a resurgence in tech IPOs in 2025 after a drought that lasted about three years. Navan filed its original prospectus on Sept. 19, with plans to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “NAVN.”

Last week, the U.S. government entered a shutdown that has substantially reduced operations inside of agencies including the SEC. In August, the agency said its electronic filing system, EDGAR, “is operated pursuant to a contract and thus will remain fully functional as long as funding for the contractor remains available through permitted means.”

Cerebras, which makes artificial intelligence chips, withdrew its registration for an IPO days after the shutdown began.

Navan CEO Ariel Cohen and technology chief Ilan Twig started the company under the name TripActions in 2015. It’s based in Palo Alto, California, and had around 3,400 employees at the end of July.

For the July quarter, Navan recorded a $38.6 million net loss on $172 million in revenue, which was up about 29% year over year. Competitors include Expensify, Oracle and SAP. Expensify stock closed at $1.64on Friday, down from its $27 IPO price in 2021.

Navan ranked 39th on CNBC’s 2025 Disruptor 50 list, after also appearing in 2024.

WATCH: Brex CEO on Navan partnership

We developed 'best in class' enterprise travel expense solution, says Brex CEO on Navan partnership

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Tech megacaps lose $770 billion in value as Nasdaq suffers steepest drop since April

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Tech megacaps lose 0 billion in value as Nasdaq suffers steepest drop since April

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, speaking with CNBC’s Jim Cramer during a CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer event at the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 7th, 2025.

Kevin Stankiewicz | CNBC

Shares of Amazon, Nvidia and Tesla each dropped around 5% on Friday, as tech’s megacaps lost $770 billion in market cap, following President Donald Trump’s threats for increased tariffs on Chinese goods.

With tech’s trillion-dollar companies occupying an increasingly large slice of the U.S. market, their declines send the Nasdaq down 3.6% and the S&P 500 down 2.7%. For both indexes, it was the worst day since April, when Trump said he would slap “reciprocal” duties on U.S. trading partners.

After market close on Friday, Trump declared in a social media post that the U.S. would impose a 100% tariff on China and on Nov. 1 it would apply export controls “on any and all critical software.”

Amazon, Nvidia and Tesla all slipped about 2% in extended trading following the post.

The president’s latest threats are disrupting, at least briefly, what had been a sustained rally in tech, built on hundreds of billions of dollars in planned spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Read more CNBC tech news

In late September, Nvidia, which makes graphics processing units for training AI models, became the first company to reach a market cap of $4.5 trillion. Nvidia alone saw its market capitalization decline by nearly $229 billion on Friday.

OpenAI counts on Nvidia’s GPUs from a series of cloud suppliers, including Microsoft. OpenAI is only seeing rising demand.

In September it introduced the Sora 2 video creation app, and this week the company said the ChatGPT assistant now boasts over 800 million weekly users. But Microsoft must buy infrastructure to operate its cloud data centers. Microsoft’s market cap dropped by $85 billion on Friday.

The sell-off wiped out Amazon’s gains for the year. That stock is now down 2% so far in 2025. It competes with Microsoft to rent out GPUs from its cloud data centers, but it doesn’t have major business with OpenAI. The online retailer is now worth $121 billion less than it was on Thursday.

“There continues to be a lot of noise about the impact that tariffs will have on retail prices and consumption,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told analysts in July. “Much of it thus far has been wrong and misreported. As we said before, it’s impossible to know what will happen.”

Tesla, which introduced lower-priced vehicles on Tuesday, saw its market capitalization sink by $71 billion.

The automaker reports third-quarter results on Oct. 22, with Microsoft earnings scheduled for the following week. Nvidia reports in November.

Google parent Alphabet and Facebook owner Meta fell 2% and almost 4%, respectively.

WATCH: Pres. Trump: Calculating massive increase of tariffs on Chinese products into U.S.

Pres. Trump: Calculating massive increase of tariffs on Chinese products into U.S.

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Govini, a defense tech startup taking on Palantir, hits $100 million in annual recurring revenue

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Govini, a defense tech startup taking on Palantir, hits 0 million in annual recurring revenue

Govini, a defense tech software startup taking on the likes of Palantir, has blown past $100 million in annual recurring revenue, the company announced Friday.

“We’re growing faster than 100% in a three-year CAGR, and I expect that next year we’ll continue to do the same,” CEO Tara Murphy Dougherty told CNBC’s Morgan Brennan in an interview. With how “big this market is, we can keep growing for a long, long time, and that’s really exciting.”

CAGR stands for compound annual growth rate, a measurement of the rate of return.

The Arlington, Virginia-based company also announced a $150 million growth investment from Bain Capital. It plans to use the money to expand its team and product offering to satisfy growing security demands.

In recent years, venture capitalists have poured more money into defense tech startups like Govini to satisfy heightened national security concerns and modernize the military as global conflict ensues.

The group, which includes unicorns like Palmer Luckey’s Anduril, Shield AI and artificial intelligence beneficiary Palantir, is taking on legacy giants such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, that have long leaned on contracts from the Pentagon.

Read more CNBC tech news

Dougherty, who previously worked at Palantir, said she hopes the company can seize a “vertical slice” of the defense technology space.

The 14-year-old Govini has already secured a string of big wins in recent years, including an over $900-million U.S. government contract and deals with the Department of War.

Govini is known for its flagship AI software Ark, which it says can help modernize the military’s defense tech supply chain by better managing product lifecycles as military needs grow more sophisticated.

“If the United States can get this acquisition system right, it can actually be a decisive advantage for us,” Dougherty said.

Looking ahead, Dougherty told CNBC that she anticipates some setbacks from the government shutdown.

Navy customers could be particularly hard hit, and that could put the U.S. at a major disadvantage.

While the U.S. is maintaining its AI dominance, China is outpacing its shipbuilding capacity and that needs to be taken “very seriously,” she added.

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