Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 13, 2025.
Hamad I Mohammed | Reuters
Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund said it will vote against Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar pay package at Tesla‘s annual shareholder meeting this week, rebelling against management guidance and threats from Musk to step down if the deal is rejected.
Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which manages the fund — the largest of its kind in the world, and a major shareholder in Tesla — said on Tuesday that it had already cast its vote against Musk’s remuneration package as CEO of the carmaker.
“While we appreciate the significant value created under Mr. Musk’s visionary role, we are concerned about the total size of the award, dilution, and lack of mitigation of key person risk- consistent with our views on executive compensation,” NBIM said in a statement.
“We will continue to seek constructive dialogue with Tesla on this and other topics,” the fund’s managers added.
Norway’s wealth fund holds a 1.14% stake in Tesla, according to its half-year filings in June. The value of that investment was last declared to be 118.3 billion Norwegian kroner ($11.6 billion).
Tesla shares were 2.5% lower in premarket trade.
Tesla’s Board of Directors is asking shareholders to approve a pay plan for Musk that could see him granted almost $1 trillion in stock and expand his voting powers at the company. The full award would be contingent on Tesla hitting certain milestones over the next 10 years.
The proposals have raised eyebrows and been met with opposition from some company watchers. Last month, the Take Back Tesla campaign — a coalition of unions and corporate watchdogs — urged shareholders to reject the deal, while proxy advisories Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis have also recommended investors vote against the compensation package.
Musk has hit back at those recommendations, labeling ISS and Glass Lewis “corporate terrorists” on an analyst call.
“Tesla is worth more than all other automotive companies combined,” Musk wrote in a post on X last month in response to a critic of the pay proposal. “Which of those CEOs would you like to run Tesla? It won’t be me.”
Representatives for Musk and Tesla were not immediately available to comment on NBIM’s vote against the proposed CEO compensation package.
However, Musk has butted heads with NBIM over his pay in the past.
Last year, NBIM voted against reinstating Musk’s $56 billion pay deal after it was rescinded by a U.S. judge. The package — the largest public executive compensation plan in U.S. history — was ultimately approved by Tesla’s shareholders.
Following the vote, the Financial Times and Norwegian newspaper E24 published text messages exchanged between Musk and NBIM Chief Executive Nicolai Tangen, which showed the Tesla CEO declining an invitation to a dinner in Norwegian capital Oslo.
“When I ask you for a favor, which I very rarely do, and you decline, then you should not ask me for one until you’ve done something to make amends,” Musk reportedly wrote. “Friends are as friends do.”
Musk is the world’s wealthiest person, according to Forbes, with a net worth of $504.1 billion.
David Sacks, White House AI and Crypto Czar, attends a meeting of the White House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Education in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 4, 2025.
“The U.S. has at least 5 major frontier model companies. If one fails, others will take its place,” Sacks wrote in a post on X.
Sacks’ comments came after OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said Wednesday that the startup wants to establish an ecosystem of private equity, banks and a federal “backstop” or “guarantee” that could help the company finance its infrastructure investments.
She softened her stance later in a LinkedIn post and said OpenAI is not seeking a government backstop for its infrastructure commitments. She said her use of the word “backstop” clouded her point.
“As the full clip of my answer shows, I was making the point that American strength in technology will come from building real industrial capacity which requires the private sector and government playing their part,” Friar wrote.
The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. OpenAI directed CNBC to Friar’s LinkedIn post.
Sacks said the Trump Administration does want to make permitting and power generation easier, and that the goal is to facilitate rapid infrastructure buildouts without raising residential electricity rates.
“To give benefit of the doubt, I don’t think anyone was actually asking for a bailout. (That would be ridiculous.),” he wrote.
Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI and then CEO and co-founder of Inflection AI, speaks during the Axios BFD event in New York on Oct. 12, 2023.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
Microsoft on Thursday said it’s forming a team that will be tasked with performing advanced artificial intelligence research.
Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of the Microsoft AI group that includes Bing and the Copilot assistant, announced the formation of the MAI Superintelligence Team, and said in a blog post that he’ll be leading it.
“We are doing this to solve real concrete problems and do it in such a way that it remains grounded and controllable,” Suleyman wrote. “We are not building an ill-defined and ethereal superintelligence; we are building a practical technology explicitly designed only to serve humanity.”
The decision comes months after Facebook parent Meta spent billions to hire talent for its new Meta Superintelligence Labs unit that’s working on research and products. The term superintelligence typically refers to machines deemed more intelligent than the smartest people.
Suleyman was a co-founder of AI lab DeepMind, which Google bought in 2014. After leaving Google in 2022, he co-founded and led AI startup Inflection. Microsoft hired Suleyman and several other Inflection employees last year.
Top technology companies have rushed to hire leading AI engineers and researchers, augmenting their products with generative AI capabilities. The boom started with OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT in 2022.
Microsoft uses OpenAI models in Bing and Copilot, while OpenAI runs workloads in Microsoft’s Azure cloud. Microsoft also owns a $135 billion equity stake in OpenAI following a restructuring.
Microsoft has taken steps to reduce its dependence on OpenAI. After the Inflection deal, the software company also began drawing on models from Google and from Anthropic, which was founded by former OpenAI executives.
The new Microsoft AI research group will focus on providing useful companions for people that can help in education and other domains, Suleyman wrote in his blog post. It will also pursue narrow areas in medicine and in renewable energy production.
“We’ll have expert level performance at the full range of diagnostics, alongside highly capable planning and prediction in operational clinical settings,” Suleyman wrote.
As investors and analysts are increasingly voicing their concerns about overspending on AI without a clear path to profits, Suleyman said he wants “to make clear that we are not building a superintelligence at any cost, with no limits.”
Doordash‘s stock plummeted toward its worst session ever as investors rejected the company’s aggressive spending strategy.
The food delivery platform said it plans to shell out “several hundred million dollars” next year on new product initiatives like autonomous delivery and a new global tech stack.
These plans will improve its product globally, but involve “direct and opportunity costs” in the short run, Doordash said.
CEO Tony Xu defended the company’s spending decisions during the earnings call with analysts and said Doordash is running the business as it always has — to solve problems for customers in the highest quality ways.
“Our track record in investing in the areas that we currently have operating … have suggested that we’ve had some success in repeating this playbook, and we’re doing this now for future growth,” he said.
In recent months, Doordash has spent big money to open new markets and boost optionality for customers as it battles industry competitors such as Uber, and worries mount of a slowdown in consumer discretionary spending.
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This year, the California-based company purchased restaurant booking platform SevenRooms for $1.2 billion and acquired British food delivery firm Deliveroo in a deal worth $3.9 billion. Doordash also launched an autonomous robot delivery robot known as Dot in September and new DashMart fulfillment services for retailers.
The length and breadth of these investments will remain a key issue for the company’s shares, wrote Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski.
“In our view, this is one of the best operational management teams in the sector and longer duration investors are likely to remain supportive through this period,” he wrote. “However, given inconsistent disclosure, we believe patience may be required.”
Doordash’s third-quarter profit totaled 55 cents per share, falling short of the 69 cents per share forecasted by LSEG. Revenues grew 27% from a year ago to $3.45 billion, above Wall Street’s $3.36 billion estimate.
The company expects adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter between $710 million to $810 million, with a midpoint of $760 million. Analysts polled by FactSet expected $806.8 million.
Doordash expects Deliveroo to add $45 million to adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter and about $200 million in 2026.