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Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, stands in the foundry of the Tesla Gigafactory during a press event. year.
Patrick Pleul | picture alliance | picture alliance | Getty Images

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk expressed his displeasure with President Joe Biden on Tuesday, deeming his administration “biased” against Tesla and saying it was “controlled” by unions during a speech on stage at the Code Conference in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Musk, in his typically irreverent form, also repeated several of his prior taunts against federal financial regulators at the SEC, reiterated his support for cryptocurrency and nuclear energy, and said he is optimistic about Tesla and tech in China despite recent antitrust and cryptocurrency crackdowns there.

Beef with Biden

Code host and Recode editor-at-large Kara Swisher asked Musk to explain recent tweets where he chided President Joe Biden.

Musk sighed. “You know, Biden held this EV summit — didn’t invite Tesla. Invited GM, Ford, Chrysler and UAW. An EV summit on the White House! Didn’t mention Tesla once, and praised GM and Ford for leading the EV revolution.”

Musk continued, “Does this sound maybe a little biased or something? And you know, just — it’s not the friendliest administration. Seems to be controlled by unions as far as I can tell.”

Swisher asked if he was waiting to get former president Trump back or to be president himself, he said no on both counts.

Taxes and tweets

Swisher asked Musk — who is currently the wealthiest person in the world, according to Bloomberg — to respond to criticism that while his companies have received a good deal of government contracts and subsidies, the CEO has avoided paying some taxes personally in the US through creative, if legal, accounting practices.

In June, the investigative news site ProPublica reported on Musk’s tax bill as part of a massive analysis of billionaire’s finances. They found that Musk’s income tax bill amounted to zero in 2018.

Musk insulted ProPublica’s reporting as “tricky” and “misleading.” (ProPublica did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Musk’s contentions.)

Then, he said that the number was so low because he does not draw a salary, so his cash compensation is basically zero. Musk borrows money against stock options that vest over time instead.

As he has amassed more and more shares in Tesla and SpaceX, he said, he has “not really bothered” to take money off the table by selling a stake. Success of SpaceX and Tesla was far from assured, Musk reminisced. “They skirted bankruptcy many times. But I never tried to take money off the table. And now this is trying to be turned around and made into a bad thing.”

Publicly traded Tesla never issued a notice to shareholders that it was near bankruptcy.

When Musk’s stock options expire at Tesla, the CEO said his marginal tax rate will be over 50 percent. “I have a bunch of options that are expiring early next year–so… a huge block of options will sell in Q4. Because I have to or they’ll expire.”

Swisher said, “So you will eventually pay a lot of taxes?”

Musk said, “Massive, yeah. Basically, a majority of what I sell will be tax.”

Critics may believe that wealthy people borrowing against their stock is “a trick to get away from paying taxes,” he said. But Musk emphasized that this is not uncommon and can be a risky move. “Borrowing against stock is all sort of fun and games until you have a recession and you hit the margin calls and then you go to zero which happens basically every time there’s a recession.”

He replied, “I’ve definitely gone on record and said I think our stock price is too high in my opinion, and this did nothing to stop the rise of the stock price. So… I don’t know– what am I supposed to do, you know? I’m not the one making it go up!” The audience laughed.

“I think it’s important to bear in mind, my actual tax rate is 53 percent. They’re trying to make it sound like I was paying very low taxes, but in fact my taxes are very high…A huge amount will be paid in the next three months because of expiring options,” he continued.

Swisher also asked about the CEO’s copious, and sometimes combative, use of Twitter. “Walk us through when you decide to do a tweet,” she said.

Musk replied to Swisher in a sarcastic tone.

“Well, I think about it for hours. And I consult with my strategy team,” he laughed with the audience. “Or maybe I’m wasted and then I brrrr–psshht! Gone! Let me shoot myself in the foot, bam! Now let me shoot myself in the foot bam! That describes some of my tweets.”

Previously, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Tesla and Musk for securities fraud after the CEO wrote, on Twitter, that he was considering taking Tesla private for $420 per share and had funding secured.

They ultimately settled that lawsuit, with Musk and Tesla each paying a $20 million fine to the feds and Musk relinquishing his role as chairman of the board at Tesla. Musk also agreed to have his tweets reviewed by a compliance officer at Tesla before he posts them, if they contain any material company information.

“Are you worried about any SEC involvement in your tweets going forward?” Swisher asked.

Musk said, “What does that stand for again? I know the middle word is ‘Elon’s’ but I can’t remember the other two words.

She urged him to answer seriously. “Are you worried they’re gonna say Elon, stop… tweeting.”

Musk said, “Are you talking about the shortseller enrichment commission?”

Both comments were allusions to insults Musk had lobbed at the financial regulator on Twitter in 2020 and 2018, respectively.

Crypto and China

Tesla made waves when it purchased about $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin. After it disclosed the holdings, the price of bitcoin skyrocketed. When Musk said on Twitter that Tesla would stop accepting bitcoin as a payment for its electric cars, the price of bitcoin plummeted.

When Musk tweets an endorsement of a particular coin — as he has done with dogecoin — its price tends to increase at least temporarily.

When Swisher asked about cryptocurrency regulation, Musk said that the SEC should back off.

“Just let it fly,” he suggested.

The People’s Bank of China recently declared all virtual currency-related activities illegal. Swisher asked Musk if he has any concerns about working in China, or if he was worried about U.S.-China relations.

After praising Tesla’s employees and vehicle assembly plant in Shanghai, Musk said, he was “not especially” worried about China right now. As the pandemic wanes, enabling a culture of in-person meetings to resume, Musk predicted “trust levels” in China with tech companies and foreign businesses would “start heading in a more positive direction.”

Musk said he thought China may not be embracing cryptocurrency in part because of electricity shortages there and the massive amount of electricity needed for mining bitcoin. But he also noted cryptocurrency could decrease the power of centralized governments.

When Swisher noted Musk individually can “change the shares” in cryptocurrency more than China can, he acknowledged this. She asked him if that was a good thing. He quipped, “If it goes up, I suppose it is.”

Space and energy

Swisher and Musk discussed SpaceX, its competitors, plans to expand Starlink (a satellite internet service) and ambitions to make humanity a “multi-planet species” at length.

During the course of their SpaceX discussion, Musk took the occasion to mock the phallic shape of Blue Origin’s rocket, and berate Jeff Bezos for his aerospace company’s litigiousness.

Swisher asked, “Can you explain from a technological point of view why it’s that shape?” The characteristically ribald Musk said, “If you are only going to be doing sub-orbital then your rocket can be sort of shorter, yes.”

Musk specified that he doesn’t really speak with the Amazon founder, but instead subtweets him — meaning he posts tweets about Bezos without addressing him directly.

When asked about SpaceX creating light pollution that has interfered with astronomers’ work, Musk said “We take great pains to make sure our satellites do not interfere with their telescopes.” SpaceX may launch some new telescopes using the Starship vehicle, he noted, which would have ten times the resolution of the Hubble. He said only amateur astronomers are complaining about SpaceX today.

As the session wrapped up, one audience member asked if Musk is concerned about utilities being able to generate and transmit enough electricity to power electric vehicles as they become more popular.

Musk estimated that electricity demand would approximately double as the world shifts from gas-powered to electric vehicles.

“This is gonna create a lot of challenges with the grid,” he said. He saw the demand as “unworkable” unless significant local power generation is added at houses through means such as residential solar products, like those sold by Tesla.

Besides solar on rooftops, he said we’ll need to add “large, sustainable power generation developments primarily wind and solar” to the grid, pairing them with battery packs to smooth out the intermittent nature of renewable energy.

Musk added, as a closing thought:

“I’m also kind of pro-nuclear. And I’m sort of surprised by the public sentiment against nuclear. I’m not saying we should go build a whole bunch of new nuclear plants. But I don’t think we should shut down ones that are operating safely. They did this in Germany and had to create a whole bunch of coal power plants and I don’t think that was the right decision, frankly.”

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Tech founders call on Sequoia Capital to denounce VC Shaun Maguire’s Mamdani comments

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Tech founders call on Sequoia Capital to denounce VC Shaun Maguire's Mamdani comments

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.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

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Samsung expects second-quarter profits to more than halve as it struggles to capture AI demand

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Samsung expects second-quarter profits to more than halve as it struggles to capture AI demand

Samsung signage during the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, California, US, on Thursday, March 20, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

South Korea’s Samsung Electronics on Tuesday forecast a 56% fall in profits for the second as the company struggles to capture demand from artificial intelligence chip leader Nvidia. 

The memory chip and smartphone maker said in its guidance that operating profit for the quarter ending June was projected to be around 4.6 trillion won, down from 10.44 trillion Korean won year over year.

The figure is a deeper plunge compared to smart estimates from LSEG, which are weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate.

According to the smart estimates, Samsung was expected to post an operating profit of 6.26 trillion won ($4.57 billion) for the quarter. Meanwhile, Samsung projected its revenue to hit 74 trillion won, falling short of LSEG smart estimates of 75.55 trillion won.

Samsung is a leading player in the global smartphone market and is also one of the world’s largest makers of memory chips, which are utilized in devices such as laptops and servers.

However, the company has been falling behind competitors like SK Hynix and Micron in high-bandwidth memory chips — an advanced type of memory that is being deployed in AI chips.

“The disappointing earnings are due to ongoing operating losses in the foundry business, while the upside in high-margin HBM business remains muted this quarter,” MS Hwang, Research Director at Counterpoint Research, said about the earnings guidance.

SK Hynix, the leader in HBM, has secured a position as Nvidia’s key supplier. While Samsung has reportedly been working to get the latest version of its HBM chips certified by Nvidia, a report from a local outlet suggests these plans have been pushed back to at least September.

The company did not respond to a request for comment on the status of its deals with Nvidia.

Ray Wang, Research Director of Semiconductors, Supply Chain and Emerging Technology at Futurum Group told CNBC that it is clear that Samsung has yet to pass Nvidia’s qualification for its most advanced HBM.

“Given that Nvidia accounts for roughly 70% of global HBM demand, the delay meaningfully caps near-term upside,” Wang said. He noted that while Samsung has secured some HBM supply for AI processors from AMD, this win is unlikely to contribute to second-quarter results due to the timing of production ramps.

Meanwhile, Samsung’s chip foundry business continues to face weak orders and serious competition from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Wang added.

Reuters reported in September that Samsung had instructed its subsidiaries worldwide to cut 30% of staff in some divisions, citing sources familiar with the matter.

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Waymo to begin testing in Philadelphia with safety drivers behind the wheel

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Waymo to begin testing in Philadelphia with safety drivers behind the wheel

A Waymo autonomous self-driving Jaguar electric vehicle sits parked at an EVgo charging station in Los Angeles, California, on May 15, 2024.

Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images

Waymo said it will begin testing in Philadelphia, with a limited fleet of vehicles and human safety drivers behind the wheel.

“This city is a National Treasure,” Waymo wrote in a post on X on Monday. “It’s a city of love, where eagles fly with a gritty spirit and cheese that spreads and cheese that steaks. Our road trip continues to Philly next.”

The Alphabet-owned company confirmed to CNBC that it will be testing in Pennsylvania’s largest city through the fall, adding that the initial fleet of cars will be manually driven through the more complex parts of Philadelphia, including downtown and on freeways.

“Folks will see our vehicles driving at all hours throughout various neighborhoods, from North Central to Eastwick, and from University City to as far east as the Delaware River,” a Waymo spokesperson said.

With its so-called road trips, Waymo seeks to collect mapping data and evaluate how its autonomous technology, Waymo Driver, performs in new environments, handling traffic patterns and local infrastructure. Road trips are often used a way for the company to gauge whether it can potentially offer a paid ride share service in a particular location.

The expanded testing, which will go through the fall, comes as Waymo aims for a broader rollout. Last month, the company announced plans to drive vehicles manually in New York for testing, marking the first step toward potentially cracking the largest U.S. city. Waymo applied for a permit with the New York City Department of Transportation to operate autonomously with a trained specialist behind the wheel in Manhattan. State law currently doesn’t allow for such driverless operations.

Waymo One provides more than 250,000 paid trips each week across Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, Texas, and is preparing to bring fully autonomous rides to Atlanta, Miami, and Washington, D.C., in 2026.

Alphabet has been under pressure to monetize artificial intelligence products as it bolsters spending on infrastructure. Alphabet’s “Other Bets” segment, which includes Waymo, brought in revenue of $1.65 billion in 2024, up from $1.53 billion in 2023. However, the segment lost $4.44 billion last year, compared to a loss of $4.09 billion the previous year.

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