In this photo provided by the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District, firefighters are seen at the scene of a fatal accident involving a Tesla and Contra Costa County fire truck on Feb. 18, 2023, in Contra Costa, California.
Contra Costa County Fire Protection District
Federal vehicle safety regulators initiated a new, special crash investigation into a fatal collision that involved a Tesla Model S sedan and a firetruck in Walnut Creek, California, last month, CNBC has confirmed.
The driver of the Tesla died, a passenger was critically injured and four firefighters who were inside the firetruck were taken to a hospital following the crash, according to records obtained by CNBC from the California Highway Patrol and the Contra Costa County Fire Department.
According to fire department records following the incident on Feb. 18, the firetruck was parked in the middle of an interstate highway in order to protect other first responders who were towing a disabled vehicle from the area at the time the Tesla vehicle veered into it.
NHTSA and CHP have each opened separate investigations into the crash.
The CHP wrote in an statement following the fatal incident, “It is unclear if drug or alcohol influence is a factor in this crash. It was unable to be determined at the scene if the Tesla was being operated with any driver assistance or automation activated at the time of the crash.”
Read more about electric vehicles from CNBC Pro
Both CHP and NHTSA want to know whether Tesla’s driver-assistance systems, which are marketed as Autopilot and Full Self-Driving options in the United States, caused the crash.
All new Tesla vehicles in the U.S. come with a standard driver-assistance package called Autopilot. Customers who pay Tesla a monthly subscription fee of $199 or $15,000 upfront can also obtain additional driver-assistance features as part of a premium package called FSD, which stands for Full Self-Driving. Tesla allows FSD customers to sign up for FSD Beta as well, which is a way to test new features that have not been fully debugged on public roads.
Despite their brand names, Tesla does not make a driverless vehicle or system. The company cautions drivers to keep their hands on the wheel, and be ready to take over steering or braking at any moment.
The crash investigation is part of an extensive NHTSA probe of Tesla’s driver-assistance systems, and how they perform around parked first responder vehicles.
According to records on the agency’s website, NHTSA opened a “preliminary evaluation” of Tesla’s Autopilot systems on Aug. 13, 2021. “The investigation opening was motivated by an accumulation of crashes in which Tesla vehicles, operating with Autopilot engaged, struck stationary in-road or roadside first responder vehicles tending to pre-existing collision scenes,” it said.
According to the NHTSA report, at least 14 Teslas have crashed into first responder vehicles while using the Autopilot system.
NHTSA expanded the probe to an “engineering analysis” in spring of 2022, in order to determine if Tesla’s systems may “exacerbate human factors or behavioral safety risks by undermining the effectiveness of the driver’s supervision.”
In lay terms, NHTSA is trying to determine if Tesla’s Autopilot, FSD and other driver-assistance features cause motorists to become so distracted from the road that they would drive more safely without them.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. NHTSA does not comment on open investigations.
Founded in 2022, ElevenLabs is an AI voice generation startup based in London. It competes with the likes of Speechmatics and Hume AI.
Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
LONDON — ElevenLabs, a London-based startup that specializes in generating synthetic voices through artificial intelligence, has revealed plans to be IPO-ready within five years.
The company told CNBC it is targeting major global expansion as it prepares for an initial public offering.
“We expect to build more hubs in Europe, Asia and South America, and just keep scaling,” Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs’ CEO and co-founder, told CNBC in an interview at the firm’s London office.
He identified Paris, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico as potential new locations. London is currently ElevenLabs’ biggest office, followed by New York, Warsaw, San Francisco, Japan, India and Bangalore.
Staniszewski said the eventual aim is to get the company ready for an IPO in the next five years.
“From a commercial standpoint, we would like to be ready for an IPO in that time,” he said. “If the market is right, we would like to create a public company … that’s going to be here for the next generation.”
Undecided on location
Founded in 2022 by Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski, ElevenLabs is an AI voice generation startup that competes with the likes of Speechmatics and Hume AI.
The company divides its business into three main camps: consumer-facing voice assistants, integrations with corporates such as Cisco, and tailor-made applications for specific industries like health care.
Staniszewski said the firm hasn’t yet decided where it could list, but that this decision will largely rest on where most of its users are located at the time.
“If the U.K. is able to start accelerating,” ElevenLabs will consider London as a listing destination, Staniszewski said.
The city has faced criticisms from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists that its stock market is unfavorable toward high-growth tech firms.
Meanwhile, British money transfer firm Wiselast month said it plans to move its primary listing location to the U.S.,
Fundraising plans
ElevenLabs was valued at $3.3 billion following a recent $180 million funding round. The company is backed by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and ICONIQ Growth, as well as corporate names like Salesforce and Deutsche Telekom.
Staniszewski said his startup was open to raising more money from VCs, but it would depend on whether it sees a valid business need, like scaling further in other markets. “The way we try to raise is very much like, if there’s a bet we want to take, to accelerate that bet [we will] take the money,” he said.
Synopsys logo is seen displayed on a smartphone with the flag of China in the background.
Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
The U.S. government has rescinded its export restrictions on chip design software to China, U.S.-based Synopsys announced Thursday.
“Synopsys is working to restore access to the recently restricted products in China,” it said in a statement.
The U.S. had reportedly told several chip design software companies, including Synopsys, in May that they were required to obtain licenses before exporting goods, such as software and chemicals for semiconductors, to China.
The U.S. Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.
The news comes after China signaled last week that they are making progress on a trade truce with the U.S. and confirmed conditional agreements to resume some exchanges of rare earths and advanced technology.
The Datadog stand is being displayed on day one of the AWS Summit Seoul 2024 at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Center in Seoul, South Korea, on May 16, 2024.
Chris Jung | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Datadog shares were up 10% in extended trading on Wednesday after S&P Global said the monitoring software provider will replace Juniper Networks in the S&P 500 U.S. stock index.
S&P Global is making the change effective before the beginning of trading on July 9, according to a statement.
Computer server maker Hewlett Packard Enterprise, also a constituent of the index, said earlier on Wednesday that it had completed its acquisition of Juniper, which makes data center networking hardware. HPE disclosed in a filing that it paid $13.4 billion to Juniper shareholders.
Over the weekend, the two companies reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, which had sued in opposition to the deal. As part of the settlement, HPE agreed to divest its global Instant On campus and branch business.
While tech already makes up an outsized portion of the S&P 500, the index has has been continuously lifting its exposure as the industry expands into more areas of society.
Stocks often rally when they’re added to a major index, as fund managers need to rebalance their portfolios to reflect the changes.
New York-based Datadog went public in 2019. The company generated $24.6 million in net income on $761.6 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2025, according to a statement. Competitors include Cisco, which bought Splunk last year, as well as Elastic and cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.
Datadog has underperformed the broader tech sector so far this year. The stock was down 5.5% as of Wednesday’s close, while the Nasdaq was up 5.6%. Still, with a market cap of $46.6 billion, Datadog’s valuation is significantly higher than the median for that index.