Google’s new Pixel Tablet on its default Home screen.
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I’ve been breaking out of my usual wheelhouse and getting hands-on with Google’s new Pixel Tablet for the last few days. It’s in stores now, and starts at $499 for the base 128 GB model. You can also spring for the $599 256 GB model, and at only $100 more, I think it’s a worthwhile upgrade to double your storage capacity, depending on your use case.
It’s been years since Google rolled out a new tablet, and besides the included charging dock and attendant Hub Mode, the company hasn’t tried to reinvent the wheel. You won’t find pro-oriented accessories like you do on the iPad: no stylus, no keyboard, and aside from a matching case with kickstand, not much in the way of Google-designed accessories.
But in my few days of testing, it seems like this might have been by design. And there’s really one kind of consumer Google had in mind for this product, and if that’s you, this tablet may be worth the price.
What’s good
Hub Mode, Hub Mode, Hub Mode. If you’re a consumer who’s already enmeshed in Google’s ecosystem and are interested in a Google Home-compatible array of smart home devices, the Pixel Tablet may just become your new best friend.
The Pixel Tablet’s best feature is Hub Mode, which turns the device into a landing page for your whole life when you click it to the dock.
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Here’s how it works: When you dock your Pixel tablet with the included charging speaker dock, the tablet visually responds and transforms its lock screen into a customizable screen.
It’s the kind of feature that works well if you already have Google Home devices. From the lock screen, you can view cameras, tweak lighting and adjust your blinds, if you’re one of the lucky folks with smart window treatments. If someone rings your Nest or Ring doorbell, it’ll show you who’s at the door as well.
It could work well in the kitchen or family room — somewhere with a lot of people moving in and out — and can feed in alerts about package delivery, running timers or even when your Uber or Lyft is en route.
I opted for Google’s dynamic on-screen clock in the Prime skin. The clock faces are beautiful and manage to be visually engaging without being a needless distraction.
Unfortunately, my smart-home devices are all set up for Apple HomeKit, which made it difficult to see how it fit into my ecosystem. But the functionality that Hub Mode can offer makes it a step up from relying just on your Nest Hub, because it’s portable.
The Pixel Tablet docked.
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You can buy charging docks individually and dot them around your home, moving your tablet(s) from location to location as you go about your day. For example, you could find a recipe from the couch, tote your Pixel Tablet to the kitchen and get to cooking.
Hub Mode also lets you cast video from your phone or computer to the Hub.
Multitasking is also solid, although it definitely isn’t a computer-killer — nor is Google positioning it as one. It’s perfectly adequate for streaming video and weeding through your inbox at the same time, although depending on the angle of the tablet or the optional case with kickstand, your typing experience may vary.
What’s bad
The Tensor G2 SoC processor, new to the Pixel Tablet, offers a snappy experience, but its power felt constrained by some aspects of the user interface, such as a momentary lag when you pull down to access the control panel.
Google’s Pixel Tablet in Chrome.
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Although the emoji background is a great concept and responds to user touch, the lag muted the experience a bit.
This is a tablet that requires you to get used to its shortcomings: Getting the angle of motion precisely right to go to the home screen rather than switching to another app, for example. Some of those weak points, though, are likely my inexperience with Android.
This isn’t a tablet for a power user, either. It’ll help you do what you need to do as far as basic productivity, but don’t expect to be penning a novel or a tablet review on it. It’s a similar story with the twinned 8MP cameras. My colleague and I both felt that the 7MP front-facing camera on an older iPad Pro outshone the front-facing camera on the Pixel, which seemed a little washed out and unusually sharp in comparison.
Should you buy it?
Go for the Pixel Tablet if you think there’s a space in your home and routine for a portable smart hub. Hub Mode is where this device shines, and even little things such as the air quality indicator on the lock screen and the improved speaker quality made my morning routine noticeably better. At $499 for the 128GB model, it’s got more than enough storage at a reasonable price, especially if you’re already integrated into the Google ecosystem.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Apple CEO Tim Cook shake hands on the day they present Apple’s announcement of a $100 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 6, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Apple shares rose 13% this week, its largest weekly gain in more than five years, after CEO Tim Cook appeared with President Donald Trump in the White House on Wednesday.
Shares of the iPhone maker rose 4% to close at $229.35 per share on Friday for the company’s largest weekly gain since July 2020. The week’s move added over $400 billion to Apple’s market cap, which now sits at $3.4 trillion.
At the White House on Wednesday, Cook appeared with Trump to announce Apple’s plans to spend $100 billion on American companies and American parts over the next four years.
Apple’s plans to buy more American chips pleased Trump, who said during the public meeting that because the company was building in the U.S., it would be exempt from future tariffs that could double the price of imported chips.
Investors had worried that some of Trump’s tariffs could substantially hurt Apple’s profitability. Apple warned in July that it expected over $1 billion in tariff costs in the current quarter, assuming no changes.
“Apple and Tim Cook delivered a masterclass in managing uncertainty after months and months of overhang relative to the potential challenges the company could face from tariffs,” JP Morgan analyst Samik Chatterjee wrote on Wednesday. He has an overweight rating on Apple’s stock.
Cook’s successful White House meeting also comes two weeks after Apple reported June quarter earnings in which overall revenue jumped 10% and iPhone sales grew by 13%.
In an aerial view, the Tesla headquarters is seen in Austin, Texas, on July 24, 2025.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
Tesla has been granted a permit to run a ride-hailing business in Texas, allowing the electric vehicle maker to compete against companies including Uber and Lyft.
Tesla Robotaxi LLC is licensed to operate a “transportation network company” until August 6, 2026, according to a listing on the website of the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, or TDLR. The permit was issued this week.
Elon Musk’s EV company has been running a limited ride-hailing service for invited riders in Austin since late June. The select few passengers have mostly been social media influencers and analysts, including many who generate income by posting Tesla fan content on platforms like X and YouTube.
The Austin fleet consists of Model Y vehicles equipped with Tesla’s latest partially automated driving systems. The company has been operating the cars with a valet, or human safety supervisor in the front passenger seat tasked with intervening if there are issues with the ride. The vehicles are also remotely supervised by employees in an operations center.
Musk, who has characterized himself as “pathologically optimistic,” said on Tesla’s earnings call last month that he believes Tesla could serve half of the U.S. population by the end of 2025 with autonomous ride-hailing services.
The Texas permit is the first to enable Tesla to run a “transportation network company.” TDLR said Friday that this kind of permit lets Tesla operate a ride-hailing business anywhere in the state, including with “automated motor vehicles,” and doesn’t require Tesla to keep a human safety driver or valet on board.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
As CNBC previously reported, Tesla robotaxis were captured on camera disobeying traffic rules in and around Austin after the company started its pilot program. None of the known incidents have been reported as causing injury or serious property damage, though they have drawn federal scrutiny.
In one incident, Tesla content creator Joe Tegtmeyer reported that his robotaxi failed to stop for a train crossing signal and lowering gate-arm, requiring a Tesla employee on board to intervene. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has discussed this incident with Tesla, a spokesperson for the regulator told CNBC by email.
Texas has historically been more permissive of autonomous vehicle testing and operations on public roads than have other states.
A new law signed by Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott goes into effect this year that will require AV makers to get approval from the state before starting driverless operations. The new law also gives the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles the authority to revoke permits if AV companies and their cars aren’t complying with safety standards.
Tesla’s AV efforts have faced a number of challenges across the country, including federal probes, product liability lawsuits and recalls following injurious or damaging collisions that occurred while drivers were using the company’s Autopilot and FSD (Full Self-Driving) systems.
A jury in a federal court in Miami last week determined that Tesla should hold 33% of the liability for a fatal Autopilot-involved collision.
And the California DMV has sued Tesla, accusing it of false advertising around its driver assistance systems. Tesla owners manuals say the Autopilot and FSD features in their cars are “hands on” systems that require a driver ready to steer or brake at any time. But Tesla and Musk have shared statements through the years saying that a Tesla can “drive itself.”
Since 2016, Musk has been promising that Tesla would soon be able to turn all of its existing EVs into fully autonomous vehicles with a simple, over-the-air software update. In 2019, he said the company would put 1 million robotaxis on the road by 2020, a claim that helped him raise $2 billion at the time from institutional investors.
Those promises never materialized and, in the robotaxi market, Tesla lags way behind competitors like Alphabet’s Waymo in the U.S. and Baidu’s Apollo Go in China.
Tesla shares are down 18% this year, by far the worst performance among tech’s megacaps.
Shares of The Trade Desk plummeted almost 40% on Friday and headed for their worst day on record after the ad-tech company announced the departure of its CFO and analysts expressed concerns about rising competition from Amazon.
The Trade Desk, which went public in 2016, suffered its steepest prior drop in February, when the shares fell 33% on a revenue miss. In its second-quarter earnings report late Thursday, the company beat expectations on earnings and revenue, but the results failed to impress investors.
The Trade Desk, which specializes in providing technology to companies that want to target users across the web, said finance chief Laura Schenkein is leaving the job and being replaced by Alex Kayyal, who has been working as a partner at Lightspeed Ventures.
While some analysts were uneasy about the sudden change in the top finance role, the bigger concern is Amazon’s growing role in the online ad market, as well as the potential impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on ad spending.
Amazon has emerged as a significant player in the digital advertising market in recent years, and is now third behind Google and Meta. Last week, Amazon reported a 23% increase in ad revenue for the second quarter to $15.7 billion, which beat estimates.
Read more CNBC Amazon coverage
Amazon’s ad business has largely been tied to its own platforms, with brands paying up so they can get discovered on the sprawling marketplace. However, Amazon’s demand-side platform (DSP), which allows brands to programmatically place ads across a wider swath of internet properties, is gaining more resonance in the market.
“Amazon is now unlocking access to traditionally exclusive ‘premium’ ad inventory across the open internet, validating the strength of its DSP and suggesting The Trade Desk’s value proposition could erode over time,” Wedbush analysts wrote on Friday.
The Wedbush analysts lowered their rating on The Trade Desk to the equivalent of hold from buy, and cited Amazon’s recent ad integration with Disney as a sign of the company’s aggressiveness.
Executives at The Trade Desk were asked about Amazon on the call, and responded by suggesting that the companies don’t really compete, emphasizing that Amazon is conflicted because it will always prioritize its own properties.
“A scaled independent DSP like The Trade Desk becomes essential as we help advertisers buy across everything and that we have to do that without conflict or compromise,” CEO Jeff Green said on the call. “It is my understanding that Amazon nearly doubled the supply of Prime Video inventory in the recent months. That creates a number of conflicts.”
For the second quarter, The Trade Desk reported a 19% increase in year-over-year revenue to $694 million, topping the $685 million estimate, according to analysts polled by LSEG. Adjusted earnings per share of 41 cents beat estimates by a penny.
Looking to the third quarter, the Trump administration’s tariffs were also a theme, as the company forecast revenue of at least $717 million, representing growth of 14% at minimum.
“From a macro standpoint, some of the world’s largest brands are absolutely facing pressure and some amount of uncertainty,” Green said. “Some have to respond more than others to tariffs. Many are managing inflation worries and the related pricing that comes with that.”
With Friday’s slump, The Trade Desk shares are now down 53% for the year, while the S&P 500 is up about 9%. The Trade Desk was added to the S&P 500 in June.