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Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold about 22 million more shares in his electric vehicle business, which were worth around $3.6 billion, according to a financial filing out Wednesday night. The transactions took place between Monday and Wednesday this week according to the filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Earlier this year, Musk told his millions of followers on social media that he had “no further TSLA sales planned” after April 28.
According to financial research firm VerityData, Musk has sold 94,202,321 shares so far this year at an average price of $243.46 per share for pre-tax proceeds of approximately $22.93 billion.
Director of research for VerityData, Ben Silverman, wrote in an e-mail to CNBC on Wednesday, “Musk’s prior sales going back to November 2021 were expertly timed, so Tesla shareholders need to pay attention to Musk’s actions and not his words – or lack thereof when it comes to his recent selling.”
However, he continued to sell portions of his sizable holdings in Tesla after agreeing to buy Twitter in a deal worth around $44 billion. The acquisition closed in late October. Musk, who is also CEO of SpaceX, a major defense contractor, immediately appointed himself CEO of the social media company.
After Musk’s Twitter takeover, he told employees there that he sold Tesla shares to “save” their business.
Tesla shares have been declining this year, and sliding even further since he took on that new responsibility.
Shares of Tesla closed down 2.6% on Wednesday at $156.80, dropping the company’s market capitalization to $495 billion. Tesla shares were down 55% year-to-date as of Wednesday’s close.
Ernest Garcia III, CEO of Carvana, speaks to CNBC on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, March 7, 2019.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Shares of Carvana plummeted by more than 40% in Wednesday morning trading after the embattled online used car retailer’s largest creditors signed a deal binding them to act together in negotiations with the company.
The pact, as first reported by Bloomberg, includes creditors such as Apollo Global Management and Pacific Investment Management that hold around $4 billion of Carvana’s unsecured debt, or about 70% of the total outstanding. The agreement will last at least three months.
Such creditor agreements are viewed as a way to streamline negotiations around new financing or a debt restructuring. They have assisted in preventing creditor fights that have complicated other debt restructurings in recent years.
A person with knowledge of the situation who is not authorized to speak publicly on the matter confirmed details of the deal Wednesday to CNBC. They downplayed the deal signaling any increased concerns for bankruptcy, citing the company’s meaningful liquidity runway.
Following the creditor deal, Wedbush analyst Seth Basham said Wednesday that bankruptcy is becoming more likely for Carvana and downgraded its stock to underperform from neutral and slashed his price target to $1 from $9 per share.
JPMorgan said Wednesday that the creditor deal signals that Carvana “may have initiated debt restructuring negotiations with bond holders” but the “possibility of imminent Ch. 11 filing seems low.”
“We believe CVNA has enough cushion through shortterm revolvers to get through till end of 2023, and a severe recession could accelerate this by 1-2 quarters,” Rajat Gupta said in an investor note.
Carvana did not immediately respond for comment. Pimco and Apollo declined to comment.
Trading of Carvana shares was briefly halted Wednesday morning after the stock fell below $5 a share for the first time since the company went public in 2017. The stock fell below $4 a share after the halt was lifted. Carvana’s stock has plummeted by about 97% this year after reaching an all-time intraday high of $376.83 per share on Aug. 10, 2021.
The company grew exponentially during the coronavirus pandemic, as shoppers shifted to online purchasing rather than visiting a dealership, with the promise of hassle-free selling and purchasing of used vehicles at a customer’s home.
But Carvana did not have enough vehicles to meet the surge in consumer demand or the facilities and employees to process the vehicles it did have in stock. That led Carvana to purchase ADESA and a record number of vehicles amid sky-high prices as demand slowed amid rising interest rates and recessionary fears.
Carvana has repeatedly borrowed money to cover its losses and growth initiatives, including an all-cash $2.2 billion acquisition earlier this year of Adesa’s U.S. physical auction business from KAR Global.
Last week, Bank of America downgraded Carvana to neutral, saying that the company badly needs more liquidity as it struggles to turn profitable. Analyst Nat Schindler said the company “is likely to run out of cash by the end of 2023. There is no indication yet of a potential cash infusion.”
And last month, Morgan Stanley pulled its rating and price target for the stock. Analyst Adam Jonas cited deterioration in the used car market, company’s debt and a volatile funding environment for the change. He also said the company’s stock could be worth as little as $1.
Stock futures traded lower Monday as investors remained keyed on interest rate policy from the Federal Reserve and as a surge in China stocks over a loosening of Covid-19 restrictions in the country failed to boost U.S. equities.
Here are some stocks that could make moves Monday:
have been caught in the sell off that’s hammered small-capitalization stocks that don’t produce earnings or generate free cash flow, yet. Investors hoped that third-quarter earnings could turn sentiment around, but some concerns linger.
(ticker: CHPT), on Thursday afternoon, reported a per-share loss of 25 cents from $125 million in sales. Wall Street was looking for a loss of 20 cents per share on sales of $132.3 million.
A Tesla Model 3 vehicle is on display at the Tesla auto store on September 22, 2022 in Santa Monica, California. Tesla is recalling over 1 million vehicles in the U.S. because the windows can pinch a person’s fingers while being rolled up.
Allison Dinner | Getty Images
Tesla is still the top-selling electric vehicle brand in the U.S., but its dominance is eroding as rivals offer a growing number of more affordable models, according to a report Tuesday by S&P Global Mobility.
The data firm found that Tesla’s market share of new registered electric vehicles in the U.S. stood at 65% through the third quarter, down from 71% last year and 79% in 2020. S&P forecasts Tesla’s EV market share will decline to less than 20% by 2025, with the number of EV models expected to grow from 48 today to 159 by then.
A drop in Tesla’s U.S. market share was expected, but the rate of the decline could be concerning for investors in Elon Musk’s autos and energy company. As Musk focuses attention on fixing his recently acquired social media company, Twitter, Tesla shares closed down by about a point to $180 on Tuesday. Tesla’s stock has declined by almost half year to date.
S&P reported that Tesla is slowly losing its stranglehold on the U.S. EV market to fully electric models that are now available in price ranges below $50,000, where “Tesla does not yet truly compete.” Tesla’s entry-level Model 3 starts at about $48,200 with shipping fees, but the vehicles typically retail for higher prices with options.
“Tesla’s position is changing as new, more affordable options arrive, offering equal or better technology and production build,” S&P said in the report. “Given that consumer choice and consumer interest in EVs are growing, Tesla’s ability to retain a dominant market share will be challenged going forward.”
Read more about electric vehicles from CNBC Pro
The new data follows a Reuters report Monday that Tesla is developing a revamped version of its entry-level Model 3 aimed at cutting production costs and reducing the components and complexity in the interior.
During the company’s third-quarter earnings call in October, Musk said Tesla was finally working on a new, more affordable model that he first teased in 2020.
“We don’t want to talk exact dates, but this is the primary focus of our new vehicle development team, obviously,” he said, adding that Tesla had completed “the engineering for Cybertruck and for Semi.”
He described the future vehicle as something “smaller,” that will “exceed the production of all our other vehicles combined.”
Stephanie Brinley, associate director of AutoIntelligence for S&P Global Mobility, noted that Tesla’s unit sales are expected to increase in coming years despite the decline in its market share.
Tesla’s current leadership in EVs is over a relatively insignificant market. Despite the amount of attention surrounding EVs, sales of all-electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles — which include electric motors as well as an internal combustion engine — remain miniscule.
Of the 10.22 million vehicles registered in the U.S. through the third quarter, roughly 525,000, or 5.1%, were all-electric models. That’s up from 334,000, or 2.8%, through the third quarter of 2021, according to S&P.
The majority of the EVs registered through September — or nearly 340,000 — were Teslas, according to S&P. The remaining vehicles were divided, very unevenly, among 46 other nameplates.
But Tesla’s success in the market as well as government incentives have all but forced traditional automakers to make an effort in the growing EV segment.
The Ford Mustang Mach-E, ranked third in EV registrations, is the only non-Tesla vehicle in the top five rankings, S&P said. Those EVs were followed by the Chevrolet Bolt and Bolt EUV, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, Volkswagen ID.4 and Nissan Leaf.
S&P noted that the growth in EVs is largely coming from current owners of Toyota and Honda vehicles. Both of the automakers are well-known for fuel-efficient vehicles but have been slow to transition to all-electric models.
To help curb carbon and other emissions from traditional gas-powered vehicles, several states and the federal government are encouraging the transition to fully electric vehicles with incentives such as tax breaks.
Transportation is responsible for 25% of carbon emissions from human activity globally, according to estimates by the nonprofit International Council on Clean Transportation.
Nio is trying to stand out from a wave of Chinese electric vehicle competitors through its technology. The company is hoping its partnership with Tencent can help it boost its tech prowess in areas from mapping to autonomous driving.
Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio and tech giant Tencent agreed to work together on areas including autonomous driving and high-definition mapping.
Tencent — a gaming, social media and cloud computing titan — has signed a cooperation agreement with Nio, one of Tesla’s rivals in China, as the firms look to cash in on Beijing’s focus on so-called new energy cars.
The partnership could allow Tencent to do this, while also giving Nio the technology backing of one of China’s biggest firms. Tencent is already a major investor in Nio, which is striving to differentiate itself from a sea of electric car start-ups.
Nio and Tencent said on Monday they will work together on high-precision mapping systems for drivers. Nio will also be using Tencent’s cloud computing infrastructure for data storage and training for autonomous driving. Driverless cars require huge amounts of real-time data to be processed in order to train algorithms.
Tencent’s partnership with Nio gives the company another opportunity to push into new business areas as its core video gaming business, which has been battered by strict domestic regulation, continues to face headwinds.
Still, the company delivered 31,607 vehicles in the third quarter, marking a quarterly delivery record for the start-up.
However, China’s once high-flying EV start-ups have seen their share prices hammered this year as investors turned away from growth stocks and China’s economy faced a slew of problems.
Car buyers just can’t catch a break these days. Vehicle prices climbed sharply during the pandemic, and now the cost of financing a new set of wheels is going up.
Even if prices ease, interest rates on car loans likely will climb higher, at least for a while, making this an inopportune time to replace a vehicle, financing experts say.
Hidden deep below some of New York City’s most luxurious apartment buildings is an exclusive world of futuristic parking spaces where high-end vehicles are parked and retrieved by robotic parking machines. CNBC’s Ray Parisi shows you what it’s like to drive a car into an intelligent-parking system where a single spot starts at $300,000.
Hidden deep below some of New York City’s most luxurious apartment buildings is an exclusive world of futuristic parking spaces where high-end vehicles are parked and retrieved by robotic parking systems.
The high-tech spots are a rare amenity in the Big Apple, and if you want your car to occupy one of these VIP spaces you’ve got to be ready to fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The spots are only accessible to residents of buildings where the apartments will set you back several million, and if you want your car to live there too you’ll need between $300,000 to $595,000 more to score some precious space in the private garage.
CNBC found two buildings in Manhattan offering spots for sale inside a so-called robo-parking garage.
The first is located at 121 East 22nd Street near NYC’s Gramercy Park where a 140-unit condo building developed by Toll Brothers offers 24 automated parking spots.
High above the 22nd St condo’s underground garage is the wraparound terrace of a 5-bedroom duplex apartment that recently sold with a $300K parking spot for $9.45 million.
DroneHub Media
Earlier this month, Lori Alf, a full-time resident of Florida, picked up one of the rare parking spaces for $300,000 when she purchased the building’s priciest unit: a 5-bedroom duplex spanning almost 3,800 square feet.
She told CNBC the package deal, which totaled $9.45 million, was a gift to her children who are now spending more time in New York.
The sun-drenched living area inside Lori Alf’s penthouse unit at 121 E 22nd St.
Toll Brothers City Living
Now when Alf or her kids want to park the family’s Porsche Cayenne in the condo’s garage they pull up to a kiosk where the wave of a small radio frequency ID tag unlocks access to a subterranean car lair where no humans are allowed.
Pressing a button on the kiosk sends a jolt of life into an empty metal pallet one level below. It slides across a track onto a powerful lift that sends the empty pallet up toward ground-level to meet the Alfs who can then carefully position their car on top of it.
As a vehicle enters the automated system a motion board delivers messages to the driver to assure the vehicle is positioned properly for the parking process to begin.
CNBC
Before their wheels are whisked away, a set of cameras scan the system’s entryway to confirm the car’s trunk and doors are all closed — and that there are no objects or humans left behind that might obstruct the automation.
When the scanners deliver the “all clear,” the pallet, with car on top, disappears into the floor, pausing briefly as it descends into the basement to spin the vehicle 180 degrees before slotting it into one of the empty spaces.
The system can lift and shuffle two dozen cars across four rows and two levels.
A car parked on the lower level of the automated parking garage at 121 E 22nd St where prices start at $300K per spot.
CNBC
Retrieving the car is a lot like making a selection from a giant vending machine. Residents swipe their RFID tags once again, and the system delivers their cars in about 2 minutes and 15 seconds.
One of the perks for Alf: She never has to put the car in reverse to exit the building.
“The car is turned for you by the robot,” she told CNBC. “Who doesn’t live for a robot that sets you in the right direction in NYC?”
Pedro Fernandez, a local sales representative for Klaus Parking, the company that sold the German-made parking system to the building’s developer, told CNBC it’s the most automated garage he’s ever installed in Manhattan.
The company’s top-tier system typically costs between $50,000 and $70,000 per spot installed. Fernandez said developers invest over a million dollars in the intelligent parking infrastructure because it’s super efficient at arranging vehicles and maximizing space.
The view inside the robo-parking machine at 121 E 22nd St reveals a system of pallets and hydraulic lifts that maneuver cars around a two-tier subterranean parking structure.
CNBC
“There was no other way to park 24 cars,” Fernandez said of the garage space under 121 East 22nd Street.
The self-parking system can unlock more spaces per square foot because it doesn’t require the ramps and driving lanes you see in most conventional garages, he said.
”As crazy as it may sound, $300,000 for a residential parking spot is considered a reasonable price in New York City,” said Senada Adzem, a Florida-based real estate broker at Douglas Elliman, whose team represented Alf in her recent purchase.
Adzem told CNBC spots in the system that include a charging plug for electric vehicles will run you $350,000. And whether it’s electrified or not, every parking spot carries a $150 per-month maintenance fee.
“The overall lack of parking in the city, an ongoing problem with no end in sight, will only escalate such pricing,” said Adzem.
She believes short supply could turn the seemingly lavish expense into a money-maker for owners, who could eventually resell their spot at a profit.
A car inside the automated parking garage at 520 West 28th where spots start at $450K.
Martien Mulder & Related
Across town, parking spots are even pricier in a building that was once home to popstar Ariana Grande and currently houses rock musician Sting and his film producer wife Trudie Styler.
The price to park at 520 West 28th Street starts at $450,000.
The $16.5M penthouse at 520 W 28th St unfolds over the 15th & 16th floors, featuring a 2,040 sq ft terrace that wraps around the building’s curvaceous glass facade.
Colin Miller / Related
The luxe residence, designed by famed architect Zaha Hadid and developed by The Related Companies, includes a 4,500-square-foot penthouse currently on the market for $16.5 million. And according to listing agent Julie Pham of Corcoran, a parking space in the building’s garage can cost upwards of $595,000 more per vehicle.
“I’d never seen anything like it before,” Pham said of the unique amenity.
Residents can use an app to communicate with the so-called “secured parking portal” and remotely start the automated retrieval process so the car is ready to go when they are.
The $16.5M penthouse listing includes ten rooms and almost 4,500 sq ft of indoor living space, the asking price does not include parking.
Colin Miller / Related
While Pham wouldn’t reveal the identities of any past or present clients, she did tell CNBC the automated parking was a major draw for one famous resident, who had a security team examine the parking area prior to moving in.
The unnamed celebrity’s representatives OK’d the deal in part because the star could enter and exit the garage in total privacy, Pham said.
“They liked the idea that you didn’t have to engage with a valet or an attendant, or that anyone couldn’t come in right behind you,” she said.
And during the pandemic, the broker said, residents who wanted to minimize their exposure to Covid-19 loved that they could deposit and retrieve their vehicle without handing over their keys to a valet.
While the automated spots are pricey, they’re not even close to NYC’s most expensive.
In recent years, some condo developers have pushed their asking prices for a basic concrete-and-yellow-stripe parking spot to the $1-million mark, according to Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, a firm specializing in real estate appraisals and consulting. Still, he said, it’s unlikely a spot with a 9-figure asking price has ever lured in an actual buyer.
“I never found evidence of their actual closings,” he told CNBC.
Miller, who analyzed public records at CNBC’s request, said one of the most expensive parking spots sold in town last year was located at 220 Central Park South, where a parking space went for an impressive $750,000. Miller said, based on public records, it appears connected to an apartment in the building that traded for $16 million.
“It’s really tough to track since most sales are embedded in the sale of a unit,” Miller told CNBC.
And it’s even tougher to track sales of spots in the newer automated systems, because, in many cases the spots are actually licensed to buyers, not deeded and sold like most real estate, according to brokers.
Miller said his best estimate for the going rate of a single NYC parking spot: “I think $300,000 to $400,000 is the sweet spot for new development.”
This image, from March 2021, shows a worker with car batteries at a facility in China.
STR | AFP | Getty Images
China is leading the way when it comes to lithium — and the rest of the world has not been quick enough to respond to its dominance, according to the CEO of American Lithium.
Speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” Monday, Simon Clarke discussed how China had secured its position of strength within the industry.
“I just think the Chinese have — I mean you have to take your hat off, they’ve played a great game,” he said.
“For decades, they’ve been locking up some of the best assets across the world and quietly going about their business and developing knowledge on building lithium-ion technology, soup to nuts,” he added. “And we’ve been very slow to react to that.”
He added that the U.S.’ Inflation Reduction Act, and a number of other measures, meant people were “starting to wake up to it.”
Alongside its use in cell phones, computers, tablets and a host of other gadgets synonymous with modern life, lithium — which some have dubbed “white gold” — is crucial to the batteries that power electric vehicles.
Read more about China from CNBC Pro
China is certainly a dominant force within the sector.
In its World Energy Outlook 2022 report, the International Energy Agency said the country accounted for roughly 60% of the world’s lithium chemical supply. China also produces three-quarters of all lithium-ion batteries, according to the IEA.
With demand for lithium rising, major economies are attempting to shore up their own supplies and reduce dependency on other parts of the world, including China.
The stakes are high. In a translation of her State of the Union speech, delivered in September, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said “lithium and rare earths will soon be more important than oil and gas.”
As well as addressing security of supply, von der Leyen also stressed the importance of processing.
“Today, China controls the global processing industry,” she said. “Almost 90% … of rare earth[s] and 60% of lithium are processed in China.”
Read more about electric vehicles from CNBC Pro
With the above in mind, a number of companies in Europe are looking to develop projects centered around securing supply.
New Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk announced that he will reinstate the Twitter account of former President Donald Trump on Saturday.
Musk ran a straw poll on the social media platform starting late Friday asking his followers to vote on whether to reinstate former U.S. President Donald Trump’s account on the platform. The poll ran for twenty four hours.
At its conclusion, Musk wrote in a tweet, “The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.” The latter phrase means “the voice of the people is the voice of god.”
Trump’s account appeared to be live on Twitter, but the former president had not issued any new posts to the social media platform immediately after Musk removed the ban.
Under previous ownership, Twitter had issued a lifetime ban on President Donald Trump’s account in January 2021.
The former president’s account was first suspended by Twitter in the wake of the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol where his supporters rioted and disrupted lawmakers who were formally counting Electoral College votes.
At the time, Twitter said in a tweet, it made the decision “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”
Once Trump was banned from Twitter, and other social platforms including Facebook, he formed a social media company of his own.
For his part, Trump said earlier this year that he would not return to the social media platform even if Musk reversed the ban.
The former president told CNBC’s Joe Kernen in April after news of the deal that though he likes Musk, he was “disappointed by the way I was treated by Twitter. I won’t be going back on Twitter.”
Musk had foreshadowed his decision to welcome Trump back onto the platform back in May, shortly after he first agreed to buy the company. At FT Live’s Future of the Car conference, Musk said he “would reverse the permanent ban” if the deal went through.
“Permanent bans should be extremely rare and really reserved for accounts that are bots, or scam, spam accounts… I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump,” Musk said at the time. “I think that was a mistake, because it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”
The move to bring Trump back to Twitter comes days after the former president announced his third campaign for the White House. Trump is currently under federal investigation for his handling of classified documents and his role in a massive effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
Trump’s account being reactivated arrives weeks before the December runoff election between Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., and Republican candidate Herschel Walker. Trump’s activity on Twitter could impact the race.
Conservative radio host Erick Erickson tweeted, “There goes Georgia,” in response to the news. Erickson seemed to suggest that Trump would damage Walker’s chances with his prospective tweets.
Trump has applauded Twitter’s new ownership under Musk. “I am very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands, and will no longer be run by Radical Left Lunatics and Maniacs that truly hate our country,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account in October. Truth Social is a Twitter-like platform run by the Trump Media & Technology Group.
On Oct. 28, as Musk was taking the helm at Twitter, he wrote on the platform that, “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints. No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.”
Musk has not yet said whether he has formed a content moderation council or who is participating in it.
The NAACP was one of the first civil rights groups to condemn Musk for allowing Trump back onto the platform. Derrick Johnson, the CEO of the NAACP, called on any companies still working with Twitter to pause their advertising following the decision to reinstate Trump.
“Any advertiser still funding Twitter should immediately pause all advertising,” Johnson said in a statement to CNBC. “If Elon Musk continues to run Twitter like this, using garbage polls that do not represent the American people and the needs of our democracy, God help us all,” he added.
Johnson was among a group of civil rights leaders who recently met with Musk and called on him to disallow the return of many users that had been banned from the platform.
Democratic leaders have concerned for months that Musk would allow Trump to return to Twitter.
Members of President Joe Biden’s inner circle and party strategists were worried that misinformation will rise on Twitter under Musk’s leadership and ahead of the 2024 presidential election, which could pit Biden against the former president in a rematch, CNBC previously reported.
A White House spokesman did not return a request for comment.
BlackBerry was once at the top of the smartphone market in the U.S. In 2010, almost half of smartphone subscribers in the U.S. used BlackBerrys, according to Comscore.
The phones were well-known for having a tactile keyboard and for BlackBerry’s advanced cybersecurity — often favored among businesses and governments.
But after its phones fell out of favor with users, BlackBerry altered its course, taking some of the cornerstones of the business with it.
“After a few years, we realized that we would never get the volume up — and it’s a volume game,” said John Chen, CEO of BlackBerry. “And so we made that pivotal shift to a software-only company and focus on security and cyber and things of that sort.”
“Currently, BlackBerry has two main business units, a cybersecurity business unit and an IoT business unit within the cybersecurity business unit,” said Charles Eagen, chief technology officer of BlackBerry.
Its cybersecurity unit focuses on securing things such as smartphone applications and mobile banking websites. Its internet of things unit focuses on the communication of technology within connected and autonomous cars.
“We now have the lion’s share of embedded software in most of the cars,” Chen said.
BlackBerry’s technology is in roughly 215 million cars and this side of BlackBerry is continuing to grow, according to the company.
“If we look at the industry opportunity itself, it’s our expectation that the auto software industry is going to roughly triple in size from 2020 through 2030,” said Luke Junk, senior analyst at Baird.
However, BlackBerry does face competition in the cybersecurity industry, and in 2021 its revenue from cybersecurity was $500 million.
“I think that the company can reach likely a lower peak than we’ve seen in the past but a more sustainable growth trajectory and potentially more profitable future as well on a margin percentage basis,” Junk said.
CNBC visited BlackBerry’s Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Center and interviewed Chen to find out what’s next for the company.
The Twitter logo is displayed on the exterior of Twitter headquarters on October 26, 2022 in San Francisco, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
After Twitter told employees it would be closing its offices until Monday, new owner and CEO Elon Musk has called engineering staff into the San Francisco headquarters office, according to internal emails obtained by CNBC.
Late Thursday, Twitter sent out a companywide email saying its offices would be closed from Friday until Monday, and badge access would cut off during that temporary closure.
Then, in a pair of widely distributed emails sent at the start of business Friday, Musk called for “anyone who actually writes software” to report to Twitter’s headquarters by Friday afternoon. First, though, he asked them to send him a high-level report of the best code they have worked on in the last six months.
After the initial call for engineers to come into the office, he also sent a follow-up encouraging people to fly to San Francisco to present in person. He said, in one of his emails, he would be working late into the night at the company’s headquarters office Friday and again on Saturday morning.
Musk said the point of sharing all this code and meeting with him in the office would be to do “short, technical interviews” that would help him “better understand the Twitter tech stack.”
Musk said those authorized to work remotely could request to speak with him by video. But quixotically he also said, “Only those who cannot get to Twitter HQ or have a family emergency are excused.”
Their new “Chief Twit,” as Musk humorously calls himself, had issued an ultimatum a day earlier telling them they would need to commit to his vision for Twitter 2.0, and agree to work “long hours at high intensity.”
Three employees who resigned Thursday told CNBC they still had access to some internal systems at Twitter on Friday morning.
One believed that so many people from Twitter’s human resources and IT teams had resigned or been laid off that it may take a long time for the company to figure out whose access to email, Slack and other systems should be switched off.
These people asked to remain unnamed, citing fear of professional repercussions.
Here are the emails sent from Elon Musk to employees at Twitter early on Friday (transcribed by CNBC) over the first few hours of the business day in San Francisco:
From: Elon Musk
To: Team
Subj. All Software Engineers
Date: Nov. 18, 2022 [time stamp removed]
Anyone who actually writes software, please report to the 10th floor at 2 p.m. today.
Before doing so, please email me a bullet point summary of what your code commits have achieved in the past 6 months, along with up to 10 screenshots of the most salient lines of code.
Thanks,
Elon
From: Elon Musk
To: Team
Subj. All Software Engineers
Date: Nov. 18, 2022 [time stamp removed]
If you’re working remotely, please email the request below nonetheless and I will try to speak to you via video. Only those who cannot physically get to Twitter HQ or have a family emergency are excused.
These will be short, technical interviews that allow me to better understand the Twitter tech stack.
Thanks,
Elon
From: Elon Musk
To: Team at Twitter
Subj. All Software Engineers
Date: Nov. 18, 2022 [time stamp removed]
If possible, I would appreciate it if you could fly to SF to be present in person. I will be at Twitter HQ until midnight and then back again tomorrow morning.
A lithium-ion battery photographed at a Volkswagen facility in Germany. Lithium-ion batteries are crucial components in electric vehicles.
Jan Woitas | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
LONDON — A facility described as the U.K.’s “first large-scale lithium refinery” will be located in the north of England, with those behind the project hoping its output will hit roughly 50,000 metric tons each year once up and running.
On Monday, a statement released by Green Lithium on the website of the London Stock Exchange said construction of the £600 million (around $687 million) project was expected to last three years, with commissioning slated for 2025.
The refinery will be based at Teesport, a major port on Teesside. Green Lithium said its product would “go into the supply chain for lithium-ion batteries, energy storage, grid stabilisation and EV batteries.”
Alongside its use in cell phones, computers, tablets and a host of other gadgets synonymous with modern life, lithium — which some have dubbed “white gold” — is crucial to the batteries that power electric vehicles.
The U.K. wants to stop the sale of new diesel and gasoline cars and vans by 2030. It will require, from 2035, all new cars and vans to have zero tailpipe emissions. The European Union, which the U.K. left on Jan. 31, 2020, is pursuing similar targets.
Read more about electric vehicles from CNBC Pro
With demand for lithium rising, European economies are attempting to shore up their own supplies and reduce dependency on other parts of the world.
In a translation of her State of the Union speech last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said “lithium and rare earths will soon be more important than oil and gas.”
As well as addressing security of supply, von der Leyen, who switched between several languages during her speech, also stressed the importance of processing.
“Today, China controls the global processing industry,” she said. “Almost 90% … of rare earth[s] and 60% of lithium are processed in China.”
“So we will identify strategic projects all along the supply chain, from extracting to refining, from processing to recycling,” she added. “And we will build up strategic reserves where supply is at risk.”
Read more about energy from CNBC Pro
Back in the U.K., Business Secretary Grant Shapps said Green Lithium’s refinery would “deliver more than 1,000 jobs during its construction and 250 long-term, high-skill jobs for local people when in operation.”
“It is also allowing us to move quickly to secure our supply chains of critical minerals, as we know that geopolitical threats and global events beyond our control can severely impact the supply of key components that could delay the rollout of electric vehicles in the UK,” he added.
The news about Green Lithium comes after Britishvolt, another firm looking to establish a foothold in the electric vehicle sector, said it had secured short-term funding that would enable it to stave off administration for the time being. The company said its employees had also agreed to a pay cut for November.
Twitter product executive Esther Crawford revealed details about the way the social network’s new verification scheme will work on Tuesday, following the company’s acquisition by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk in late October.
Some originally verified accounts will soon sport an “official” label, she said, while any user who pays $7.99 per month for Twitter Blue, the company’s subscription product, will sport a blue check mark. She did not specify what it will take to gain “official” status.
Blue checks originally went to verify the identity of government officials, politicians, celebrities, some journalists, executives, medical professionals and organizations whose identity the company had verified. Musk himself has benefited from having the Twitter verification check mark. So have myriad journalists, including at CNBC.
Historically, the blue check mark let other Twitter users know that an account on the social network, and its contents, were coming from the individual or organization shown on that Twitter profile. At least some users whose accounts sported the verification mark had to provide the platform with personal info such as employer information, a phone number, or a copy of their driver’s license for identity verification.
Other social networks, like Meta‘s Facebook and Instagram, have similar verification systems.
Under Musk’s direction, the new Twitter Blue check mark will instead work as a paying subscriber badge that the company nonetheless plans to call “verification.” The subscription service has become a major focus for Musk, who wants the platform to become less reliant on advertisers and generate more revenue from subscriptions.
Crawford specified on Tuesday that subscribing to Twitter Blue and gaining the check mark from the company will no longer require identity verification, writing:
“A lot of folks have asked about how you’ll be able to distinguish between @TwitterBlue subscribers with blue checkmarks and accounts that are verified as official, which is why we’re introducing the ‘Official’ label to select accounts when we launch.”
“The new Twitter Blue does not include ID verification — it’s an opt-in, paid subscription that offers a blue checkmark and access to select features. We’ll continue to experiment with ways to differentiate between account types.”
“Not all previously verified accounts will get the ‘Official’ label and the label is not available for purchase. Accounts that will receive it include government accounts, commercial companies, business partners, major media outlets, publishers and some public figures,” she wrote.
Crawford, director of product management at Twitter, joined the social media company when it acquired her startup, Squad, in December 2020. Since Musk took over, she has become the product leader for Twitter Blue. The team experienced a significant workforce reduction last week, which has affected its ability to ship a redesigned verification system by the Nov. 7 date Musk originally set as a sprint goal. Crawford’s team is now trying to hire back some of the employees who received termination notices.
Musk’s plans for the new “verification” system have drawn widespread criticism.
Comedians, influencers and actors including Valerie Bertinelli, Kathy Griffin, Ethan Klein, Sarah Silverman and Rich Sommer all appeared to change their Twitter display names on their verified profiles to “Elon Musk” without indicating that they were parodying his account.
A technologist and USC Annenberg Civic Media Fellow, Sydette Harry, told CNBC ahead of the new Twitter Blue launch that the company had problems thwarting harassment, hate speech, misinformation and impersonation long before the Tesla CEO took over. For example, the company has never managed to protect Black and other minority users effectively, especially those who were not celebrities or public figures with a blue check.
She added, of the new verification system, “This new method is going to be theatrically bad, because once people pay for verification it takes the issue from a community moderation problem, which can be expected on a free or ad-supported service, to a customer-service problem.”
She also said that she’s concerned Musk seems focused on U.S. users, despite the service’s large international customer base.
The Twitter profile page belonging to Elon Musk is seen on an Apple iPhone mobile phone.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
After Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took ownership of Twitter last week, the social networking giant embarked on a steep reduction in its workforce. The cuts affected a total of 983 employees in California, its home state, according to three letters of notice that the company sent to regional authorities, which were obtained by CNBC.
The company’s new owner, CEO and sole director Musk, wrote in a tweet on Friday afternoon, “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.”
Twitter’s reduction in force extended beyond California, and CNBC could not immediately confirm whether Musk’s description is accurate. A loss of $4 million per day at the company would represent an annual loss around $1.5 billion.
The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requires employers to provide advance notice, generally within 60 days, of mass layoffs or plant closings in California.
According to the letters from Twitter, shared by the California Employment Development Department, Twitter notified affected employees on Nov. 4. Many of those workers described losing access to email, and other internal systems at Twitter, overnight on Nov. 3 in public posts on social media, including on Twitter itself.
This kind of arrangement may serve as “payment in lieu of notice,” in California depending on specific terms of employment. Permanent terminations are expected to begin Jan. 2023, according to the WARN notices.
In three different California WARN notice letters, signed by the Twitter Human Resources Department but no individual executives, the company wrote: “Affected employees will be paid all wages and other benefits to which they are entitled through their date of termination.”
According to the WARN notice, Twitter cut approximately 784 workers in San Francisco, including nine executive and senior level officials or managers, 147 mid-level employees who typically reported directly to top execs, 592 other professionals and 36 sales and administrative support workers combined.
At the company’s satellite locations in Santa Monica, Twitter cut approximately 93 employees including 17 mid-level officials and managers, 66 professionals and 10 combined sales and administrative support workers, the WARN notice showed.
At a San Jose office, Twitter cut approximately 106 employees, including one executive or senior-level official or manager, 18 mid-level officials and managers, 85 professionals and two administrative support workers, according to the WARN notice.
Twitter was sued Thursday by former employees in a proposed class action filed by worker’s rights attorney Shannon Liss Riordan and others who were concerned that employees were not given proper notice, under federal and California law, that they would be terminated in the mass layoffs.
Shannon Liss-Riordan, a worker’s rights attorney representing the terminated Twitter employees, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
DETROIT — General Motors is suspending its advertising on Twitter following Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform, the company told CNBC on Friday.
The Detroit automaker, a rival to Musk-led electric vehicle maker Tesla, said it is “pausing” advertising as it evaluates Twitter’s new direction. It will continue to use the platform to interact with customers but not pay for advertising, GM added.
“We are engaging with Twitter to understand the direction of the platform under their new ownership. As is normal course of business with a significant change in a media platform, we have temporarily paused our paid advertising. Our customer care interactions on Twitter will continue,” the company said in an emailed statement.
Under CEO Mary Barra, the Detroit company was among the first automakers to announce billions of dollars in spending to better compete against Tesla in the battery electric vehicle segment.
A General Motors sign is seen during an event on January 25, 2022 in Lansing, Michigan. – General Motors will create 4,000 new jobs and retaining 1,000, and significantly increasing battery cell and electric truck manufacturing capacity.
Jeff Kowalsky | AFP | Getty Images
A spokesperson for Ford Motor, another Tesla rival, told CNBC that the automaker is not currently advertising on Twitter, and had not been doing so prior to Elon Musk’s take-private deal. They added, “We will continue to evaluate the direction of the platform under the new ownership.”
However, when presented with a screenshot of a promoted tweet from Ford CEO Jim Farley, the spokesperson could not confirm when was the last time Ford or its collaborators may have paid for ads, including promoted tweets, on the platform.
Ford is continuing to engage with its customers on Twitter.
Other auto companies, including Rivian, Stellantis and Alphabet-owned Waymo, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on whether they plan to suspend advertising or discontinue using the social media platform in wake of Musk’s $44 billion buyout of Twitter.
Electric truck maker Nikola said it had no plans to change anything regarding the platform.
The future direction of Twitter has been central to the takeover story. Musk has said he is a “free speech absolutist,” who would restore the account of former President Donald Trump, who was banned over his tweets during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.
Musk said on Friday that he plans a “content moderation council” and will not reinstate any accounts or make major content decisions before it is convened. Musk also said in a statement to advertisers this week that he cannot let Twitter become a “free-for-all hellscape.”
Henrik Fisker, CEO of EV startup Fisker Inc., deleted his Twitter account earlier this year when Twitter’s board accepted Musk’s bid to buy the company and take it private. Fisker Inc. continues to use Twitter, which every major automotive brand utilizes for customer engagement and marketing.
Musk has long boasted that Tesla does not pay for traditional advertising, a cost that has added up for conventional automakers’ brands through the years.
Instead, Tesla rewards people who run, or are members of, Tesla owners’ clubs as well as other social media influencers who promote the company’s products, stock and Musk on social networks, especially Twitter and YouTube as well as on fan blogs.
They are often granted early access to Tesla products, like the company’s Full Self Driving Beta software, and given passes to company events where attendance is limited.
In September 2020, Tesla weighed a stockholder proposal to begin strategic, paid advertising to educate the public about its vehicles and charging network. The Tesla board recommended against it, and shareholders voted with the board against starting to pay for traditional ad campaigns.
In the company’s annual report for 2021, Tesla wrote: “Historically, we have been able to generate significant media coverage of our company and our products, and we believe we will continue to do so. Such media coverage and word of mouth are the current primary drivers of our sales leads and have helped us achieve sales without traditional advertising and at relatively low marketing costs.”
It reported marketing, promotional and advertising costs were “immaterial” for the years ended Dec. 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019 in financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
— CNBC’s John Rosevear contributed to this report.
In this photo illustration, the image of Elon Musk is displayed on a computer screen and the logo of twitter on a mobile phone in Ankara, Turkiye on October 06, 2022.
Muhammed Selim Korkutata | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
After closing a $44 billion transaction to take Twitter private, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — now the de facto CEO of Twitter — announced that he plans to form a “content moderation council” at the social networking company. He says he will not make any “major content decisions” or reinstate any accounts that were previously banned before the council convenes.
In May 2022, after Musk had agreed to buy Twitter at $54.20 per share, he said he would reverse Twitter’s lifetime ban on former President Donald Trump if the acquisition went through.
At the time, Musk said, “I would reverse the permanent ban… I don’t own Twitter yet. So this is not like a thing that will definitely happen, because what if I don’t own Twitter?”
Musk has not yet offered details about how his content moderation council will work, who will be invited to it and whether Twitter’s will be more or less independent or powerful than Facebook’s oversight board.
One of Musk’s first big moves after closing the deal was to fire Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, and other executives including its prior head of safety, Vijaya Gadde, who was involved in the decision to suspend Trump, and ban political advertising on Twitter.
Twitter banned Trump from the platform in January 2021 following the attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol, which occurred just as a joint session of Congress met to certify the election of President Joe Biden. The riot was intended to disrupt the counting of the electoral votes.
As CNBC previously reported, Trump was issued a subpoena earlier this month by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot.
The committee, which voted unanimously on this move, is requiring Trump’s testimony under oath next month and records relevant to their probe into the attack, which the panel noted came after weeks of his denying losing the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.
Committee Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in a letter to Trump cited what they called his central role in a deliberate effort to reverse his loss in the 2020 presidential election and to remain in power.
As NBC News previously reported, a Twitter employee named Anika Navaroli provided testimony to the Jan. 6 committee suggesting that the social network did not do everything in its power in time to prevent violence on that day.
It was clear that individuals using Twitter were plotting violence, according to her testimony, and Twitter detected a surge in violent tags like “Execute Mike Pence” around Jan. 6, for example. Trump had “fanned the flames” of violent users’ persistent calls to hang Mike Pence, she testified.
CNBC could not immediately ascertain whether Navaroli is still employed at Twitter.
Early in the Trump presidency, Musk served on a White House economic advisory board and a manufacturing jobs initiative council. But he stepped down from both in 2017, after Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate accords.
Despite this, Trump praised Musk effusively in 2020, calling him “one of our great geniuses” during an interview with “Squawk Box” co-host Joe Kernen at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Trump praised Musk again on Friday for taking Twitter private. The former president previously said he would not return to the platform, but that could change now that the company is run by Musk.
In May, Musk tweeted, “In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party. But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican.”
