Tesla shareholders are voting this week on whether to award CEO Elon Musk a new pay package potentially worth up to $1 trillion over a decade, with some prominent investors in the electric car maker criticizing the compensation plan.
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, which holds a stake in Tesla, on Tuesday said it would vote against the pay package.
“While we appreciate the significant value created under Mr. Musk’s visionary role, we are concerned about the total size of the award, dilution and lack of mitigation of key person risk consistent with our views on executive compensation,” said Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages the country’s government pension fund.
The fund has a 1.16% stake in Tesla, the sixth-largest holding among institutional investors.
Another investor, Baron Capital Management, said Monday that it would vote in favor of the package.
Musk “has built one of the most important companies in the world,” wrote Ron Baron, founder of the asset management firm. “He’s redefining transportation, energy and humanoid robotics and creating lasting value for shareholders while doing it. His interests are completely aligned with investors.”
Musk is the world’s richest person, with Bloomberg estimating his wealth at $477 billion.
Tesla’s board of directors introduced the proposed pay package in early September. Musk, who controls nearly 16% of Tesla’s outstanding shares, would also receive more voting power under the plan. In a Sept. 5 regulatory filing, the board described the proposed compensation package as an “ambitious plan to retain and incentivize Mr. Musk through the issuance of a highly customized, performance-based restricted stock award.”
Tesla would be required to hit certain financial and operational milestones for Musk to earn the full pay package. Those include the company reaching a market capitalization of at least $8.5 trillion; delivering 20 million vehicles; producing 1 million self-driving “robotaxis”; and manufacturing 1 million of the company’s humanoid robots, dubbed Optimus, which are currently under development.
Robyn Denholm, chairperson of the Tesla board, warned investors last week that Musk could leave the company if shareholders reject the enhanced pay proposal.
“If we fail to foster an environment that motivates Elon to achieve great things through an equitable pay-for-performance plan, we run the risk that he gives up his executive position, and Tesla may lose his time, talent and vision, which have been essential to delivering extraordinary shareholder returns,” Denholm wrote in a letter to shareholders posted on social media.
Elon Musk claimed on October 31 that SpaceX will be sending data centers into space. He responded to a post on X from journalist Eric Berger about the viability of the concept.
“Simply scaling up Starlink V3 satellites, which have high speed laser links would work,” he wrote on X. “SpaceX will be doing this.”
As AI tools proliferate, so does demand for quick outputs. But it takes significant energy for AI models to function at the speed and quality that we want it to—both AI training and inference rely on data centers. The data centers that host the GPUs powering these functions are expanding, and with it the amount of electricity needed to operate and cool them.
The environmental impact of new technology is increasingly an issue. So why not just move those data centers to space?
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Musk says that SpaceX’s satellites could incorporate the computing power for data centers. The company’s Starlink satellites currently provide global broadband internet service, orbiting at 550 km from Earth. They’re closer than other satellites, meaning latency is much lower at around 25 milliseconds compared to over 600 ms.
The company’s upcoming V3 satellites are designed to provide gigabit-class internet speeds and could reportedly weigh up to 4,409 pounds. Musk says they could be made even larger to host the data centers.
Still, they need Starship, SpaceX’s enormous rocket, for launch. Starship has had an explosion-filled history but recently had a good launch (its eleventh) in October.
StartupStarcloud is also on a mission to send data centers into space. The Redmond, Washington-based company is about to launch its Starcloud-1 satellite, carrying NVIDIA’s H100 GPU. It’s expected to offer 100 times more powerful GPU computing than any other space-based operation.
The company hopes it’s a step toward its goal of building five-gigawatt orbital data centers around 2.5 miles wide.
“The only environmental cost is the launch,” said Philip Johnston, Starcloud CEO. “After that, we could save 10 times the carbon emissions compared with running data centers on Earth.”
The thing that gets me, and I’m really curious about your take on this, Brian, as someone with children, that the guides these people that were brought in, they were actually in the room with students helping them with any technological glitches or settling anything that’s happening in the real world. While some had experience as educators, others did not, and not only that, Alpha actually had often targeted individuals without teaching backgrounds, going instead for folks that were in the entrepreneurship space, because nothing screams early childhood education like Series A funding. I’m so confused as to what the entire point of this is.
Brian Barrett: It feels reductive, right? It is the idea that school is about grades and grades are about numbers and coding is all that matters. When obviously school is about learning to interact with people, it is a social thing as much as it is a numbers thing. I think too, how do you quantify and nextify art class and finger painting and all the other things that are good for social development, good for mental development that aren’t crunching numbers. And it just feels like that’s not part of the calculus here, which is a shame.
Leah Feiger: And we didn’t even get into a core WIRED area of interest, which is surveillance issues. These kids are being surveilled.
Brian Barrett: Yeah. There was a report that our reporter, Todd found that there was eye tracking software involved in this. Again, for some parents, I am sure that this is great, and again, Alpha School has a lot of parents who say, “Yes, this is what we want.” They’ve got a lot of great reviews, a lot of glowing press. What we found in Brownsville was not that.
Leah Feiger: And as that last little surveillance anecdote, there’s one piece of reporting that Todd shared that really freaked me out of this one student who at home received a notification that she’d been flagged for an anti-pattern or a distraction by the Alpha system while she was working on her schoolwork. It turns out she says that Alpha system sent a video of her in her pajamas, taken from the computer’s webcam that showed her talking to her younger sister. Again, she’s at home. This doesn’t end the minute that they leave the classroom either. This is so beyond. And I’m sure there’s the case that everyone’s making, oh, they’re collecting data. This is a holistic experience. That’s still creepy to me.
Earth’s average temperature is nearing critical thresholds as the international community lags behind its emissions goals. As a result, bold technological strategies to cool the planet have gained attention in recent years, and now, Elon Musk is weighing in.
Early Monday morning, Musk took to X to share his two cents on how to address the climate crisis. He claimed that using satellites for solar radiation management (SRM)—a theoretical geoengineering technique that would allow humans to control the amount of sunlight reaching Earth—would be an effective solution.
“A large solar-powered AI satellite constellation would be able to prevent global warming by making tiny adjustments in how much solar energy reached Earth,” Musk wrote.
When asked how this would ensure precise, equitable adjustments to solar energy across the planet—while also accounting for seasonal variations and potential geopolitical conflicts over control—Musk replied: “Yes. It would only take tiny adjustments to prevent global warming or global cooling for that matter. Earth has been a snowball [many] times in the past.”
So, it would appear he doesn’t quite have all the answers. That said, it’s certainly notable that the wealthiest man on Earth and the CEO of the world’s largest satellite company, is advocating for space-based SRM. Experts warn, however, that this strategy is both highly unrealistic and dangerous.
Is SpaceX eyeing a new orbital venture?
Musk isn’t the only entrepreneur interested in blocking out the Sun. A growing number of companies are exploring different approaches to SRM, from using atmospheric aerosols to mimic the sunlight-blocking effects of volcanic eruptions to launching thousands of mirrors into orbit.
While some of these companies have raised significant capital and have set ambitious near-term targets for development and testing, none are anywhere close to deploying their technology at scale. If Musk’s SpaceX wades into this burgeoning industry, these startups will suddenly find a very big fish in their very small pond.
But to be clear, Musk has not shared any plans for SpaceX to develop SRM-capable satellites. And even with the company’s billion-dollar valuation and the enormous Starlink constellation it has already deployed, doing so would be far easier said than done.
Could Musk actually do it?
The first hurdle SpaceX would face is a pivot away from producing Starlink communications satellites to developing the artificially intelligent, solar-powered, SRM-capable satellites Musk described. And no, the nearly 9,000 operational Starlinks currently in orbit could not be adapted for this purpose. Alternatively, SpaceX could launch an entirely new satellite division devoted to this geoengineering project while simultaneously managing Starlink.
While Musk did not share specifics on how these satellites would work, they would likely be equipped with mirrors or sunshades that come together in formation to create a gigantic, manipulatable barrier between Earth and the Sun. When we say gigantic—we really mean it.
Scientists don’t know exactly how many SRM satellites it would take to make a meaningful difference in Earth’s average temperature, but estimates range so high that many experts consider this solution infeasible. The cost of deployment alone would likely prove insurmountable even for Musk, with estimates in the multi-trillion-dollar range.
Even if Musk could make this happen, that doesn’t mean he should. Experts have long warned of the potential consequences of space-based SRM, which could trigger major, unintended changes in Earth’s climate, the day-night cycle, biodiversity, geopolitical tensions, and more.
Avoiding these consequences—and actually mitigating global warming—would require unprecedented technological control and international governance over the largest and most impactful satellite constellation ever deployed.
Needless to say, it’s not happening anytime soon. Still, Musk’s growing interest in this technology will undoubtedly attract attention to this nascent industry, potentially fueling innovation and debate over how geoengineering can and should go.
Elon Musk’s answer to Wikipedia recently launched—and the rollout has been anything but smooth. Grokipedia had only been live for 47 minutes before it crashed. Once those problems were fixed, though, a growing number of people began noticing errors in the site’s entries. And that could serve as a warning to business leaders to read their company’s entry particularly closely.
Grokipedia is different from Wikipedia in that all of the 885,000-plus articles were written by Musk’s Grok AI, not humans. And AI—whether it’s Grok, ChatGPT or Perplexity—sometimes plays fast and loose with the truth. For companies, that can cause all manner of problems, since 92 percent of people don’t check the veracity of AI answers.
Wikipedia, Grokipedia’s inspiration and arch-rival, allows anyone to edit content, but community-driven policies strive to ensure the site’s accuracy. Human editors monitor changes and correct errors, though the site is far from perfect.
Several individuals have looked up their Grokipedia pages and found factual errors. Science fiction writer John Scalzi ran a spot check on the article about him soon after Grokipedia’s launch. Quickly, he noticed that it incorrectly listed his birth order in relation to his siblings as well as the publishing order of his books. The site also stated as fact an internet rumor that Steven Spielberg was directing an upcoming film adaptation of his story Old Man’s War. (Spielberg is not, something Scalzi has said repeatedly.)
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“Grok can find out things about me on the Internet, and put those things into Grokipedia, but it doesn’t appear to have the ability to discriminate between what is truth and what’s not,” he wrote. “If it shows up enough on the Internet, Grok’s happy to print the not truth. … I can’t trust it to be accurate about me, so how can I trust it to be accurate about any other thing? The answer is, I can’t. “
Canadian software developer Tim Bray, who co-founded several companies, including Antarctica Systems and Open Text Corp., also did a spot check of his Grokipedia page and found it lacking.
“Every paragraph contains significant errors,” he wrote. “Sometimes the text is explicitly self-contradictory on the face of it, sometimes the mistakes are subtle enough that only I would spot them.”
Even the entry about Elon Musk has errors, it turns out. Grokipedia says that after Musk left the Department of Government Efficiency, Vivek Ramaswamy took on “a more prominent role” at the agency. In actuality, Ramaswamy quit DOGE in January before the agency even got started.
A quick scan of Inc.’s Grokipedia page revealed some errors, as well. It listed one employee as being on staff since 1983. (He left 10 years ago.) But Musk’s site also fixed at least one error from Wikipedia (about the nature of Inc.’s National Magazine Award in 2014).
Correcting errors
Grokipedia, initially, seemed to have no way for people to change article pages. It still doesn’t, at least not directly, but the site has added a “Suggest Edit” button, which can be accessed by highlighting an erroneous passage and right clicking on it. (There have also been accusations that much of Grokipedia’s content seems to be drawn from Wikipedia, so it’s worth checking that site. If the errors are repeated there, you can correct them quickly, and then hope Grokipedia adjusts its page subsequently.)
Companies that have issues with how their business is presented on the site can lodge complaints and ask for corrections, but it’s unclear how fast the turnaround time is – and there doesn’t appear to be any way to confirm suggested changes are being considered.
Beyond factual errors, this new AI encyclopedia, as you may have heard, seems to have an ideological bias that some say embraces the right, but in many instances appears to parrot Musk’s own philosophies. (The site was originally scheduled to launch Oct. 20, but was delayed, Musk said, because “We need to do more work to purge out the propaganda.”)
Grokipedia assigns a perceived political bias to many people, sites and businesses (including Nike, Procter & Gamble and Disney). It says, on its page about race and intelligence, that science says some races are more intelligent than others. And it describes George Floyd primarily as “an American man with a lengthy criminal record.” The site also deadnames and misgenders transgender people regularly.
Despite its many reported problems and the reputational damage it can do to people and businesses, Musk seems proud of his creation. “Version 1.0 will be 10X better, but even at 0.1 it’s better than Wikipedia imo,” he wrote following the site’s launch.
If you believe artificial intelligence poses grave risks to humanity, then a professor at Carnegie Mellon University has one of the most important roles in the tech industry right now.
Zico Kolter leads a 4-person panel at OpenAI that has the authority to halt the ChatGPT maker’s release of new AI systems if it finds them unsafe. That could be technology so powerful that an evildoer could use it to make weapons of mass destruction. It could also be a new chatbot so poorly designed that it will hurt people’s mental health.
“Very much we’re not just talking about existential concerns here,” Kolter said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We’re talking about the entire swath of safety and security issues and critical topics that come up when we start talking about these very widely used AI systems.”
OpenAI tapped the computer scientist to be chair of its Safety and Security Committee more than a year ago, but the position took on heightened significance last week when California and Delaware regulators made Kolter’s oversight a key part of their agreements to allow OpenAI to form a new business structure to more easily raise capital and make a profit.
Safety has been central to OpenAI’s mission since it was founded as a nonprofit research laboratory a decade ago with a goal of building better-than-human AI that benefits humanity. But after its release of ChatGPT sparked a global AI commercial boom, the company has been accused of rushing products to market before they were fully safe in order to stay at the front of the race. Internal divisions that led to the temporary ouster of CEO Sam Altman in 2023 brought those concerns that it had strayed from its mission to a wider audience.
The San Francisco-based organization faced pushback — including a lawsuit from co-founder Elon Musk — when it began steps to convert itself into a more traditional for-profit company to continue advancing its technology.
Agreements announced last week by OpenAI along with California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings aimed to assuage some of those concerns.
At the heart of the formal commitments is a promise that decisions about safety and security must come before financial considerations as OpenAI forms a new public benefit corporation that is technically under the control of its nonprofit OpenAI Foundation.
Kolter will be a member of the nonprofit’s board but not on the for-profit board. But he will have “full observation rights” to attend all for-profit board meetings and have access to information it gets about AI safety decisions, according to Bonta’s memorandum of understanding with OpenAI. Kolter is the only person, besides Bonta, named in the lengthy document.
Kolter said the agreements largely confirm that his safety committee, formed last year, will retain the authorities it already had. The other three members also sit on the OpenAI board — one of them is former U.S. Army General Paul Nakasone, who was commander of the U.S. Cyber Command. Altman stepped down from the safety panel last year in a move seen as giving it more independence.
“We have the ability to do things like request delays of model releases until certain mitigations are met,” Kolter said. He declined to say if the safety panel has ever had to halt or mitigate a release, citing the confidentiality of its proceedings.
Kolter said there will be a variety of concerns about AI agents to consider in the coming months and years, from cybersecurity – “Could an agent that encounters some malicious text on the internet accidentally exfiltrate data?” – to security concerns surrounding AI model weights, which are numerical values that influence how an AI system performs.
“But there’s also topics that are either emerging or really specific to this new class of AI model that have no real analogues in traditional security,” he said. “Do models enable malicious users to have much higher capabilities when it comes to things like designing bioweapons or performing malicious cyberattacks?”
“And then finally, there’s just the impact of AI models on people,” he said. “The impact to people’s mental health, the effects of people interacting with these models and what that can cause. All of these things, I think, need to be addressed from a safety standpoint.”
OpenAI has already faced criticism this year about the behavior of its flagship chatbot, including a wrongful-death lawsuit from California parents whose teenage son killed himself in April after lengthy interactions with ChatGPT.
Kolter, director of Carnegie Mellon’s machine learning department, began studying AI as a Georgetown University freshman in the early 2000s, long before it was fashionable.
“When I started working in machine learning, this was an esoteric, niche area,” he said. “We called it machine learning because no one wanted to use the term AI because AI was this old-time field that had overpromised and underdelivered.”
Kolter, 42, has been following OpenAI for years and was close enough to its founders that he attended its launch party at an AI conference in 2015. Still, he didn’t expect how rapidly AI would advance.
“I think very few people, even people working in machine learning deeply, really anticipated the current state we are in, the explosion of capabilities, the explosion of risks that are emerging right now,” he said.
AI safety advocates will be closely watching OpenAI’s restructuring and Kolter’s work. One of the company’s sharpest critics says he’s “cautiously optimistic,” particularly if Kolter’s group “is actually able to hire staff and play a robust role.”
“I think he has the sort of background that makes sense for this role. He seems like a good choice to be running this,” said Nathan Calvin, general counsel at the small AI policy nonprofit Encode. Calvin, who OpenAI targeted with a subpoena at his home as part of its fact-finding to defend against the Musk lawsuit, said he wants OpenAI to stay true to its original mission.
“Some of these commitments could be a really big deal if the board members take them seriously,” Calvin said. “They also could just be the words on paper and pretty divorced from anything that actually happens. I think we don’t know which one of those we’re in yet.”
Elon Musk has told Joe Rogan that he hopes to unveil a flying car “before the end of the year.” As Gizmodo has reported, Rogan asked Musk about about the long-delayed second-gen Tesla Roadster in his show, when the Tesla CEO suddenly started talking about wanting the vehicle to fly. If you’ll recall, Tesla unveiled a new Roadster in 2017 and had plans to start deliveries in 2020, but its production got delayed again and again. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently tweeted that he’d been having difficulties getting a refund on the $50,000 deposit he made for one way back in 2018. But instead of talking in depth about Roadster’s status, Musk talked about getting close to an “unforgettable” product demo of a prototype instead.
He was giving Rogan vague answers in the interview, but he eventually said: “Well, you know, my friend Peter Thiel, once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars. I mean, I think if Peter wants a flying car, we should be able to buy one” He didn’t want to divulge all the details in the show, but he claimed that the vehicle Tesla is supposedly working on contains “crazy, crazy technology.” Musk said he wasn’t sure it’s a car but that “it loos like a car.” He didn’t answer when Rogan asked if it had “retractable wings” or mentioned if the vehicle would be VTOL, or a Vertical Take-off and Landing, aircraft.
Musk has been talking about developing flying cars as early as 2014, as Gizmodonotes. However, take note that the CEO is rather infamous for being overly optimistic and ambitious with his timelines, not just for the automaker but also for his other companies like SpaceX. Take for example, the aforementioned Roadster, which is yet to go into production, and the SpaceX Falcon Heavy whose first launch didn’t happen until five years later than he predicted. That said, it’s also possible for Tesla to unveil a prototype that would still have to go through massive changes and improvements if and when it becomes ready for production.
Billionaire oligarch Elon Musk appeared on the latest episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast on Friday. And while much of the conversation covered topics we’ve heard before, Musk decided to drop some news about something he wants to demo by the end of the year: a flying car.
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before—from Musk himself, no less, who has been talking about making a flying car since at least 2014.
Musk’s flying car dreams came up in the context of Tesla’s Roadster, a car that was originally produced from 2008 to 2012. The second-generation Roadster has been promised by Musk for years, but he’s always failed to deliver since the original target date of 2020. When Rogan asked the Tesla CEO about the Roadster’s status, Musk slowly made it clear that he wants it to fly. But it took him some time during the conversation to actually reveal what he was talking about.
“We’re getting close to….” Musk said with a long pause, “…demonstrating the prototype. One thing I can guarantee is that this product demo will be unforgettable. Unforgettable.”
Rogan didn’t quite understand because Musk hadn’t revealed that he was referring to a flying car. The podcaster asked him how it would be unforgettable. Musk replied with a laugh, “Whether it’s good or bad, it will be unforgettable.” Rogan was still confused, asking Musk to explain.
“Well, you know, my friend Peter Thiel, once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars,” said Musk, finally giving a hint.
Thiel, the cofounder of Palantir and Musk’s old friend from his days at PayPal, is another far-right billionaire who spends his days talking about the Antichrist in the most sweaty manner possible. Rogan couldn’t quite understand what Musk was saying and pressed him further, to which Musk replied, “I mean, I think if Peter wants a flying car, we should be able to buy one.”
Rogan asked Musk if the vehicle would have a “retractable wing,” imploring him to elaborate further. Musk replied that he “can’t do the unveil before the unveil,” but said that he thinks, “it has a shot at being the most memorable product unveil ever.” The billionaire said he hoped to unveil it “before the end of the year,” putting an emphasis on hopefully.
None of this should be a surprise for anyone who’s followed Musk over the past decade. He often likes to roll out prototypes and ideas long before they’re ready to deliver. That doesn’t mean you’ll actually see those things in the form they were promised.
Remember Musk’s idea for the Hyperloop? Or the more modest Loop system, which was supposed to be a 155-mile-per-hour autonomous mass transit system? It was going to be able to carry 16 people at a time, zipping around in tunnels underneath cities. When it came time for Musk to deliver, he built a tunnel in Las Vegas where human drivers ferry around people in regular Tesla vehicles at slow speeds.
Which is to say that Musk might very well hold a demo of a flying car soon, though a prototype isn’t the same thing as a product that hits the market. Musk also unveiled an autonomous two-seater Cybercab over a year ago, and there are no indications that it will be released anytime soon. The Robotaxis, on the other hand (regular Tesla vehicles that drive “autonomously” with a safety driver in the passenger seat), are already shuttling people around in Texas.
There’s also the issue that confronts every flying car inventor of the past century: Since flying is much more difficult and dangerous than driving, how large is the market for something like this? Any aircraft that carries passengers in the U.S. needs to be flown by someone with a pilot’s license. Unless, of course, it’s an autonomous flying vehicle. And that presents its own logistical challenges, such as coordinating air traffic.
The full episode, which is available on YouTube, includes the broader conversation, but Musk definitely hedged on the timing of his flying Roadster while talking with Rogan.
“You know, we need to make sure that it works,” said Musk. “Like this is some crazy, crazy technology we got in this car. Crazy… technology. Crazy crazy.”
Rogan asked him if it was different than what was previously announced for the Roadster, which Musk confirmed.
“It has crazy technology. Like, is it even a car? I’m not sure. It looks like a car,” said Musk. “Let’s just put it this way. It’s crazier than anything James Bond… if you took all the James Bond cars and combined them, it’s crazier than that.”
It’s interesting that Musk is giving hints that it might not be a “car.” It’s entirely possible that this means he’s developing a vertical take-off and landing vehicle (VTOL), which typically doesn’t drive on the road, but can still shuttle passengers. Many VTOL promises of the past decade have grabbed headlines as “flying cars,” even though they don’t actually drive on the road at all and function much more like helicopters.
Rogan was stunned, saying that he didn’t know what to think because he was only getting a “limited amount of information.” Musk, clearly sensing skepticism, told Rogan that if he wanted to see it before the unveiling, he would show it to him.
Are we going to see a flying car soon? It sounds like it. But we’ve had functioning flying cars since at least the 1950s. Are we going to see something that will be more than just a flashy distraction from the fact that Tesla vehicle sales are in the toilet ever since Musk aligned himself with President Donald Trump and made those two Nazi-style salutes? That part remains to be seen.
In between trying to become the world’s first trillionaire, expanding his defense contracting business, fighting the “woke mind virus,” feuding with Sam Altman, and overseeing half a dozen tech companies, Elon Musk has somehow found the time to wade into the debate over whether it’s good or bad that a rogue Waymo robotaxi (by the company’s own admission) seems to have run over and killed a beloved bodega cat in San Francisco.
In case you somehow missed it, a cat was run over earlier this week, leading to ongoing anger against the reputed culprit (Waymo). The feline, whose name was KitKat—but who also went by the moniker “the mayor of 16th street”—was a longtime staple of Randa’s Market in the city’s Mission neighborhood. KitKat’s owner, Mike Zeidan, told The San Francisco Standard that his pet was hit by a robotaxi late Monday night. “Honestly, man, it’s difficult,” Zeidan said. “He was a one-of-a-kind cat. He brought joy to so many people. People loved him.”
Waymo seems to have admitted that its vehicle did, indeed, run over KitKat. “We reviewed this, and while our vehicle was stopped to pick up passengers, a nearby cat darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away,” a company spokesperson told Gizmodo. “We send our deepest sympathies to the cat’s owner and the community who knew and loved him.”
On Friday, as a means of adding his two cents, Musk retweeted an account that had defended driverless cars as being a savior, not a killer, of neighborhood pets. “5.4 million cats are hit by cars every year in the U.S., and 97 percent of those cats die from their injuries,” @WholeMarsBlog wrote. “Autonomy will dramatically reduce that number.”
“True, many pets will be saved by autonomy,” Musk commented.
It’s great that Elon could take time out of his busy schedule to participate in the discourse around KitKat. Big picture, Musk is launching a robotaxi service, so we all know which dog he has in this fight. But the truth of the matter is, we don’t really know if autonomous cars would reduce the number of feline deaths.
One of the primary selling points for robotaxis has been that human drivers are notorious for running into things, crashing, and otherwise causing dangerous mayhem on America’s roadways. And it’s true that human drivers can be absurdly dangerous. That said, the jury is still out on whether robotaxis are actually that much safer than human drivers. Speed is a factor in a significant portion of traffic fatalities, and robotaxis have so far steered clear of those speeds. At the same time, there’s also the fact that, whether robotaxis are safer or not, part of living in a free society involves accepting a certain amount of risk attached to that freedom. Currently, anyone can get into a car and drive it where they want to go, regardless of what the software in the car is programmed to do. That won’t necessarily be the case in a world governed by robotaxis.
Elon Musk is widely recognized as an electric car pioneer. Yet the Tesla CEO has also single-handedly chilled the automaker’s sales, according to a recent study by researchers at Yale University.
Public controversy over Musk’s role as leader of the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), as well as his acquisition of social media platform Twitter (now known as X) in 2022, reduced Tesla’s sales by up to 1.2 million vehicles over a three-year period, the researchers estimated in a working paper published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research that aimed to measure the effect of Musk’s politics on Tesla’s business.
“This study highlights just how impactful a CEO’s partisan actions can be,” the researchers wrote. “We show that Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person and CEO of the most valuable automaker by market capitalization, had a dramatic effect on Tesla sales due to his politically partisan activities unrelated to Tesla’s core business.”
Musk’s adverse impact on Tesla’s business became visible starting in mid-2022, with sales especially dropping in Democratic-leaning states and counties, the study further concludes.
“Musk’s actions antagonized his most loyal customer base, for, as we show, Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to purchase a Tesla,” the researchers said.
The study’s lead author is energy and environmental economist Kenneth Gillingham, who is the senior associate dean of academic affairs at the Yale School of the Environment. His research focuses on consumer behavior and policy in the transportation and energy sectors.
Musk announced in May that he was pulling back from DOGE, which the Trump administration formed to shrink the federal government and cut spending.
Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment on the paper’s findings.
Musk’s foray into politics and emergence as a prominent adviser to President Trump early in his second term raised the entrepreneur’s visibility but alienated some potential Tesla customers, Mike O’Rourke, chief market strategist at Jonestrading, previously told CBS News.
Tesla last week reported third-quarter earnings of $1.4 billion, down 37% from the year-ago period, citing higher costs and tariff-related headwinds. Tesla’s vehicle sales fell 1% in 2024 despite a 7% increase in EV sales across the car industry.
Tesla’s stock fell 27% in February, a period of time that coincided with Mr. Trump’s first full month in the White House. But the shares have rebounded and are now up roughly 14% on the year, with investors betting on growth in the company’s fledgling robotaxi business, autonomous driving technology and plans to build AI-powered humanoid robots.
“We estimate the AI and autonomous opportunity is worth at least $1 trillion alone for Tesla,”Wedbush Securities technology analyst Dan Ives said in a recent report, adding that he expects the Trump administration to fast-track such initiatives.
Another measure of Musk’s perceived value to Tesla is the enormous pay package shareholders are preparing to vote on for the executive. That total package could be worth up to $1 trillion in a decade, one of the richest compensation packages in corporate history.
For Musk to earn the full amount, Tesla would have to hit certain profitability and production targets, as well as reach a market cap of $8.5 trillion — nearly six times its current value — in 10 years.
Robyn Denholm, chairman of Tesla’s board of directors, is urging shareholders to approve Musk’s proposed compensation. “Without Elon, Tesla could lose significant value, as our company may no longer be valued for what we aim to become: a transformative force reimagining the fundamental building blocks of mobility, energy and labor,” Denholm said in the letter.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s recent politics have cost the company millions of car sales, according to an October report published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
If not for the “Musk partisan effect,” as it is referred to by researchers, Tesla would have sold an additional 1 to 1.26 million vehicles in the U.S. from October 2022 to April 2025. That translates to tens of billions in revenue that never came in. In fact, moving those additional cars would have boosted the company’s sales by a massive 67 to 83 percent—and California likely would have reached its 2026 target of 35 percent zero-emission vehicles market share.
The political activity at hand refers to Musk’s donating around $300 million to Republican candidates, leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Trump, and his handling of X.
The report tracks Tesla’s sales before and after Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in October 2022. Pre-acquisition, Democrat-heavy counties preferred Teslas more often than Republican counties. Afterwards, however, there was a noticeable shift away from Tesla purchases in those Democratic counties.
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As per the study, Musk’s behavior “antagonized his most loyal customer base,” as it’s more often left-leaning buyers interested in EV. Those buyers haven’t stopped purchasing completely. Rather, the report recorded a boost of around 17 to 22 percent in sales of competitors’ electric and hybrid vehicles.
On the flip side, Republicans don’t seem more interested in Tesla. According to a survey cited in the NBER report, “Musk’s public persona over the last two years has significantly reduced liberal and Democratic support for Tesla without increasing conservative and Republican support.”
The data proves Tesla is no longer just a car company, but a political statement. And it’s because of Musk’s public involvement in politics. It’s a rising trend in top companies, like Spotify losing artists due to the CEO’s support for AI military company Helsing, and the Starbucks boycott related to the company’s stance in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
What’s left to watch is Tesla’s future sales, especially as it continues to roll out its robottaxi service across the US.
OpenAI’s “will they, won’t they” flirtation with becoming a for-profit corporation is over. On Tuesday, the company announced that it has completed its recapitalization process, turning its AI lab into a for-profit corporation despite the objections of the company’s co-founder, Elon Musk.
“We believe that the world’s most powerful technology must be developed in a way that reflects the world’s collective interests,” OpenAI chairman Brett Taylor wrote of the change. “The close of our recapitalization gives us the ability to keep pushing the frontier of AI, and an updated corporate structure to ensure progress serves everyone.”
Under the new structure, there are now two separate entities: the OpenAI Foundation, which is a non-profit organization with partial control over OpenAI Group, a newly formed public benefit corporation. Under the new structure, OpenAI Group will be able to do things that a for-profit entity can (and a non-profit can’t), like raise more money and acquire companies. It will also get its own board of directors, which the Foundation will appoint.
OpenAI Foundation will own 26% of the now for-profit OpenAI Group, valued at around $130 billion, and will continue to be granted shares of the company as it grows. Microsoft will hold a 27% stake in the for-profit arm, which is currently valued at about $135 billion. Microsoft also announced that, as a part of this shift, it will continue to hold intellectual property rights to OpenAI models and future products through 2032. The remaining 47% of the company’s stock will be held by other investors and the employees of OpenAI Group.
In announcing the for-profit move, Altman said in a livestream that his hope is for the OpenAI Foundation to be one of the “biggest non-profits ever.” The expectation is for the Foundation to use its equity stake in the OpenAI Group to help fund philanthropic work. That will start with a $25 billion commitment to “health and curing diseases” and “AI resiliance” to counteract some of the risks presented by the deployment of AI.
Altman also seemed to shift the goal posts on achieving artificial general intelligence, taking a posture that OpenAI aims to develop a “personal AGI” that will be available to people via tools that they will then use to create new things.
As part of a frankly pretty messy Q&A session at the end of the stream, Altman and OpenAI Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki answered questions from viewers. That included a question on when AGI will be achieved. Pachocki said, “In some number of years, we will look back at these years and say this was the transition period when AGI happened,” but did not provide a definitive answer. Altman declined to provide an answer related to AGI, instead pivoting to a goal of creating an “AI researcher” capable of performing autonomous research by 2028.
Notably, Microsoft announced that as part of the new arrangement with OpenAI, if the company declares that it has achieved artificial general intelligence, it will have to have that verified by an independent expert panel.
Throughout the Q&A, Altman was peppered with questions that clearly had an air of frustration.
When asked why OpenAI has copied TikTok’s model with Sora and may introduce ads to ChatGPT despite warning about tech becoming addictive and eroding trust, Altman admitted that he’s still worried about these problems but said, “You’ll have to judge us on our actions,” without providing anything resembling a real answer. The majority of the most upvoted questions from audience members in the Q&A were from users frustrated by the guardrails that prevent them from having “adult” conversations with ChatGPT, which resulted in Altman repeatedly apologizing for the rollout of its latest model and safety features. At times, Pachocki and Altman appeared to be trying to pass difficult questions to each other to handle rather than committing to an answer themselves.
The move to a for-profit structure has been a point of contention around OpenAI for years now. Despite initially being founded as a non-profit, OpenAI launched a for-profit subsidiary in 2019, and in 2024, it announced a plan to restructure to form a public benefit corporation that would shift ownership of OpenAI’s models to the for-profit arm. That received a significant amount of pushback, including from co-founder Elon Musk, who sued to prevent the restructuring from taking place. While the legal challenges temporarily prevented OpenAI from making the change, the company decided to go forward with the recapitalization anyway. Time will tell if it sticks.
While Musk will likely continue to object to the change, another opponent of OpenAI’s for-profit shift appears to be standing down. According to TIME, California Attorney General Rob Bonta won’t sue to prevent OpenAI from forming its corporate arm. “We secured concessions that ensure charitable assets are used for their intended purpose, safety will be prioritized, as well as a commitment that OpenAI will remain right here in California. With these important concessions in place, we will not be in court opposing OpenAI’s recapitalization plan,” Bonta told TIME in an email.
On Monday, Elon Musk’s xAI startup launched Grokipedia, which the billionaire is pitching as an AI-generated alternative to the crowdsourced encyclopedia Wikipedia. Musk first announced the project in late September on his social media platform X, saying it would be “a massive improvement over Wikipedia,” and “a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.”
Musk said last week that he had delayed the launch of Grokipedia because his team needed “to do more work to purge out the propaganda.” When Grokipedia eventually dropped on Monday, WIRED was initially unable to access the website and received an automated message that it was blocked.
When we finally got access to it, WIRED found that the online encyclopedia contained lengthy entries generated by AI. While many of the pages WIRED saw on launch day appeared fairly similar to Wikipedia in terms of tone and content, a number of notable Grokipedia entries denounced the mainstream media, highlighted conservative viewpoints, and sometimes perpetuated historical inaccuracies.
The Grokipedia entry about the slavery of African Americans in the US includes a section outlining numerous “ideological justifications” made for slavery, including the “Shift from Necessary Evil to Positive Good.” The end of the entry focuses on criticisms of The 1619 Project, which it says incorrectly framed “slavery as the central engine of the nation’s political, economic, and cultural development.”
Entries for more recent historical events put conservative perspectives at the center. When WIRED searched for “gay marriage” in Grokipedia, no entry popped up, but one of the on-screen suggestions was for “gay pornography” instead. This entry in Grokipedia falsely states that the proliferation of porn exacerbated the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.
“This marked the onset of what would become a devastating crisis disproportionately affecting gay male communities, where behaviors idealized in pornography—such as unprotected receptive anal intercourse and multiple anonymous partners—aligned directly with primary transmission routes, leading to rapid seroconversion rates,” the Grokipedia entry claims.
xAI did not immediately return a request for comment.
The Grokipedia entry for “transgender” includes two mentions of “transgenderism,” a term commonly used to denigrate trans people. The entry also refers to trans women as “biological males” who have “generated significant conflicts, primarily centered on risks to women’s safety, privacy, and sex-based protections established to mitigate male-perpetrated violence.” The opening section highlights social media as a potential “contagion” that is increasing the number of trans people.
Grokipedia, Elon Musk’s alternative to Wikipedia, sparked to life on Monday afternoon. Then it went dark again. Then it sparked to life again Monday evening. As of this writing, it is up. In terms of style, it looks like Wikipedia with its optional dark mode turned on.
Based on a very brief review, it contains articles on most topics one would most easily expect in an encyclopedia, professing to have just under 900,000 in total. The website Wikicount says there are about 7 million English Wikipedia articles.
There are gaps in Grokipedia, however. For instance, at the moment it does not currently appear to have a dedicated article about the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Musk announced that his AI company, xAI, was building an online encyclopedia late last month, saying it would be a “massive improvement over Wikipedia.” The idea for Grokipedia was born during an appearance by Musk on the All-In Podcast. Host and fellow high net worth individual David Sacks asked Musk point blank to create it, noting that Wikipedia was “hyper-partisan” and full of “activists.”
Here are some comparisons between Wikipedia articles and Grokipedia articles. These are copied verbatim from the intros of articles with the footnotes and links removed for ease of reading:
Nick Fuentes
Wikipedia:
Nicholas Joseph Fuentes (born August 18, 1998) is an American far-right political commentator, activist and live streamer. He identifies as a Christian nationalist and part of the incel subculture. His views have been described as racist, white supremacist, misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic, and Islamophobic. Furthermore, he has been described as a neo-Nazi and a Holocaust denier. His supporters are known as Groypers.
Grokipedia:
Nicholas Joseph Fuentes (born August 18, 1998) is an American political commentator, live streamer, and activist who hosts the nightly internet program America First and organizes the annual America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC). A self-professed traditional Catholic, Fuentes advocates for policies centered on national sovereignty, including a moratorium on immigration, withdrawal from foreign entanglements, and preservation of America’s historic European-descended majority. His rise began as a teenager supporting Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, after which he withdrew from Boston University amid threats following his attendance at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Great Replacement
Wikipedia:
Title: “Great Replacement conspiracy theory”
The Great Replacement (French: grand remplacement), also known as replacement theory or great replacement theory, is a debunked white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory coined by French author Renaud Camus. Camus’ theory states that, with the complicity or cooperation of “replacist” elites, the ethnic French and white European populations at large are being demographically and culturally replaced by non-white peoples—especially from Muslim-majority countries—through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the birth rate of white Europeans. Since then, similar claims have been advanced in other national contexts, notably in the United States. Mainstream scholars have dismissed these claims of a conspiracy of “replacist” elites as rooted in a misunderstanding of demographic statistics and premised upon an unscientific, racist worldview.
Grokipedia:
Title: “Great Replacement theory”
The Great Replacement is a theory originated by French writer Renaud Camus in his 2011 essay Le Grand Remplacement, which contends that the historic populations of European nations are undergoing demographic substitution through sustained high levels of immigration from Africa and the Middle East, compounded by sub-replacement fertility rates among native Europeans (typically below 1.5 children per woman in most EU countries) and comparatively higher fertility among immigrant groups (often exceeding 2.0). Camus describes this process as an orchestrated “genocide by substitution,” driven by elite policies favoring multiculturalism over national continuity, resulting in the erosion of indigenous cultural dominance without violent conflict. Empirical underpinnings include United Nations projections indicating that net migration will account for nearly all population stability or growth in Europe amid native decline, with foreign-born residents comprising nearly 10% of the EU population by 2024 and contributing disproportionately to births—one-third or more in nations like Austria and Germany
Greta Thunberg
Wikipedia:
Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg (Swedish: [ˈɡreːta ˈtʉːnbærj]; born 3 January 2003) is a Swedish activist best known for pressuring governments to address climate change and social issues. She gained global attention in 2018, at age 15, after starting a solo school strike outside the Swedish parliament, which inspired the worldwide Fridays for Future movement. She has since broadened her focus to include human rights and global justice, voicing support for Ukraine, Palestine, Armenia, and Western Sahara. In 2025, Thunberg twice joined a humanitarian flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip.
Thunberg has been credited with sparking the “Greta effect”, influencing environmental awareness and youth engagement worldwide. She has received numerous honors, including inclusion in Time’s 100 Most Influential People and being named Person of the Year in 2019.
Grokipedia:
Greta Thunberg (born 3 January 2003) is a Swedish activist recognized for launching a solo school strike for climate action on 20 August 2018 outside the Swedish parliament in Stockholm, an action that catalyzed the international Fridays for Future movement involving millions of students protesting government inaction on climate change.
Thunberg, diagnosed at age 11 or 12 with Asperger syndrome—a form of autism spectrum disorder—along with obsessive-compulsive disorder and selective mutism, has described these conditions as providing her with a focused “superpower” for advocacy. Her high-profile speeches at venues including the United Nations General Assembly and the World Economic Forum in Davos amplified calls for immediate emissions reductions and policy shifts, earning her Time magazine’s Person of the Year designation in 2019 as the youngest recipient. While credited with elevating youth engagement on environmental issues, Thunberg’s promotion of urgent, existential climate threats has drawn scrutiny for diverging from nuanced empirical assessments of climate risks and adaptation capacities, as well as for extending her activism into broader political arenas such as anti-capitalist and geopolitical protests.
Overall, Grokipedia gives off the impression of a site where topics and people that Elon Musk likes or supports are presented without framings that cast any doubt on their validity, and those he dislikes are presented with criticism front-and-center.
As others have pointed out, some articles are strikingly similar to Wikipedia’s, and contain notes at the bottom saying they were adapted from Wikipedia under a ShareAlike 4.0 license, which would seem to indicate that those particular Grokipedia articles are also available to share freely. However, the url for Grokipedia is at the .com top-level domain, not the .org domain like Wikipedia.
Grokipedia also mostly (or perhaps entirely) lacks photos and illustrations. It’s understandable that biographical articles don’t have portraits, but articles like “Tesseract” would benefit from clarifying illustrations and even animations, like on Wikipedia.
Some Grokipedia articles are quite long and detailed—long past the point of general interest. For instance, the article for Gizmodo, while seemingly accurate after a brief scan, seems like it would benefit from a human editor.
Overall, the project seems very much like what it purports to be: a version of Wikipedia with articles written by Grok, a large language model that favors Elon Musk’s views.
Gizmodo reached out to xAI about all of this, asking for comment. That email received an immediate, three-word reply: “Legacy Media Lies.”
Tesla is making headlines again with the return of its Mad Max mode in Full Self-Driving (Supervised). This feature, designed to make the car drive more aggressively, has arrived just as the automaker faces new scrutiny from regulators and ongoing lawsuits from customers.
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Mad Max Mode returns in Tesla’s latest FSD update
Tesla recently launched its FSD v14.1.2 update. The update follows last year’s major FSD v14 release, which introduced “Sloth Mode” for slower, more cautious driving. The latest update moves to the opposite end of the spectrum with Mad Max mode.
According to Tesla’s release notes, this profile allows higher speeds and more frequent lane changes than Hurry mode. The update has sparked mixed reactions. Some Tesla fans praise it for making driving feel more natural. Critics argue that it invites risky behavior at a time when regulators like the NHTSA and California DMV are already investigating Tesla’s advanced driver-assist systems.
A new Mad Max speed profile is now included in Tesla’s Full Self-Driving interface.(Tesla)
History of Tesla’s Mad Max mode since 2018
The Mad Max setting isn’t new. Tesla first introduced it in 2018 for the original Autopilot system. At the time, Elon Musk described it as ideal for handling aggressive city traffic. The name, borrowed from the post-apocalyptic movie series, immediately drew attention for its bold tone.
Now, the feature is back in Tesla’s latest FSD version. Within hours of release, drivers reported seeing cars equipped with Mad Max mode rolling stop signs and driving over the speed limit. These early reports highlight how the mode may behave more assertively than before.
Why Tesla brought back its Mad Max mode
Bringing back Mad Max mode may serve several purposes for Tesla. It helps demonstrate the company’s continuous development of FSD software while appealing to drivers who prefer faster, more decisive movement in traffic. It also acts as a signal that Tesla is still chasing the goal of Level 4 autonomy, even though its system remains classified as Level 2, requiring constant driver supervision.
Tesla owners can access Mad Max mode through the car’s settings under Speed Profiles. (Chesnot/Getty Images)
For Tesla, this feature shows confidence in its progress. For observers, it raises concerns about timing. With multiple investigations and lawsuits in progress, many expected Tesla to focus on safety rather than on more aggressive driving profiles.
What this means for you
If you own a Tesla with Full Self-Driving (Supervised), you can access Mad Max mode through the car’s settings under Speed Profiles. This mode provides a more assertive driving experience that includes quicker acceleration, more lane changes, and less hesitation.
However, remember that Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system still requires active driver attention. You must keep your hands on the wheel and remain ready to take control at any moment. While the name suggests thrill and speed, safety and awareness should remain your top priority.
Tesla’s speed-profile menu includes the toggle options of Chill, Standard, Hurry, and Mad Max profiles to customize how aggressively their car responds in traffic. (REUTERS/Mike Blake)
If you share the road with Teslas, it’s smart to stay alert. Vehicles using Mad Max mode may accelerate or change lanes more quickly than expected. Giving Teslas a little extra space can help reduce surprises and keep everyone safer on the road.
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Tesla’s decision to reintroduce Mad Max mode is both strategic and provocative. It revives a feature from its early Autopilot days while reigniting debate over the balance between innovation and responsibility. The mode’s return reminds everyone that Tesla continues to test the limits of driver-assist technology and public tolerance for it.
Will Tesla’s revived Mad Max mode mark a bold step toward autonomy or a dangerous gamble in the race for self-driving dominance? Let us know by writing to us at CyberGuy.com
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Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.
NEW YORK (AP) — For nearly three years, JPMorgan Chase has picking up the legal tab of Charlie Javice and Olivier Amar, the two convicted fraudsters who sold their financial aid startup Frank to the bank.
But the two have racked up an astronomical, nine-figure legal bill that far exceeds any reasonable amount the two may have needed for their defense, the bank said in a court filing late Friday. Chase shouldn’t have to pay and its agreement as part of the startup purchase to shoulder the costs should end, the bank argued.
According to the filing, Javice’s team of lawyers across five law firms have billed JPMorgan approximately $60.1 million in legal fees and expenses, while Amar’s lawyers have billed the bank roughly $55.2 million in fees.
In total, the bank alleges Javice and Amar’s lawyers have racked up legal fees of $115 million, with one law firm receiving $35.6 million in reimbursements alone. In comparison, Elizabeth Holmes, who was convicted of defrauding investors in the Theranos case, reportedly ended up with a legal bill of roughly $30 million.
The bank would be “irreparably injured” if the court does not put an end to “abusive billing,” the bank said. Javice and her lawyers have treated the process “like a blank check,” Chase said.
Javice, 33, was convicted in March of duping the banking giant when it bought her company, called Frank, in the summer of 2021. She made false records that made it seem like Frank had over 4 million customers when it had fewer than 300,000. Amar was convicted of the same charges.
Early in the case, a Delaware court ruled that the bank was required to advance Javice and Amar for any legal fees, which was part of the bank’s agreement when Frank was acquired in 2021.
Part of Javice’s legal team is Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel, who is also the lawyer who has previously represented Elon Musk. Spiro did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.
A law firm representing Amar did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The legal fees sought by Charlie Javice and Olivier Amar are patently excessive and egregious. We look forward to sharing details of this abuse with the court in coming weeks,” said Pablo Rodriguez, a spokesman for the bank
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility!
I am sure you are waiting to learn the results of last week’s poll. (Reminder: Sign up for the Mobility newsletter to participate in our polls!) Here is what I asked: “What is the best business model for autonomous vehicle tech? (Keep profitability in mind.)”
Far and away, readers think longer-haul delivery is the best bet, with 40% picking this option. Robotaxis came in next with 25.5% of the vote, followed by licensing tech to automakers at 19.1% and last-mile delivery with 14.9%. One reader emailed to point out that I didn’t include warehouse applications like autonomous forklifts. The longer-haul delivery category can be broken down further, though, and is worth another poll, which we included in this week’s newsletter.
In the long list of arguments one might make to justify a $1 trillion compensation package, having control over a robot army was certainly not on my mind. And yet, this is the argument Elon Musk made during Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call.
Here’s the rundown: On November 6, shareholders will vote whether to approve a board-endorsed compensation package that would grant Musk up to 12% of Tesla’s stock. If the company hits its target market value of $8.6 trillion, that package would be worth about $1 trillion.
The board and Musk have spent weeks lobbying shareholders to approve the measure, even as proxy advisers Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis have recommended that investors reject it. Musk is now in attack mode, which was on display at the end of the earnings call when he called the firms corporate terrorists and made his final pitch. His robot army argument centers on power and control, not so much money. Although, hey, money can provide both.
“My biggest concern line: If we build this robot army, do I have a strong influence over that robot army? I don’t feel comfortable building a robot army if I don’t have a strong influence,” Musk said during the earnings call. He was referring to Tesla’s Optimus robot program and used it as an example of products he wants full control over.
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That argument will hardly persuade Musk’s critics, particularly in the wake of his role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency. But Musk doesn’t need to convince his growing list of critics, unless, of course, they own Tesla shares.
A little bird
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
This week, General Motors dropped the ax on the BrightDrop electric van program after four short years. It was not the biggest surprise in the world; after all, hundreds of unsold vans have been sitting untouched in lots in Michigan and Canada for months now. (One little bird reached out to tell us that hundreds of them are in a lot in Flint, Michigan.) GM cited a slower-than-expected market for commercial electric vans, but it didn’t go into detail about why, exactly, BrightDrop failed so miserably.
Another little bird has given us a clue, though. The vans are pricey but well-liked and should save fleet owners money over time. And electric drivetrains are a great fit for last-mile delivery. What GM appears to have missed was the infrastructure piece, according to one insider. The company leaned hard on outside partnerships to build out so-called depot charging, instead of offering it as part of the fleet purchases. That turned a number of potential customers away and just generally caused headaches.
The big deal this week is about EVs and AI data centers. Yes, there is a connection.
Redwood Materialsraised $350 million in a Series E round led by venture firm Eclipse, and included a new strategic investment by Nvidia’s venture capital arm, NVentures. The company’s valuation was not disclosed, but a source familiar with the round told TechCrunch it was about $6 billion, a billion dollars higher than its previous valuation.
The chunk of this money is going toward Redwood’s new energy storage business, which is giving a new purpose to EV batteries it has collected and that have too much life left to put through the recycling process. The company ties these retired EV batteries to renewable energy sources like wind and solar, or the grid, to power AI data centers or industrial sites.
Other deals that got my attention this week …
Avride secured strategic investments and other commitments of up to $375 million, backed by Uber and Nebius. None of these companies gave me specifics when asked if this was all equity. One insider did say to pay attention to the “other commitments” bit, which suggests it was not a straight cash injection.
Spiro, the African electric motorbike startup headquartered in Dubai, raised $100 million in a round led by the Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA), the development arm of Afreximbank. This is the largest raise ever for African e-mobility.
Notable reads and other tidbits
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
General Motors made several announcements at an event in NYC that were meant to show where it’s headed. And, yes, AI plays a central role. Before AI could take the stage, GM said it will overhaul the electrical and computational guts of its future vehicles. The company will roll out a new electric architecture and centralized computing platform in new vehicles, starting with the Cadillac Escalade IQ in 2028. That foundation will allow the company to deliver faster software; more capable automated driving features, including eyes-off driving; and a custom, conversational AI assistant.
Earnings season is upon us, and this quarter I am watching for data and executive commentary that helps me understand how tariffs and the expired EV tax credit are affecting the automotive sector. I don’t have any clear takeaways yet — and probably won’t until the next quarter.
Tariffs are hitting, Q3 reports from GM and Ford indicate. For instance, GM forecast that tariffs will reduce its 2025 profits by $2.3 billion and Ford said it would take a $2 billion bite out of the bottom line. But both of those projections are billions of dollars better than the automakers predicted earlier this year, and the automakers hope to offset those costs. CEOs from both automakers thanked President Trump for extending a relief measure from tariffs on automotive parts sourced from Canada and Mexico.
Some other GM and Ford news: Ford will continue to pause production of its F-150 Lightning trucks as it prioritizes gas and hybrid F-Series versions in a bid to recover from a fire at its primary aluminum supplier Nevolis. Meanwhile, GM CEO Mary Barra told the Verge’s Decoder podcast that the company will drop support for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from all of its vehicles. Oh, and late-breaking: GM has laid off 200 salaried workers from its Warren Tech Center.
Tesladelivered a record number of vehicles in the third quarter of 2025, results buoyed by U.S. customers who took advantage of the expiring federal EV tax credit. That didn’t translate to greater earnings. Tesla’s third-quarter profit was $1.4 billion, 37% lower than it was in the same quarter last year.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administrationopened an investigation after seeing footage from early October of a Waymo autonomous vehicle maneuvering around a stopped school bus that was unloading kids in Atlanta.
Rivian is undergoing a bit of a shake-up that includes cutting 600 people from its workforce (its third round of layoffs this year), and its founder and CEO is taking on yet another position: chief marketing officer. Rivian also agreed this week to pay $250 million to settle a class-action shareholder lawsuit filed after the company suddenly hiked prices on its R1 pickup truck and SUV in 2022.
Meanwhile, I spent some time in the Bay Area with executives from Rivian’s micromobility spinout company Also. The company revealed three new products, and if Also president Chris Yu and Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe (and Also board member) are to be believed, there will be even more coming. For now, it’s a slick modular pedal-assist e-bike and two pedal-assist quad vehicles — the delivery van version that Amazon has already agreed to buy. The big compelling tech story here is vertical integration and software.
The Giving Pledge was designed to hold the world’s richest people accountable for donating at least half their fortunes in their lifetimes or wills–but so far, only John and Laura Arnold have actually done it.
From well-known Wall Street energy trader to philanthropist, John Arnold began his career trading natural gas at Enron and later ran a hedge fund, Centaurus Partners. By 2012, he had retired and fully pivoted to philanthropy at 38 years old.
The Arnolds have donated over $2 billion to date, and more than $204 million in 2024, according to Forbes. Currently, their net worth is around $2.9 billion, meaning their donations amount to about 42 percent of their wealth.
In addition, John Arnold has a Forbes philanthropy score of 5 out of 5. The score is based on those who have donated more than 20% of their wealth.
Since launching their foundation, “Arnold Ventures,” in 2008, their philanthropic efforts have expanded to 150 employees across offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Houston.
How the Arnolds donate
John and Laura Arnolds’ approach to giving is data-driven, aiming to deliver real, measurable results from what they offer, and has been fundamentally focused on research. Their efforts include a variety of public policy issues, including health care, higher education, criminal justice, infrastructure, and more.
Emphasizing research and measurable outcomes, their philanthropy also reflects a broader belief that wealth should be used in real time—not preserved for future generations. In fact, John Arnold has previously noted that The Arnolds will not have a legacy foundation after their deaths.
Most recently, “Arnold Ventures” joined the American Institute for Boys and Men to issue a call for new research on the long-term consequences of online sports betting as states continue to legalize the practice.
The Giving Pledge
Launched in 2010 by Bill and Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett, the Giving Pledge invites the world’s wealthiest individuals and families to publicly commit to giving away at least 50% of their wealth to philanthropy, either during their lifetimes or in their wills.
Some of the signers include Bezos’s ex-wife MacKenzie Scott (but not Jeff Bezos), Michael Bloomberg, Elon Musk, George Lucas, and Mark Zuckerberg.
Despite hundreds of billionaires signing the Giving Pledge, they haven’t necessarily followed through. The pledge is a moral commitment rather than a legally binding contract—participants sign an open letter explaining their reasons for giving. They can choose which causes and charities to support.
The Institute for Policy Studies’ 2025 report, The Giving Pledge at 15, highlights that Laura and John were the only participants technically in compliance with the pledge since signing in 2010.
“The Arnolds should be commended, they’ve boldly decided to give and to study how philanthropy can actually move money out the door instead of sequestering wealth. They’re among the most significant players in the Giving Pledge class when it comes to pushing real charity reform,” report co-author Bella DeVaan told Fortune in an interview.
Among the 22 deceased U.S. Pledgers, only eight met their pledge before death—just one, Chuck Feeney, gave away his entire fortune while alive.
Furthermore, of the original 57 U.S. signers in 2010, 32 remain billionaires, with their net worth increasing by almost 300% since signing. Only 11 of the original group are no longer billionaires—but it’s mainly because their net worth dropped, not because they gave it away.
“Wealth is accumulating incredibly quickly for the wealthiest people in America,” DeVaan added. The Giving Pledge is one of the few public commitments they make in lieu of stronger federal regulation or taxation—so its fulfillment is really important.”
John Arnold recently defended The Giving Pledge on X following a Fortune report about Peter Thiel saying he encouraged Elon Musk to abandon it due to concerns that his wealth would be donated to “left-wing nonprofits.”
“The multitude of billion-dollar fortunes, whether in the 1s, 10s, or 100s, have the potential to be put to enormous benefit,” Arnold wrote. “I won’t offer unsolicited advice as to what I think someone should do with their money. I’d only suggest that figuring out what to do with it in a productive fashion can be as important as trying to make more.”
Tesla held its third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, and CEO Elon Musk seemed particularly focused on getting his $1 trillion payday. But before the world’s wealthiest man made the case for why he deserves to be the first trillionaire, he wanted to make sure you understand one thing: He’s going to help abolish poverty.
“We’re excited about the updated mission of Tesla, which is sustainable abundance,” Musk said on the call.
“So going beyond sustainable energy to, say, sustainable abundance is the mission, where we believe with Optimus and self-driving, that you can actually create a world where there is no poverty, where everyone has access to the finest medical care. Optimus will be an incredible surgeon, for example. And imagine if everyone had access to an incredible surgeon.”
To be clear, Optimus, Tesla’s robot, is nowhere near ready to be a “surgeon.” But Musk went on, tossing in a caveat about safety.
“So I think there’s… you know, of course, we make sure Optimus is safe and everything, but I do think we’re headed for a world of sustainable abundance. And I’m excited to work with the Tesla team to make that happen,” said Musk.
Musk’s utopian vision isn’t new
The billionaire has long teased the idea that the future will be filled with so many robots and so much automation that nobody will have to work. It’s an idea that was incredibly popular in the 20th century, not just in science fiction but among serious academics. Back in the 1960s, it was just taken as a given that people of the year 2000 would only work maybe 20 hours per week. And beyond that, by the mid-21st century, no one would have to work at all.
That vision for the future didn’t work out, of course. Granted, much of the U.S. workforce became George Jetson-style button pushers in the sense that we have a large information-based economy where many people sit at keyboards typing. But the ability to just sit at home and not work while robots do everything is still a fantasy. And it’s a fantasy because the problem isn’t technological, it’s political.
There is no way to ever deliver a leisure society where everyone gets paid to do nothing unless you create a political and economic system that delivers that. The “free market” will not just cause that to happen by magic. When Amazon uses robots to streamline its operations—replacing workers and sorting packages more efficiently—the online retailer doesn’t give the money it saves to workers. That money goes to shareholders. And it’s unclear how many people actually believe that Musk’s robots would somehow deliver what he dubs a “universal high income” in the future, above and beyond a universal basic income.
Musk doesn’t understand poverty
In reality, Musk does not give a fuck about poverty. To guys like Musk, people who are poor are just getting what they deserve. And all it takes is a quick search of his X account to see how often he says things to degrade homeless people.
“In most cases, the word ‘homeless’ is a lie,” Musk tweeted on Dec. 10, 2024. “It’s usually a propaganda word for violent drug addicts with severe mental illness.”
In most cases, the word “homeless” is a lie.
It’s usually a propaganda word for violent drug addicts with severe mental illness. https://t.co/Vwp8L7tNzd
You may notice that Musk’s tweet was sent a month following the 2024 presidential election, after Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris, but before Trump was sworn in for his second term on January 20.
Musk would soon join Trump’s government as the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), where he helped unlawfully abolish the foreign aid program USAID and ran riot through just about every federal agency, destroying programs he didn’t like and hoovering up personal data along the way. What gave him the legal authority to do that? Nothing. But Musk did it anyway with the blessing of President Trump, until the two men predictably had a falling out.
Who deserves a good life?
Musk believes that the U.S. is built on meritocracy, where people who have billions of dollars obviously deserve that money, and people who are poor deserve to stay poor. He demonstrated that time and again with DOGE, claiming that he was rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse. The “fraud,” as he saw it, was people who were undeserving of the government benefits they received, whether it was food stamps or Social Security, a program he called a Ponzi scheme.
Remember when Musk went to CPAC in February and swung around a chainsaw, symbolic of the government programs he was going to cut? Those programs are what would be necessary to deliver money and services to people in order to make sure no one is poor. Why on Earth would anyone believe that he cares about poverty after such a ridiculously over-the-top display of his power?
Musk frequently insists that America’s homelessness problem is the fault of those on the streets.
“The vast majority of those on the streets are there due to severe drug addiction and/or mental illness,” Musk tweeted on Nov. 9, 2024. “The issue not that they got a little behind in their mortgage payments and would be back on their feet if someone just offered them a job.”
But Musk doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The billionaire quite literally doesn’t see the people who are struggling as he gets shuttled around the world. The majority of people who are homeless “have no mental health or substance use disorder,” according to the United States Interagency on Homelessness. Somewhere between 40-60% of people who lack homes also have a job.
As the agency explains on its website: “Today, only 37 affordable homes are available for every 100 extremely low-income renters. As a result, 70% of the lowest-wage households spend more than half theirincome on rent, placing them at high risk of homelessness when unexpected expenses (such as car repairs and medical bills) arise.”
Elon doesn’t believe in charity
Musk has repeatedly said that he doesn’t really believe in charity. The CEO insists that he’s doing enough good in the world through his private companies. When the head of the UN World Food Program noted in 2021 that Musk could end world hunger with just 2% of his wealth, Musk balked at the idea.
Instead of giving $6 billion to end hunger for 42 million people, as the UN had proposed, he gave $5.7 billion to an undisclosed charity. Forbes reports the most likely recipient was a donor-advised fund (DAF), which “behaves like a philanthropic bank account.” Forbes doesn’t even count DAF donations as charitable contributions when tracking billionaires because the money can just sit in the account indefinitely.
Forbes also notes that donating to a DAF gets Musk a huge tax break. So it seems pretty obvious what’s happened there. Musk’s private foundation hasn’t donated the legally required 5% of its assets for three years in a row, more evidence that any “giving” he does is mostly for tax reasons.
Musk’s promises about fixing poverty are PR
Investors vote on Musk’s $1 trillion pay package on Nov. 6, calling the people who oppose it “corporate terrorists” during his call on Wednesday. And he knows full well that he needs to pay lip service to those struggling financially right now, since he’s accumulating an obscene amount of wealth.
But Musk has to know that his utopian pitch for Optimus will not deliver a work-free society. And selling robots has nothing to do with creating that perfect world; it’s about making more money for him. Same as it ever was.
Elon Musk stole the show in the final minutes of Tesla’s Wednesday earnings call to label the advisory firms pushing shareholders to reject his $1 trillion pay package “corporate terrorists.”
After months of being relatively quiet following his resignation from the Department of Government Efficiency and subsequent fallout with President Donald Trump, Musk slammed proxy advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis.
“I just don’t feel comfortable building a robot army here and then being ousted because of some asinine recommendations from ISS and Glass Lewis, who have no freaking clue,” Musk said. “I mean, those guys are corporate terrorists.”
Musk, in a separate X post on Wednesday, also called into question the role of proxy advisory firms generally. The Tesla CEO echoed criticism from ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood by saying these firms—which issue recommendations to shareholders for how they should vote on proposals at public companies’ annual shareholder meetings—have too much sway, especially with passive investors like index funds, which have substantial voting power because of the shares they hold for clients.
“ISS and Glass Lewis have no actual ownership themselves and often vote along random political lines unrelated to shareholder interests! This is a major problem that is not just limited to Tesla,” Musk wrote on X.
However, advisory firms do not vote directly in annual shareholder meetings and merely recommend positions that are also individually analyzed by some of the biggest institutional investors, including BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, which do their own in-house research. Both ISS and Glass Lewis twice recommended voters reject Musk’s previous 2018 pay package. Shareholders ultimately approved the package twice.
A spokesperson for Glass Lewis told Fortune in a statement its job is to provide analysis and recommendations to its clients.
“Those that are Tesla shareholders will ultimately make their own decisions about Mr. Musk’s pay proposal and the Board directors that put it forward for shareholder vote,” the statement read.
ISS declined to comment. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk, who has a net worth of $455 billion, said he needs an ownership stake “in the mid-20s approximately” to achieve his goals at Tesla. The pay package in question would give Musk about $1 trillion over 10 years if he meets performance metrics, one of which includes boosting the company’s market cap more than 500% to $8.5 trillion.
ISS and Glass Lewis both issued reports earlier this month questioning Musk’s pay package, in part because of the package’s size and because it would dilute existing shareholders’ holdings.
While Tesla claimed regular benchmarking doesn’t apply to Musk’s pay, because no other company has “remotely similar goals embodied in their compensation programs,” Glass Lewis wrote in its report that Musk’s 2025 performance award is “unprecedented” compared with that of other public companies, and around 33.5x larger than its predecessor from 2018.
“It is clear that the quantum, on a realizable and granted basis, outpaces all other pay packages.”
