Elon Musk
EU grills Elon Musk’s X about content moderation and deepfake risks
The European Union has deepened the investigation of Elon Musk-owned social network, X, that it opened back in December under the bloc’s online governance and content moderation rulebook, the Digital Services Act…
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that lidar sensors are a “crutch” for autonomous vehicles. But his company has bought so many from Luminar that Tesla is now the lidar…
Elon Musk guts Tesla’s charging team after winning over major automakers
Tesla has gutted its charging team in a new round of layoffs, despite recently winning over major automakers like Ford and General Motors and making its connector the de facto…
TechCrunch Minute: Elon Musk’s big plans for xAI include raising $6 billion
TechCrunch recently broke the news that Elon Musk’s xAI is raising $6 billion at a pre-money valuation of $18 billion. The deal hasn’t closed yet, so the numbers could change.…
Tesla Autopilot investigation closed after feds find 13 fatal crashes related to misuse
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration closed a long-standing investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot driver assistance system after reviewing hundreds of crashes involving its misuse, including 13 that were fatal and…
xAI, Elon Musk’s OpenAI rival, is closing on $6B in funding and X, his social network, is already one of its shareholders
xAI, Elon Musk’s 10-month-old competitor to the AI phenom OpenAI, is raising $6 billion on a pre-money valuation of $18 billion, according to one trusted source close to the deal.…
Tesla’s new growth plan is centered around mysterious cheaper models
Tesla’s been undergoing some major changes, and now we have a sense of why: The company says it is upending its product roadmap because of “pressure” on EV sales. The…
Tesla profits drop 55%, company says EV sales ‘under pressure’ from hybrids
Tesla profits fell 55% to $1.13 billion in the first quarter from the same year-ago period as a protracted EV price-cutting strategy and “several unforeseen challenges” cut into the automaker’s bottom…
Tesla earnings week spotlights EV price cuts, ‘balls to the wall’ autonomy push
Tesla investors, still digesting a 43% drop in share price since the beginning of the year, are gearing up for what will likely be unimpressive financial results for the first quarter…
TechCrunch Minute: Tesla’s Cybertruck recall, layoffs set the stage for its Q1 earnings
Tesla is not having a good start to the week. In its defense, it didn’t have a very good end to last week, either. Today the news is that recent…
Tesla has spent $200K advertising on Elon Musk’s X so far
Tesla has spent around $200,000 on advertising through February on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, after the CEO caved to shareholder pressure last year and said his company would…
Tesla ditches EV inventory price discounts as Elon Musk moves to ‘streamline’ sales and delivery
Tesla has ended discounts on inventory across its electric vehicle lineup — even as sales for EVs have flagged — as part of a larger and vague plan by CEO…
TechCrunch Minute: Why Tesla’s big layoffs happened, and what comes next
Tesla’s layoffs and executive departures took a bite out of its share price this week. The well-known electric vehicle company shed around 10% of its staff, impacting an estimated 14,000…
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Tesla layoffs hit high performers, some departments slashed, sources say
Tesla management told employees Monday that the recent layoffs — which gutted some departments by 20% and even hit high performers — were largely due to poor financial performance, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The layoffs were announced to staff just a week before Tesla is scheduled to report its first-quarter earnings.…
Elon Musk is planning to charge new X users a small fee to enable posting on the social network and to curb the bot problem. In reply to an X…
Tesla execs Drew Baglino and Rohan Patel leave as company lays off 10%
Two high-profile executives have departed Tesla the same day that the electric automaker laid off thousands of workers, TechCrunch has confirmed. Drew Baglino, Tesla’s SVP of Powertrain and Energy, and…
Given flagging sales of the company’s existing product line, a mass-market electric vehicle would be a welcome shot in the arm.
Social network X is rolling out access to xAI’s Grok chatbot to Premium tier subscribers after Elon Musk announced the expansion to more paid users last month. The company said…
Just hours after Elon Musk claimed Reuters was “lying” about Tesla’s plans to ditch its $25,000 low-cost EV and instead focus all its efforts on a robotaxi, the Tesla CEO…
X warns that you might lose followers as it does another bot sweep
X is warning users they may see a reduction in their follower counts as the company attempts to clear the network of some spammers and bots in a large sweep.…
The changes appear to confirm the earlier tests of NSFW communities spotted by various researchers and reverse engineers.
Grok-1.5 appears to be a measurable upgrade over its predecessor, Grok-1 — at least judging by the published benchmark results and specs.
Welcome to Elon Musk’s Twitter (now X), where the rules are made up and the check marks don’t matter. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO announced his bid to buy Twitter…
Elon Musk says all Premium subscribers on X will gain access to AI chatbot Grok this week
Following Elon Musk’s xAI’s move to open source its Grok large language model earlier in March, the X owner on Tuesday said that the company formerly known as Twitter will…
A judge just killed Elon Musk’s lawsuit against an anti-hate research org
A federal judge sided against Elon Musk today, dismissing a lawsuit brought by Musk and X that targeted a nonprofit that researches online hate. X sued the Center for Countering…
Social network X (formerly Twitter) launched new top-up packs for its developer API program on Tuesday. These paid upgrades will allow developers to fetch roughly 10,000 posts for $100 if…
Why Elon Musk’s AI company ‘open-sourcing’ Grok matters — and why it doesn’t
Elon Musk’s xAI released its Grok large language model as “open source” over the weekend. The billionaire clearly hopes to set his company at odds with rival OpenAI, which, despite…
Elon Musk’s xAI has open sourced the base code of Grok AI model, but without any training code. The company described it as the 314 billion parameter Mixture-of-Expert model on…
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Leaked SpaceX documents show company forbids employees to sell stock if it deems they’ve misbehaved
SpaceX requires employees to agree to some unusual terms related to their stock awards, which have a chilling effect on staff, according to sources and internal documents viewed by TechCrunch. That includes a provision that allows SpaceX the right to purchase back vested shares within a six-month period following an employee leaving the company for…
SpaceX makes significant progress with third Starship orbital test flight
SpaceX is continuing to make progress on the development of Starship, the largest rocket ever built, with the third test flight Thursday accomplishing considerably more than the previous two tests.…
