Apple’s sales fell 5% in its very important holiday quarter compared to a year earlier, according to new data from CounterPoint Research. At the same time, the iPhone’s global market share slipped a percentage point to 18%. That suggests incorporating Apple Intelligence into the latest iPhone model hasn’t been enough to spur the strong upgrade cycle that bulls had hoped for.
Apple shares are off more than 1% in the premarket as of 8:30 a.m. ET.
Tesla’s 29 Austin Robotaxis have been involved in eight crashes since they launched in June, Electrek reports, citing National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data you can download here. Those crashes for the most part involved property damage, and only in one case led to a minor injury. Notably, the crashes occurred with a safety monitor in the front seat.
As Electrek notes, that data suggests Tesla Robotaxis are crashing once every 40,000 miles, whereas the average human driver in the US crashes about once every 500,000 miles. On Tesla’s Full Self-Driving website, the company claims vehicles with the technology engaged have 7x fewer major and minor collisions — a claim that experts like Carnegie Mellon’s Phil Koopman have said doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Over the weekend, Tesla began testing two more Robotaxis without those safety monitors, in hopes of achieving CEO Elon Musk’s latest goal of removing them from the Austin fleet by year’s end.
As Electrek notes, that data suggests Tesla Robotaxis are crashing once every 40,000 miles, whereas the average human driver in the US crashes about once every 500,000 miles. On Tesla’s Full Self-Driving website, the company claims vehicles with the technology engaged have 7x fewer major and minor collisions — a claim that experts like Carnegie Mellon’s Phil Koopman have said doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Over the weekend, Tesla began testing two more Robotaxis without those safety monitors, in hopes of achieving CEO Elon Musk’s latest goal of removing them from the Austin fleet by year’s end.
The race for AI is not just about who has the highest-scoring model, the biggest data center, or the most GPUs. AI companies are trying to build viable businesses with enough annual revenue to someday help offset today’s massive capital expenditures as they build out AI infrastructure.
According to a new report from The Information, xAI’s latest efforts to sell its Grok model to Corporate America aren’t going great — unless it’s a business with ties to CEO Elon Musk (though even Tesla shareholders aren’t completely sold on xAI).
The company has raised $27 billion in debt and equity, and the top source of revenue are subscriptions that cost $30 per month for “SuperGrok.” The company is building out an enterprise sales team to try and make up for its lack of experience selling to businesses, per the report.
Competitors Anthropic and OpenAI have developed major revenue streams from sales to businesses.
Grok’s high-profile controversies, such as the “MechaHitler” episode and its scantily clad anime AI companions, might be sending the wrong messages to Corporate America.
The company has raised $27 billion in debt and equity, and the top source of revenue are subscriptions that cost $30 per month for “SuperGrok.” The company is building out an enterprise sales team to try and make up for its lack of experience selling to businesses, per the report.
Competitors Anthropic and OpenAI have developed major revenue streams from sales to businesses.
Grok’s high-profile controversies, such as the “MechaHitler” episode and its scantily clad anime AI companions, might be sending the wrong messages to Corporate America.
Months after the dismantling of DOGE and shedding hundreds of thousands of federal workers, the Trump administration is looking to Big Tech for some expert help to “solve the federal government’s most critical technological challenges.”
The “US Tech Force” is a program to recruit workers from some of the largest tech companies in the country. The deal: for two years, participating companies will supply qualifying workers to do a stint as a federal employee, working on AI, cybersecurity, and data analytics.
The federal government isn’t exactly known for paying the kinds of huge salaries that tech workers are used to, but the program will offer participants salaries between $150,000 and $200,000.
A long list of companies are listed as participants in the project, including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and Meta.
The website says that the Tech Force will be nonpartisan and “focused exclusively on improving government technology capabilities.”
The “US Tech Force” is a program to recruit workers from some of the largest tech companies in the country. The deal: for two years, participating companies will supply qualifying workers to do a stint as a federal employee, working on AI, cybersecurity, and data analytics.
The federal government isn’t exactly known for paying the kinds of huge salaries that tech workers are used to, but the program will offer participants salaries between $150,000 and $200,000.
A long list of companies are listed as participants in the project, including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and Meta.
The website says that the Tech Force will be nonpartisan and “focused exclusively on improving government technology capabilities.”
Over the weekend, Tesla began testing its driverless cars without safety monitors — a move that’s sent Tesla up and competitors Uber and Lyft down as investors view it as concrete momentum toward Tesla’s autonomous future.
Even Google, which owns current autonomous taxi leader Waymo, is down slightly in early trading, though it’s unclear if the Tesla news has anything to do with it. Waymo and Tesla are widely considered to be front-runners in the autonomous driving space.
Tesla bull Dan Ives, of course, expects Tesla to win, predicting it will command about 70% of the global autonomous market over the next decade.
Even Google, which owns current autonomous taxi leader Waymo, is down slightly in early trading, though it’s unclear if the Tesla news has anything to do with it. Waymo and Tesla are widely considered to be front-runners in the autonomous driving space.
Tesla bull Dan Ives, of course, expects Tesla to win, predicting it will command about 70% of the global autonomous market over the next decade.
