Slate Auto

The anti-Cybertruck: Bezos-backed Slate unveils a bare-bones EV truck under $20,000

With a much lower potential price tag, the move puts pressure on Tesla to finally make its own low-cost car.

4/25/25 8:19AM

Last night Slate Auto, the stealth EV startup backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, formally unveiled a bare-bones, customizable electric pickup that’s supposed to cost less than $20,000 after federal credits when it rolls out at the end of 2026. (InsideEVs has a lot of details here.) Tesla’s cheapest model, the Model 3, which starts at $35,000 after credits, costs about 75% more.

The Slate truck is sort of the opposite of Tesla’s latest new model, the Cybertruck, which after a price reduction now starts at about $70,000, or more than three Slate trucks. For one, it’s minuscule in comparison to the Cybertruck’s huge footprint, with a total length of 174.6 inches versus the Cybertruck’s 223 inches. Unlike the Cybertruck, the Slate truck has no infotainment, its windows are hand-cranked and it definitely doesn’t claim to drive itself. It’s also a lot less powerful and a lot less showy.

Slate Auto’s price point makes it cheaper than any electric vehicle in the US. It also would make it cheaper than most gas vehicles, with the average cost of new vehicles in the US hovering around $50,000.

Tesla investors have long clamored for an affordable model — something the company promised and then walked back. Tesla scrapped the company’s long-awaited $25,000 model last year after deciding to go forward with the self-driving, steering-wheel-less Cybercab instead.

As a concession, the company said it would offer lower-cost versions of existing models. Despite reporting to the contrary, Tesla said during its latest earnings report that the company is still on track to release those models in the first half of this year. It didn’t specify a price but did say that producing these models on existing manufacturing lines “will result in achieving less cost reduction than previously expected.”

Of course, a lot can happen between now and late next year. And while both Slate and Tesla are assembled it the US, it’s likely both will be subject to tariffs on imported parts.

Like Tesla, we’ll believe Slate’s affordable mass-market vehicle, when customers can actually buy it.

Jon Keegan

great scott!

Clash of the titans: Here are the biggest AI data center projects

Hyperion, Colossus, Prometheus, and Stargate. Our guide to the GPUs and gigawatts that make up the largest AI infrastructure projects in the industry.

Man and Girl Walking Through Aisle of Computers

Rani Molla6h

Meta launches federal super PAC to fight state AI policy proposals

Meta has launched a federal super PAC called the American Technology Excellence Project, spending “tens of millions” of dollars to fight what it considers “onerous AI and tech policy bills across the country,” Axios reports. Last month, Meta launched a California super PAC to back pro-AI candidates in the state.

Silicon Valley in general has been rushing behind pro-AI PACs, seeking to fight proposals like Senator Mark Kelly’s that would force AI companies to foot some of the bill for the societal ills they cause.

Exclusive: Meta launches super PAC to fight AI regulation

Rani Molla6h

Wedbush: Nvidia investment in OpenAI is a “watershed moment”

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives thinks Nvidia’s $100 billion investment in OpenAI says a lot of things about the importance of the moment we’re in. It’s a “watershed moment,” a “Ryder Cup moment,” and a “validation sign that the AI Arms Race is heating up among Big Tech firms.” In a note this morning, Ives wrote:

“We believe the AI Revolution is now heading into its next stage of growth as the tidal wave of Big Tech capex spending coupled by enterprise use cases now exploding across verticals is creating a number of AI winners in the tech world. The last few months we have seen a major validation moment for our AI Revolution bull thesis as the cloud stalwarts Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are leading the charge on this unprecedented spending cycle. Nvidia’s recent robust earnings and demand commentary from the Godfather of AI Jensen speaks to the evolution of AI spend now spreading beyond Big Tech to governments, enterprises, energy capacity, and overall infrastructure build outs around the globe.”

He does not consider it a bubble — or at least not yet. “While there are worries about an ‘AI Bubble’ and stretched valuations we continue to view this as a 1996 Moment for the Tech World and NOT a 1999 Moment,” Ives wrote, suggesting the situation is more like the early days of the internet, when there was a lot of investment in internet companies and a lot of experimentation — and when the dot-com bubble bursting was still a few years off.

If having multiple CEOs is better for stock market returns, Oracle is quadrupling down

But buyer beware: the last time Oracle had co-CEOs, shares underperformed.

Nate Becker9/22/25

Rani Molla9/22/25

Ives raises Apple price target to Wall Street high of $310, citing a “real upgrade cycle” for iPhones

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives raised his Apple price target to $310 from $270 thanks to “early strong demand signs” for the iPhone 17, which he says is tracking 10% to 15% ahead of the iPhone 16 at this point.

That $310 price target is the highest among Wall Street analysts polled by Bloomberg.

Ives said the Street’s estimate of about 230 million iPhone unit sales for Apple’s upcoming fiscal year is conservative and instead thinks the company is on track to sell 240 million to 250 million units in FY26. Ives wrote:

“The combination of a pent-up consumer upgrade cycle with our estimates of 315 million of 1.5 billion iPhones globally not upgrading their iPhones in the last 4 years, coupled with some design changes/enhancements have been the magical formula out of the gates.”

Sherwood News reported last week that redesigned iPhone models, which went on sale Friday, are seeing more interest than they have in three years — a phenomenon we speculate might have less to do with the iPhone itself and more to do with a natural upgrade cycle, as the rush of phones purchased in 2020 and 2021 become obsolete.