BYD vs. Tesla: China's EV giant is charging ahead

8/3/23 7:00PM

BYD time

‍For Chinese manufacturing giant BYD, it seems like the only way is up at the moment — the automaker has just posted its third consecutive month of record-breaking EV sales and climbed 224 positions on this year’s Fortune Global 500.

While its 212th placement on Fortune’s list will undoubtedly be the first time that some in the West will have come across BYD, the company has quietly become one of the two major players in the electric vehicle game and is pulling away from its more brazen US counterpart, Tesla.

‍Supercharged growth

‍BYD’s growth in recent years has seen the company overtake huge brands at both national and international levels — in May, we charted the company’s 2-year journey from being China’s 5th biggest automaker to the top spot with a 10.4% market share. Although comparisons with Tesla aren’t exact — Musk’s company deals exclusively in battery electric vehicles (BEVs), while BYD makes plug-in hybrids too — a similarly speedy ascent has played out in the global EV market.

In 2020, Tesla finished the year with just under 500,000 deliveries, more than double BYD’s figure of ~188,000, but, just 2 years later, the tables had firmly turned. By the end of 2022, the Chinese automaker saw its net income soar 446% as it cemented its position at the top of the EV market, selling nearly 1.9 million models compared to Tesla’s 1.3 million tally.

Jon Keegan21h

OpenAI reportedly poaching key Apple designers, using Apple manufacturing partners for AI gadgets

New details are emerging about the mysterious AI gadgets being designed by former Apple design chief Jony Ive since OpenAI purchased his startup “io” in May.

According to a report by The Information, Ive’s team has recruited several key Apple design and hardware employees to work on the gadgets. The Information reported some details of the devices:

“One of the products OpenAI has talked to suppliers about making resembles a smart speaker without a display, the people said. OpenAI has also considered building glasses, a digital voice recorder and a wearable pin, and is targeting late 2026 or early 2027 for the release of its first devices, one of the people said.”

OpenAI is also turning to Apple’s Chinese manufacturing partners to build the products, having signed contracts with Luxshare, and has been in talks with Goertek, per the report.

OpenAI Raids Apple for Hardware Talent, Manufacturing Partners

“One of the products OpenAI has talked to suppliers about making resembles a smart speaker without a display, the people said. OpenAI has also considered building glasses, a digital voice recorder and a wearable pin, and is targeting late 2026 or early 2027 for the release of its first devices, one of the people said.”

OpenAI is also turning to Apple’s Chinese manufacturing partners to build the products, having signed contracts with Luxshare, and has been in talks with Goertek, per the report.

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Jon Keegan, Rani Molla21h

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Zuckerberg: AI might be a bubble but “misspending a couple of hundred billion” is worth it to achieve superintelligence

“It’s quite possible” that AI is a bubble, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told tech journalist Alex Heath, formerly of The Verge, on his new podcast, “Access,” and for his newsletter, Sources. That isn’t stopping Zuckerberg’s social media company from going all in on AI in hopes of achieving superintelligence, aka AI that’s smarter than humans.

“If we end up misspending a couple of hundred billion dollars, I think that that is going to be very unfortunate, obviously,” said Zuckerberg, who’s shelling out $600 billion on US data centers and infrastructure through 2028. “But what I’d say is I actually think the risk is higher on the other side.”

“The risk, at least for a company like Meta, is probably in not being aggressive enough rather than being somewhat too aggressive,” he added.

I saw Meta's new AI lab

“The risk, at least for a company like Meta, is probably in not being aggressive enough rather than being somewhat too aggressive,” he added.

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People are rushing to buy Apple’s iPhone 17, but it’s probably not because of the iPhone 17

More people went to Apple’s website when preorders for the new iPhone began than have since 2022.

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Grok has 64 million monthly users while ChatGPT has 700 million weekly users

Daddy, it seems, is very much not home.

CEO Elon Musk spent the majority of his time at xAI this summer rather than at Tesla, where he recently claimed to have shifted his focus, The New York Times reports. The piece is full of other great details on his AI startup — read it all — but here are some notable tidbits from the story and from one of its reporters, Kate Conger, who shared extras on social media:

xAI’s Grok has 64 million monthly users, compared with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has about 700 million weekly users. Musk is currently suing OpenAI and Apple over what he says is unfavorable positioning on the iOS App Store.
Musk wanted Grok to be less woke and more popular, a command that led it to post antisemitic remarks and call itself “MechaHitler.”
Musk plans on building a Microsoft competitor called “Macrohard,” something he said he’s painting on the roof of xAI’s new Memphis data center.
xAI’s execs said after Grok 4, the next model will be called Grok 420.

UPDATE (September 19): Corrected headline of piece to reflect ChatGPT has 700 million weekly users, not daily.

Elon Musk Has Focused on xAI Since Leaving Washington

xAI’s Grok has 64 million monthly users, compared with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has about 700 million weekly users. Musk is currently suing OpenAI and Apple over what he says is unfavorable positioning on the iOS App Store.
Musk wanted Grok to be less woke and more popular, a command that led it to post antisemitic remarks and call itself “MechaHitler.”
Musk plans on building a Microsoft competitor called “Macrohard,” something he said he’s painting on the roof of xAI’s new Memphis data center.
xAI’s execs said after Grok 4, the next model will be called Grok 420.