CHINA-SHENZHEN-VEHICLE CARRIER VESSEL-BYD-MAIDEN VOYAGE (CN)

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BYD’s profit could double in Q1, as deliveries keep racing ahead of Tesla

The Chinese EV giant delivered 1 million+ cars in Q1 and continues to pull ahead on some pretty huge metrics.

4/9/25 11:28AM

In its preliminary earnings for the first quarter on Tuesday, electric automaker BYD revealed that net income could jump as much as 119% in the first 3 months of the year to 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion), after delivering more than 1 million EVs across Q1 — up almost 60% on the same period last year.

Easy ride

While Trump’s tariffs have been a major bump in the road for other automakers, BYD — which had no plans to sell cars in the US owing to existing tariffs, even before this latest round — has had a pretty smooth year so far, with shares hitting a record high in March, after the company announced its market-leading superfast charging tech.

Less than a week later, execs and investors at the Shenzhen-based company had even more to cheer, after the EV giant posted 777 billion yuan ($107 billion) in sales across 2024, surpassing US rival Tesla’s annual revenue figures for the first time in 7 years.

BYD lagging Tesla on that measure has often been down to the Chinese automaker’s comparatively cheap cars, too, with one of its most popular EVs starting around $10,000. On model deliveries overall, BYD has been pulling ahead for years now.

Per numbers from CnEV, a company that tracks China’s electric vehicle market, BYD delivered just over 1 million EV units in the first 3 months of 2025, compared to Tesla’s 336,681 shipments over the same period, which disappointed investors in Elon Musk’s car company. Although Tesla’s recent struggles around the world have certainly led to more daylight between the two EV makers in recent months, the gap has looked increasingly difficult for the American automaker to close ever since it first ceded the lead in 2022.

In bad news for Tesla execs and investors, some worry that tariffs might only widen the gulf between the two.

Thank you, Mr. President

Speaking with the New York Post recently, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said that they were “probably drinking champagne” at BYD headquarters as Trump announced the tariffs, adding that the new restrictions only “accelerate BYD’s success,” and estimating that the tariffs could force additional costs of as much as $100 billion on automakers like Tesla each year.

Investors took note of the company’s better-than-expected preliminary results, pushing shares up as much as 7.8% on Tuesday, with BYD up ~20% so far this year, while Tesla has declined more than 40% in the same period.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

6/17/26

Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

The race to influence AI chatbots is leading to some companies to adopt shady competitive tactics.

Tom Jones6/17/26

Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

Rani Molla6/15/26

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TAKING ACCOUNTS

6/15/26

Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

Jon Keegan6/15/26

Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5