May numbers are in for Tesla in Europe and China — and they’re bad

Last quarter was terrible for Tesla, which saw a 13% drop in vehicle sales or about 50,000 fewer than it had delivered in Q1 2024, its biggest ever year-on-year decline. We’re now two months into the second quarter and things could be looking even worse. May sales of Tesla in Europe and China — the EV company’s two biggest markets besides the US — were down about 30% each, according to data collected by an analyst who goes by Troy Teslike and whose Tesla’s estimates are consistently very close to reality.

This quarter, using data from April and May and estimates for June, it looks like Tesla will have missed last year’s numbers by about 50,000 in Europe and China alone. Adding in his estimates for US sales, Teslike expects Q2 Tesla deliveries to be 78,000 shy of Q2 2024’s 444,000, or about 18% lower.

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Anthropic really doesn’t want the US to help China with AI

Anthropic made its case for freezing China out of the AI race as much as possible in a new policy paper. The company warned that letting China catch up to US AI companies could risk AI-powered mass surveillance and huge risks to monitoring AI safety.

Jon Keegan5/15/26

Tesla finally reported un-redacted information about its Robotaxi crashes

There have been a total of 17 crashes so far among its Texas Robotaxis. Read about them all here.

Rani Molla5/15/26

Alphabet sold $3.6 billion in Japanese yen bonds — a record for a foreign company — likely to help its AI capex binge

We now have the value for Alphabet’s Japanese yen bond raise — 576.5 billion yen, or $3.6 billion — and it’s a record for a foreign issuer in Japan. The deal was spread across seven tranches with maturities ranging from 3 to 40 years, allowing the company to lock in rates as low as 1.965%.

The latest deal comes on the heels of Alphabet’s massive US and European bond deals, where the company has tapped global markets for nearly $60 billion in fresh capital over the last few months. In a filing earlier this week, the search giant said it would use the proceeds for “general corporate purposes.” That likely means fueling its AI infrastructure build-out, which has pushed its projected 2026 capex bill to a staggering $190 billion.

HALLUCIN-AI-TIONS

5/14/26

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Chris Stokel-Walker

Rani Molla5/14/26

Bloomberg: Relationship between OpenAI and Apple has deteriorated and legal action may be imminent

The two-year-old alliance between Apple and OpenAI has deteriorated, Bloomberg reports, with the AI giant now consulting legal counsel about issuing a potential breach of contract notice.

OpenAI executives allege that Apple failed to adequately integrate and promote ChatGPT on the iPhone, causing the AI firm to lose out on billions a year in subscriptions and hurt its brand, according to the report.

Meanwhile, Apple has expressed concerns over OpenAI’s privacy protection, and has been miffed that OpenAI has been working on its own hardware with former Apple design lead Jony Ive.

More recently, Apple, which has trailed its peers in developing AI, has decided to offer users their choice of AI models, rather than aligning exclusively with OpenAI’s.

Apple-OpenAI Relationship Frays, Setting Up Possible Legal Fight

Meanwhile, Apple has expressed concerns over OpenAI’s privacy protection, and has been miffed that OpenAI has been working on its own hardware with former Apple design lead Jony Ive.

More recently, Apple, which has trailed its peers in developing AI, has decided to offer users their choice of AI models, rather than aligning exclusively with OpenAI’s.

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