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Rani Molla

Prediction markets think Tesla investors will approve CEO Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package on Thursday

Polymarket users are highly convinced that Tesla investors will approve CEO Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package later this week, with the market-implied likelihood on the event contract at one point stretching above 97% today, though it’s since come down to around 94%.

Of course, even if investors approve his 2025 CEO Performance Award at the November 6 shareholder meeting, that doesn’t necessarily mean Musk will get the full payout. The deal is performance-based and requires Musk and Tesla to hit a number of lofty goals over the next decade, including:

  • Boosting the company’s market cap to $8.5 trillion from today’s $1.46 trillion.

  • Delivering 1 million AI robots (it has so far delivered none).

  • Having 1 million robotaxis in commercial operation (there are currently about 30 in Austin without a Tesla employee in the driver’s seat).

Tesla’s board and Musk have been loudly campaigning for the pay package’s approval. Board Chair Robyn Denholm wrote in an investor letter last week that it’s integral to keeping Musk. Musk himself took over the company’s earnings call last month to argue that the 29% voting control that’s part of the pay package would be integral to guiding Tesla’s development of AI robots.

“If we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over that robot army?” Musk said.

Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.

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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.

tech
Rani Molla

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.

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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