Elon Musk Bloomberg Qatar Economic Forum

Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks via video call during Bloomberg’s Qatar Economic Forum on May 20, 2025 (Karim Jaafar/Getty Images)

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Tesla’s Elon Musk doubles down on “a major rebound in demand” without giving evidence

Saying something aloud doesn’t make it true.

Rani Molla

5/21/25 11:39AM

Tesla CEO Elon Musk asserted in a second interview yesterday that his electric car company has turned a corner after producing dismal results last quarter, telling CNBC reporter David Faber, “We’ve seen a major rebound in demand.” Earlier in the day, he told Bloomberg’s Mishal Husain that vehicle sales had “already turned around.”

Both times Musk provided little in the way of evidence.

Here’s the CNBC exchange, which happened right after Musk shared his standard line that the true value of Tesla is in autonomy and robots, and right before had to leave the call for another appointment:

Musk: ...we’ve seen a major rebound in demand at this point. I feel comfortable with—
Faber: You have seen a major rebound in demand?
Musk: Oh yeah.
Faber: You really believe — you have seen that?
Musk: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look for most people, I mean, when you buy a product, I mean, how much do you care about the political views of the CEO? Or do even know what they are?

Musk came back for a second part of the interview, but the host didn’t pick up the same line of questioning. Musk didn’t provide any details about that demand rebound.

Of course there’s the possibility Musk has internal data that shows a bounce-back in demand, but it’s also worth noting that saying something doesn’t make it true — especially in the case of Musk.

What we do know for sure is that early indicators suggest demand is depressed.

Here are some:

Tesla told its workers it wouldn’t be running the production line next week at its Texas plant, where it produces its bestselling Model Y and its Cybertruck — typically not something you do when you’re trying to keep up with high demand. Business Insider reports that workers were told they could either show up for training and cleaning or use their PTO to take the time off.
When asked about lower sales, Musk continually cites a switch in production to the new Model Y in Q1 as the reason for the softness, as people held off buying it as they awaited the new one. However, demand for the new Model Y also looks soft, as the company is currently offering discounts on it.
April sales data, which represents the first month of Q2, is down in Europe and China, two of the company’s biggest markets besides the US.
While there’s no US data yet, analysts track VIN registrations and dealer inventory, among other data points, to come up with their estimates. The FactSet consensus analyst estimate for Q2 deliveries is 405,000 — 9% below what it delivered last year in Q2. Analysts expect the company to also deliver fewer vehicles in 2025 than it did in 2024, which was itself a disappointing year.
Tesla employees have confirmed the demand problem.

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Jon Keegan1h

Nvidia partners with Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab for 1 gigawatt of Rubin GPUs

Nvidia announced a “long-term” partnership with AI startup Thinking Machines Lab, founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati.

The deal involves an investment from Nvidia and a commitment to provide 1 gigawatt’s worth of the company’s next-gen Vera Rubin processors to the startup.

Thinking Machines Lab has raised at least $2 billion for a reported valuation of $50 billion.

In January, two of the cofounders of Thinking Machines Lab left for OpenAI, and another left for Meta. The company’s only product is Tinker, a tool that helps developers train AI models.

NVIDIA and Thinking Machines Lab Announce Long-Term Gigawatt-Scale Strategic Partnership

Thinking Machines Lab has raised at least $2 billion for a reported valuation of $50 billion.

In January, two of the cofounders of Thinking Machines Lab left for OpenAI, and another left for Meta. The company’s only product is Tinker, a tool that helps developers train AI models.

Jon Keegan2h

Report: Meta has acquired Moltbook, the AI-only social network

Meta has acquired the startup Moltbook, which is a viral social network where humans are allowed to read, but only AI agents are allowed to post, according to a report by Axios.

Moltbook’s founders, Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr, will join the Meta Superintelligence Lab, which is run by Alexandr Wang, formerly of ScaleAI.

AI super-users are currently obsessed with OpenClaw (formerly named both Clawdbot and Moltbot), a free tool that lets users run AI agents privately on their home computers that can be interfaced via chat apps, like Slack, WhatsApp, or Telegram. The agents are given wide access to users’ data to allow them to take on a wide variety of tasks like managing emails, organizing files, and controlling home automation. The founder of OpenClaw was recently hired by OpenAI, and the project will be reportedly be open-sourced.

A Meta spokesperson told Axios, “The Moltbook team joining MSL opens up new ways for AI agents to work for people and businesses.”

It’s not clear if Meta plans on actually doing anything with Moltbook, as it may just be an “acquihire.” Before the acquisition, Schlicht and Parr worked together at Octane AI, an AI e-commerce platform, where Schlicht was CEO and Parr was cofounder and president. Integrating AI features into e-commerce — both for customers and online retailers — has been an area of intense focus recently for AI companies, which are hoping that shoppers will hand off purchases to bots and that sellers will integrate agents into their customer service and back-end processes.

Exclusive: Meta acquires Moltbook, the social network for AI agents

A Meta spokesperson told Axios, “The Moltbook team joining MSL opens up new ways for AI agents to work for people and businesses.”

Rani Molla3h

Reuters: SpaceX wants a Nasdaq listing — with early Nasdaq 100 access

SpaceX is leaning toward listing what’s potentially the biggest IPO of all time on Nasdaq, Reuters reports, contingent on early inclusion on the exchange’s Nasdaq 100 index. Typically companies have to wait up to a year before being considered for inclusion in indexes like the S&P 500 or the Nasdaq 100, but Nasdaq recently proposed a change that could decrease that wait time to under a month for megacap companies.

SpaceX is reportedly aiming for a staggering $1.75 trillion valuation and could go public as soon as June. Getting into a major index would spark automatic buying from index funds, lifting demand and liquidity while expanding its investor base. The listing would be a major win for Nasdaq, reinforcing its dominance in Big Tech IPOs and driving billions in index licensing and trading revenue.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s rocket company has yet to make a final decision on which exchange it will list on, and the New York Stock Exchange is also competing for the listing, Reuters said.

Exclusive: Elon Musk's SpaceX weighs Nasdaq listing after seeking early index entry, sources say

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s rocket company has yet to make a final decision on which exchange it will list on, and the New York Stock Exchange is also competing for the listing, Reuters said.

25%

Rani Molla4h

Apple manufactured 55 million iPhones — about 25% of its global production — in India last year, Bloomberg reports. That’s up from about 36 million in 2024, as the company has been trying to decrease reliance and avoid tariffs on China.

That share would put the iPhone maker ahead of Wall Street’s schedule. At the start of 2025, analysts predicted Apple’s iPhone production in India would reach 25% by 2027.

“The vast majority of the iPhones sold in the US, or the majority, I should say, have a country of origin of India,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said during the company’s fiscal Q3 2025 earnings call.

Rani Molla23h

“Tesla killer” Slate Auto switches CEOs ahead of launch later this year

Just months before the expected launch of its $25,000 truck, so-called “Tesla killer” Slate Auto has swapped out its CEO. Former Amazon Marketplace Vice President Peter Faricy is the new leader of the Jeff Bezos-backed company, while the previous CEO, Chris Barman, one of the electric truck maker’s first employees, is now president of vehicles.

“ The marketplace component is really important to us. Being able to understand how to sell things in the 21st century is really important because we're gonna be direct to consumer, without dealerships,” Jeff Jablansky, head of communications at Slate, said of the change. “The way Chris put it is, we are adding horsepower at a critical moment when people are going to be able to actually order their trucks.”

In a social media post just last month, then CEO Barman said the company would unveil the exact price tag for its Blank Slate, which goes on sale late in 2026, in June, but reaffirmed it will be in the mid-$20,000s.

Bezos-backed Slate Auto hires new, ex-Amazon CEO

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