Elon Musk certainly has a lot of ideas. Since making a fortune from PayPal in the original dotcom boom, he’s taken over Tesla, pushing forward production of electric cars, and founded SpaceX, the rocket company that now flies plenty of NASA payloads.
Two newer companies — the Boring Company, focused on digging holes for transit tunnels, and NeuraLink, which is developing brain-computer interfaces — also occupy his time. Then there’s the Hyperloop, the high-speed land travel design he’s encouraged others to develop. Somehow, this brash billionaire still has time to get himself into trouble on Twitter.
In unsealed testimony, SpaceX investor Iqbaljit Kahlon says that some Chinese investors are “directly on the cap table.” This may raise some national security concerns, depending on how much information about SpaceX — which is deeply involved with the US defense department — gives to its investors.
The Financial Times has a good rundown of the extensive executive churn across Elon Musk’s companies in recent months, from Tesla’s robotics team to xAI’s CFO. Musk’s “24/7 campaign-style work ethos” is apparently a little difficult to keep up with.
Federal agencies will now be able to use xAI’s models via the partnership. The news comes after xAI’s tech has been widely criticized for its lack of safety processes and transparency — earlier this month, experts told The Verge about their fears related to xAI, Grok, and its surveillance risks.
[The Wall Street Journal]
It cost xAI around $490 million, according to a report by AI research institute Epoch AI, which is more than nine times the estimated cost of training Meta’s Llama 3.
[Epoch AI]
The workers focused on Gemini, AI Overviews, and other products, and the news came amid conflicts about pay, working conditions, and the workers’ concern that they’re training AI to replace their own jobs, Wired reported. And at Elon Musk’s xAI, more than 500 data annotation staffers were let go on Friday, per Business Insider.
xAI’s track record with safety is concerning, Senator Elizabeth Warren says in letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The fourth installment in the automaker’s Master Plan series seizes on flashy new buzzwords: sustainable abundance.
Tesla has revealed the fourth part of its “Master Plan.” Part three dropped in 2023, promising to create “a sustainable energy civilization.” The new plan is instead about “sustainable abundance,” promoting clean energy and automation that will “give people back more time to do what they love.” Or, as Electrek puts it:
“This is a bunch of utopic nonsense, complete with AI ‘abundance’ buzzwords that Grok could have easily written.”
[X (formerly Twitter)]
He wrote on X, “It’s a tongue-in-cheek name, but the project is very real!” Since software companies don’t build physical hardware, he wrote — name-checking Microsoft as an example — he wants to fully automate such a company using AI. The Verge found a filing suggesting a Macrohard Ventures, LLC, was incorporated in Delaware last Friday, but it’s unclear whether it’s linked to Musk.
[X (formerly Twitter)]
That’s according to court filings, which state that Musk asked the Meta CEO about “potential financing arrangements or investments” before sending his letter of intent. Neither Zuckerberg nor Meta signed it.
Musk’s ‘antitrust’ tantrum takes on a new target.
‘There are two Teslas,’ attorney Brett Schreiber told us. ‘There’s Tesla in the showroom and then there’s Tesla in the courtroom.’
Despite police stats showing violent crime in Washington D.C. is down 26 percent from last year, after dropping by 35 percent compared to the year before, the president has continued to insist that crime in the city is “totally out of control,” in posts and comments to reporters.
The latest comments from Trump and Elon Musk pushing to federalize the city follow a report that DOGE affiliate Edward Coristine and another person were attacked in a carjacking attempt that occurred between 3 and 4AM on August 3rd.
“Luke’s résumé didn’t pass muster,” says one former government official, but obviously that doesn’t matter to DOGE. Farritor is “designated a GS-15, the highest salary rank for civilians, earning $167,603,” Bloomberg reports. He’s chauffeured around in a black SUV. And he’s betting that even if DOGE is a failure, he’s written his ticket for life: “To gamble like that shows you understand the theater of Silicon Valley.”
[bloomberg.com]
A regulatory filing surfaced Monday morning in Korea showing the underperforming electronics giant won an order to build chips for an unnamed large global tech company in a contract that runs through 2033.
Then, a few hours later, Elon Musk tweeted the arrangement was for Tesla’s “next-generation AI6 chip,” built at Samsung’s plant in Texas, confirming an earlier report by Bloomberg.
Update: Added info from Elon Musk’s tweet.
The left-leaning nonprofit watchdog has been a frequent target of Elon Musk and other Republicans for its reporting on the right wing media ecosystem. Its legal battles have left the group with mounting bills, concerns for staff safety, and hesitant donors, The New York Times reports.
“Unlike some major media entities that have recently caved to pressure, we understand that this battle is larger than us,” Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters, said in a statement. “That’s why we continue to carry out our mission and fight in court.”
Eater editors taste through half the menu at the new Tesla Diner in Los Angeles
And for Twitter, too, he says in a new podcast with Rabble (aka Evan Henshaw-Plath), who hired Dorsey at Odeo. The specific part starts a little after 28 minutes.
Dorsey has also invested $10 million in a group Rabble is a part of called “and Other Stuff,“ according to TechCrunch. The group is working on “a common vision for the development of Nostr infrastructure and products.”
Now I’m going to bleach my soul and get myself to a nunnery.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Troy Jones, director of Tesla’s North American sales, is leaving after 15 years at the company. This comes after Tesla reported a steep drop in sales for the second quarter. Other execs have similarly been fleeing. Elon Musk fired Omead Afshar, who formerly led operations in North America and Europe. And the company’s director of human resources for North America, Jenna Ferrua, departed in June, according to the Journal. The C-suite is getting thin.
