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.
The FDA has given the Elon Musk company a green light for its second patient, the Wall Street Journal reports. Neuralink’s first implant in a human started to detach from that person’s brain, causing him to briefly lose some functions. To try to solve that problem, Neuralink reportedly plans to place the device’s threads deeper into the brain.
The application to extend an injunction for X to remove posts depicting an attack on a church bishop was refused on Monday, for yet undisclosed reasons. A final hearing is expected in mid-June.
X blocked the video for Australian users but refused to remove it globally, despite the Australian eSafety Commission finding that geoblocking wasn’t enough to comply with its online safety laws.
The implant is a coin-shaped chip embedded into the skull with threads that reach into the brain.
In the weeks following the surgery, a number of threads retracted from the brain
That limited how much data it could collect, but Neuralink found a workaround by making its algorithm more sensitive. The Elon Musk company wrote about the problem in a blog after The Wall Street Journal asked about the issue.
On today’s Decoder, Verge transportation editor Andy Hawkins and I try to figure out Tesla. The company has been on a real rollercoaster these past two weeks — in terms of its stock price, its basic financials, and well, its vibes. With Elon Musk saying he’s going all in on autonomy and announcing a robotaxi event in August, it seems like we’re getting closer to a make-or-break moment for the company.
Between when we recorded this episode and today, there have been more than a half dozen new updates in the Tesla saga, including another wave of layoffs. That is a lot of chaos for a company that is trying to execute a huge pivot to become a very different kind of business than it is today — and do so very quickly. Like I said, Andy and I tried to explain Tesla. You let us know if we succeeded.
In the wake of more “absolutely hard core” layoffs at Tesla that were especially hard on the charging division, Elon Musk is saying the company still plans to grow its Supercharger network “at a slower pace.”
Compare that to the message he sent internally, as reported by The Information: “We will continue to build out some new Supercharger locations, where critical, and finish those currently under construction.”
Tesla restrictions set by local authorities have been lifted now that the company’s Chinese-made vehicles have passed their data security requirements, as Musk arrived in Beijing to meet with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Sunday.
According to Reuters, the automaker has also secured a deal to use Baidu’s mapping license to collect data on Chinese roads — a key step for introducing Full Self Driving software to the country.
Tesla laid off over 10 percent of its workforce this month, but Musk says the cuts were needed for the company’s “next phase of growth:”
A company is kind of like a creature growing, and if you don’t reorganize it for different phases of growth, it will fail. You can’t have the same organizational structure.
Apparently, that next stage of growth also involves a $56 billion pay package for Musk.
Tesla paid X $280,000 for advertising and other services, according to the company’s proxy statement. X paid Tesla $1.02 million for unspecified work. SpaceX paid Tesla $2.9 million for “certain commercial, licensing and support agreements.” Tesla paid SpaceX $800,000 for use of its corporate jet. And Tesla paid the Boring Company $1.2 million.
No one paid Neuralink anything.
After experimenting with its $1-ish annual “Not A Bot” subscriptions in New Zealand and the Philippines, Elon Musk suggests that a broader rollout is coming to the service built upon freely contributed content. Only question is when?
While the fee might curtail bot creation, it will definitely curtail new user signups.
Elon Musk’s lawyers have reportedly undercut his free-speech theatrics related to ye old Twitter’s refusal to block accounts as ordered by the country’s highest court. According to Reuters, X’s lawyers said the following in a letter addressed to Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on Monday:
“As already communicated to the federal police, X Brasil informs that all orders issued by this Supreme Court and the Superior Electoral Court will continue to be fully complied with by X Corp.”
The accounting is “more of an art than a science,” anonymous sources tell Bloomberg. But on an operational and ongoing basis? No, not profitable, according to those sources.
Previously, The Wall Street Journal reported Starlink fell short of expectations in 2022. Hm!
After a report from Reuters said Tesla’s $25,000 Model 2 project got the ax, Elon Musk quickly scheduled a Tesla Robotaxi launch on August 8th. Other than the curiously selected date, this is a reminder that Elon’s made a lot of unfulfilled statements about robotaxis over the years (and “full self-driving,” and autonomy generally).
Bennett Tomlin checks them out in this video, which you have plenty of time to watch before August.
Elon’s X Premium package pitches have included forcing them on celebrities, bundling access to an AI bot of uncertain value, and a chance at a slice of ad revenue generated by other paying customers, in addition to an edit button, blog posts, and fewer ads.
Now he’s offering Premium or Premium Plus (normally $8 or $16 per month) as a free sweetener for accounts with at least 2,500 “Verified subscriber” followers (5,000 for Plus) that presumably also pay for access.
The terms of the settlement are confidential, reports CNBC. Owen Diaz had previously told the court that supervisors failed to intervene when his coworkers used “daily racist epithets” against him and other Black employees at the Fremont, California plant where he worked.
He was awarded $137 million in 2021 but asked for a retrial after a judge reduced the amount to $15 million in 2022.
Leaked documents viewed by TechCrunch say SpaceX can prevent former or current employees from selling shares during a tender offer if they engaged in “an act of dishonesty against the company” or violated policies.
Since SpaceX is a private company, this could prevent employees from selling their shares until SpaceX goes public — which may not even happen. SpaceX also reserves the right to buy back vested shares six months after an employee leaves the company, TechCrunch reports.
