Davis Wilson:

Musk Eats His Words as Tesla (TSLA) Embraces DeepSeek to Revive Ailing Chinese Sales

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has teamed up with tech group DeepSeek to revitalize its ailing business in China, just months after slating the company’s achievements. The company is joining forces with both DeepSeek and ByteDance’s Doubao on adding new tools to its cars in China. Tesla stock was 2% higher in early trading.

It is understood that Doubao will work on voice command-related tools like the temperature in a Tesla, navigation, and in-car entertainment, while DeepSeek will handle the AI side of things.

“While many recognize DeepSeek’s achievements, this represents just the beginning of China’s AI innovation wave,” Louis Liang, an AI sector investor with Ameba Capital, told Bloomberg. “We are witnessing the advent of AI mass adoption, this goes beyond national competition.”

Tesla cars in the U.S. currently use an AI model created by xAI’s Grok. Bloomberg believes that rolling out Grok in China has hit some legal hurdles forcing Musk to look elsewhere.

Selecting DeepSeek however is also quite the volte-face for Musk who questioned the claims of DeepSeek when it emerged in January this year with a low-cost but just as effective AI model.

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James Altucher:

Ethereum, Bitcoin Spike After Powell Signals Interest Rate Cut

The price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies rose on Friday after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell signaled the possibility of an interest rate cut in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Within 15 minutes of Powell’s speech starting, Bitcoin jumped above $114,700 from $112,000, a nearly 2.5% gain, while Ethereum surged to $4,600 from $4,300, an almost 7% increase, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko. Both cryptocurrencies remained down 2.9% and 1.4%, respectively, over the past week.

By the time Powell was done with his remarks, altcoins were soaring. XRP and Solana had both surged more than 6% in less than an hour, with XRP regaining the $3 threshold for the first time since Tuesday. Dogecoin leapt more than 7% for the same time frame. However, most altcoins tracked by CoinGecko were still slightly in the red on the week, a sign of investors' earlier angst about the Fed's path forward.

An interest rate cut would likely buoy cryptocurrency and other risk-on assets by boosting liquidity for investment. U.S. President Donald Trump has been pressuring Powell relentlessly to slash rates amid concerns that the economy is slowing.

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Greg Guenthner:

Elon Musk Asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg To Join xAI Bid To Buy OpenAI, Filing Shows

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to help him finance a $97.4 billion takeover of OpenAI in early 2025, court filings on Thursday revealed.

The filing is part of a legal case between Musk and OpenAI that was initiated last year. The case is proceeding in a federal court in Northern California, and a judge recently said OpenAI can move ahead with counter claims against Musk, who co-founded OpenAI as a non-profit with Sam Altman and others in 2015.

When Musk floated his proposal to buy OpenAI in February, he was incensed that the company and Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, were pushing to transform the business into a for-profit entity. Altman and Musk, who were longtime friends, have become bitter adversaries since OpenAI’s emergence as a leader in generative AI with billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft.

In a statement to the court published Thursday, OpenAI said that when Musk and xAI were trying to form a consortium of investors to finance a takeover, they approached Zuckerberg with a letter of intent and asked “about potential financing arrangements or investments.”

Neither Zuckerberg nor Meta signed the LOI, the filing said.

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