Hey, and welcome to TechScape. On this week’s version: Elon Musk suffers the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Apple beats itself up over Siri, and Meta goes after one in all its personal over a tell-all ebook.
Musk took a beating final week, as did Tesla
My colleague Nick Robins-Early reviews:
The previous 10 days have marked a number of of essentially the most vital setbacks for Musk in months. Tesla, arguably his marquee firm, continued to fall in worth as buyers fearful about the specter of commerce conflict and doable recession – in addition to declining earnings. Escalating protests in opposition to the corporate over the billionaire’s function within the authorities additionally grew in quantity and depth throughout the US, coupled with rising instances of vandalism and social stigma in opposition to his automobiles. SpaceX has additionally struggled, with one in all its rockets dramatically exploding in midflight final week after which an announcement that it was delaying a rescue mission to retrieve “stranded” astronauts. The corporate tried once more two days later.
Including to Musk’s complications, his social media platform, X, skilled widespread outages all through the day on Monday. Throughout a Fox Enterprise interview, he claimed that it was the results of a “huge cyberattack” that the corporate had traced to the world of Ukraine.
Musk can also be coping with growing pushback over his function at Doge. A number of retailers reported that the “first buddy”, as he’s christened himself, obtained right into a heated alternate with Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, throughout a White Home assembly final week, which ended with Donald Trump showing to rein in Musk’s energy to make staffing selections at authorities businesses with a Reality social submit. A federal decide in California additionally issued a preliminary injunction on Thursday to reinstate hundreds of the employees that Doge mass fired. In the meantime, polling this week from Quinnipiac College reveals that regardless of Musk repeatedly declaring that the general public loves what Doge is doing, a sturdy majority of individuals disapprove of his initiative.
To shore up Musk’s fortune, Tesla held a gross sales occasion on the garden of the White Home. Donald Trump browsed a number of of the corporate’s automobiles and ultimately introduced he would buy one and label vandalism in opposition to Tesla showrooms as home terrorism.
The scene was a putting use of the presidency to endorse the enterprise of the commander-in-chief’s greatest monetary backer. Nonetheless, the show additionally appeared that Musk wanted Trump to reverse his string of losses and quell the backlash in opposition to him.
Methinks the CEO doth protest an excessive amount of. It’s unclear if the maneuver will work. Republicans purchase far fewer electrical automobiles than Democrats, and Democrats newly hate Musk, per latest polls and automotive business shopper knowledge compiled by the New York Occasions. As one analyst instructed the paper: “If you make your product unattractive to half the market, I promise you, you received’t improve your gross sales.”
Tesla’s inventory has fallen 37% for the reason that begin of 2025. Given a lot decline and extra on the horizon with Trump’s tariffs and plummeting shopper sentiment, would the corporate’s board have a fiduciary obligation to take away him? In principle and in #Resistance fanfiction, possibly, however in apply, there’s little likelihood. Will shareholders sue? They’ve prior to now, taking authorized challenge together with his monumental $56bn pay bundle, and a decide discovered of their favor twice. Nonetheless, that pay bundle was the results of a basic reality about Tesla: Elon Musk is synonymous with the corporate. To serve on the board, to purchase its shares, and now even buy one of many firm’s automobiles is to imagine in him. The Cybertruck is as a lot a Maga emblem as a purple hat.
In different Elon Musk information
Apple castigates itself over Siri’s ineptitude
iPhone house owners and Wall Avenue alike have been ready for Apple to catch as much as the factitious intelligence (AI) capabilities of Google, OpenAI, Microsoft and Samsung. If an explosive inside assembly is any indication, they’ll be ready loads longer.
Final week, Apple’s senior director, Robby Walker, instructed the Siri workforce that their failures had been ugly and embarrassing, in line with Bloomberg, in whose pages this saga has primarily performed out. For an organization that touts its designs as so very lovely, harmonious and superior, it’s arduous to consider a extra insulting evaluation.
Apple had trumpeted the Siri upgrades finally 12 months’s firm convention for software program builders. The workforce had reportedly been cranking ship new options this spring, solely to see their work shelved and executives increase the opportunity of scrapping it solely.
What arrived as a substitute was a public humiliation: the announcement of an indefinite delay on any main adjustments to Siri. Senior leaders at Apple together with software program chief Craig Federighi fearful that the AI options didn’t work as marketed and even operate in a fundamental method once they tried it out. Some members of Apple’s AI division assume the work on Siri’s new options needs to be scuttled like a defunct warship and restarted underneath new management, in line with Bloomberg. The corporate has taken down an advert for Siri’s AI enhancements launched in 2024.
For the reason that inception of Siri, Apple’s iPhone homunculus has received infamy as a clumsy digital assistant. I nonetheless can’t cajole her into controlling Spotify precisely or persistently, an issue that has endured since I owned an iPhone 6. With the arrival and proliferation of generative AI, Siri’s issues have been thrown into obvious reduction. She will be able to’t compete with ChatGPT’s a number of capabilities. Compounding Apple’s issues are the baffling, unsuitable and viral summaries of notifications by Apple Intelligence, a set of options introduced in September alongside the iPhone 16. In the meantime, Amazon has revamped its line of good units with a refreshed Alexa two weeks in the past, courtesy of Anthropic’s Claude AI fashions
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Falling brief on AI has mushroomed right into a full-blown disaster for a corporation that prides itself on releasing merchandise later than rivals however with extra intuitive designs and considerate options. I’d think about switching to a Pixel if I wasn’t some 15 years deep into the Apple software program ecosystem.
A former director of world coverage at Meta has written a tell-all ebook about her time on the firm, and it has incensed her former employer. In Careless Individuals, Sarah Wynn-Williams writes that Joel Kaplan sexually harassed her, Sheryl Sandberg ordered her to share a mattress aboard a personal airplane, and Mark Zuckerberg was keen to make censorship concessions to re-enter the Chinese language market, although nothing got here of his genuflection.
The ebook describes Meta’s management as “callously detached to the value others would pay for their very own enrichment”.
With juicy particulars, it provides to personalize and personify the motives behind the corporate’s headline-making public strikes, rendering them legible and knowable.
“The individuals nefariously guiding the expertise” ranks among the many most interesting varieties of stories tales about tech. And the ebook comes precisely at a time when persons are thirsty to learn extra about figures reminiscent of Kaplan and Zuckerberg, who’ve embraced a starring function within the second Trump administration. High that off with a profile of Sandberg that runs counter to her public narrative.
For its half, Meta describes the ebook’s severe allegations as outright false and has taken the extraordinary step of acquiring a authorized order to quash Wynn-Williams’ potential to publicize her ebook. Meta’s lawyer demanded the flexibility to revise the ebook, saying her account was filled with “overheated and doubtlessly defamatory allegations”, per NBC. It’s a far cry from the response to The Ugly Reality, a 2021 bestseller by two New York Occasions reporters, which Meta didn’t take authorized motion in opposition to.
Is all the pieces in Wynn-Williams’ ebook true? Choose for your self the reply she gave Enterprise Insider when requested if she had it factchecked:
The accusation of a failure to factcheck comes immediately from a Meta spokesperson, Andy Stone, the corporate’s finest assault canine on X and Threads. We’d do effectively to take his jab with a grain of salt, however we might likewise do effectively to think about Wynn-Williams’ non-answer rigorously.
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