Dan Ives: Tech's huge rally will continue in the second half of the year
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
Behold, the epic flop that is the Cybertruck
It might not come as a shock if you have eyes, but the Cybertruck is, officially, a flop. Tesla is deliberately opaque about its sales numbers on specific models, so you have to squint to get a sense of just how badly the company's dystopian dumpster on wheels is performing in the real world. But we definitely have some idea. Here's what we know, based on Tesla's deliveries (a proxy for sales) released this week: The EV maker delivered about 384,000 vehicles in total, world-wide, between April and June this year — a record 13.5% decline from a year earlier. Zoom in, and it gets uglier. Tesla doesn't break out sales of the Cybertruck, one of its 'premium' models that was plucked straight from CEO Elon Musk's internet-addled brain. It discloses just two categories — the Model 3 and Y in one category and, in the second, 'other models,' which is almost entirely the company's legacy Model S sedan, the Model X SUV and the Cybertruck. The company said it delivered about 10,400 'other' models in the second quarter, which itself is a huge problem. In the same quarter last year, Tesla sold more than 21,500 'other' models. It's hard to think of another word for a 52% decline other than a collapse. How many of those 'others' are Cybertrucks, and how many are the Model S or X? That's not entirely clear. But let's look at the first three months of this year. Tesla sold about 12,900 'other' models, of which 7,100 were Cybertrucks, according to registration data from S&P Global Mobility. So a bit more than half. It'd be safe to estimate, then, that Tesla likely sold something in the ballpark of 5,000-6,000 Cybertrucks in the second quarter if consumer trends held steady. It might even be getting marginally outsold by the F-150 Lightning and GM's electric pickups, rivals whose sales are also falling but weren't nearly as hyped as Musk's brainchild. The company didn't respond to a request for comment. But even in a hypothetical world where all of those 10,400 deliveries in the second quarter were Cybertrucks, Tesla would still be massively underperforming the expectations set by Musk, who told investors two years ago that he expected Tesla to be churning out 250,000 a year by 2025. We're halfway through the year, and Tesla has barely hit a fraction of that. What could possibly be holding Cybertruck sales back, apart from its $80,000-$100,000 price tag and the imminent erasure of EV tax credits? Perhaps it's the oddball design. Or the repeated recalls, including one for an exterior steel panel falling off while the truck is moving. Or the roughly 200-mile real-world range reported by owners, rather than the 500-mile range that was initially promised. Or the lack of the also initially-promised range extender, which quietly disappeared. Or the vehicle's intractable affiliation with the world's wealthiest wannabe-oligarch. Or maybe people fear dropping six figures on a 7,000-pound car that has become a symbol of the MAGA right wing and a target of vandalism. Will the Cybertruck's shortcomings sink Tesla? Probably not. But the stumble has become a reflection of the company's broader turmoil. The electric truck faces serious competition from the likes of Rivian, Ford and GM. Chinese rivals are eating into Tesla's market share in key markets overseas, particularly Europe and China. Tesla is on the verge of losing its title as the world's largest EV maker by annual sales to Chinese automaker BYD. This week, BYD — which isn't allowed in the US market — reported 1 million electric vehicles sold in the first half of this year, putting it far ahead of Tesla's year-to-date total of about 721,000. The Tesla faithful on Wall Street are still all-in on Musk, whom they see as a visionary and, perhaps more to the point, a showman who has made them rich. Tesla's stock (TSLA) is down about 17% this year, but it's up nearly 300% over the last five years. For the ride-or-die bulls, it may not matter that Musk's MAGA turn has clobbered the company's core business of selling cars because he has convinced them that Tesla's future lies in an AI-powered, driverless utopia. And it's Musk's history of promises that have driven that meteoric share price increase, and, accordingly, Musk's personal wealth. But the longer Musk is at the helm, the more his promises and predictions seem to come up short.
Miami Herald
an hour ago
- Miami Herald
Elon Musk's Plan for New Party Scores Polling Win
Elon Musk's surprise push to create a new political party is already shaking up the 2026 landscape, with fresh polling showing early momentum behind his outsider bid. A new survey conducted by Quantus Insights between June 30-July 2 among 1,000 registered voters found that 40 percent of voters—including many Republican voters—say they would consider backing the Tesla and SpaceX CEO's party over traditional GOP or Democratic candidates. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent. Musk, who left the Trump administration in May, touted forming a new political party, which he called the "America Party," after revealing he was fiercely opposed to President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which narrowly passed the House on Thursday. "If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day," he wrote in a string of posts on Monday. "Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE." The poll suggests Musk's new party could split conservative coalitions and draw in independents. According to the survey, 14 percent of voters said they would be "very likely" to support or vote for Musk's proposed party if it were launched, while 26 percent said they would be "somewhat likely." Another 38 percent said they were not likely to support it, while 22 percent remained unsure. The survey also revealed clear divides across party lines and demographics. Among men who identify as Republicans, interest was especially strong: 23 percent said they are "very likely" and 34 percent say "somewhat likely" to back the America Party—a total of 57 percent expressing openness to Musk's political brand. Male independents were also a promising base, with nearly half (47 percent) saying they're likely to support it. In contrast, Democrats appeared far more skeptical. Just 7 percent of male Democrats said they would be "very likely" to support Musk's party, while 36 percent said they would not likely back it at all. Among female Democrats, only 5 percent are "very likely" supporters. The poll also revealed dissatisfaction with both main parties. When asked which party best reflects American values, nearly a third of voters said "neither." Among independents, that share was even higher, with 59 percent saying neither the Republican nor Democratic Party represents values of America. By comparison, 37 percent of voters said the Republican Party best reflects American values, while 31 percent chose the Democratic Party. In a blog post, Quantus pollster Jason Corley wrote that the results indicate an "erosion" of "institutional loyalty, of cultural cohesion, and of trust." He added: "The signal is clear: a large slice of the electorate is open to something new, something disruptive. This is not about Musk. It's about the growing sense that the existing order is failing to represent the country as it truly is, or wants to be." Musk's net favorability rating currently stands at -18 points, according to pollster Nate Silver's tracker. Musk, who left the Trump administration in May after leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) for four months, has said that around 80 percent of Americans lie outside the ideological extremes represented by Democrats and Republicans—a potentially appealing talking point for an alternative political movement. But experts that Newsweek has spoken to have expressed doubt that the party would be able to make an impact. What People Are Saying Quantus Insights said on X: "The poll's intent was to simply capture the idea of another option, specifically one backed my Musk. 40 percent support isn't surprising. There are many out there who are absolutely shocked by the level of support when, in fact, it shouldn't be much of a shock at all. This kind of question always polls well. In 2023, 63 percent of Americans supported a third party, the highest in Gallup's 20-year trend." Dafydd Townley, an American politics expert at the University of Portsmouth, previously told Newsweek that "third parties do not tend to have a long lifetime in American politics," adding that Musk's new party "would likely split the Republican vote, potentially resulting in a Democrat-dominated House of Representatives, at least in the short term, due to the winner-takes-all electoral system." Mark Shanahan, a political scientist at the University of Surrey, who focuses on the U.S., echoed that skepticism, telling Newsweek: "I wouldn't hold out too much hope for an 'America Party' for a number of reasons. First, history is against it. The USA is a strongly two-party political system," he noted, pointing out that "around 90 percent [of Americans] actively identify with either the Republicans or Democrats," even if formal party membership is relatively low. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act now heads to Trump's desk, where he is expected to sign it on Friday. Related Articles What Happened to DOGE? Number of Government Jobs SurgesMusk Threatens to Primary Republicans Over Trump Bill, Analysts ReactThe 1600: R.I.P. Suffers New Blow as Tesla Sales Drop for Second Quarter 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.
Gizmodo
2 hours ago
- Gizmodo
Zuckerberg Was Wrong About the Metaverse. Can We Really Trust Him With Superintelligent AI?
Mark Zuckerberg once sold us the metaverse. Now he wants us to believe he's going to lead us into the age of superintelligence. Should we fall for it again? Elon Musk once called him 'Zuck the Fourteenth,' a jab comparing Meta's CEO to France's King Louis XIV—a monarch infamous for his ego, extravagance, and disregard for limits. It's a fitting label, especially as Zuckerberg floods the headlines, positioning himself as Silicon Valley's new AI king. But let's rewind. Just a few years ago, Zuckerberg declared that the metaverse was the future of humanity. In a slickly produced video released on October 28, 2021, he rebranded Facebook as Meta Platforms and declared, 'The metaverse is the next frontier.' It was a bold new vision: a 3D immersive virtual world where we would live, work, and socialize as digital avatars using Meta-manufactured VR headsets and smart glasses. Meta poured nearly $20 billion into Reality Labs, the division tasked with building this digital utopia, in a single year. The promise? A seamless escape from the real world into a vibrant virtual one. But the promised land never arrived. Despite the investment, the user adoption didn't follow. Horizon Worlds, Meta's flagship metaverse platform, struggled to retain interest. The headsets were clunky, the software buggy, and the use cases unclear. People didn't want to live in VR. The metaverse flopped. Now, Zuckerberg wants the public, and the tech world, to believe he's leading the charge into the next big thing: artificial general intelligence, or AGI. This is the holy grail of AI. A moment when machines surpass human intelligence across nearly all tasks. It's what some call superintelligence, and it's no longer just science fiction. But there's a problem. Meta is not leading. OpenAI, Google's Gemini, and China's DeepSeek have pulled ahead with more advanced models and tools. Meta's LLaMA models are competent, but not groundbreaking. The company's biggest claim to fame in the AI arms race so far? Making its large language models open source. Now Zuckerberg is trying to change that by opening his wallet. In what's becoming an aggressive poaching campaign, Meta has started offering 'giant offers' to top AI researchers. According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, some of these offers exceed $100 million. Meta has already lured away key talent, including Alexandr Wang (founder of Scale AI), Nat Friedman (former GitHub CEO), and OpenAI veterans like Shengjia Zhao, Shuchao Bi, Jiahui Yu, and Hongyu Ren. Zuckerberg isn't hiding it. He recently announced the creation of Meta Superintelligence Labs, an ambitious effort to consolidate AI efforts under one roof and leapfrog the competition. In his internal memo, he promised that Meta will lead the way in delivering personal superintelligence, an AI that can manage your life, schedule your time, guide your decisions, and essentially act as a personal brain assistant. And he's made it clear: he's not done hiring. It's a dramatic pivot and a savvy one. AI is no longer hype. It's here, and it's transforming everything from how we work to how we think. Whether you fear it or embrace it, AI is shaping the next phase of human life. But that doesn't mean Zuckerberg gets to be its face. After all, this is the same executive who once told the world that a legless cartoon avatar in VR was our future. The same person who sank tens of billions into a virtual world that no one wanted. Now he's asking us to trust him on AGI, a technology that could reshape the world, economies, and the future of human labor. Zuckerberg isn't an AI visionary. He's a ruthless competitor who spots the next big thing and tries to buy his way to the top. He couldn't beat TikTok, so he cloned Reels. He couldn't acquire Snapchat, so he copied Stories. Now he's applying the same playbook to AI: buy the best people, sell a big vision, and hope the world forgets what happened last time. If anything, his pivot to AI is proof of just how serious this moment is. Because when Zuckerberg starts spending, it's not out of curiosity. It's because he smells dominance. And that might be the most compelling reason to pay attention. Not because he's leading the way in building artificial superintelligence, but because he's trying to control who gets to build it, and what rules they play by.
