Tech Giants Make Waves with AI Investments, Production Shifts, and New Features
Several major technology companies, including Microsoft, Tesla, Meta, and X, made significant announcements this week regarding artificial intelligence investments, production changes, and new platform features.
Microsoft reported a $7.6 billion increase in net income from its investment in OpenAI, the AI lab behind ChatGPT, during its latest quarterly earnings, according to TechCrunch. The software giant has invested over $13 billion in OpenAI, which is reportedly seeking additional funding at a valuation between $75 billion and $83 billion, Bloomberg reported. Microsoft and OpenAI renegotiated some of the terms of their deal in September when OpenAI restructured, according to TechCrunch.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced the company will end production of the Model S sedan and Model X SUV after the next quarter, according to TechCrunch. Musk stated the company will offer support for existing Model S and Model X owners for as long as people have the vehicles. "It's time to basically bring the Model S and X programs to an end with an honorable discharge, because we're really moving into a future that is based on autonomy," Musk said during the company's quarterly earnings call. Once production ends, Tesla will build Optimus robots in the same factory space in Fremont, California, according to TechCrunch.
Tesla also disclosed in a letter to shareholders that it invested $2 billion in Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, according to TechCrunch. xAI, the startup behind the Grok chatbot that also owns Musk's social media company X, recently raised $6 billion in a Series E funding round. Other investors in xAI include Valor Equity Partners, Fidelity, Qatar Investment Authority, as well as Nvidia and Cisco as strategic investors, according to TechCrunch. In November, Tesla shareholders voted on a nonbinding measure to allow the Tesla board to authorize an investment in xAI, with about 1.06 billion votes in favor and 916.3 million opposed, per Bloomberg's reporting at the time.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed his ambitions for Meta's AI smart glasses business during Meta's Q4 2025 earnings call on Wednesday, according to TechCrunch. Zuckerberg stated that Meta is doubling down on its production of AI wearables and its own AI models after pivoting its Reality Labs investments away from the metaverse. "Billions of people wear glasses or contacts for vision correction. And I think that we're at a moment similar to when smartphones arrived, and it was clearly only a matter of time until all those flip phones became smartphones," Zuckerberg said. "It's hard to imagine a world in several years where most glasses that people wear aren't AI glasses." He added that sales of Meta's glasses tripled within the last year, and he believes that they're some of the fastest-growing consumer electronics in history, according to TechCrunch.
Elon Musk's X is rolling out a feature to label edited images as manipulated media, according to a post by Musk on X, according to TechCrunch. The company has not clarified how it will make this determination or whether it includes images edited using traditional tools like Adobe Photoshop. Details on the new feature are scarce, with Musk sharing an announcement of the feature made by the anonymous X account DogeDesigner, which is often used as a proxy for introducing new X features, according to TechCrunch. DogeDesigner's post claimed X's new feature could make it harder for legacy media groups to spread misleading information, according to TechCrunch.
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