Slate Auto

The anti-Cybertruck: Bezos-backed Slate unveils a bare-bones EV truck under $20,000

With a much lower potential price tag, the move puts pressure on Tesla to finally make its own low-cost car.

4/25/25 8:19AM

Last night Slate Auto, the stealth EV startup backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, formally unveiled a bare-bones, customizable electric pickup that’s supposed to cost less than $20,000 after federal credits when it rolls out at the end of 2026. (InsideEVs has a lot of details here.) Tesla’s cheapest model, the Model 3, which starts at $35,000 after credits, costs about 75% more.

The Slate truck is sort of the opposite of Tesla’s latest new model, the Cybertruck, which after a price reduction now starts at about $70,000, or more than three Slate trucks. For one, it’s minuscule in comparison to the Cybertruck’s huge footprint, with a total length of 174.6 inches versus the Cybertruck’s 223 inches. Unlike the Cybertruck, the Slate truck has no infotainment, its windows are hand-cranked and it definitely doesn’t claim to drive itself. It’s also a lot less powerful and a lot less showy.

Slate Auto’s price point makes it cheaper than any electric vehicle in the US. It also would make it cheaper than most gas vehicles, with the average cost of new vehicles in the US hovering around $50,000.

Tesla investors have long clamored for an affordable model — something the company promised and then walked back. Tesla scrapped the company’s long-awaited $25,000 model last year after deciding to go forward with the self-driving, steering-wheel-less Cybercab instead.

As a concession, the company said it would offer lower-cost versions of existing models. Despite reporting to the contrary, Tesla said during its latest earnings report that the company is still on track to release those models in the first half of this year. It didn’t specify a price but did say that producing these models on existing manufacturing lines “will result in achieving less cost reduction than previously expected.”

Of course, a lot can happen between now and late next year. And while both Slate and Tesla are assembled it the US, it’s likely both will be subject to tariffs on imported parts.

Like Tesla, we’ll believe Slate’s affordable mass-market vehicle, when customers can actually buy it.

Rani Molla14m

Amazon to lay off thousands more office workers on path to 30,000 cuts

Amazon plans to axe thousands of corporate workers next week, after laying off 14,000 back in October, according to Reuters. The new cuts could be “roughly the same” number as last time and may hit Amazon Web Services, retail, Prime Video, and human resources, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

The company plans to cut a total of 30,000 corporate positions as part of an effort to “streamline operations and reset its culture,” Business Insider reported separately, noting comments from CEO Andy Jassy, who said the earlier layoffs were “about culture” rather than AI-related cost cutting.

Exclusive: Amazon plans thousands more corporate job cuts next week, sources say

There are now more than one million “.ai” websites, contributing an estimated $70 million to Anguilla’s government revenue last year

Data from Domain Name Stat reveals that the top level domain originally assigned to the British Overseas Territory of Anguilla passed the milestone in early January.

David Crowther, Claire Yubin Oh25m

Claire Yubin Oh2h

TikTok closes deal to operate in the US

TikTok has finally sealed its deal to establish a majority American-owned joint venture to manage its US operations.

On Friday, the social media company announced that its US arm will now be led by three “managing investors” — Silver Lake, Oracle, and MGX, each with a 15% holding — whilst ByteDance retains 19.9% of the business, and a swath of other investors, including Michael Dell’s family office, round out the cap table.

The joint venture will be operated by a seven person majority-American board of directors which includes TikTok CEO Shou Chew, with Adam Presser, previously TikTok’s head of operations, trust, and safety, as its CEO.

Though the valuation of the new venture has not been shared, Vice President JD Vance has previously cited the market value of TikTok’s US operations at about $14 billion, just topping Snap and lower than Pinterest.

The deal closes the platform’s battle, which kicked off in earnest in August 2020 when President Donald Trump first tried to ban TikTok over national security concerns. The announcement notes that the new TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC will “secure U.S. user data, apps and the algorithm.” Trump celebrated the deal, which has been signed off by both the US and Chinese governments per Reuters, in a Truth Social post, saying TikTok "will now be owned by a group of Great American Patriots and Investors, the Biggest in the World.”

Rani Molla19h

Elon Musk says Tesla Robotaxis are operating without drivers, sending stock higher

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla’s Robotaxis are now operating in Austin without a safety monitor. Tesla has been testing driverless cars in the area for about a month, and Musk had previously said the company would remove safety drivers by the end of 2025.

It’s unclear how many exactly of the roughly 50 Robotaxis the company operates in the area don’t have drivers. Tesla is “starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors, and the ratio will increase over time,” Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of AI, posted shortly after Musk. Ethan McKenna, the person behind Robotaxi Tracker, estimates it’s two or three vehicles.

What is clear is that the move is good for Tesla’s stock, which is currently up 3.5%, extending its gains after Musk’s tweet. Morgan Stanley said yesterday that it considers the removal of safety drivers a “precursor to personal unsupervised FSD rollout.” Unsupervised Full Self-Driving is widely considered to be integral to the would-be autonomous company’s value proposition.

At the World Economic Forum earlier on Thursday, Musk said, “Self-driving cars is essentially a solved problem at this point.”

Just started Tesla Robotaxi drives in Austin with no safety monitor in the car.

Congrats to the @Tesla_AI team!

If you’re interested in solving real-world AI, which is likely to lead to AGI imo, join Tesla AI. Solving real-world AI for Optimus will be 100X harder than cars. https://t.co/OnP8gredWD
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 22, 2026

Jon Keegan22h

Survey: CEOs and workers have wildly different thoughts on AI productivity gains

One of the main reasons companies are rushing to adopt AI is to give their workers the miraculous productivity boost that AI companies have been promising — and believe will quickly earn back their investment.

But now that companies have been using AI for a while, a growing perception gap is emerging between the C-suite and their employees.

The Wall Street Journal reported on new findings by research firm Section, which surveyed 5,000 white-collar workers from companies with more than 1,000 employees.

More than 70% of the corporate executives in the survey said they were “excited” by AI, and 19% of them said the tools have saved them more than 12 hours of work per week.

But nonmanagement workers had a very different take on AI. Almost 70% of this group said AI made them feel “anxious or overwhelmed,” and 40% said the tools saved them no time at all.

CEOs Say AI Is Making Work More Efficient. Employees Tell a Different Story.