Tesla Optimus humanoid robot on display inside a Tesla pop...

Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot on display (Stanislav Kogikuvia/Getty Images)

Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto

Tesla: Pay no attention to the terrible headlines. Check out this dancing robot!

Tesla jokes: “We’re a car company right.”

Rani Molla

5/14/25 9:44AM

Tesla news these days is pretty much only bad news.

A few recent headlines include:

Disappearing EV credits
Declining sales
A bad start to Q2 based on monthly reports from around the world
Shrinking demand as evidenced by a week-long labor pause and confirmation from Tesla employees themselves
A report that the company hasn’t even begun testing driverless robotaxis that it’s supposed to roll out to the public in a few weeks

Yet the stock has risen 23% in the last week and 35% in the last month.

A number of outlets have speculated that the latest rise may have something to do with the China trade deal, but as we’ve written, that shouldn’t affect Tesla much. Perhaps the real reason for investor optimism is coming from something more fun... like Tesla’s dancing robot, Optimus.

In the past few days, Tesla has been posting a series of videos showing its humanoid robot dancing over what sounds like the techno music Tesla plays on its earnings calls. In an earlier video, it’s attached to a cable (likely to catch it if it falls), but in a video posted last night, it’s not:

Was just getting warmed up https://t.co/dN6rSXiLVS pic.twitter.com/JbJ8TxyaAz
— Tesla Optimus (@Tesla_Optimus) May 14, 2025

In a retweet of the dancing robot post, the Tesla account jokes: “We’re a car company right.”

The statement is a nod to CEO Elon Musk’s repeated assertions that autonomous humanoid robots like Optimus are the key to his company’s future and the reason for its sky-high valuation. In other words: don’t focus on our struggling car business because we’re not a car business. After all, Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood said that there’s a "$26 trillion revenue opportunity" in humanoid robots and Tesla is well-positioned to succeed there!

But perhaps, like at Tesla’s Cybercab event last fall, not everything is as it seems. Then, the Optimus bots pouring drinks and chatting up attendees turned out to be remotely operated. This time, the robot’s performance also might be less impressive than at first glance.

“What’s not shown is the human operator whose movements the robot is copying. This setup is called whole body teleoperation,” a well-regarded Tesla analyst who goes by the name Troy Teslike said, linking to two videos to support his claim. “The movements don’t need to happen simultaneously. Once the robot learns them, it can repeat them exactly later.”

He added:

“In short, Optimus can copy human movements without falling over, but that doesn’t mean it has the sensors or balance to do similar movements on its own without exactly replicating a human. So, the technology is still far from being useful in a home setting.”

Jon Keegan31m

Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams and banned goods, Reuters reports

Meta has been making billions of dollars per year from scam ads and sales of banned goods, according internal Meta documents seen by Reuters.

The new report quantifies the scale of fraud taking place on Meta’s platforms, and how much the company profited from them.

Per the report, Meta internal projections from late last year said that 10% of the company’s total 2024 revenue would come from scammy ads and sales of banned goods — which works out to $16 billion.

Discussions within Meta acknowledged the steep fines likely to be levied against the company for not stopping the fraudulent behavior on its platforms, and the company prioritized enforcement in regions where the penalties would be steepest, the reporting found. The cost of lost revenue from clamping down on the scams was weighed against the cost of fines from regulators.

The documents reportedly show that Meta did aim to significantly reduce the fraudulent behavior, but cuts to its moderation team left the vast majority of user-reported violations to be ignored or rejected.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told Reuters the documents were a “selective view” of internal enforcement:

“We aggressively fight fraud and scams because people on our platforms don’t want this content, legitimate advertisers don’t want it, and we don’t want it either.”

Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told Reuters the documents were a “selective view” of internal enforcement:

“We aggressively fight fraud and scams because people on our platforms don’t want this content, legitimate advertisers don’t want it, and we don’t want it either.”

Rani Molla

AIs Wide Shut

OpenAI says its AI device will be “multimodal” but doesn’t give many more details

Here’s what we know about the Jony Ive and OpenAI device so far.

$350B

Rani Molla3h

Google wants to invest even more money into Anthropic, with the search giant in talks for a new funding round that could value the AI startup at $350 billion, Business Insider reports. That’s about double its valuation from two months ago, but still shy of competitor OpenAI’s $500 billion valuation.

Citing sources familiar with the matter, Business Insider said the new deal “could also take the form of a strategic investment where Google provides additional cloud computing services to Anthropic, a convertible note, or a priced funding round early next year.”

In October, Google, which has a 14% stake in Anthropic, announced that it had inked a deal worth “tens of billions” for Anthropic to access Google’s AI compute to train and serve its Claude model.

Rani Molla21h

Apple to pay Google $1 billion a year for access to AI model for Siri

Apple plans to pay Google about $1 billion a year to use the search giant’s AI model for Siri, Bloomberg reports. Google’s model — at 1.2 trillion parameters — is way bigger than Apple’s current models.

The deal aims to help the iPhone maker improve its lagging AI efforts, powering a new Siri slated to come out this spring.

Apple had previously been considering using OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, but decided in the end to go with Google as it works toward improving its own internal models. Google, which makes a much less widely sold phone, the Pixel, has succeeded in bringing consumer AI to smartphone users where Apple has failed.

Google’s antitrust ruling in September helped safeguard the two companies’ partnerships — including the more than $20 billion Google pays Apple each year to be the default search engine on its devices — as long as they aren’t exclusive.

Apple Plans to Use 1.2 Trillion Parameter Google Gemini Model to Run New Siri

Rani Molla21h

Netflix creates new made-up metric for advertisers

It’s not quite WeWork’s community-adjusted EBITDA, but it’s also not quite a real number: Netflix announced today that it has 190 million “monthly active viewers” for its lower-cost ad-supported tiers. The company came up with the metric by measuring the number of subscribers who’ve watched “at least 1 minute of ads on Netflix per month” and multiplying that by what its research assumes is the number of people in that household.

It builds on Netflix’s previous attempt at measuring ad viewership with monthly active users, which is the number of profiles that have watched ads (94 million as of May). The MAV measurement, of course, is a lot bigger, and bigger numbers are more attractive to advertisers, who are spending more and more on streaming platforms.

“After speaking to our partners, we know that what they want most is an accurate, clear, and transparent representation of who their ads are reaching,” Netflix President of Advertising Amy Reinhard explained in a press release. “Our move to viewers means we can give a more comprehensive count of how many people are actually on the couch, enjoying our can’t-miss series, films, games, and live events with friends and family.”

Netflix last reported its long-followed and more easily understood paid membership numbers at the beginning of the year, when it crossed 300 million.

Netflix’s Third Season of Ads and a Look Ahead at What's Next - About Netflix