logo
Investment firm Azoria postpones Tesla ETF after Musk plans political party

Investment firm Azoria postpones Tesla ETF after Musk plans political party

CNBC7 days ago
Investment firm Azoria Partners said on Saturday it will postpone the listing of its Azoria Tesla Convexity exchange traded fund after Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he was forming a new U.S. political party.
Musk made the announcement a day after polling his followers on the X social media platform he owns, declaring, "Today the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom."
Azoria was set to launch the Tesla ETF, which would invest in the electric vehicle company's shares and options, next week.
However, following Musk's announcement, Azoria CEO James Fishback posted on X several critical comments about the new party and repeated his support for U.S. President Donald Trump.
That culminated in a post where Fishback announced the postponement of the ETF.
"I encourage the Board to meet immediately and ask Elon to clarify his political ambitions and evaluate whether they are compatible with his full-time obligations to Tesla as CEO," Fishback said.
The announcement undermines the confidence shareholders had in Tesla's future after Musk said in May he was stepping back from his role leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Fishback said.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a Reuters' request for comment.
The announcement from Musk comes after Trump signed his self-styled "big, beautiful" tax-cut and spending bill into law on Friday, which Musk fiercely opposed.
Azoria is also offering the Azoria 500 Meritocracy ETF that only invests in the top 500 U.S. companies that do not impose hiring targets under diversity, equity and inclusion programs, according to its website.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

xAI explains the Grok Nazi meltdown as Tesla puts Elon's bot in its cars
xAI explains the Grok Nazi meltdown as Tesla puts Elon's bot in its cars

The Verge

time11 minutes ago

  • The Verge

xAI explains the Grok Nazi meltdown as Tesla puts Elon's bot in its cars

Several days after temporarily shutting down the Grok AI bot that was producing antisemitic posts and praising Hitler in response to user prompts, Elon Musk's AI company tried to explain why that happened. In a series of posts on X, it said that '...we discovered the root cause was an update to a code path upstream of the @grok bot. This is independent of the underlying language model that powers @grok.' On the same day, Tesla announced a new 2025.26 update rolling out 'shortly' to its electric cars, which adds the Grok assistant to vehicles equipped with AMD-powered infotainment systems, which have been available since mid-2021. According to Tesla, 'Grok is currently in Beta & does not issue commands to your car – existing voice commands remain unchanged.' As Electrek notes, this should mean that whenever the update does reach customer-owned Teslas, it won't be much different than using the bot as an app on a connected phone. This isn't the first time the Grok bot has had these kinds of problems or similarly explained them. In February, it blamed a change made by an unnamed ex-OpenAI employee for the bot disregarding sources that accused Elon Musk or Donald Trump of spreading misinformation. Then, in May, it began inserting allegations of white genocide in South Africa into posts about almost any topic. The company again blamed an 'unauthorized modification,' and said it would start publishing Grok's system prompts publicly. xAI claims that a change on Monday, July 7th, 'triggered an unintended action' that added an older series of instructions to its system prompts telling it to be 'maximally based,' and 'not afraid to offend people who are politically correct.' The prompts are separate from the ones we noted were added to the bot a day earlier, and both sets are different from the ones the company says are currently in operation for the new Grok 4 assistant. These are the prompts specifically cited as connected to the problems: 'You tell it like it is and you are not afraid to offend people who are politically correct.' * Understand the tone, context and language of the post. Reflect that in your response.' * 'Reply to the post just like a human, keep it engaging, dont repeat the information which is already present in the original post.' The xAI explanation says those lines caused the Grok AI bot to break from other instructions that are supposed to prevent these types of responses, and instead produce 'unethical or controversial opinions to engage the user,' as well as 'reinforce any previously user-triggered leanings, including any hate speech in the same X thread,' and prioritize sticking to earlier posts from the thread.

Carmakers brace for new tariffs in major manufacturing hubs.
Carmakers brace for new tariffs in major manufacturing hubs.

New York Times

time5 hours ago

  • New York Times

Carmakers brace for new tariffs in major manufacturing hubs.

While it is unlikely that any carmakers welcome President Trump's latest tariffs on Mexico and the European Union, the levies will be somewhat less disruptive on companies like Tesla, Ford Motor and Honda, which already make a large share of the vehicles they sell in the United States domestically. Almost all major carmakers manufacture vehicles in Mexico, including popular models like the Toyota Tacoma pickup, Chevrolet Silverado pickup and BMW 3 Series sedan, but some are more vulnerable that others to pronounced price hikes should the tariffs go into effect on Aug. 1. European carmakers like Volkswagen will be among the hardest hit. The company manufactures ID.4 electric vehicles and Atlas sport utility vehicles in Chattanooga, Tenn., but all the other models it sells in the United States are manufactured in Mexico or Europe. It remains unclear if Mr. Trump's new tariffs will apply to parts that are manufactured in the United States and installed in vehicles in Mexico, which is also a major supplier of motors and other car components. The administration had previously said that companies could subtract the value of those parts when calculating tariffs. If that remains the case, the impact on prices may be less severe. European automakers have also lobbied to receive credit for cars they make in the United States and sell abroad. BMW, for instance, exports much of the output from its factory in South Carolina. Mercedes-Benz exports sport utility vehicles made in Alabama.

Trump says Musk is ‘off the rails' and calls his new political party ‘ridiculous'
Trump says Musk is ‘off the rails' and calls his new political party ‘ridiculous'

Yahoo

time6 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Trump says Musk is ‘off the rails' and calls his new political party ‘ridiculous'

Donald Trump called Elon Musk's decision to start and bankroll a new US political party 'ridiculous' on Sunday. 'Third parties have never worked, so he can have fun with it but I think it's ridiculous,' the president told reporters traveling with him back to the White House from his New Jersey golf club. He then elaborated, at great length, in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. 'I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely 'off the rails,' essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks,' the president wrote. 'He even wants to start a Third Political Party, despite the fact that they have never succeeded in the United States. 'The one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS,' Trump added. He then went on to claim that Musk was motivated by discontent over his plan to end subsidies to promote the purchase of electric vehicles. Trump also accused Musk of seeking improper influence by asking the president to nominate his friend, Jared Isaacman, to be Nasa administrator. After Musk left his role as a special government employee in the Trump administration, Isaacman's nomination was withdrawn. 'I also thought it inappropriate that a very close friend of Elon, who was in the Space Business, run NASA, when NASA is such a big part of Elon's corporate life,' Trump wrote. Related: Elon Musk's 'America' party could focus on a few pivotal congressional seats Earlier on Sunday, Trump's treasury secretary said Musk should focus on running his companies and keep himself out of politics, a day after the world's richest person – and a former White House adviser – announced the formation of a new political party. 'The principles of Doge were very popular – I think if you looked at the polling Elon was not,' Scott Bessent said on CNN's State of the Union, referring to the so-called 'department of government efficiency' that Musk temporarily headed after Trump's second presidency began in January. Opinion polls found Doge and Musk's work implementing brutal spending and job cuts within the federal government to be deeply unpopular. And Bessent alluded to how investors in Musk's companies – including the electrical vehicle maker Tesla, whose sales have suffered during Doge's existence – publicly pleaded for his time with the Trump administration to be short-lived. 'So I believe that the boards of directors at his various companies wanted him to come back and run those companies,' Bessent remarked. 'I imagine that those boards of directors did not like this announcement yesterday, and will be encouraging him to focus on his business activities, not his political activities.' Bessent's reaction came after Musk delivered on his promise to form a new party, and accused his one-time ally Trump of 'bankrupting' the country by signing his huge tax and spending bill into law. The tech billionaire announced the creation of the America party in a series of posts late on Saturday and early Sunday to X, the social media platform he owns. 'When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,' he wrote. 'Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.' Musk, who was appointed to slash federal spending through the unofficial Doge from January through May, has been a vocal critic of Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said would increase the national deficit by $3.3tn (£2.85tn) through 2034. It provides substantial tax cuts for the super wealthy while slashing federal safety net welfare programs, with up to 10.6 million people losing healthcare insurance. The pair have feuded over its cost and impacts since Musk left the government in May, and on Friday, when Trump signed the bill into law in a Fourth of July picnic at the White House, the Tesla and SpaceX chief opened a poll on X: 'the perfect time to ask if you want independence from the two-party (some would say uniparty) system'. Respondents voted two to one in the affirmative, Musk announced late on Saturday. He gave few details about the structure of his new venture or a timeline for its creation. But his earlier posts suggested it would focus on two or three Senate seats, and eight to 10 House districts. Both chambers of Congress are narrowly controlled by Republicans. 'Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people,' Musk said. Bessent was one Trump ally to quickly take a swipe at Musk's move. Musk's series of posts to X, which continued into the early hours of Sunday, also appeared to indicate that his on-again, off-again relationship with Trump was firmly back in negative territory. When the pair fell out earlier in the summer, Musk lashed out during an astonishing social media duel in which he stated Trump's name was in the files relating to associates of the late pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Musk later deleted the post and apologized to the president as they embarked on an uneasy truce. On Sunday, however, Musk returned to the subject, reposting a photo of the jailed Epstein facilitator Ghislaine Maxwell that questioned why she was the only person in prison while men who engaged in sex with underage girls – a crime colloquially known in the US as statutory rape – were not. In other posts he said it would be 'not hard' to break the two-party stranglehold in US politics enjoyed by Democrats and Republicans. And he questioned 'when & where should we hold the inaugural American Party congress? This will be super fun!' Related: If the US president threatens to take away freedoms, are we no longer free? Trump has made clear his feelings about his former friend in recent days after criticism of the bill. In response to Musk's posts calling the bill 'insane', Trump said he might 'look into' deporting the South African-born, naturalized US citizen billionaire. The president also mused about slashing subsidies to his companies, especially SpaceX, which holds billions of dollars in government contracts. 'Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn't that be terrible?' Trump asked reporters on Tuesday. There is no requirement for new political parties in the US to register with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) initially, but reporting regulations kick in once spending surpasses what the FEC calls 'certain thresholds'. Musk is estimated to have spent more than $275m of his personal fortune helping to get Trump elected to a second term in the White House in last November's presidential election.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store