Tech stocks today: Tesla's Cybercab event fails to impress, Feds launch investigation into the robotaxi

LIVE Tech stocks today: Tesla's Cybercab event fails to impress, Feds launch investigation into the robotaxi Yahoo Finance Updated Fri, September 4, 2026 at 3:02 PM GMT+2 1 min read TSLA NVDA Tesla ( TSLA ) stock fell in early trading after the company's private Cybercab launch in Austin, Texas, underwhelmed Wall Street. The company had built hype heading into the event, and investors saw it as a potential turning point for the company's self-driving ambitions, with Tesla's stock rising 5% the day before. But few details were offered on the size of the robotaxi fleet.

Hours after the event, federal investigators opened an investigation into Cybercabs over whether the robotaxi — which has no steering wheel or pedals — complies with federal motor vehicle safety standards. Nvidia ( NVDA ) stock continued to rise, meanwhile, after the AI leader announced it was buying the open-weight AI platform Hugging Face for roughly $13 billion. In a statement, Nvidia said Hugging Face would remain "an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem" and that the company would continue to support open-weight and open-source AI models.

Nvidia said it's the largest contributor of open models and data to the Hugging Face platform. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027, pending regulatory approval. LIVE 25 updates Today at 1:02 PM UTC Grace O'Donnell Feds launch investigation into Tesla’s Cybercab deployment TechCrunch reports: The United States' top automotive safety regulator has opened an investigation into Tesla's decision to launch its new Cybercab on public roads with no steering wheel or pedals.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced Friday morning that it opened the probe mere hours after Tesla put the first Cybercabs on the streets of Austin, Texas. Federal vehicle safety regulations require manual controls like brake pedals, though the Department of Transportation recently proposed removing those requirements for vehicles that are designed to be autonomously driven. NHTSA said Friday that Tesla told the agency that it self-certified the Cybercab as being compliant with all of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS).

Automakers traditionally self-certify whether their vehicles comply with FMVSS rules. In the filing, the agency said it was opening the investigation to "examine the process and technical data on which Tesla relied when certifying the Cybercab and related issues. " NHTSA said it will consider the extent to which the company's certification depended on determinations that certain federal motor standards are inapplicable to the Cybercab.

Read more. Today at 12:08 PM UTC Grace O'Donnell Tesla stock falls after Cybercab launch does not impress Tesla ( TSLA ) stock fell 3% on Friday after the company's Cybercab launch didn't make the splash that investors were hoping for, turning the hyped-up launch into more of a sell-the-news event. At a closed event, the EV maker presented its two-seat self-driving robotaxi on the streets of Austin, where attendees could test-drive the vehicles.

However, the company did not livestream the launch, as it has done for similar events. Instead, Tesla fans could catch glimpses via posts on Twitter. Some Tesla leaders held a presentation , though CEO Elon Musk did not appear.

The robotaxis feature a gold exterior, scissor-like doors, and no steering wheel or pedals. The Cybercabs are designed to run entirely on Tesla's Full Self-Driving software. "We are indeed entering a literal golden era of transport," Musk posted on X, "That's why Cybercab is gold!

" Tesla said the robotaxis would be available for public rides beginning at 5 p. m. CT on Friday, though it did not disclose how many vehicles would be on the roads.

Thu, September 3, 2026 at 8:38 PM UTC Pras Subramanian Tesla's Cybercab event is tonight. Here's what the industry — and Wall Street — expects. Tesla will take the wraps off its production Cybercab purpose-built robotaxi in Austin later today, marking a potential turning point for the company's self-driving ambitions.

Tesla's Cybercab is a two-seat EV with scissor-like doors and no steering wheel or pedals, designed to run entirely on Tesla's Full Self-Driving software. A Tesla Cybercab is parked on a residential street in Los Angeles, California, on August 25, 2026. (Michael Yanow/NurPhoto via Getty Images) · NurPhoto via Getty Images The production version will likely look similar to various prototypes spotted testing around the country, including a few driving around Austin with safety drivers.

An interesting wrinkle would be if there is a version sold with a steering wheel and pedals, which would allow it to be sold to private individuals. But Tesla may have poured cold water on that notion, posting "No steering wheel, no pedals" from the Tesla Robotaxi X. com account.

Read more. Thu, September 3, 2026 at 8:36 PM UTC Grace O'Donnell Tesla and SpaceX stocks jump 7% as Wall Street gets bullish on Cybercab event, AI upgrades It's a good day to be Elon Musk. Tesla ( TSLA ) stock popped 5% on Thursday as anticipation built ahead of the company's Cybercab event tonight , where the EV maker will take the wraps off its production version of its autonomous robotaxi.

Shares of Musk's other company, SpaceX ( SPCX ), gained over 6% amid a broader tech stock rally and as analysts grew more bullish on the company's AI business and monetization. On Wednesday, Oppenheimer's research team raised its price target for SpaceX to $280 and reiterated an Outperform rating on shares. "This is supported by major, rapid improvements to SPCX's AI model/platform, validated by channel checks and third-party LLM benchmarks," the analysts wrote in a note.

"We think SPCX will be a winner of the near-term compute shortage, as it has the ability to bring on infrastructure faster than anyone else, and is using this infrastructure and its data to improve its own models faster than anyone else," the analysts added. "The company has already signed several short-term AI compute leasing contracts at 2-3x competitor rates, which results in the company getting a one-year cash payback on IT equipment — far ahead of the industry average of 2. 5 years.

" Combined, the two Musk companies added over $200 billion in market value on Thursday. Thu, September 3, 2026 at 7:00 PM UTC Bex Evans OpenAI Rolls Out GPT-6 Astra Model With Added Cyber Guardrails Bloomberg reports: OpenAI is releasing a new generation of its technology called GPT-6 that the company is positioning as a key milestone in its decade-long push to build so-called artificial general intelligence. The startup said Thursday that it has rolled out GPT-6 Astra to business users that are in its Daybreak program, which lets approved testers use its most capable models.

OpenAI also plans to release a version of the AI model with added cybersecurity guardrails to its paid ChatGPT users. Both versions have safeguards to prevent users from accessing its most cutting-edge cybersecurity capabilities. Read more.

Thu, September 3, 2026 at 2:25 PM UTC Grace O'Donnell Nvidia's Hugging Face acquisition is 'less about the financials,' analyst says Nvidia's ( NVDA ) Hugging Face acquisition will add a lot of value to its ecosystem, CFRA Research equity analyst Angelo Zino told Yahoo Finance, but investors may need to take a long-term view of the deal. "I think it's less about the financials, at least today or even over the next 12, 18, 24 months," CFRA Research Equity analyst Angelo Zino told Yahoo Finance. " I think it's more along the lines of building that AI ecosystem and trying to develop more and more capabilities and technology out there for the AI ecosystem, for physical AI, to really continue to come to fruition and build it out.

" Zino pointed out that Nvidia has been looking to diversify its business beyond being strictly a hardware company by developing its CUDA computing platform and other tools for developers. "Hugging Face kind of fits in with all of that," Zino said. "And obviously, as the AI ecosystem grows, it ultimately translates to greater adoption, greater appetite and demand for what Nvidia is doing.

" Thu, September 3, 2026 at 1:09 PM UTC Grace O'Donnell Nvidia investor explains why the Hugging Face acquisition is a 'great strategic move' Nvidia's ( NVDA ) move to take over Hugging Face amounts to a "great strategic move," BD8 CEO and Nvidia investor Barbara Doran told Yahoo Finance on Thursday. Doran explained that Nvidia is "positioning themselves to be much more of an AI platform rather than just a supplier of chips. " "Right now, chip … demand is huge.

But they are positioning themselves for the day when that will slow down, which still looks like it's far in the future. But that will happen at some point. " Doran continued that she thinks it's a great move.

"And $13 billion, given their free cash flow, which this year for the calendar year is projected at about $200 billion, is not a big bite," she added. The Street seems to be net-positive on the news, with Nvidia stock gaining close to 1% in premarket trading. Thu, September 3, 2026 at 12:46 PM UTC Grace O'Donnell Nvidia acquires Hugging Face for $12.

93 billion On Thursday, AI kingmaker Nvidia ( NVDA ) officially announced it's buying Hugging Face , a US-based platform for sharing open-weight AI models for free. Nvidia said it's paying $12. 93 billion for the platform.

According to the company, more than 18 million developers, researchers, and creators use Hugging Face to share more than 3 million models, and more than 200,000 companies use the platform to discover and deploy AI. The move highlights how Nvidia has thrown its weight behind open-weight AI models. The company said it is the largest contributor of open models and data to the Hugging Face platform, which "will remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem.

" "Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang posted on X about the acquisition. "They allow every developer, startup, university, industry and country to build with, customize and benefit from AI. " Hugging Face gained wider recognition in recent months after OpenAI's AI models went rogue during a training exercise, escaped containment, and hacked into the platform , raising concerns about how easily AI can hack into sites.

Read more. Wed, September 2, 2026 at 8:54 PM UTC Grace O'Donnell Snowflake stock soars as AI-fueled quarter boosts full-year outlook Snowflake ( SNOW ) stock surged 20% in after-hours trading as strong quarterly results and a guidance raise exceeded Wall Street's expectations. For the full year, Snowflake now forecasts product revenue of $6.

07 billion, up from the cloud-based software company's previous guidance of $5. 84 billion. "AI continues to compound our advantages, creating a flywheel effect across the business," CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy said in the release.

"CoWork and CoCo are driving transformational outcomes for our customers, while fueling rapid adoption, user growth, new workloads, and overall platform consumption. " Here's a look at the key numbers for the second quarter: Revenue increased 35% year over year to $1. 55 billion, beating Wall Street estimates of $1.

48 billion, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Adjusted earnings per share reached $0. 62, above estimates of $0.

45. Remaining performance obligations (the company's backlog) increased 30% year over year to $9 billion. Listen to the earnings call here at 5 p.

m. ET > Wed, September 2, 2026 at 7:00 PM UTC Bex Evans GoPro announces AI pivot with $285 million merger deal Forbes reports: The iconic wearable camera manufacturer GoPro announced a $285 million merger deal with a company that produces optical equipment for AI infrastructure on Tuesday, while also announcing a new effort to diversify its business to also produce optical and imaging technology for AI infrastructure and national security purposes. GoPro said it was planning to merge with Starman Optical, a privately held company owned by Starman Holdings that produces optical transceivers—devices that turn data into light for high-speed communication.

The $285 million deal will pay GoPro shareholders $1. 14 per share, and shareholders will retain control of approximately 10% of the company. Read more.

Wed, September 2, 2026 at 6:56 PM UTC Jake Conley Nvidia chief urges G20 leaders to not overly regulate AI Nvidia ( NVDA ) chief Jensen Huang urged G20 finance ministers to spur AI adoption to further their countries' economic growth. "Every single country needs to build infrastructure so you can support your own local economy," Huang said on Wednesday at the G20 meeting in North Carolina. "This is the great equalizer.

" Huang spoke alongside several other Big Tech and AI leaders, including SpaceX's ( SPCX ) Elon Musk and Meta ( META ) chief Mark Zuckerberg. The tech leaders are pressing G20 nations to adopt what's been dubbed the "Carolina Principles," which guide that governments shouldn't create new regulatory bodies that would slow down AI's build-out and usage. On Wednesday, Huang pushed for narrow regulations on AI and said that governments should leave companies to develop guidelines around AI instead of setting policy.

"The technology is in its formative stages, and the advice that I would have is to regulate practical and actual harm, and not regulate theoretical and hypothetical harm," Huang said. "Every single company has to take it upon themselves to develop the technology safely. " The biggest risk for nations that regulate AI, Huang said, is "being left behind.

" Wed, September 2, 2026 at 1:27 PM UTC Grace O'Donnell Uber plans to cut 3,300 jobs in major restructuring effort: Bloomberg Uber ( UBER ) is planning on slashing 10% of its global jobs, affecting roughly 3,300 employees, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday . It also is implementing a stricter remote work policy. In an email obtained by Bloomberg, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi stated that the company's growth in recent years created "structures that made sense when businesses were smaller but no longer serve us well at our current scale.

" As a result, the company is reportedly planning to lay off a number of managers, small teams of one to two people, and those operating more than seven layers from the CEO. Bloomberg reported that the core engineering, science, and delivery groups would be affected. In a push to get employees back to the office, Uber also said it would allow only about 1% of employees to work remotely.

The ridesharing business intends to reinvest restructuring savings into its core business and autonomous development. "Our opportunity from here is enormous," Khosrowshahi said in the email. "We have the chance to bring Uber to hundreds of millions more people; to invest even more in drivers, couriers and merchants; and to innovate across our core businesses and build the autonomous future.

" Wed, September 2, 2026 at 12:46 PM UTC Grace O'Donnell Here's the biggest thing keeping AI stock investors up at night Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi reports: Investors in AI stocks are not without their long list of worries — chief among them is that demand is peaking. "There was a notable discrepancy between management teams' outlooks for fundamentals and investors' outlooks for share prices," Deutsche Bank analyst Melissa Weathers wrote in a new note on Wednesday. The note recapped a recent conference Deutsche Bank had, hosting tech execs from Intel ( INTC ) and Sandisk ( SNDK ) and investors in the space.

"Fundamentally, most companies in attendance signaled steady and strong trends, especially the supply chain names gearing up for more advanced processor architectures, higher memory demand, etc. Many management teams signaled confidence not only in industry-wide trends (confidence spanned across sub-sectors like processors, broad-based semis, semicap, etc), but also company-specific efforts to expand margins and drive EPS power. " By contrast, investor sentiment has soured materially from the enthusiasm seen in the first half of the year, with "peak cycle" fears common among many investors.

Much of this bearishness stems from ongoing concerns about demand destruction caused by DRAM pricing and technological innovation aimed at breaking through the "memory wall," Weathers explained. Read more. Wed, September 2, 2026 at 12:43 PM UTC Ines Ferré Dell stock surges on record orders for AI servers Dell Technologies ( DELL ) stock surged as much as 10% in premarket trading on Wednesday.

The maker of laptops and servers raised guidance and posted record revenue and adjusted earnings for its fiscal 2027 second quarter amid a booming AI server business. The company said it booked a record $60. 9 billion in AI server orders and exited the quarter with a record $95 billion backlog.

Dell Technologies said it also saw growth in its traditional servers, networking, and storage businesses. The company posted record revenue of $47 billion, up 58% year over year. Earnings per share came in at $6.

34, up 273% from a year ago. Adjusted earnings rose 203% to $7. 04 per share.

"With AI momentum accelerating and our opportunity expanding across the portfolio, we're raising our full-year FY27 revenue outlook by $25 billion to $192 billion, up nearly 70% year over year," said Jeff Clarke, CEO of Dell Technologies, in the company's earnings release. Read more. Tue, September 1, 2026 at 6:14 PM UTC Bex Evans Hut 8 stock is a winner in a new deal between Anthropic and Nvidia-backed Lambda Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi reports: Big dealmaking continues at a rapid clip for AI infrastructure play Hut 8 ( HUT ).

Hut 8 is developing the data center in Nueces County, Texas, that will be leased by Nvidia ( NVDA ) as part of a new $35 billion cloud-computing deal between Anthropic ( ANTH. PVT ) and Nvidia-backed Lambda, according to a new report from the WSJ. Hut 8 shares rose as much as 4% in premarket trading on Tuesday.

"We have many projects that we are at late stage on," Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot said on Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid in late August (video above). "We have early-stage [projects] across the whole pipeline. We have 11 that we've disclosed publicly.

That doesn't include any behind-the-meter opportunities that we're working on. That doesn't include any M&A opportunities. So we have a ton of projects we're working on.

" Hut 8 has a remarkable transformation story, evolving from a bitcoin miner to one of the most important AI data center operators in North America. Its deal flow — now including one with Nvidia — is starting to flesh this out. Read more.

Tue, September 1, 2026 at 6:12 PM UTC Bex Evans Software stocks crushed chips in August. History says September gets tougher. Software's second-best month since 2002, paired with a reversal in chip and AI infrastructure stocks, made for a record divergence between software and chip stocks in August.

What comes next might not be so rosy for software. Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre reports: That leaves September with a very different starting point. Software enters the month with the momentum, while much of the physical AI trade is already on the defensive.

And this wasn't an ordinary software rally. A broader S&P software index gained roughly 14% in August, its strongest August in data going back to 1990. So Yahoo Finance looked at the 12 strongest prior August rallies in software over that history and what happened next.

Software historically held up through Sept. 15, with a median gain of about 1%. Semiconductors were already down roughly 1% by then.

Then things got tougher. From Sept. 15 through month-end, median software returns fell roughly 1%, the S&P 500 dropped almost 2%, and semiconductors slid about 3.

5%. Twelve observations make a small sample, so this is a tendency rather than a forecast. The broader calendar isn't particularly friendly either.

September has historically been the weakest month for the S&P 500, while volatility has tended to pick up as summer ends . August showed the market could rotate around weak chips. September will show how long that can last.

Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance Read more. Tue, September 1, 2026 at 4:42 PM UTC Grace O'Donnell New Apple CEO John Ternus logs on New Apple ( AAPL ) CEO John Ternus has officially signed on. "Hello," he simply wrote in his first post on X, greeting over 66K followers.

Apple investors appeared enthused, with the stock rising 3% in afternoon trading. "Congrats! " SpaceX CEO Elon Musk replied, chief executive to chief executive.

As my colleague Dan Howley has reported, Ternus will need to get to work quickly. Apple is set to host its annual iPhone event in early September, where it's expected to unveil its first foldable iPhone. There's also a lot of scrutiny on what Apple's AI-powered Siri will look like.

Like Tim Cook before him, Ternus will need to become a master diplomat, navigating Apple's relationship with the Trump administration and changing regulatory landscape for the App Store. Plus, Apple is currently embroiled in a heated legal battle with OpenAI over its trade secrets and hardware competition. Cook will continue to serve as an executive chairman, and he may help advise on some of these issues.

But after a settling-in period, it will be up to Ternus to make the next era of Apple his own. Tue, September 1, 2026 at 3:14 PM UTC Grace O'Donnell Musk predicts AI will grow the global economy 'by 20% to 30%' Tesla ( TSLA ) and SpaceX ( SPCX ) CEO Elon Musk rarely shies away from making bold predictions about new technologies. His comments at the G20 summit for central bankers and finance ministers were no different.

"We are going to see and are seeing, in fact, significant productivity gains from artificial intelligence, and we'll see very dramatic gains in productivity from robotics," Musk said, appearing virtually at the summit in Asheville, N. C. "Just to give you some sense of scale here, I think AI will probably increase the global economy by 20% to 30%," Musk added.

"That's my rough estimate, meaning on the order of $20 trillion to $30 trillion per year. " Musk advocated for regulators to encourage and embrace new technology like AI, arguing that it should be "default legal" rather than "default illegal. " He was most bullish on robotics, predicting that there would be a billion humanoid robots in the next decade.

"AI will be able to do anything digital, anything that does not require shaping of atoms by hand, probably by the end of next year. " Tue, September 1, 2026 at 2:31 PM UTC Grace O'Donnell The OpenAI-Apple battle is escalating, 2 new legal filings show OpenAI ( OPAI. PVT ) fought back against allegations that it stole trade secrets from Apple ( AAPL ), according to a new court filing published on Monday, as a legal battle between the two highly secretive tech firms heats up.

"This dispute is a mess of Apple's own making, and it is trying to blame everyone else," OpenAI said in the filing. "Apple blames employees who left the company for taking their personal accounts with them — even though Apple encouraged them to use personal accounts for work. " Apple alleges that two OpenAI employees, Tang Tan and Chang Liu, who formerly worked at Apple, gave Apple's proprietary information to OpenAI.

In a separate filing on Monday, Apple also accused OpenAI of destroying evidence , Bloomberg reported. OpenAI called Apple's lawsuit "baseless," blaming the iPhone maker's own "sloppy" offboarding processes for its complaints and arguing that Apple was attempting to delay OpenAI's competing hardware device. At the heart of the case is a growing rivalry between the companies as they move to build devices that can dominate in the AI age.

OpenAI's device for ChatGPT "differs materially from known Apple products," the startup said, but it poses a risk to eroding the market share of the iPhone. Read more. Mon, August 31, 2026 at 7:16 PM UTC Ines Ferré Amazon stock drops on report of planned FTC lawsuit Amazon ( AMZN ) stock tumbled about 3% on Monday after a Wall Street Journal report said the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) plans to sue the e-commerce giant, accusing it of manipulating the prices businesses paid for advertising on its retail platform.

The suit, which includes a coalition of more than 20 state attorneys general, is expected to state that Amazon misled advertisers by covertly increasing the minimum amount they were required to pay to have their products' ads featured, according to FTC officials. The lawsuit is expected to claim that the price manipulation practice generated tens of billions of dollars in profit for the company over seven years.