City Austin Financial News

SINGAPORE–When Elon Musk made a surprise visit last month to Beijing, the Tesla chief executive brought along a trusted lieutenant: Tom Zhu, the company’s former China head who had skyrocketed through the ranks as a turnaround guru. Now, Zhu—one of just three senior executives including Musk currently named on Tesla’s website—is getting deployed from Tesla’s Texas headquarters back to China at a vulnerable time for the world’s most valuable automaker, according to a person familiar with the matter. Zhu, who was born in China and educated in the U.S.

Railways Ministry has joined the viral keyboard trend. The multiple versions of the viral meme trend asking users to look between two letters on their keyboard has amazed the netizens. The ministry used the keyboard trend to spread awareness among people about the customer care number for railway enquiry-139.

Kroger is shuttering three spoke facilities in its Texas and Florida e-commerce operations

Spicejet and Tech Mahindra were among those who donated to the Aam Aadmi Party through electoral bonds, according to Election Commission data made public on Thursday. The Election Commission made public a fresh data set of electoral bonds, including their alpha-numeric numbers that can help match their purchasers with the political parties that received the funds. Megha Engineering And Infrastructures Limited, Torrent Pharmaceuticals Limited, BG Shirke Construction Technology Pvt Ltd, Bajaj Auto Ltd, Tech Mahindra Ltd, Spicejet Limited, Derive Trading And Resorts Private Limit, Vardhman Textiles Ltd and V M Salgaocar Corporation Pvt Ltd were among the major companies that donated electoral bonds to the party.

Ukraine amid the ongoing conflict with Russia, US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin warned that if Vladimir Putin is successful here, he will not stop there. Convening the 20th meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, Austin said that Ukraine will not back down in the face of the Russian invasion of the country, and neither will the United States, the statement from the US Department of Defence (DOD) stated. The meeting took place at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, praising the «countries of conscience» that are working together to aid Ukraine in its fight.

A pair of anti-ESG laws Texas passed in 2021 are costing the state hundreds of millions in lost economic activity and more than 3,000 full-time jobs, a new study found.

Google's Gemini chatbot cranked out images of Black and Asian Nazi soldiers was seen as a warning about the power artificial intelligence can give tech titans. Google CEO Sundar Pichai last month slammed as «completely unacceptable» errors by his company's Gemini AI app, after gaffes such as the images of ethnically diverse Nazi troops forced it to temporarily stop users from creating pictures of people.

The Bitcoin (BTC) hash rate experienced a significant drop of 34% as a result of a sudden freeze in Texas, causing some miners to scale back their operations due to the strain on the state’s energy grid.

Apple Inc. is shutting a 121-person team related to artificial intelligence operations in San Diego, leaving many employees at risk of termination, according to people familiar with the matter. The group, known as Data Operations Annotations, was told Wednesday that they would be relocating to Austin to merge with the Texas portion of the same team, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans haven’t been announced.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce is looking to off-load loans on struggling United States office properties.

By Hannah Lang

Elon Musk vehemently criticized recent media coverage surrounding an incident involving a factory robot at a Tesla facility in Austin. Musk's response was prompted by reports resurfacing about a 2021 incident where an engineer was allegedly injured by a Kuka robot arm during software updates. Musk lambasted the media for linking this incident to Tesla's humanoid Optimus robots, stressing that the coverage misrepresented the nature of the accident. The incident, previously covered by outlets like the Daily Mail and The Information, detailed how an engineer working on software updates became ensnared by a factory robot, resulting in injuries. Witnesses reported the engineer being pinned and bleeding until another worker intervened by activating the emergency stop button.

10-year Treasury yields declined on Tuesday, near two-month lows after data on the housing market and consumer, along with comments from Federal Reserve officials. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller national home price index posted a 3.9% increase in September on an annual basis, below the 4.0% estimate but stronger than the 2.5% rise in August, suggesting the housing market may be picking up steam. A separate report from the Conference Board showed its consumer confidence index climbed to 101.0 in November, below the expected 102.0 but above the downwardly revised 99.1 in the prior month. Despite a climb last week, the 10-year yield is on track for its biggest monthly decline since August 2019, as investors largely believe the Federal Reserve is done with its interest rate hike cycle and attempts to price in when the central bank will instead cut rates. The sharp drop has pushed the 10-year yield near its lowest levels since late September. «The market does a good job of getting itself excited for rate cuts and then overly pessimistic on rate cuts and then overly pessimistic on more hikes and we kind of swing the pendulum from one extreme to the other,» said Thomas Urano, co-chief investment officer at Sage Advisory in Austin. «We're at the bottom end of this recent range trade and I think the market is has gotten a little bit ahead of itself in expecting the Fed to cut so aggressively absent a sudden downward change in the economic data.» Softening economic data, including a reading on inflation two weeks ago, has fueled expectations the Fed will hold rates at their current level, while pricing in a slightly greater than 50% chance of a rate cut of at least 25 basis points in May, according to CME's FedWatch Tool.

Max Verstappen sweat. Even if it was just a little bit. Verstappen had to work through the field after starting sixth instead of from pole position, then held off the charging Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton over the final laps in the Texas heat to win the United States Grand Prix on Sunday at the Circuit of the Americas.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The top job in the U.S. House of Representatives remained vacant on Saturday, after hardline Republican Jim Jordan failed in his third bid for the gavel and dropped out of the race.

Republicans voted to remove Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, as their speaker nominee, a race for the top position has begun within the divided House Republican conference.

Max Verstappen failed to take pole position despite dominating the sport, he is excited for Sunday's Austin GP. He had a rare, unfortunate qualifying session at the 2023 F1 US GP and finished sixth. Charles Leclerc of Ferrari clinched the pole position. But, the Dutch Formula One driver said, «It makes the Sunday a bit more fun.»

American Express on Monday announced a multi-year partnership with Formula One in the first new sports sponsorship in more than a decade for the global payment company

Tesla shipped 435,059 cars globally in the third quarter, as factory downtime led to its first delivery decline in more than a year.

Dell is considering a fresh investment in its research and development (R&D) centre in Bengaluru, an official statement said on Saturday. The Dell team comprising Michael Dundas of Global Manufacturing Operations and Technology, Alan Richey, Senior Vice President, Legal, and Tabrez Ahmad, Director, Asia Pacific and Japan, Govt Affairs and Public Policy held meetings with Karnataka Large and Medium Industries and Infrastructure Minister M.B. Patil, in Austin, on Friday, as per the state Large and Medium Industries Ministry.