Tech news

Elon Musk wants to be a trillionaire

Elon Musk’s journey to becoming the world’s first trillionaire will likely be powered by rockets rather than cars, as SpaceX now accounts for nearly two-thirds of the Tesla CEO’s wealth.

Musk became the first person ever to top the $800 billion mark this week, with his net worth now around $845 billion, according to Forbes. He’s worth more than the next three richest people – Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg – combined.

The tech magnate’s unprecedented wealth surged after his aerospace and defense company, SpaceX, acquired his artificial intelligence and social media company, xAI, this week in a deal that valued the merged entity at $1.25 trillion, according to financial documents reviewed by CNBC.

With Musk’s ownership estimated at around 43% in the combined company, his stake would be valued at over $530 billion, marking a rapid shift in his fortunes.

Musk’s priorities are also likely shifting his focus more to SpaceX than Tesla, a reality that the EV company acknowledged in its latest proxy filing, where it noted that “a majority of Mr. Musk’s wealth is now derived from other business ventures.”

Last year, Musk confirmed he wants to take SpaceX public in 2026, which would make Tesla a less prevalent component of his liquid wealth. But he still has to get buy-in from public market investors, who may be reluctant to pay up for a company that combines a defense contractor and satellite business with a cash-burning AI model developer that’s trying to take on Google, OpenAI and Anthropic.

SpaceX has received more than $20 billion from contracts with the federal government, according to research from FedScout, with more lucrative contracts on the way, and Musk has framed the acquisition as the next step towards “orbital data centers.”

“You’ve muddied up your story a little bit as a pure-play SpaceX shareholder, but the opportunity has gotten a lot bigger,” said Greg Martin, managing director at Rainmaker Securities, which works on transactions for pre-IPO companies. “It makes sense for them to access a much larger capital market, especially with xAI, which does have insatiable need for capital.”

XAI is currently being investigated by authorities in Europe, Asia, Australia and California, after the company’s Grok image generator let users create and share “deepfake” explicit images of children and women.

It’s not clear whether Musk’s merger will require any regulatory review. Democratic senators this week called for the Pentagon to investigate SpaceX over undisclosed Chinese investors in the company.

Musk still has a major incentive to stay focused on Tesla. Late last year, shareholders voted to approve a new pay package that could be worth $1 trillion, paid out in 12 tranches, if Tesla hits certain milestones, including market cap gains and operational achievements, over the next decade. The first tranche of stock gets paid out if Tesla hits a market cap of $2 trillion, about $460 billion more than the current valuation.

Tesla said in the proxy filing detailing the plan that the structure aims to “prevent him from prioritizing those other ventures.”

However, Columbia Law professor Dorothy Lund, a corporate and securities law expert, told CNBC in an email that the strategy may not work.

Musk is now “negotiating comp packages at each company, with each board trying to induce him to pay attention via comp,” Lund wrote. “If SpaceX/xAI gives him more money and a bigger share, that Tesla package may look less appealing.”

Before the xAI acquisition, Musk owned about 42% of SpaceX and controlled 80% of the votes, according to FCC reports. His current ownership in Tesla is between 11% and 15% of shares outstanding, depending on what’s included in his stake, according to public filings.

With Tesla’s brand value and core auto sales in decline, and its long-promised robotaxis and humanoid robots still in development, the company’s stock price is down about 9% this year.

Based on Musk’s ownership in SpaceX, and assuming Tesla shares are flat, the rocket and AI company would have to reach a valuation of about $1.6 trillion for the world’s richest person to reach trillionaire status.

Ross Gerber, CEO of investment firm Gerber Kawasaki, is betting that Musk won’t ever want to take SpaceX public as a standalone entity. Rather, he expects to see a merger of SpaceX and Tesla, and he speculated this week it would list on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker symbol X, which formerly belonged to U.S. Steel.

Gerber is a long-time Tesla investor and now holds shares in SpaceX after his firm previously backed Musk’s leveraged buyout of Twitter in 2022. Musk rebranded Twitter as X, and merged the social network with xAI last year.

Consolidating his empire makes sense, Gerber said, because it would allow Musk to fulfill his dream of running one big company under the brand name X. Following Alphabet’s announcement this week that it will spend up to $185 billion on capex this year, Gerber said Musk is going to have to be able to bring in massive sums of cash.

“This huge entity would make it easier for them to raise money and borrow,” he said. “How else is Musk supposed to compete and become a major AI player?”

Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment.

CNBC

Tech news

EssilorLuxottica triples Meta AI glasses sales in 2025

EssilorLuxottica’s more than tripled its Meta artificial intelligence glasses sales last year, the Ray-Ban maker said on Wednesday in its fourth-quarter results.

The French-Italian eyewear brand said it sold over 7 million AI glasses last year.

That’s up from the 2 million that the company sold in 2023 and 2024 combined, according to its quarterly report last February.

The figure reported Wednesday includes smart glasses sold under the brands for Ray-Ban and Oakley, the latter of which was unveiled in June.

The company’s smart glasses success is the latest sign that the adoption of wearable AI devices is gaining momentum with consumers.

“Our success in wearables is helping to propel the AI-glasses revolution, with our iconic brands being a powerful driver of demand,” the company said in a release.

EssilorLuxottica has been working on the wearable devices with the social media company since 2019, CNBC reported at the time. The two companies launched the first edition of the glasses in September 2021, but the device didn’t gain widespread attention until the second-generation launch in 2023.

In September, EssilorLuxottica and Meta introduced a new Ray-Ban iteration, controllable through hand gestures and neural technology. That device retails for $799 and features a small display in one of the lenses.

Meta in January said it would pushback the international launch of the Ray-Ban Display glasses, originally slated for early 2026, due to “unprecedented” demand in the U.S.

Last month, Bloomberg reported that Meta and EssilorLuxottica were discussing doubling production to at least 20 million by the end of this year to meet growing demand.

Meta has indicated its commitment to working with the glasses maker and extended a long-term partnership agreement to “collaborate into the next decade” in 2024.

— CNBC

Tech news

John Wick game confirmed with Keanu Reeves, Lionsgate

A new John Wick game is officially in development for PlayStation 5, with developer Saber Interactive confirming the project.

In the announcement, the studio said: “We can finally share our next big project with you. And ‘yeah’, it’s a John Wick AAA game!”

The team adds that fans will need to wait for the official title and release date, promising more details about the story and setting in the future.

According to Saber, the project is being developed in collaboration with franchise director Chad Stahelski, actor Keanu Reeves and Lionsgate.

The studio adds the game will take place within an established period of the John Wick timeline and will expand the wider story universe.

“We are working closely with Chad Stahelski (John Wick director and franchise visionary), Keanu Reeves, and Lionsgate to produce a highly anticipated, adrenaline-fueled experience that fits into the world of John Wick,” the press release says.

The studio also confirms the game will feature cinematic environments, signature camerawork and the series’ well known gun fu combat style.

“Like many of you, we are huge John Wick fans,” Saber says, adding that the project includes both familiar characters and new additions created for the game.

The News

Tech news

Alphabet flags possible 2026 capex surge as cloud business booms

Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab said on Wednesday that capital expenditure could as much as double this year, in yet another aggressive spending ramp-up by the Google parent as it deepens investments to allay constraints on compute capacity and push ahead in the AI race.

Alphabet and its Big Tech rivals are expected to collectively shell out more than $500 billion on AI this year. Meta (META.O), opens new tab last week hiked capital investment for AI development this year by 73%, while Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab also reported record quarterly capital expenditure.

The aggressive expansion in outlay comes at a time when investors have increasingly grown concerned about payoffs from AI investments. Google, however, has been able to show strong progress in its AI efforts, and its stock has surged 76% since the beginning of 2025.

“We are seeing our AI investments and infrastructure drive revenue and growth across the board,” CEO Sundar Pichai told analysts on a conference call on Wednesday.

Gemini 3 success, AI benefits in ad business drive investor confidence in Google parent

Alphabet executives said that investments in AI computing power capacity – servers, data centers and networking equipment – were central to the company’s plans to target capital expenditure of $175 billion to $185 billion this year, up from $91.45 billion in 2025. Analysts had expected on average that it would spend about $115.26 billion this year, according to data compiled by LSEG.

Alphabet shares were volatile in after-hours trading – falling 6% before recouping most losses to trade down just about 1%, as investors weighed the swell in spending against surging revenue and profit, both of which beat expectations in the December quarter.

The company’s cloud business in particular reported stellar growth in the fourth quarter ended December, surging 48% to $17.7 billion, beating analyst expectations. That represented the quickest pace of growth in more than four years.

“We’ve been supply-constrained, even as we’ve been ramping up our capacity,” Pichai said. “Obviously, our capex spend this year is an eye towards the future.”

Pichai said he expected Alphabet to face continued capacity constraints through the year.

Google plans a whopping $175 billion – $185 billion in capex this year

GOOGLE NOW A LEGITIMATE HYPERSCALER ALONGSIDE AMAZON AND MICROSOFT

The launch of Google’s Gemini 3 AI model in November reshaped the narrative around Google as an AI laggard. The strong reception propelled the company in the AI arms race and prompted rival OpenAI to issue an internal “code red” to push teams to accelerate development.

Google’s enterprise-grade Gemini model has sold 8 million paying seats across 2,800 companies, Pichai said. Last month, Google scored one of its biggest deals yet, a cloud partnership with Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab to power the iPhone maker’s AI offerings with its Gemini models.

The cloud division’s growth was “importantly higher growth than Microsoft Azure for the first time in several years,” helping the parent company to justify the capex hike, said Gil Luria, a D.A. Davidson analyst.

Cloud companies see revenue boost as AI splurge holds up

“Cloud at 48% growth with rapidly expanding margins is no longer a ‘show me’ story: they showed us,” said Ethan Feller, stock strategist at Zacks Investment Research. “Google has established itself as a legitimate hyperscaler alongside Amazon and Microsoft, with AI workloads driving real enterprise demand.”

Alphabet executives have touted the cloud as a proof point of AI-driven revenue on past earnings calls, but the most recent quarter suggested newfound confidence in messaging around growth from other parts of the business, like the search engine, that have been bolstered by AI integrations.

Google’s Gemini AI assistant app now has more than 750 million users per month, Pichai said, up by 100 million compared with November. Daily queries in AI Mode, a chatbot-like feature in its native search engine, have also doubled since launch.

Gemini has helped the advertising unit to deliver ads on long, complex search queries that were previously difficult to monetize, Google’s chief business officer, Philipp Schindler, told analysts.

The company reported total revenue of $113.83 billion for the quarter, beating analyst estimates of $111.43 billion, per LSEG data. Adjusted profit per share of $2.82 also beat estimates of $2.63.

Thomson Reuters