Crypto News: Elon Musk seems bored with cars

Last night was a big deal for Elon Musk and Tesla. On a Warner Bros. lot in California, Musk played emcee to a suite of robotic stars—both humanoid and vehicular. But, as Dana Hull writes, it didn't totally land with investors. Plus: The number-crunchers setting sports gambling odds, and why the NBA needs a major star on the New York Knicks. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up.

I watched Elon Musk unveil a dedicated Cybercab and an art-deco-inspired Robovan concept from home on Thursday. It was a long night; the event was delayed for almost an hour, and it wasn't even scheduled to start until 10 p.m. New York time. We saw, as the title "We, Robot" promised, a variety of robots and slick prototypes of vehicles that operate without human drivers. If the lighting was dramatic, it was maybe part of the spectacle of doing a business event on a Hollywood sound stage.

And through all the pageantry, my main thought was: Elon Musk is bored of making cars.

There was no mention of a cheaper, truly mass-market electric vehicle— one that would cost $25,000 or less, which some analysts call the "Model 2." For years, Tesla Inc. talked about selling 20 million vehicles a year. Its most recent impact report backed away from that goal and just said it "wants to displace fossil fuels by selling as many Tesla products as possible."

The Cybercab prototype. Source: Tesla

Where, exactly, are those products? The Model 3 and Y account for roughly 95% of Tesla vehicle sales, and I thought we might see a stripped-down version of the 3 or the Y at Thursday's event—or at least a mention that it was still in the works.

"Disappointingly, Tesla did not tease/unveil the anticipated cheaper model at the event," wrote analyst Edison Yu of Deutsche Bank in a note on Friday. "Based on our channel checks, we now think that instead of a true next-gen Model 2 there will likely be a less expensive de-contented variant of the current Model Y."

Instead, on Thursday night, we got Optimus robots walking around the venue and serving drinks.

"I think this will be the biggest product ever of any kind," Musk said. "Because I think every one of the 8 billion people of Earth, I think everyone's going to want their Optimus buddy."

In Elon's world, this all makes sense. A decade ago, electric cars were a novelty, and Tesla was the only real game in town. Now, China's BYD Co. is pumping out EVs for the global market, and consumers have lots of options.

So Tesla is trying to differentiate itself as an autonomous and AI company that makes robots that will one day mow your lawn and babysit your kids. Then it can keep trading like a high-valuation tech company instead of a grind-it-out automaker.

We first heard about the Robotaxi day this spring, when Reuters broke the news that Tesla had basically shelved plans for the cheaper, mass-market car. Then in July, we at Bloomberg broke the news that the Robotaxi event—originally planned for August—had been delayed to October. Musk is widely known as a marketing genius who's pulled rabbits out of hats several times. His presentation fell flat this time, judging by the market reaction. Time, maybe, to pivot back to cars.

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Photo illustration: 731; Photos: ATP Media (1); Courtesy Sportradar (1)

Along with the pub and the kebabery, one fixture of nearly every British high street is the betting shop. Even unconsciously, the eye registers the distinct colors of their signboards: the forest-green frontage of Paddy Power, the navy of William Hill, the red-bleeding-into-blue of Betfred, the angry red of Ladbrokes. Since betting became legal in the UK in 1961, these bookmakers have taken hundreds of billions of pounds in bets—not just on World Cups, tennis tournaments and elections but also on when humans would walk on the moon, whether the yeti really exists and how long it would take to recapture an African golden eagle that had fled the London Zoo. Their integration into English life has been so thorough that, during the anti-immigrant riots in the summer of 2024, a man with a sticker reading "British and Proud" on his chest lamented the loss of a country that once had "pubs everywhere, betting shops everywhere." He said this standing in front of a pub, with two betting shops a 10-minute walk away.

Even though the betting shops are far from extinct, it's certainly true that, over the past 15 years, much of the action has moved online. In parallel, sportsbooks have heavily outsourced what might be considered the nucleus of their job: setting odds for gamblers to bet on. They've had to. As websites and apps became the most popular way by far to bet, customer appetites grew commensurately insatiable.

The work of trawling the sporting universe and calculating this unending torrent of odds is in various parts data collection, statistics, algorithm modeling and artificial intelligence engineering. No sportsbook has the resources to do it all. Instead, they rely on specialized companies that are closer in character to the quants of Wall Street than to the bookies down at the dog track. To these firms, which mostly originated in Europe but now also drive betting in the newly open and wildly lucrative American market, every game is an interplay of statistics. They're confident that, with enough data, harnessed in deals with sports leagues that reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars, they can set realistic odds for even the most specific of events, such as a goal scored by a midfielder with his head in the last 10 minutes.

Samanth Subramanian visits the world of big-money data deals and advanced statistical models here: Inside the Companies That Set Sports Gambling Odds

Illustration: Nathan McKee for Bloomberg Businessweek

This offseason, New York Knicks star guard Jalen Brunson signed a four-year, $156.5 million contract extension with the team. That may seem like a lot of money, but it's $113 million less than he would've been eligible for next offseason because of the complex algebra structuring NBA contracts. Brunson made his decision to help free up money to fill out the roster around him with players who can help the team win a championship, something it hasn't done since 1973.

He's not the first athlete to do this. Tom Brady, Derek Jeter and Patrick Mahomes did the same thing, but it's a largely selfless move in a profession where there's not always a ton of selflessness. "It's simple," Brunson said in August on Roommates Show, which he hosts with Josh Hart, a current teammate who Brunson also played with at Villanova University. "I want to be here, I want to show that actions speak louder than just talking about stuff. I want this team to be together for a long time. I want to win here, that's it."

Brunson's decision to sacrifice for the greater good cemented his place in Knicks lore. As a fan, it's hard to ask more of a player. But could Brunson reenergize the league, too?

Randall Williams answers that question in the Field Day column: Jalen Brunson Is the Player the NBA Needs Right Now

$11.5 trillion

That's how much BlackRock now holds in assets, an all-time high for the world's largest money manager as it seeks to become a one-stop shop for stocks, bonds and, increasingly, private assets.

"The extraordinary efforts of Nihon Hidankyo and other representatives of the Hibakusha have contributed greatly to the establishment of the nuclear taboo. It is therefore alarming that today this taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure."

Norwegian Nobel Committee

A Japanese grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2024.

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