Good evening, you're listening to Markets Desk.
Tesla's Semi launch landed with a thud on Wall Street today, as investors shrugged off the long-awaited truck reveal and pushed shares lower. The autonomous trucking space remains a genuine long-term opportunity, but without concrete volume targets or a clear commercial timeline, the market had little to price in beyond the spectacle.
Shifting from Detroit to diplomacy, President Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping at a state dinner Thursday evening, with a guest list that read more like a Silicon Valley summit than a diplomatic affair. Jensen Huang and Sam Altman were both in attendance as the two leaders struck an unusually warm tone, touching on Taiwan, trade, and artificial intelligence in what Trump described as an historically productive relationship.
And on the AI front, Bill Gates is sounding a notably darker note than the dinner guests might suggest. Speaking on Meet the Press, Gates warned that artificial intelligence is now powerful enough to, in his words, cause a billion deaths, and argued explicitly that self-regulation from the industry is wholly insufficient to manage that risk.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
