Pick a winner in this week’s world-famous-news-haiku-competition™ in today’s poll below. ⬇️

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

Table of Contents

• What's Next for Nvidia?

• Elon Musk’s Cybertruck Gets ‘Sentimental’ Reprieve

• United Airlines Tells Meta’s Muse To Take a Hike

• Porsche to Tesla: Keep Your Aerial Circus

• Munich-Based Agile Robots Attracts Big Tech $

• Poll of the Day: It’s World-Famous-575™ Time

• Poll of the Day: Burning Disco! Burning Disco!

What’s the Stock Market Up To, Eh?

$SPX ( ▼ 0.35% )  $DJI ( ▼ 0.36% )  $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies Mentioned in Today’s Newsletter

$NVDA ( ▼ 4.34% )  $TSLA ( ▲ 1.69% )  $UAL ( ▼ 6.02% )  $META ( ▼ 0.82% )  $VWAGY ( ▼ 2.9% )  $SFTBY ( ▼ 5.6% )  $GOOGL ( ▲ 1.79% )  $THYKF ( ▼ 1.58% )  

What's Next for Nvidia?

The iconic black leather jacket has left the building. Following a dramatic implosion involving undisclosed romances and an alleged Chinese spy, Jensen Huang’s 33-year reign atop Nvidia $NVDA ( ▼ 4.34% ) has come to an abrupt end — vaporizing over $1 trillion in market value this month alone.

So, what actually happens to an AI empire when its singular maestro exits stage left?

First came the boardroom damage control. The directors appointed Harvey Jones as Nvidia’s first-ever chair, who swiftly declared that the board has “full confidence in Colette and the leadership team.” That refers to longtime CFO Colette Kress, now interim CEO, whom insiders describe as possessing the ruthlessness and “sharp elbows” required for the job. Kress moved fast to calm the waters, insisting, “We will continue advancing the work that has made Nvidia a leader in accelerated computing and AI, and execute on the opportunities ahead.”

Yet what comes next looks distinctly messy. Huang famously operated with more than 60 direct reports, having once scoffed on a podcast about traditional org charts: “none of that stuff makes any sense to me.” Unwinding that hyper-centralized structure is a massive governance headache. Prediction markets on Kalshi currently favor 22-year company veteran Ian Buck (35% odds), whom Yale management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld told the Wall Street Journal is “a hugely strong replacement who brings the right technical expertise, customer relationships, experience, and employee relationships for the role.” Other speculative names include Arm CEO Rene Haas (8%), Kress herself (30%), and AMD CEO Lisa Su — while Elon Musk chimed in on social media that it would be “an honor” to hire Huang.

Meanwhile, rivals are circling. As Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon told the Financial Times, “We always knew key man risk was an issue for Nvidia... there’s blood in the water now.” Allspring’s Matthias Scheiber agreed, telling the FT that Huang’s departure “might lead to relative shift in favor of competition.”

Whoever takes the crown next won't just need to ship GPUs — they'll have to prove Nvidia is a resilient institution, not just one man in a leather jacket.

Elon Musk’s Cybertruck Gets ‘Sentimental’ Reprieve

Just days after abruptly sounding the death knell for Tesla’s $TSLA ( ▲ 1.69% ) polarizing pickup, Elon Musk reversed course, granting the motorized brutalist doorstop an unexpected stay of execution through the end of summer 2027.

Why keep a struggling geometric wedge on assembly lines?

“This is not the smartest move from a profit-maximizing standpoint btw, but there must be some room in this world for sentimentality or what’s the point,” Musk confessed on X, the social media platform he owns.

Apparently, amidst grand visions of interplanetary colonization and robotic fleets, Musk discovered a soft spot for the sharpest vehicle ever stamped into sheet metal.

Only days earlier, cold boardroom arithmetic appeared to have won out. Musk had initially announced the vehicle’s demise, explaining that production would wind down around “the middle of next year to make room for increased Cybercab production” at Tesla's Texas facility. Frankly, the corporate ledger was begging for mercy. Despite Musk’s initial daydream of 250,000 annual sales, U.S. deliveries cratered to roughly 20,000 units last year — plunging from nearly 39,000 in 2024.

Yet rather than cutting the cord, Musk opted to clear out remaining back orders before pivoting the factory floor. That grants buyers a final window to live out their Blade Runner fantasies before Tesla retools for the Cybercab — a pedal-less, two-seat robotaxi meant to transform Tesla into an AI and robotics colossus.

Until summer 2027 arrives, the Cybertruck rolls on.

Quote of the Day

United Airlines Tells Meta’s Muse To Take a Hike

Silicon Valley promised that the future of travel belonged to autonomous artificial intelligence: Simply tell your bot you need a vacation, and let algorithmic magic handle the tedious booking. But United Airlines $UAL ( ▼ 6.02% ) has other plans, abruptly slamming the cabin door on AI agents and sending Meta $META ( ▼ 0.82% )  shares tumbling roughly 2% this week.

Instead of letting Mark Zuckerberg’s hyped new Muse assistant whisk travelers through checkout, United banned third-party bots from securing reservations across its platforms. United CEO Scott Kirby was brutally frank about why the carrier refused to roll out the red carpet: “To be honest, I don’t want to create another middleman.”

The airline also cited glaring security and regulatory tripwires, warning in a statement that “sharing account credentials with personal, third-party, AI assistants can expose sensitive information, and actions taken by these tools may result in unintended purchases, account changes, or use of MileagePlus miles.” It certainly didn't help Meta's case that Muse recently suffered glitches leaking sensitive loan applications and confidential executive revenue documents. Moreover, federal aviation rules require actual humans to verify that luggage is free of hazardous goods — a legal hurdle no software agent can clear.

Beyond privacy, airlines simply resent paying for Silicon Valley's server traffic. As Henry Harteveldt, aviation analyst at Atmosphere Research Group, explained, United wants to avoid adding an “even more powerful, intermediary.” Harteveldt noted, “Flight searches cost airlines money, and undoubtedly United wants to avoid the expense associated with the surge of AI bot flight searches.”

For now, Meta’s automated future has been unceremoniously grounded at the departure gate. I’m flying Delta to NYC on a Muse-booked flight on Saturday morning, and frankly, I can’t see why United wouldn’t see this as a simple gift to its competition.

Song of the Day: Megan Moroney, ‘You For Me’

Critics praise Megan Moroney’s “You for Me (Smoky Mountain Demo)” as an intimate, stripped-back return to her acoustic songwriting roots. The track trades her recent pop-country polish for raw storytelling and emotional vulnerability.

Porsche to Tesla: Keep Your Aerial Circus

If you ask Elon Musk, the natural evolution of personal transit involves launching a sports car off a massive curved ramp, doing a midair flip, and sticking the landing via compressed-air thrusters. If you ask Porsche, that is not automotive engineering — it’s an amusement park ride.

Speaking at a conference in Berlin, Porsche $VWAGY ( ▼ 2.9% ) CEO Michael Leiters took a deadpan swipe at Tesla’s airborne antics. While Musk went full Hollywood stunt coordinator — catapulting a Roadster prototype to 60 mph in under a second before flipping it across the sky — Leiters made it clear that Stuttgart has zero interest in stunt-double theatrics.

“We want to completely steer clear from any kind of effects and shows,” Leiters said, emphasizing that Porsche is banking on tangible engineering over Hollywood flair. He dryly noted that the two rivals “are clearly targeting different customers.” Translation: Tesla sells sci-fi spectacles to… well… whom, exactly?… while Porsche sells grounded prestige to drivers who prefer all four tires making contact with asphalt.

Rather than rocket-boosted parlor tricks, Porsche countered with its Mission S concept, which Leiters reported has drawn an “overwhelming” reception. Marketed as the “future of sports cars,” the low-slung concept features torpedo fenders, a rear fan wheel, and a price tag set to comfortably dwarf the $135,500 entry point of the 911. Crucially, it accommodates hybrid or combustion engines, marking Porsche’s first flagship sports car platform since retiring the 918 Spyder in 2015.

Meanwhile, Tesla’s aerial gymnastics look suspiciously like counter-programming.

Free Yourself From Advertising Forever!

Munich-Based Agile Robots Attracts Big Tech $

For decades, the standard playbook for European tech has been simple: Draft an exhaustive 400-page regulation, host a solemn symposium in Brussels, and watch American software eat your lunch. But Agile Robots is taking a different approach — and deep-pocketed tech giants are frantically writing checks.

The Munich-based startup just pulled in $500 million in new funding from heavy-hitting backers like SoftBank $SFTBY ( ▼ 5.6% ) and a scandal-battered Nvidia $NVDA ( ▼ 4.34% ) , vaulting its valuation to $8.5 billion. That pushes Agile’s total war chest to $2 billion, with heavyweight partners like Google DeepMind $GOOGL ( ▲ 1.79% ) along for the ride.

Why is Big Tech showering Bavarian hardware with billions? Because chatbots writing polite corporate emails cannot weld car chassis or assemble electronic gearboxes on factory lines. The real game is bringing algorithms into the messy physical world, and founder and CEO Zhaopeng Chen is positioning iron and silicon as the continent’s industrial salvation.

“Physical AI is one of the solutions for Europe,” argued Chen, who founded the company in 2018 after studying engineering in China and earning his doctorate at the German Aerospace Center. With China already flexing 2.3 million industrial robots, Chen warned that Europe’s greatest handicap isn't engineering capability, but a sluggish “mentality.” He issued a blunt wake-up call to complacent boardrooms: “Now I think people see China and they see the U.S., and they know if they don’t change, it’s a dead end,” he said.

Agile is backing up that bravado with genuine muscle. It has deployed nearly 30,000 robotics systems — including 3,000 to 4,000 humanoids — and projects annual sales will double this year to roughly €600 million ($668 million). Having absorbed assets from German titan ThyssenKrupp $THYKF ( ▼ 1.58% ) , it even plans to manufacture on American turf in Auburn Hills, Michigan.

As Chen put it, “In the new era of physical AI, Europe stands a chance.” Whether European industry finally adapts or gets automated into irrelevance remains open — but at least its robotic saviors will be engineered in Bavaria.

Should You Check Your 401(k) Today?

👎️ 

You should continue continuing to leave it well alone for a few weeks.

Poll of the Day: It’s World-Famous-575™ Time

Poll of the Day: Burning Disco! Burning Disco!

We asked: What's the best new metaphor for the AI trade on Wall Street?

You answered:

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Frankenstein’s Monster on an Espresso Drip (26)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 A High-Stakes Game of Musical Chairs in a Burning Disco (50)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ A $50-Billion Tapeworm Feasting on Corporate Corpses (41)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Schrödinger’s Tech Stock (I don't know why it's funny, but it is) (24)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ An AI-Drafted Spy Thriller Script Authored by an Overheating GPU (7)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ A Geopolitical Honeypot Sweating in a Black Leather Jacket (30)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ A Circular-Financing Human Centipede (sorry...) (14)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ A $1.5 Trillion Terminal-Velocity Hallucination (39)
231 Votes via @beehiiv polls

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