Tesla's vehicle price increases due to supply chain pressure, CEO Elon Musk says The price of Tesla vehicles is increasing due to supply chain pressures across the auto industry, particularly for raw materials, Elon Musk said on Monday in response to a tweet. "Prices increasing due to major supply chain price pressure industry-wide. Raw materials especially," Musk said in a tweet. He was responding to an unverified Twitter account called @Ryanth3nerd, which said, "I really don't like the direction @tesla is going raising prices of vehicles but removing features like lumbar for the Model Y..." In May, Tesla increased its Model 3 and Model Y prices, the automaker's fifth incremental price increase for its vehicles in just a few months, the Electrek website reported. During an earnings conference call in April, Musk said Tesla had experienced "some of the most difficult supply chain challenges," citing a chip shortage. "We're mostly out of that particular problem," he added at the time. In response to the removal of lumbar support on the passenger side in Tesla's Model Y, Musk said, "Moving lumbar was removed only in the front passenger seat of 3/Y (obv not there in rear seats). Logs showed almost no usage. Not worth cost/mass for everyone when almost never used." Earlier on Monday, the Electrek reported that new Tesla Model Y owners are reporting that their electric SUVs are being delivered without lumbar support on the passenger side. #wnu #Africa #tesla

ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming to step down as CEO by end of 2021 Zhang Yiming, the storied co-founder of ByteDance, is stepping down from his role as the CEO and passing the torch to Liang Rubo, another co-founder of the TikTok parent and one of the world’s most valuable internet juggernauts. In an internal letter to employees, 38-year-old age Zhang said he is making the transition to spend more time on “long-term strategy, corporate culture, and social responsibility.” Zhang will work side by side with Liang, currently ByteDance’s head of human resources and his college classmate, over the next six months to ensure a smooth transition. Zhang will remain as a member of the board at ByteDance. From the sound of the letter, Zhang reminisces about the period between college and starting ByteDance in 2012 when he spent ample time thinking about the future. That led him to conclude that machine learning would revolutionize the way people encountered information and the idea laid the foundation for ByteDance’s algorithm-driven content distributors such as Toutiao and TikTok. But acting as a CEO, he said, he was preoccupied with “listening to presentations, handling approvals, and making decisions reactively.” “Innovation and success are rooted in years of exploring and imagining what is possible. However, few people have real insight into the future, preferring to model on current and past achievements,” the founder wrote, citing American tech giants as role models. “People are amazed by the success of electric cars, but they forget that Tesla is 18 years old and first experimented with laptop batteries to power its vehicles. People know about Apple’s software management tool HomeBrew, but few realize that computer geeks were discussing the Apple I in the HomeBrew Club in the 1970s.” Zhang also recognized that he’s not the ideal manager type, saying he’s “more interested in analyzing organizational and market principles, and leveraging these theories to further reduce management work, rather than actually managing people.” “Similarly, I’m not very social, preferring solitary activities like being online, reading, listening to music, and daydreaming about what may be possible.” Liang appears to be a better fit for wearing the CEO hat for his experience leading R&D and Lark, which started as an internal work collaboration tool and later evolved into a full-flung SaaS product sold to other enterprises. Another high-profile Chinese tech boss who recently resigned from day-to-day operations was Colin Huang, founder of Alibaba’s arch rival Pinduoduo. Huang took a step back so he could allocate his energy to food and life sciences, areas that the e-commerce firm hopes could fuel its future growth. #bytedance #wnu

Lucid Motors strikes SPAC deal to go public with $24 billion valuation Lucid Motors reached an agreement to become a publicly traded company through a merger with special-purpose acquisition company Churchill Capital IV Corp, in the largest deal yet between a blank-check company and electric vehicle startup. The combined company, in which Saudi Arabia’s sovereign fund will continue to be the largest shareholder, will have a transaction equity value of $11.75 billion. Private investment in the public equity deal is priced at $15 a share, putting the implied the pro-forma equity value at $24 billion. The announcement comes more than a week after Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, reported a deal was close to being finalized. Lucid follows a string of other, albeit smaller valued, SPAC mergers with electric vehicle startups that have been announced this year, including Arrival, Canoo, Fisker and Lordstown Motors. Several EV infrastructure companies including EVgo and ChargePoint have also become public companies via SPAC mergers. Lucid might have been the most anticipated. The hype and speculation that has been rampant for weeks drove up the stock price of Churchill Capital IV Corp from its opening price of $10 a share more than 470% since January 2021. The skyrocketing share price, plummeted more than 30% after the details of the deal were announced. The private investment and cash from Churchill will provide roughly $4.4 billion in total funding to Lucid. That capital will be put to work to speed up and expand Lucid’s plans. The company plans to begin production and deliveries of the Lucid Air in North America in the second half of this year. The Air will come to Europe in 2022, followed by China in 2023. The Gravity performance luxury SUV is expected to come to market in North America in 2023. The vehicles will be produced at its new factory in Casa Grande, Arizona. The funding will be used to bring those two vehicles to market as well as to expand its factory in Arizona, Lucid CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson said Monday. The company plans to expand the factory over another three phases in the coming years to have the capacity to produce 365,000 units per year at scale. The initial phase of the $700 million factory was completed late last year and will have the capacity to produce 30,000 vehicles a year. The deal will also help Lucid realize its vision to supply electric vehicle technologies to third parties such as other automotive manufacturers as well as offer energy storage solutions in the residential, commercial and utility segments, Rawlinson said. Scaling an electric vehicle company is not cheap or easy. Lucid narrowly missed imploding several years ago as it struggled to find an investor that would provide the capital it needed to bring its ultra-luxe electric Air sedan into production. That investor ended up being Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which agreed in September 2018 to invest $1 billion into Lucid Motors. Lucid began in 2007 as Atieva, a company founded by former Tesla VP and board member Bernard Tse and entrepreneur Sam Weng that focused on developing electric car battery technology. The early research, development and eventual progress in the components and overall electric architecture would lay the critical ground work for the future Lucid, which emerged at the end of 2016 with new publicly stated purpose to make electric vehicles (although the company had already been working quietly at this for a couple of years). Rawlinson, who left Tesla to join Lucid in 2013 as CTO, was one of the driving forces behind this new mission. He later took on the CEO title and responsibility as well. While Lucid is often couched as a competitor to Tesla, Rawlinson has told TechCrunch the Air is meant to be a rival of the Mercedes S Class, the internal combustion engine flagship of the German automaker. The investor presentation released Monday echoes Rawlinson’s earlier comments, noting that “Tesla is innovative but not luxury.” Lucid describes itself as “post luxury” and in competition with “established luxury” brands Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Lucid is taking a page out of Tesla’s playbook and outlined plans to eventually offer more affordable EVs once it scales production. Rawlinson will remain as CEO and CTO. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter. #wnu #currentnews

South Korea’s prime minister has joined Clubhouse After garnering an estimated 8 million downloads since its launch, Clubhouse’s popularity continues across the world and even outside of its original tech-focused seed community. The latest news comes from East Asia, where Korean media reported this morning that the country’s current prime minister, Chung Sye-kyun, has officially joined the social audio app under the username @gyunvely, making him among the most senior political leaders worldwide to join the burgeoning app. His account was created on Valentine’s Day (February 14th) and was “nominated” by a user using the name of TJ Park (Clubhouse does not have verified profiles). So far, the prime minister has garnered slightly fewer than 500 followers and is following a bit fewer than 200 accounts, perhaps indicating the app’s current reach in one of the world’s most mobile and connected digital economies. His Clubhouse bio reads “노란잠바 그 아저씨” or “That Yellow Jacket Guy,” a reference to the Korean civil defense uniform worn by politicians in times of crisis (such as throughout the COVID-19 pandemic) and which currently serves — in cartoon form — as Chung’s profile picture. According to local media reports, Chung spoke in a Clubhouse room for over an hour with fellow Democratic Party of Korea member Jung Cheong-rae. In a public Facebook post yesterday, the prime minister said that “I heard this [app] is ‘hot’ these days so I tried it as a nighttime walk.” He further said “I was a little startled by the unexpected questions and reactions but the new experience was enjoyable. I think I’ll participate from time to time in the future.” Elaborating, he said “the fact that it’s audio-only and everyone can have a conversation without reserve made me think that it’s a better communication tool than any other social media platforms, especially since currently we’re living in the age of non-face-to-face communication.” Discussions in the Clubhouse room included questions asking whether it was really him, to more bread-and-butter policy issues like the high price of real estate and physical abuse in the sports world, which has dominated headlines in recent weeks in local media. While Clubhouse has become something of a fixture for techies and every form of hustle culture connoisseur imaginable, the app has increasingly made forays into politics that are hardly unknown to other social networks. Miami’s mayor Francis Suarez has been on Clubhouse to sell his city’s potential for the tech industry. San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin joined a “debate” on the platform about the future of SF, while NYC mayoral aspirant and all around UBI nerd Andrew Yang joined a discussion about … himself. Meanwhile, Bitcoin aficionado and itinerant Tesla leader Elon Musk has even proposed bringing Vladimir Putin onto Clubhouse for a live fireside chat. Yet, as the platform expands globally, the challenges to its open and free-wheeling if somewhat moderated conversations are coming under closer scrutiny. China has now blocked Clubhouse within its borders after a brief period of uncensored conversation. As Clubhouse continues to garner mainstream legitimacy and interest, questions continue to percolate on the future of the app’s success, such as how it will fund creators and continue to thrive once the world opens up after COVID-19. #wnu #currentnews

NASA picks SpaceX Falcon Heavy for $332M mission to launch lunar Gateway components in 2024 NASA has announced that SpaceX will take two major parts of the Gateway lunar orbiter that will function as a pit stop for future moon missions. The Power and Propulsion Element and Habitation and Logistics Outpost — which together will form the first usable lunar space station — will go up in 2024 on a Falcon Heavy, with an estimated price tag of $332 million. The Falcon Heavy, which provides a far larger lift capacity than SpaceX’s now commonly used Falcon 9, has only had two commercial launches since its successful test launch in early 2018 (with Starman and a Tesla Roadster, you may remember). Arabsat-6A launched in April of 2019, and STP-2 a few months later, but since then the Heavy hasn’t seen any action. (Several missions are planned for the next year, however.) NASA’s selection of the launch vehicle as the one that will bring these two crucial components to lunar orbit is a huge endorsement, however, and may actually snowball into more work down the line if the agency’s own Space Launch System continues to be delayed. The PPE and HALO, as the two pieces are called, provide the essentials for a self-sustaining lunar orbital habitat: essentially the pressurized cabin and the power source that keeps it operational and allows maneuvering. So you could say they’re fundamental. They’re also big, and can’t be sent up in 10 different pieces on smaller rockets. But there are precious few heavy launch vehicles available — and it looks like they decided that SpaceX’s was the best bet, having flown three successful missions already. This mission is valued at $332 million in launch and related costs, so it’s a serious investment that will require a lot of collaboration between SpaceX, NASA, Northrop Grumman (which is building the HALO) and Maxar (making the PPE). For now launch is set for no earlier than may of 2024, but that date may (and in fact is highly likely to) slip as various delays accrue. The whole Artemis program is experiencing a period of reality alignment, and while new target dates haven’t been given for all the ambitious plans made during the last four years, few of the old ones have been repeated the way they were as recently as last fall. Nevertheless even a five or six-year plan to return to the moon’s surface is still quite ambitious, considering — as has become the standard NASA refrain — “we’re going there to stay.” We’ll likely hear more about the new timeline as the agency comes to grips with it itself over the next few months. #wnu

Tesla’s Bitcoin investment could be bad for the company’s climate reputation and its bottom line Tesla’s $1.5 billion investment in Bitcoin may be good for Elon Musk, but it’s definitely risky for the company that made him the world’s richest man, according to investors, analysts and money managers at some of the country’s largest banks. As a standard bearer for the consumer electric vehicle industry and the broader climate tech movement rallying around it, Tesla’s bet to go all in on crypto could damage its climate bonafides and its reputation with customers even as other automakers pour in to the EV market. Given Bitcoin’s current environmental footprint, the deal flies in the face of Tesla’s purported interest in moving the world to cleaner sources of energy and commerce. Until the energy grid decarbonizes in places like Russia and China, mining bitcoin remains a pretty dirty business (from an energy perspective), according to some energy investors who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak about Musk’s plans. “We were talking about people doing this in Russia back in 2018 and how they were tapping coal power to run their mining operations,” one investor said. “The cost per transaction from an energy intensity standpoint has only gotten more intense. I don’t see how those things coalesce, climate and crypto.” The stake makes Tesla one of the largest corporate hodlers of Bitcoin but represents a massive portion of the company’s $19 billion in cash and cash equivalents on hand. “Given the size of their treasury it feels irresponsible, IMO,” wrote one investor whose firm backed Tesla from its earliest days. The company’s move could be seen as another example of the absurdity of U.S. capital markets in today’s investment climate — and the underlying cynicism of some of its biggest beneficiaries. Meanwhile, Bitcoin investors welcomed the move, which sent the value of their holdings rocketing up by roughly 18% over the course of the day. “The announcement that Tesla has diversified its treasury through the addition of bitcoin is not surprising, nor is the assuredness implied by an 8% allocation of cash-on-hand. Equal to Tesla’s R&D expenditure for 2020, this investment is significant to the Company and shows a commitment to maximizing shareholder returns,” wrote Stillmark founding partner Alyse Killeen. “Elon Musk has a long history of operating at the precipice of what’s possible technically and setting the trend of what’s to later become common operationally. I suspect the same will be true here, and that Tesla is the first of a larger cohort of publicly-traded companies that will aim to optimize the returns of their cash via bitcoin.” Industry observers on Wall Street also criticized the company’s big bet on Bitcoin. “Tesla buying $1.5 billion in BTC is interesting. Am assuming they haven’t hedged it, so they will either be cash rich in the future or have a hole in the balance sheet. Elon Musk stays wild,” wrote one capital planning executive at a major Wall Street bank who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the press. “[It’s] not dissimilar from a large company throwing cash into a wildly volatile emerging market currency.” Still, in the short term, the deal is showing dividends. The price of Bitcoin has risen nearly $8,000, or 18.73%, over the course of the day since Tesla made its announcement. But the investment represents the equivalent of the company’s entire research and development budget, as Killeen noted. That’s… something. There’s also the question is whether any regulator will step in to punish Musk. Musk has been tweeting his support for Bitcoin and other, more arcane (or useless) cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin for the past several weeks, in what seems to be a violation of his agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The world’s richest man has previously been fined by regulatory agencies for his tweeting habits. Back in 2018, the SEC charged Musk with fraud for tweets about privatizing the electric vehicle company at $420 per share. Musk eventually settled with the SEC, at the price of his role as chairman of Tesla’s board and a $20 million personal fine — with Tesla paying out another $20 million to the SEC. The volatility of the cryptocurrency could impact more than just Tesla’s bottom line, but also hit its customers should they use the currency to buy cars. “Bitcoin jumped over 15% to a new high of $44,000 on Monday. This sort of hype-based price power should be worrying to investors and consumers alike – especially if this is to be used as medium of exchange,” wrote GlobalData analyst Danyaal Rashid, Head of Thematic Research at GlobalData. “If Elon Musk can help dictate the price of this asset with a tweet or large order, the same could happen to send the price back down. The task of purchasing a vehicle should not be speculative. Consumers who may have thought of buying bitcoin to use as a substitute for fiat – could very easily end up with more or less than they bargained for.” #wnu #currentnews #wafconnect

Tesla summoned by Chinese regulators for quality concerns Tesla, which is seeing rapid growth in China as it ramps up local manufacturing capacity, has been called upon by the Chinese government for talks over quality issues in its electric cars. A group of Chinese authorities, including the country’s top market regulator, cyberspace watchdog and transportation authority, held talks with Tesla after consumers complained about acceleration irregularities, battery fire, software upgrade failures and other vehicle problems, according to a government notice posted late Monday. Tesla said on microblogging platform Weibo that it “sincerely accepts the government departments’ guidance” and will “strictly comply with Chinese laws.” It will also work to strengthen its “internal operational structure and workflow” under the direction of the regulators in order to ensure safety and consumer rights. While its popularity surged in China over the past few years, Tesla has made a series of recalls due to faulty parts or functions in the country. Just before its meeting with the government, the American EV giant recalled 20,428 imported Model S vehicles and 15,698 units of imported Model X, China’s market regulator announced last week. China is an increasingly important and the second-largest market for Tesla. The Gigafactory in Shanghai, where Tesla enjoys tax breaks granted by the local municipal government, has allowed the carmaker to localize procurement and production, thus driving down prices in products like Model 3. China contributed $6.66 billion in revenue for Tesla in 2020, more than doubling the amount from a year before, and accounted for more than 20% of the firm’s total revenues, according to Tesla’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week. In 2019, China made up just around 12% of Tesla’s revenues. Tesla is competing with a handful of well-financed and indigenous electric car startups in China such as Nio and Xpeng, which are both listed in the U.S. For comparison, Xpeng shipped a total of 27,041 vehicles in 2020, while Nio topped that with 43,728 units shipped. These numbers are still fractions of Tesla’s total delivery, which reached 499,647 vehicles in the year. #wnu #currentnews #wafconnect

An Apple car would increase pressure on Tesla and other automakers KEY POINTS Apple is close to finalizing a deal with Hyundai-Kia to manufacture an Apple-branded autonomous electric vehicle, sources previously told CNBC. A so-called Apple Car would put pressure on legacy automakers to increase their self-driving vehicle technologies, much like Tesla has done with EVs. An Apple car – known as Project Titan – has reportedly been on and off for years. Tesla has been called “the Apple of the automotive industry” for the amount of technology in its vehicles. But as Apple is in talks to partner with South Korean automaker Hyundai-Kia for an electric vehicle, what does that mean for Tesla and other automakers? Simply put, it’s complicated. Apple is known for its secrecy and there’s little information regarding what its business model would be for a so-called Apple Car. But overall, the tech giant entering new segments — phones, watches, music, streaming, etc. — has meant significant pressure for legacy companies to match its consumer interface and products. A car would likely be no different. “There’s no question that Apple getting into the auto industry at all is going to put pressure on the rest of the car industry to up their game on their consumer experience,” said Michael Ramsey, vice president, analyst for automotive and smart mobility at research firm Gartner. Ramsey said Apple’s ecosystem could “all be seamlessly integrated into an Apple-specific car,” which no other company other than Google would be able to match. “It means more competition. That’s kind of the bottom line. It’s more competition,” said Stephanie Brinley, principal automotive analyst at IHS Markit. “And it’s also very well-funded competition, if they decided to do this.” As reported earlier this week by CNBC, people familiar with the talks between Apple and Hyundai-Kia said that the electric vehicle is tentatively scheduled to go into production in 2024 at a Kia plant in Georgia, though they said the eventual rollout could be pushed back. They said no agreement has yet been reached between the two companies. In addition, they stressed that Apple may ultimately decide to partner with another automaker separately or in addition to working with Hyundai-Kia. Apple is already in millions of vehicles through partnerships with automakers for its Apple CarPlay, which is software that essentially mirrors much of an iPhone’s display onto a vehicle’s infotainment screen. But actually producing and selling a car, even with a partner such as Hyundai-Kia, isn’t as easy as getting into other consumer segments. Automotive is a capital-intensive industry with long lead times, stricter safety regulations and far narrower margins than consumer electronics. “It is not going to be easy for Apple to break into this space,” Brinley said. “It’s a very complex industry and it doesn’t get un-complexed just because you’re Apple.” Bloomberg reported Friday that the talks between Hyundai-Kia had “paused.” But a car from Apple would likely have the same impact on the auto industry regardless of the company producing the vehicle. Autonomous vehicles To assist in hitting margins even near what the tech giant is used to with its consumer electronics, its “first vehicle” is expected to be autonomous, also known as self-driving. That means it is not designed to be driven by a human, but a computer using a suite of sensors and radar to “see” its environment. Autonomous vehicles have been promised for years, but other than a fleet of retrofitted vehicles with such technologies being operated by Alphabet’s Waymo in Arizona, others such as General Motors, Uber and Lyft have missed goals or completely given up because of the difficulty. An Apple car – known as Project Titan – has been on and off for years. In 2017, Apple secured a permit to test autonomous vehicles in California. The company used already-built vehicles, including Lexus crossovers, and added Apple technology. While driving may seem somewhat simple, humans – pedestrians, bikers, other drivers – and things in our environment such as animals can be unpredictable, making it extremely difficult to program a vehicle to safely react in all situations. “When you look at the driving task, the most basic driving tasks like straight down the road between two lines or going around the corner, it’s not that hard,” said Sam Abuelsamid, principal research analyst at Navigant. “That’s not the part that gets people in trouble. It’s when you start to get into all the unusual scenarios, the edge cases.” Abuelsamid said Apple has the money and potential expertise to develop such a system, but it remains a significantly difficult task. He expects an Apple car wouldn’t initially be for consumers, but services such as delivery and ride-hailing in select markets — areas targeted by many current companies developing self-driving vehicles. “This is not going to be a mainstream product, but more of a premium product, which is typical of Apple because the one consistent thing about Apple, no matter what products they build, is they only get into stuff where they can make a significant profit margin,” he said. “The auto industry is a notoriously low margin business.” Trillion-dollar market potential But that’s the traditional automotive industry. The potential for autonomous vehicles for deliveries and ride-hailing/ride-sharing services is enormous. It takes the most expensive part of such businesses – the physical driver – out of the equation, allowing for increased profits. Cruise, a majority-owned autonomous vehicle subsidiary of GM, last year valued the autonomous vehicle industry at $8 trillion. Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty pegged the global auto and mobility market even higher at $10 trillion. “Smartphones are a $500bn annual TAM (Total addressable market). Apple has about one-third of this market. The mobility market is $10 trillion. So Apple would only need a 2% share of this market to be the size of their iPhone business,” Huberty wrote in a research note in January. It’s unclear at this time what Apple’s exact plans would be other than it is potentially going to have Hyundai-Kia produce a vehicle. Its business model has historically been selling products to consumers, but it has been growing more into services to rely less on such sales. CNBC has reached out to Apple for comment. Hyundai-Kia declined to comment. “When I look at Apple and the potential to build a car, I’ve always been a big fan,” Gartner’s Ramsey said. “I love the idea of it. It makes sense to me in the sense that if a car is becoming a consumer electronic device, in all the same ways that our really advanced smartphones and other devices are powered by batteries and updated by software, Apple should be in this business Source CNBC #wnu #currentnews #wafconnect

Tesla buys $1.5B in bitcoin, may accept the cryptocurrency as payment in the future Today in an SEC filing, Tesla disclosed that it has acquired $1.5 billion in bitcoin, the popular cryptocurrency. Moreover, the company noted that it may also accept bitcoin in the future as a form of payment for its cars, though it did allow that there is some regulatory uncertainty around that effort. As the news broke, the price of bitcoin instantly rose by around 7% to more than $40,000 per coin. Tesla had previously telegraphed that it had an interest in the cryptocurrency, however to purchase such a large block of the coin is notable. In its filing, Tesla writes that earlier this year it “updated [its] investment policy to provide [it] with more flexibility to further diversify and maximize returns on [its] cash that is not required to maintain adequate operating liquidity,” adding that it has the option of putting cash into “certain alternative reserve assets” that include “digital assets, gold bullion, gold exchange-traded funds and other assets as specified in the future.” Under that banner, the firm has “invested an aggregate $1.50 billion in bitcoin,” going on to say that the well-known electric car company “may acquire and hold digital assets from time to time or long-term.” That’s enough wiggle room for Tesla to do whatever it wants with its cash and the crypto markets. But the company wasn’t done, completing its news-drop by adding that the company “expect[s] to begin accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for [its] products in the near future, subject to applicable laws and initially on a limited basis, which [it] may or may not liquidate upon receipt.” Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made waves in recent days by pumping a silly cryptocurrency joke called Dogecoin; this is something more material. Tesla is selecting bitcoin as the cryptocurrency of its choice, helping to further cement the blockchain as the world’s best known. And that it may accept bitcoin-denominated transactions in the future could help bitcoin retain both value, and exchange volume, though we probably repeat ourselves. It’s worth noting that Musk himself has also personally sent bitcoin prices higher in past using his social presence, including by changing his bio to just the single word, before its price faded back after he removed it earlier this month. The car company then spends three paragraphs saying that its choice is risky. That’s an understatement. Then again, what is Musk if not entertaining? #wnu #currentnews #wafconnect

What will Amazon founder Jeff Bezos do next? A quarter of a century after he founded Amazon in a Seattle garage, Jeff Bezos announced this week that he is preparing to loosen his grip on the $1.7tn (£1.2tn) company. The billionaire – who until he was recently overtaken by Tesla’s Elon Musk was the world’s richest person – will this summer pass the reins to top lieutenant Andy Jassy and Bezos will become executive chairman. Few employees in the sphere conservatories at Amazon’s sprawling Seattle campus headquarters reckon Bezos will relinquish much of his iron grip on the company’s day-to-day decision making. But Bezos, 57, told his 1.3 million employees (who he refers to as “fellow Amazonians”) that “as much as I still tap dance into the office, I’m excited about this transition”. “I’ve never had more energy, and this isn’t about retiring,” he said. “I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives … I’m super passionate about the impact I think these organisations can have.” Those organisations were: the Day One Fund; the Blue Origin space company; the Bezos Earth Fund; and the Washington Post newspaper. Here we look at what Bezos will do next with those interests. Day One Fund Bezos is unique among the world’s five wealthiest people as the only one not to have signed the Giving Pledge, a philanthropic initiative created by Bill Gates and investor Warren Buffett to encourage the world’s richest people to commit to giving at least half their wealth to charity. In 2018 he gave $2bn, amounting to just over 1% of his wealth, to the Bezos Day One Fund to help address homelessness and improve education for children in low-income families. Bezos said his decision to use the fund to support nonprofits that focus on homeless services was inspired by Mary’s Place, a Seattle-based organisation with a simple motto: “No child sleeps outside.” However, the charity has been criticised for only slowly ramping up its donations to good causes. Earlier this year it named 42 recipients from 24 states that will receive donations totalling $106m. Blue Origin When attending high school near Miami, Bezos decided he wanted to go into space when he grew up. But, his ambition was not to be an astronaut; he wanted to colonise space. He was named valedictorian of his high school class and when he graduated in 1982, the Miami Herald asked for an interview. The 18-year-old Bezos told the paper he wanted to “build space hotels, amusement parks and colonies for 2 million or 3 million people who would be in orbit”. “The whole idea is to preserve the Earth,” he told the paper. “The goal was to be able to evacuate humans. The planet would become a park.” Now, Bezos owns Blue Origin a space company that aims to make space travel cheaper and slightly more accessible with reusable launch vehicles. The company, which uses the motto Gradatim Ferociter, Latin for “step by step, ferociously”, is testing a moon lander called Blue Moon and hopes to launch its first mission in 2024. In his race to commercialise space Bezos is competing against Musk’s SpaceX. Bezos Earth Fund Last year Bezos posted a picture of the Earth on Instagram, and announced the creation of his new project the Bezos Earth Fund, a $10bn initiative to support scientists, activists and charities working to tackle the climate crisis. “Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet,” he said. “I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change on this planet we all share. This global initiative will fund scientists, activists, NGOs – any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world. We can save Earth. It’s going to take collective action from big companies, small companies, nation states, global organisations, and individuals. ⁣⁣Earth is the one thing we all have in common – let’s protect it, together.⁣⁣⁣” In November he announced 16 initial recipients of the fund, who will receive a collective $791m. They include The Nature Conservancy, Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense Fund, World Resources Institute and the World Wildlife Fund, which will each receive $100 million. Bezos said, again on Instagram, that he had spent months learning about the grantees’ work and said they were all “working on innovative, ambitious and needle-moving solutions”. It is “just the beginning”, he added. The Washington Post Bezos bought the Washington Post, famed the world over for its Watergate investigation that led to the resignation of Richard Nixon, in 2013 for $250m. He has been credited with bringing the paper into the digital era after decades of decline and concern about its future as a going concern. The Post was given prominent position on Amazon devices such as the Kindle. Reporters and editors who might have feared that Bezos would interfere with editorial decision-making, say that the billionaire has focused on the technology side of the business and has not used it to promote his own agenda. “I didn’t know anything about the newspaper business … But I did know something about the internet,” Bezos said in an interview soon after he took over. … and still at Amazon Those 1.3 million Amazonians should not think they’ve seen the last of their boss. Amazon’s chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky told reporters last night that: “Jeff is really not going anywhere. It’s more of a restructuring of who’s doing what.” #wnu #wafconnect #currentnews