Good morning.Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast has been on fire lately, and I wanted to draw your attention to it.
A number of top tech folk (and Fortune Brainstorm speakers, ahem!) have joined hosts Diane Brady and Kristin Stoller in our NYC studio recently.
Among them: Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone, computing pioneer Daphne Koller, Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman, and Dropbox CEO Drew Houston. And that’s just in the last two months.
Add it to your playlist via your pod purveyor of choice, is all I’m sayin’.
Today’s tech news below. —Andrew Nusca
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Global markets brace for Nvidia earnings
Nvidia’s earnings aren’t just about Nvidia anymore.
Constituting 8% of the market-cap-weighted S&P 500 index and with an unrivaled grip on the chips that power generative AI, Nvidia sees its results treated more like a macroeconomic indicator by Wall Street than as a report card on a single company.
Investors are bracing for the company’s latest quarterly results due after today’s market close, with trading in Nvidia options implying expectations that the stock will move 6%, up or down—equal to a $260 billion change in Nvidia’s market value.
In the three months since the company last gave investors a quarterly update, Nvidia’s stock has surged 35%.
But the tension surrounding what is already the most closely watched earnings event of the season has been ratcheted up by recent jitters over what some worry is a dangerous financial bubble in AI-related stocks.
Uncertainty about Nvidia’s China business also looms large.
Wall Street analysts are looking for Nvidia’s Q2 revenue to surge 53% year over year to $46 billion, at the high end of Nvidia’s guidance, with earnings per share of $1.01. Data center sales, the crux of Nvidia’s business, are expected to come in close to $40 billion.
But with Nvidia’s shares having gained so much in recent months, a miss on Wednesday, or cautious guidance tied to China restrictions, could send the stock plummeting.
Jack Gold, founder and principal analyst at J. Gold Associates, told Fortune that Nvidia now has two primary groups to please: stockholders and the Trump administration.
“They’re caught,” he says, “between a rock and a hard place.” —Sharon Goldman
Tesla robotaxis are being tested in Las Vegas tunnels
Autonomous testing of Tesla cars has begun in the 3.5-mile tunnel system that Elon Musk’s Boring Company operates below the Las Vegas Convention Center, Fortune has learned.
Steve Hill, CEO of city marketing organization the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, says the autonomous testing had begun prior to Tesla’s robotaxi launch in June—at the end of 2024—and that no passengers have been in vehicles during the testing.
Thus far, all of the initial testing has been done with the standard Full Self-Driving (FSD) software that consumers can get in their personal Tesla vehicles, and with a Boring Company safety operator in the driver’s seat, according to Hill.
Hill added that Boring Company is operating the vehicles, but was unsure of Tesla’s exact role in the testing apart from furnishing the vehicles and the self-driving software.
There have been no scrapes or accidents thus far, though safety drivers have “periodically” had to intervene and take control of the vehicles, Hill said.
The Boring Company and Elon Musk have repeatedly suggested that the Teslas driving below Las Vegas will eventually drive themselves, but until now, there has been no firm timeline for when that process would formally begin.
Boring Company, which received initial approvals to construct a 68-mile underground taxi system below Las Vegas, still has not received the necessary permits to dig within city limits, a Las Vegas spokesman confirmed. (The Las Vegas Convention Center tunnel is technically in Clark County.)
For now, Boring Company is in the process of expanding its tunnel system and fleet of human drivers—currently working on an underground road to the Las Vegas airport. —Jessica Mathews
Family of teen who died by suicide sues OpenAI
The parents of a 16-year-old California boy have sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman alleging that ChatGPT coached him in planning and taking his own life earlier this year.
In a matter of months, ChatGPT evolved from being Adam Raine’s homework assistant to being his “suicide coach,” according to his parents Matt and Maria Raine. It allegedly affirmed his feelings that “life is meaningless” and worked with him to plan a “beautiful suicide.”
“ChatGPT was functioning exactly as designed,” the lawsuit reads, “to continually encourage and validate whatever Adam expressed, including his most harmful and self-destructive thoughts, in a way that felt deeply personal.”
The lawsuit also claims that OpenAI ignored safety issues as it pushed to launch its GPT-4o model and that the company intentionally designed ChatGPT to encourage psychological dependency.
The suit was filed in San Francisco Superior Court and accuses the defendants of wrongful death, negligence, product liability, and failure to warn consumers.
The Raines are seeking damages for their son’s death as well as a court order to prevent others from experiencing the same thing.
OpenAI told the New York Times that ChatGPT’s safeguards—"such as directing people to crisis helplines and referring them to real-world resources”—work best “in common, short exchanges.”
It added: “We’ve learned over time that they can sometimes become less reliable in long interactions where parts of the model’s safety training may degrade.” —AN
More tech
—DOGE puts SSNs at risk. The organization uploaded Social Security numbers for hundreds of millions of Americans to an insecure cloud server, a whistleblower says.
—Anthropic reaches settlement in copyright class action lawsuit brought by authors.
—Meta to launch super PAC. “Tens of millions” of dollars reportedly committed to light-touch AI policy in California.
—Apple AI acquisition? Execs reportedly discussed buying Mistral and Perplexity.
—Okta beats on Q2 earnings. Shares jumped 7% after the company posted better-than-expected quarterly results and a full-year outlook.
—Airbnb’s Brian Chesky: Still in Founder Mode, still treating dozens of employees as direct reports (whether they are or not).
—MongoDB shares jump 28%. A big beat on quarterly revenue and profit, plus a boost to its full-year guidance.
—Mark Cuban’s advice to new grads: Learn how to implement AI and secure jobs at companies who aren’t big enough to have AI experts on staff.
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