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Tesla Roadster owned by Hollywood legend to be auctioned for cancer research

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An Original Tesla Roadster owned by Hollywood superstar Olivia Newton-John has become available for purchase in an online auction, where a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the “Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Center” in her hometown of Melbourne, Australia.

In 2010, the actress, most famous for her 1978 role in the musical “Grease” with John Travolta, and her husband, John Easterling, purchased the 742nd Roadster produced by Tesla Motors. It is estimated to be worth between $80,000 and $100,000 according to Julienslive.com, the site responsible for handling the auction.

The original Roadster available for auction features a one-speed direct-drive transmission, tachometer, engine immobilizer, traction control, 4-sensor 4-wheel anti-lock braking system, rear-wheel drive, adjustable suspension, front and rear ventilated brakes, forged wheels, bonded aluminum chassis, and carbon fiber body.

Olivia Newton-John’s Original Tesla Roadster is available for auction on Julien’s Live. (Credit: Julien’s Live)

Bidding started at $20,000, but the vehicle is currently at $32,500. Any person interested in owning the 248 horsepower car capable of 128 MPH and a 0-60 MPH time of 3.7 seconds should place their maximum bid price on the vehicle’s auction page by November 2 at 10 AM PDT. The winning bidder will receive the Roadster, along with the original price sticker, documentation and paperwork for the history of the car, and the original owner’s manual.

Newton-John was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992. Since her diagnosis, she has become a key figure in health awareness and cancer prevention. Newton-John and Easterling, who is described as an eco-entrepreneur and is the Founder/CEO of Amazon Herb Company, are both environmentally conscious. This mentality lead to the purchase of their Tesla Roadster in 2010. In 2012, the couple was awarded with the ACEER Legacy Award for their efforts to support the solving of environmental issues, including preserving the Amazon Rainforests.

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Tesla’s Original Roadster was produced by the Silicon Valley-based carmaker from 2008 to 2012. It was a groundbreaking vehicle, as it was the first highway legal car to use lithium-ion batteries as its power source. It was also the first all-electric car to be able to travel over 200 miles on a single charge. The company has stated during a Security and Exchange Commission Fiscal Year report for 2012 they had “delivered approximately 2,450 Tesla Roadsters to customers in over 30 countries.”

As the Next-Gen Tesla Roadster will be available for purchase and will begin production in 2020, the Original Roadster has become a true driver’s car for EV enthusiasts. Just like a 1960s Mustang is one of the most sought after vehicles for Ford Motor Company supporters, the Original Roadster pretty much falls into the same category. It is the original vehicle Tesla Motors manufactured, and will always be among a hardcore Tesla fan’s wish list. People interested in owning one of Tesla’s first thousand vehicles should contribute to Newton-John’s auction, as it not only will bring an original piece of electric vehicle history to your garage but will also directly benefit the research and development of cancer prevention.

Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Elon Musk

Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO

SpaceX has secured an option to acquire Cursor AI for $60 billion ahead of its historic IPO.

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SpaceX announced today it has struck a deal with AI coding startup Cursor, securing the option to acquire the company outright for $60 billion later this year, while committing $10 billion for joint development work in the interim. The announcement described the partnership as building “the world’s best coding and knowledge work AI,” and comes just days after Cursor was separately reported to be raising $2 billion at a valuation above $50 billion.

The move makes strategic sense given where each company currently stands. Cursor currently pays retail prices to Anthropic and OpenAI to the same companies competing directly against it with Claude Code and Codex. That means every dollar of revenue Cursor earns partially funds its own competition. With SpaceX bringing computational infrastructure to the Cursor platform, that could reduce Cursor’s dependence on OpenAI and Anthropic’s Claude AI as its providers. Access to SpaceX’s Colossus supercomputer, with compute equivalent to one million Nvidia H100 chips, gives Cursor the infrastructure to run and train its own models at a scale it could never afford independently. That one change restructures the entire unit economics of the business.

Elon Musk teases crazy outlook for xAI against its competitors

Cursor’s $2 billion in annualized revenue and enterprise reach across more than half of Fortune 500 companies gives SpaceX something its xAI subsidiary currently lacks, which is a proven, fast-growing software business with real enterprise distribution.

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For Cursor, SpaceX’s $10 billion in joint development funding is transformational. Cursor raised $3.3 billion across all of 2025 to reach that $2 billion in revenue. A single $10 billion commitment from SpaceX, even as a development payment rather than an acquisition, dwarfs everything Cursor has raised in its entire existence. That capital accelerates product development, enterprise sales infrastructure, and proprietary model training simultaneously.

The timing is deliberate. SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC on April 1, 2026, targeting a June listing at a $1.75 trillion valuation, in what would be the largest public offering in history. The company is expected to begin its roadshow the week of June 8, with Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley serving as underwriters. Adding Cursor to the portfolio before that roadshow gives IPO investors a concrete enterprise software revenue story to price in, alongside rockets and satellite internet.

The deal also addresses a weakness that became visible after February’s xAI merger. Several xAI co-founders departed following that acquisition, and SpaceX had already hired two Cursor engineers, signaling where its AI talent strategy was heading. Cursor, for its part, faces a pricing disadvantage competing against Anthropic’s Claude Code.

Whether SpaceX exercises the full acquisition option before its IPO or after remains the open question. Either way, this deal reshapes what investors will be buying into when SpaceX goes public.

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Elon Musk

Tesla is sending its humanoid Optimus robot to the Boston Marathon

Tesla’s Optimus robot is heading to the Boston Marathon finish line

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Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot will be stationed at the Tesla showroom at 888 Boylston Street in Boston, right along the final stretch of the Boston Marathon today, ready to cheer on runners and pose for photos with spectators.

According to a Tesla email shared by content creator Sawyer Merritt on X, Optimus will be at the Boston Boylston Street showroom on April 20, coinciding with Marathon Monday weekend. The Boston Marathon finishes on Boylston Street, and the surrounding area draws hundreds of thousands of spectators along with international broadcast coverage. Placing Optimus there puts it in front of a massive public audience at zero advertising cost.

The Tesla showroom is at 888 Boylston Street, between Gloucester Street and Fairfield Street. The final mile of the marathon runs directly along Boylston Street, with runners passing the big stores before reaching the finish line at Copley Square.

Optimus was first announced at Tesla’s AI Day event on August 19, 2021, when Elon Musk presented a vision for a general-purpose robot designed to take on dangerous, repetitive, and unwanted tasks. In March 2026, Optimus appeared at the Appliance and Electronics World Expo in Shanghai, where on-site staff stated that mass production of the robot could begin by the end of 2026. Before that, it showed up at the Tesla Hollywood Diner opening in July 2025 and at a Miami showroom event in December 2025.

Tesla’s well-calculated display of Optimus gives the public a low-pressure first encounter with a robot that Tesla is preparing  to soon deploy at scale. The company has previously indicated plans to manufacture Optimus robots at its Fremont facility at up to 1 million units annually, with an Optimus production line at Gigafactory Texas targeting 10 million units per year.

Tesla showcases Optimus humanoid robot at AWE 2026 in Shanghai

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Musk has said that Optimus “has the potential to be more significant than the vehicle business over time,” and separately that roughly 80 percent of Tesla’s future value will come from the robot program. Whether that holds depends on production execution. For now, Boston gets a preview of what that future looks like, standing at the finish line on Boylston Street while 32,000 runners pass by.

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Elon Musk

Tesla’s golden era is no longer a tagline

Tesla “golden era” teaser video highlights the future of transportation and why car ownership itself may be the next thing to change.

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Tesla Cybercab Golden Era is Here (Credit: Tesla)
Tesla Cybercab Golden Era is Here (Credit: Tesla)

The golden age of autonomous ridesharing is arriving, and Tesla is making sure we can all picture a future that looks like the future. A recent teaser posted to X shows a Cybercab parked outside a home, and with a clear message that your everyday life may soon look like this when the driverless vehicles shows up at your door.

Tesla has begun the rollout of its Robotaxi service across US cities, and the production of its dedicated, fully-autonomous Cybercab vehicle. The first Cybercab rolled off the Giga Texas assembly line on February 17, 2026, with volume production now targeted for this month. Additionally, the Robotaxi service built around it is already running, without human drivers, in US cities.

Tesla Cybercab production ignites with 60 units spotted at Giga Texas

The Cybercab is built without a steering wheel, pedals, or side mirrors, designed from the ground up for unsupervised autonomous operation. Musk described the manufacturing approach as closer to consumer electronics than traditional car production, targeting a cycle time of one unit every ten seconds at full scale.

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Drone footage from April 13, 2026 captured over 50 Cybercab units on the Giga Texas campus, with several clustered near the crash testing facility. Musk has noted that Tesla plans to sell the Cybercab to consumers for under $30,000, and owners will be able to add their vehicles to the Tesla robotaxi network when not in personal use, potentially generating income to offset the vehicle’s purchase cost. That model changes the math on vehicle ownership in a meaningful way, making a car something closer to a depreciating asset that can also earn by paying itself off and generate a profit.

During Tesla’s Q4 earnings call, the company confirmed plans to expand the Robotaxi program to seven new cities in the first half of 2026, including Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, and Las Vegas. The service already runs without safety drivers in Austin, and public road testing of the Cybercab has expanded to five states, including California, Texas, New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts.

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