News
GM employs Tesla-esque direct-to-consumer sales strategy in China
General Motors (GM) plans to launch a wholly-owned direct sales platform, Durant Guild, in China. With Durant Guild, GM hopes to revitalize Chinese consumers’ interest in its brand and increase sales in the country.
What is Durant Guild?
Durant Guild is named after GM’s founder William Durant. Felix Weller will head the platform. Through the direct sales platform, the legacy automaker plans to import and sell vehicles in China that have only been sold in the United States thus far, like the Hummer EV pickup truck or its SUV counterpart.
Durant Guild will adopt similar sales and marketing strategies that worked for Tesla and Apple. The direct sales platform will organize invitation-only events. It will also set up experience centers and pop-up shops throughout China.
However, the GM seems determined for Durant Guild to develop its own presence in the country. Durant Guild plans to create events and shops in unique locations to generate interest. For example, Weller shared that the platform will try to place experience centers in areas besides shopping malls, like Tesla and other EV startups.
Durant Guild’s Goals
The head of GM China, Julian Blissett, noted that the OEM’s goal with Durant Guild isn’t to sell volume but instead change the perception Chinese consumers have about General Motors. GM wants Durant Guild to build interest in cars previously only sold in the US. It hopes that some of that interest goes back to the vehicles GM is currently selling in China.
“Durant Guild is not a volume play, but if we do a good job and the products sell well, it will create a lot of buzz around Cadillac and Chevy and will help how people perceive our products and technology,” Blissett commented.
As per Reuters, General Motors’ sales of flagship brands like Buick, Cadillac, and Chevrolet have continued to plummet over the past five years. GM sales in China have dropped to 1.3 million cars a year. The legacy automaker’s market share slices have been eaten up by smart electric vehicles, like Tesla or China-based EV startups like NIO and BYD.
Challenges to GM’s Direct-to-Consumer Strategy
Blissett mentioned a shift in the Chinese market for “halo cars.” Consumers in cities have specifically started to show growing interest in performance vehicles for racing and SUVs for more off-road adventures. So General Motors hopes to attract three types of customers with Durant Guild: nature lovers; executive VIPs; and young, sporty drivers.
Chee-Kiang Lim, US-based Urban Science’s Managing Director for China, advised that GM also consider Chinese consumers’ growing interest in smart, connected features.
“What Chinese consumers want is to extend their digital lifestyles to their cars. Cars from foreign brands designed and engineered overseas are increasingly not meeting these needs,” he said.
“If Durant can overcome this bias and provide high-tech, personalized features and seamless connectivity to China’s digital ecosystems, its odds of success in the China marketplace will be higher,” Lim added.
Given the growing interest in more tech-savvy vehicles in China, General Motors would have to carefully select the cars it offers under Durant Guild. Tesla vehicles and even units from EV startups like NIO understand the tech and features people want integrated into their cars. General Motors would need to introduce similar tech or features in its vehicles to compete with newer, smarter cars.
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News
These Tesla, X, and xAI engineers were just poached by OpenAI
The news is the latest in an ongoing feud between Elon Musk and the Sam Altman-run firm OpenAI.
OpenAI, the xAI competitor for which Elon Musk previously served as a boardmember and helped to co-found, has reportedly poached high-level engineers from Tesla, along with others from xAI, X, and still others.
On Tuesday, Wired reported that OpenAI hired four high-level engineers from Tesla, xAI, and X, as seen in an internal Slack message sent by co-founder Greg Brockman. The engineers include Tesla Vice President of Software Engineering David Lau, X and xAI’s head of infrastructure engineering Uday Ruddarraju, and fellow xAI infrastructure engineer Mike Dalton. The hiring spree also included Angela Fan, an AI researcher from Meta.
“We’re excited to welcome these new members to our scaling team,” said Hannah Wong, an OpenAI spokesperson. “Our approach is to continue building and bringing together world-class infrastructure, research, and product teams to accelerate our mission and deliver the benefits of AI to hundreds of millions of people.”
Lau has been in his position as Tesla’s VP of Software Engineering since 2017, after previously working for the company’s firmware, platforms, and system integration divisions.
“It has become incredibly clear to me that accelerating progress towards safe, well-aligned artificial general intelligence is the most rewarding mission I could imagine for the next chapter of my career,” Lau said in a statement to Wired.
🚨Optimistic projections point to xAI possibly attaining profitability by 2027, according to Bloomberg's sources.
If accurate, this would be quite a feat for xAI. OpenAI, its biggest rival, is still looking at 2029 as the year it could become cash flow positive.💰 https://t.co/pE5Z9daez8
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 18, 2025
READ MORE ON OPENAI: Elon Musk’s OpenAI lawsuit clears hurdle as trial looms
At xAI, Ruddarraju and Dalton both played a large role in developing the Colossus supercomputer, which is comprised of over 200,000 GPUs. One of the major ongoing projects at OpenAI is the company’s Stargate program,
“Infrastructure is where research meets reality, and OpenAI has already demonstrated this successfully,” Ruddarraju told Wired in another statement. “Stargate, in particular, is an infrastructure moonshot that perfectly matches the ambitious, systems-level challenges I love taking on.”
Elon Musk is currently in the process of suing OpenAI for shifting toward a for-profit model, as well as for accepting an investment of billions of dollars from Microsoft. OpenAI retaliated with a counterlawsuit, in which it alleges that Musk is interfering with the company’s business and engaging in unfair competition practices.
Elon Musk confirms Grok 4 launch on July 9 with livestream event
News
SpaceX share sale expected to back $400 billion valuation
The new SpaceX valuation would represent yet another record-high as far as privately-held companies in the U.S. go.
A new report this week suggests that Elon Musk-led rocket company SpaceX is considering an insider share sale that would value the company at $400 billion.
SpaceX is set to launch a primary fundraising round and sell a small number of new shares to investors, according to the report from Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter who asked to remain anonymous due to the information not yet being public. Additionally, the company would sell shares from employees and early investors in a follow-up round, while the primary round would determine the price for the secondary round.
The valuation would represent the largest in history from a privately-owned company in the U.S., surpassing SpaceX’s previous record of $350 billion after a share buyback in December. Rivaling company valuations include ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, as well as OpenAI.
Bloomberg went on to say that a SpaceX representative didn’t respond to a request for comment at the time of publishing. The publication also notes that the details of such a deal could still change, especially depending on interest from the insider sellers and share buyers.
Axiom’s Ax-4 astronauts arriving to the ISS! https://t.co/WQtTODaYfj
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 26, 2025
READ MORE ON SPACEX: SpaceX to decommission Dragon spacecraft in response to Pres. Trump war of words with Elon Musk
SpaceX’s valuation comes from a few different key factors, especially including the continued expansion of the company’s Starlink satellite internet company. According to the report, Starlink accounts for over half of the company’s yearly revenue. Meanwhile, the company produced its 10 millionth Starlink kit last month.
The company also continues to develop its Starship reusable rocket program, despite the company experiencing an explosion of the rocket on the test stand in Texas last month.
The company has also launched payloads for a number of companies and government contracts. In recent weeks, SpaceX launched Axiom’s Ax-4 mission, sending four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) for a 14-day stay to work on around 60 scientific experiments. The mission was launched using the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and a new Crew Dragon capsule, while the research is expected to span a range of fields including biology, material and physical sciences, and demonstrations of specialized technology.
News
Tesla Giga Texas continues to pile up with Cybercab castings
Tesla sure is gathering a lot of Cybercab components around the Giga Texas complex.
Tesla may be extremely tight-lipped about the new affordable models that it was expected to start producing in the first half of the year, but the company sure is gathering a lot of Cybercab castings around the Giga Texas complex. This is, at least, as per recent images taken of the facility.
Cybercab castings galore
As per longtime drone operator Joe Tegtmeyer, who has been chronicling the developments around the Giga Texas complex for several years now, the electric vehicle maker seems to be gathering hundreds of Cybercab castings around the factory.
Based on observations from industry watchers, the drone operator appears to have captured images of about 180 front and 180 rear Cybercab castings in his recent photos.
Considering the number of castings that were spotted around Giga Texas, it would appear that Tesla may indeed be preparing for the vehicle’s start of trial production sometime later this year. Interestingly enough, large numbers of Cybercab castings have been spotted around the Giga Texas complex in the past few months.
Cybercab production
The Cybercab is expected to be Tesla’s first vehicle that will adopt the company’s “unboxed” process. As per Tesla’s previous update letters, volume production of the Cybercab should start in 2026. So far, prototypes of the Cybercab have been spotted testing around Giga Texas, and expectations are high that the vehicle’s initial trial production should start this year.
With the start of Tesla’s dedicated Robotaxi service around Austin, it might only be a matter of time before the Cybercab starts being tested on public roads as well. When this happens, it would be very difficult to deny the fact that Tesla really does have a safe, working autonomous driving system, and it has the perfect vehicle for it, too.
These Tesla, X, and xAI engineers were just poached by OpenAI
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Tesla Giga Texas continues to pile up with Cybercab castings
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