Tesla faces a new lawsuit alleging severe harassment of Black employees at its Fremont, California factory, as filed by a federal civil rights agency this week.
On Thursday, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a lawsuit against Tesla in federal court, claiming that, since 2015, the company’s Black workers have been subject to racist slurs and graffiti, including images of swastikas and nooses, according to a report from Reuters.
The suit is just the latest in allegations of racial discrimination at the automaker’s Fremont, California factory, and it comes just over a week after another lawsuit claiming toxic work environments at Tesla’s factories was dismissed.
According to this week’s lawsuit, Tesla hasn’t investigated the claims of racist conduct since the EEOC first raised them, and it also claims that the automaker has fired some employees who reported cases of harassment. Tesla has said in the past that it doesn’t tolerate any racial discrimination, adding that it takes complaints from its workers very seriously.
The lawsuit comes after it was found that the EEOC was investigating Tesla last year, with the agency saying that it discovered “reasonable cause” to believe the automaker went against federal discrimination laws. The EEOC then tried to enter into a settlement with Tesla, though discussions to settle reportedly failed. Investigations began when EEOC chair Charlotte Burrows filed an internal complaint with the commission, considered a charge against Tesla.
“Every employee deserves to have their civil rights respected, and no worker should endure the kind of shameful racial bigotry our investigation revealed,” Burrows said.
Reuters notes that the EEOC typically settles lawsuits directly with employers, adding that it’s somewhat uncommon for the agency’s cases to make it to trial.
The suit also represents the first set of federal charges brought against Tesla for allegations of racial discrimination, with similar lawsuits previously arising from the state of California and past employees. Stephen Diamond, a Santa Clara University law professor who has previously advised Tesla investors on social responsibility, notes that the escalation to the federal level could make it harder for the automaker to defend itself against allegations of discrimination.
“If the federal government gets involved, it certainly adds credibility to the claims,” Diamond said. “Major institutional investors like pension funds will be very concerned about this type of behavior.”
The lawsuit is seeking to make Tesla pay compensation and punitive damages to an unspecified number of its Black workers at the Fremont location, and it would also force the automaker to improve policies related to discrimination and retaliation.
Tesla also faces a racial discrimination case from the California Civil Rights Department (DCR), which is considered a counterpart of the EEOC’s on the state level. That particular suit alleges that Tesla discriminated against Black workers in decisions about wages, promotions and general work assignments. Tesla requested that the DCR dismiss the case last year, saying it was politically motivated, though a judge denied the request.
In addition, a former Black contract elevator operator at the Fremont factory, Owen Diaz, is now seeking his third trial with Tesla from a 2017 lawsuit alleging racial discrimination. In the suit, Diaz said he was told to “go back to Africa” and was called the N-word without any action taken by the automaker despite his repeated complaints. A jury awarded Diaz $3.2 million in April after he rejected a separate payout in 2021 that the judge had reduced from $137 million to $15 million.
Tesla is also facing a class-action lawsuit from around 240 employees in California, claiming that the company mistreated Black workers at the Fremont factory.
Former Tesla employee looks to add almost 240 plaintiffs in racism lawsuit
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News
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang explains difference between Tesla FSD and Alpamayo
“Tesla’s FSD stack is completely world-class,” the Nvidia CEO said.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has offered high praise for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system during a Q&A at CES 2026, calling it “world-class” and “state-of-the-art” in design, training, and performance.
More importantly, he also shared some insights about the key differences between FSD and Nvidia’s recently announced Alpamayo system.
Jensen Huang’s praise for Tesla FSD
Nvidia made headlines at CES following its announcement of Alpamayo, which uses artificial intelligence to accelerate the development of autonomous driving solutions. Due to its focus on AI, many started speculating that Alpamayo would be a direct rival to FSD. This was somewhat addressed by Elon Musk, who predicted that “they will find that it’s easy to get to 99% and then super hard to solve the long tail of the distribution.”
During his Q&A, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was asked about the difference between FSD and Alpamayo. His response was extensive:
“Tesla’s FSD stack is completely world-class. They’ve been working on it for quite some time. It’s world-class not only in the number of miles it’s accumulated, but in the way it’s designed, the way they do training, data collection, curation, synthetic data generation, and all of their simulation technologies.
“Of course, the latest generation is end-to-end Full Self-Driving—meaning it’s one large model trained end to end. And so… Elon’s AD system is, in every way, 100% state-of-the-art. I’m really quite impressed by the technology. I have it, and I drive it in our house, and it works incredibly well,” the Nvidia CEO said.
Nvidia’s platform approach vs Tesla’s integration
Huang also stated that Nvidia’s Alpamayo system was built around a fundamentally different philosophy from Tesla’s. Rather than developing self-driving cars itself, Nvidia supplies the full autonomous technology stack for other companies to use.
“Nvidia doesn’t build self-driving cars. We build the full stack so others can,” Huang said, explaining that Nvidia provides separate systems for training, simulation, and in-vehicle computing, all supported by shared software.
He added that customers can adopt as much or as little of the platform as they need, noting that Nvidia works across the industry, including with Tesla on training systems and companies like Waymo, XPeng, and Nuro on vehicle computing.
“So our system is really quite pervasive because we’re a technology platform provider. That’s the primary difference. There’s no question in our mind that, of the billion cars on the road today, in another 10 years’ time, hundreds of millions of them will have great autonomous capability. This is likely one of the largest, fastest-growing technology industries over the next decade.”
He also emphasized Nvidia’s open approach, saying the company open-sources its models and helps partners train their own systems. “We’re not a self-driving car company. We’re enabling the autonomous industry,” Huang said.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk confirms xAI’s purchase of five 380 MW natural gas turbines
The deal, which was confirmed by Musk on X, highlights xAI’s effort to aggressively scale its operations.
xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, has purchased five additional 380 MW natural gas turbines from South Korea’s Doosan Enerbility to power its growing supercomputer clusters.
The deal, which was confirmed by Musk on X, highlights xAI’s effort to aggressively scale its operations.
xAI’s turbine deal details
News of xAI’s new turbines was shared on social media platform X, with user @SemiAnalysis_ stating that the turbines were produced by South Korea’s Doosan Enerbility. As noted in an Asian Business Daily report, Doosan Enerbility announced last October that it signed a contract to supply two 380 MW gas turbines for a major U.S. tech company. Doosan later noted in December that it secured an order for three more 380 MW gas turbines.
As per the X user, the gas turbines would power an additional 600,000+ GB200 NVL72 equivalent size cluster. This should make xAI’s facilities among the largest in the world. In a reply, Elon Musk confirmed that xAI did purchase the turbines. “True,” Musk wrote in a post on X.
xAI’s ambitions
Recent reports have indicated that xAI closed an upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, exceeding the initial $15 billion target to fuel rapid infrastructure scaling and AI product development. The funding, as per the AI startup, “will accelerate our world-leading infrastructure buildout, enable the rapid development and deployment of transformative AI products.”
The company also teased the rollout of its upcoming frontier AI model. “Looking ahead, Grok 5 is currently in training, and we are focused on launching innovative new consumer and enterprise products that harness the power of Grok, Colossus, and 𝕏 to transform how we live, work, and play,” xAI wrote in a post on its website.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s xAI closes upsized $20B Series E funding round
xAI announced the investment round in a post on its official website.
xAI has closed an upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, exceeding the initial $15 billion target to fuel rapid infrastructure scaling and AI product development.
xAI announced the investment round in a post on its official website.
A $20 billion Series E round
As noted by the artificial intelligence startup in its post, the Series E funding round attracted a diverse group of investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group, among others.
Strategic partners NVIDIA and Cisco Investments also continued support for building the world’s largest GPU clusters.
As xAI stated, “This financing will accelerate our world-leading infrastructure buildout, enable the rapid development and deployment of transformative AI products reaching billions of users, and fuel groundbreaking research advancing xAI’s core mission: Understanding the Universe.”
xAI’s core mission
Th Series E funding builds on xAI’s previous rounds, powering Grok advancements and massive compute expansions like the Memphis supercluster. The upsized demand reflects growing recognition of xAI’s potential in frontier AI.
xAI also highlighted several of its breakthroughs in 2025, from the buildout of Colossus I and II, which ended with over 1 million H100 GPU equivalents, and the rollout of the Grok 4 Series, Grok Voice, and Grok Imagine, among others. The company also confirmed that work is already underway to train the flagship large language model’s next iteration, Grok 5.
“Looking ahead, Grok 5 is currently in training, and we are focused on launching innovative new consumer and enterprise products that harness the power of Grok, Colossus, and 𝕏 to transform how we live, work, and play,” xAI wrote.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang explains difference between Tesla FSD and Alpamayo
Elon Musk confirms xAI’s purchase of five 380 MW natural gas turbines
