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- [00:04]
A
Welcome to Tech News briefing. It's Tuesday, August 4th. I'm Katie Dayton for the Wall street journal. Elon Musk's SpaceX reports its first results as a public company today. Against a backdrop of a post IPO stock plunge and missed Tesla earnings, we'll be setting the complete scene ahead of the most anticipated earnings call of the year so far. Then we're asking, how much do you miss real buttons in your car? For some drivers, the answer is so much that they're taking extreme measures to avoid new technology in their vehicles. But first, SpaceX is set to announce its quarterly results this afternoon, the first time it's reported since going public in June. All eyes will be on Musk, who was named the world's first trillionaire after SpaceX pulled off the largest IPO of all time. But the outlook hasn't remained so sunny since then. WSJ reporter Becky Peterson joins us now to discuss what she'll be looking out for. As SpaceX reports after the bell, this has got to be one of the most anticipated speculated over earnings reports of 2026. Why will so many people be tuning into SpaceX's results after the bell today?
- [01:18]
B
So SpaceX had its big IPO in June and it brought in a lot of new retail investors, everyday people who were excited to follow Elon on his journey. Today, SpaceX executives will be talking to those investors for the first time. We don't know yet exactly who will be on the call, but I would expect to hear from Elon Musk himself, maybe Gwynne Shotwell, who's the president and chief operating officer of SpaceX and possibly also the CFO.
- [01:48]
A
And you mentioned the IPO of. Obviously since then, the stock price has dropped quite substantially. Given the big swings, is there a consensus over what we might expect to hear in terms of the results later today? Or is it pretty much anybody's guess right now?
- [02:05]
B
As of Monday, SpaceX had lost over $1 trillion from the peak of where it was trading after the ipo. It's more than half of its value if you just look at the share price. But in the world of Musk, these stocks often trade on vibes and SpaceX is no different. So before the IPO, we got the giant S1, which really outlined for the first time all of SpaceX business, what it was bringing in revenue wise from its rockets, its satellite Internet and its new AI business, which is what a lot of the value is hinging on. They have brought in a few new customers since the S1. You know, they just announced this big new rocket contract with the government, they are adding new customers to the AI data center business. So it is possible that we'll see bumps. But it hasn't been that long though. So we'll probably see just the incremental growth of a company that's reporting quarterly earnings rather than the big surprise of the first revelation in 20 years, which is what the S1 was.
- [03:12]
A
And you mentioned these three parts of the business, which is AI, which includes the X platform, space and Starlink connectivity business. Which parts of the business do you anticipate analysts will be zooming in on the closest?
- [03:26]
B
When SpaceX was a private company, investors were obsessed with its Starlink Internet business and that's because it was adding new subscribers at a really rapid clip. In the first quarter of 2026, they doubled their subscribers to Starlink compared to the same period last year. So that's a really high growth part of the SpaceX business and that's what gave it its big valuation on the private markets before it merged with xai. Now though, they have Xai and they're saying AI is the future of the business. So like other public companies, Google and Tesla, they're going to be spending a lot of money on expansion into AI. And if those other companies earnings are any indication, there's probably going to be some interest in how much Money exactly is SpaceX spending and what's their free cash flow.
- [04:19]
A
There have always been rumors and ideas around a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX. What's kind of the status on that right now from reporting you've done recently?
- [04:32]
B
Nothing official has happened and before it does, I'm sure there will be a lot of public messaging because any merger between SpaceX and Tesla would have to be approved by the Tesla board and Tesla shareholders. But Musk hasn't shooed away the rumor either. On the Tesla earnings call in July, he talked about all the ways that the companies work together and could work together.
- [04:56]
C
There's more and more overlap, especially with terrafab. That's, that's really going to be, you know, a gigantic project.
- [05:05]
B
Terrafab is the chip development project that they're doing with Tesla and Intel. And he said basically the earnings call is not the right place to discuss a SpaceX Tesla merger.
- [05:17]
C
Obviously, you know, we can't talk about, you know, combining companies and that kind of thing on. It's got to be done with the appropriate process.
- [05:26]
B
We had some reporting last week which looked at how Tesla has set up its Chinese business with some separation so that in the case of geopolitical conflict between China and Taiwan or the US And China. Its US And China businesses could survive separately. And in our story, we looked at how Tesla might separate its business either through a spinoff or a sale. Just looking at different structures that might work better in the case of a SpaceX Tesla merger.
- [05:57]
A
That was Wall Street Journal reporter Becky Peterson. A reminder, we want to hear from you. Are you worried AI is looking more and more real? How do you make sure posts you're seeing are real? Send us an email to tmbsj.com or leave us a voicemail at 212-416-2236. Or if you're listening on Spotify, leave us a comment. Coming up for some drivers, the hottest car technology right now is decisively low tech and in some cases, no tech. That's after the break. We all know the feeling. You pick up your rental car, buckle your seatbelt, and then spend the next 30 minutes trying to learn exactly how to use the touchscreen in front of you or even figure out how to switch the engine on. Yes, that did recently happen to me. Carmakers have spent years making sure their designs are filled with the latest technology, but now a group of low tech drivers is fighting back, demanding buttons and knobs instead of eye scanners and cruise control. WSJ reporter Sharon Terlop joined my colleague Imani Moiz to explain where this backlash comes from and where it might be heading.
- [07:17]
D
So what are the biggest complaints that people have about new technology in cars?
- [07:21]
E
There's people who feel distracted by the screens and the beeps. There's people who resent some of the safety technology that tells you if you're veering toward a lane or if you look sleepy. They say, I don't want my car telling me how to drive. There's people who are suspicious of connected technology. They feel like it's gathering their data. There's people who feel, and this is true, that a lot of the technology and digital features in a car make repairs more difficult. It makes it harder for do it yourself repairs and, you know, getting your car fixed, it can make it more expensive. So there's a really wide range.
- [07:57]
D
And it's not just complaints. Some people are actually finding their own workarounds to avoid high tech features. Can you talk about some of those
- [08:05]
E
Both on social media and then specific blogs and even some significant publications, There's a lot of discussion around. First of all, if I want a new car, what car can I get that has the absolute minimum technology? So that's one way people are Working around it, Some of the features can be shut off. That's another workaround where people, you can see that on message boards where people say, like, can I make this stop? I talked to one car owner and he was in the camp of it's really distracting to drive and have to also manage a screen. And so he put tape on his dashboard of a new car so he could feel things as if they were buttons.
- [08:42]
D
So if you're shopping for a new car and you don't want it to feel like a smartphone on wheels, do you still have good options?
- [08:48]
E
It's difficult because we talk to dealers and we talk to automakers and you know, this isn't the majority of vehicle customers necessarily. And so a lot of this technology, car companies and dealers want to sell the higher end cars with the higher end technology. So they aren't eager to put out a bunch of bare bone cars without any features that might only appeal to a niche customer base. And also a lot of this is required safety technology. So cars have to have backup cameras, which means they have to have some kind of a screen so you can see what the camera is projecting. So it is hard and you can't really get rid of all of them because of the requirements.
- [09:27]
D
Automakers would say that these new features make cars safer and easier to operate. But do these features also allow them to raise prices?
- [09:34]
E
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the technology and the features are something that goes into a vehicle's price. So the increasing technology in cars is one of the factors behind why cars are more expensive. Although it's funny, that's not true without exception. So one of the things that consumers have really pushed to have knobs in cars as opposed to having everything on a screen, and these screens have become so cost effective that there's actually some additional cost at times of putting knobs back where a screen once was.
- [10:04]
D
You mentioned that the kinds of consumers who want lower tech cars are not the majority. But is there enough demand that automakers are starting to respond?
- [10:14]
E
Yeah, it's interesting. It's. We hear mixed things from automakers, but they're definitely on the radar. So the automakers are well aware and the dealers are well aware that there's this segment of society. The CEO of Nissan said he's wondering if they kind of have it backwards where they put all the highest end, newest technology in the most expensive cars, which because of their price tend to be the, the cars that the ownership tends to skew older because those are the folks who tend to have more money. And he said, you know, maybe we should be putting some of this technology in the entry level cars that really young people are buying who are just in general more eager to try out new things. So it's certainly on the radar, but I don't think anyone's predicting a massive shift back to analog cars.
- [10:58]
A
That was reporter Sharon Tarlop speaking with our colleague Emani Moise. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. If you're a listener on Spotify, be sure to leave us a comment. Today's show was produced by Julie Chang with supervising producer Katie Ferguson. I'm Katie Dayton for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back later this morning with TMB Tech Minute.
- [11:19]
B
Thanks for listening.