|
|  |  | Wednesday, July 23, 2025 | | Sponsored by |  |  | | Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg
via Getty Images | | Good morning, Quartz
readers! |
| | HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW | | Trump aides head to
the Fed. As the president continues his campaign against Jerome Powell, administration officials on Thursday will visit the central bank’s contentious renovation site. |
| | Bessent open to China deal extension. The Treasury Secretary said a looming August 12 trade deal deadline between the countries could be pushed as things are in a “very good place.” |
| | Tariffs cost GM $1 billion in Q2 — and things aren’t looking up. The automaker said in its earnings that tariffs will have more of an impact in Q3 and potentially
be a $4-5 billion hit for the year. |
| | DeepMind employees jump ship for Microsoft. The company poached about a dozen workers from the Alphabet AI research unit as the AI talent wars continue to heat up. |
| | OpenAI’s “Stargate” is facing setbacks. The $500 billion project, launched to develop AI data centers across the U.S., is off to a slow start amid negotiations
between OpenAI and SoftBank. |
| | Tesla opens… a diner. Musk’s latest production asks if you’d like fries
with your EV charge at the Tesla Drive-In & Diner in L.A., which surprise opened this week — right ahead of earnings. |
|
| | A MESSAGE FROM KANTAR | _2_(1)_1.png) | INTELLIGENT INNOVATION | AI is revolutionizing marketing, but what about innovation, a space where human curiosity and
creativity have always led the way? In today’s evolving landscape, brands that fail to harness the power of AI — or lack the right expertise and data to do so — risk falling behind. This insightful booklet explores the powerful potential of AI and your innovation process, when applied in the right way. | | | THE HYPE THAT STEERS ITSELF | Tesla appears headed for a collision when it reports Q2 earnings today after the bell. Revenue is expected to fall by around 12% year-over-year, with analysts forecasting a drop to between $22.4 billion and $22.9 billion. Profit? Even worse. EPS is projected to land around $0.40–$0.44, down nearly 25% from a
year ago. Deliveries already came in at a 14% decline — Tesla’s steepest quarterly drop on record. Margins, once Tesla’s bragging rights, are expected to sink below 17% amid price cuts and disappearing EV tax credits.
But none of that is the main attraction. Wall Street’s spotlight isn’t on the spreadsheet — it’s on the sales pitch. The stock (down around 13% YTD) is trading less on fundamentals and more on Elon Musk’s ability to keep spinning a long-term AI-powered dream. Tesla’s
robotaxi pilot, launched with minimal transparency and maximum hype, has become the narrative lodestar, even as reports of glitches, accidents, and investigations pile up. Whether the tech actually works seems, at least for now, beside the point.
Still, cracks are showing. Musk’s foray into political cosplay has drawn ire from asset managers who are demanding he clock in. Execs are out, the board is MIA, competitors are catching up, and a long-promised affordable EV still doesn’t
exist beyond a few hand-wavy renderings. When the earnings call begins Wednesday, investors will be less interested in what Tesla earned in the quarter — and more in whether Musk still sounds convincing enough to keep his company from completely veering off the road. Quartz’s Shannon Carroll has more on what’s under the hood of Tesla’s crumbling margins. | | ALPHABET SOUP, SERVED HOT | Google parent company Alphabet reports earnings today, and expectations are about as lofty as its cloud division. After it blew past Wall Street’s projections last quarter, Alphabet is once again tipped to impress. Analysts are eyeing earnings per share north of $2.14 to $2.16, with revenue possibly topping
$87.9 billion (another estimate suggests $79.3 billion). But Wall Street isn’t just looking for another beat. Analysts want to know when all this spending on AI, cloud, and search reinvention will really start landing on the bottom line.
Google’s been on a Silicon Valley spending spree for its AI ambitions. The company’s chatbot is getting shipped into Volvos, and its search results are getting AI makeovers. But despite the company having “arguably the best” AI model in Gemini 2.5
Pro, analysts say Google still has to prove it can commercialize that lead because competition is creeping in. Tools such as ChatGPT are gobbling up user attention, and startup Perplexity just launched a flashy AI-powered browser aimed squarely at Google’s core business.
Still, Google’s search and ad business — the company’s financial bread and butter — remains a juggernaut. Search revenue hit $50.7 billion last quarter, and ad revenue alone reached $66.8 billion. Meanwhile, Google
Cloud continues to grow, and Waymo is expanding self-driving operations city by city… although it still isn’t a revenue driver. The question now: Can a trillion-dollar titan still move like a startup — or will all that scale slow the Google machine? Quartz’s
Hannah Parker has more on how Alphabet is keeping the clicks coming while challengers chip away. | | A MESSAGE FROM KANTAR | | INTELLIGENT INNOVATION | AI is revolutionizing marketing, but what about innovation, a space where human curiosity and
creativity have always led the way? In today’s evolving landscape, brands that fail to harness the power of AI — or lack the right expertise and data to do so — risk falling behind. This insightful booklet explores the powerful potential of AI and your innovation process, when applied in the right way. | | | MORE FROM QUARTZ | |
|
|
