Tag Archives: New Products/Services

Business

Microsoft to Deepen OpenAI Partnership, Invest Billions in ChatGPT Creator

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Microsoft Corp.

MSFT 0.98%

said Monday it is making a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI, substantially bolstering its relationship with the startup behind the viral ChatGPT chatbot as the software giant looks to expand the use of artificial intelligence in its products.

Microsoft said the latest partnership builds upon the company’s 2019 and 2021 investments in OpenAI.

The companies didn’t disclose the financial terms of the partnership. Microsoft had been discussing investing as much as $10 billion in OpenAI, according to people familiar with the matter. A representative for Microsoft declined to comment on the final number.

OpenAI was in talks this month to sell existing shares in a tender offer that would value the company at roughly $29 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported, making it one of the most valuable U.S. startups on paper despite generating little revenue.

The investment shows the tremendous resources Microsoft is devoting toward incorporating artificial-intelligence software into its suite of products, ranging from its design app Microsoft Designer to search app Bing. It also will help bankroll the computing power OpenAI needs to run its various products on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

At a WSJ panel during the 2023 World Economic Forum, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella discussed the company expanding access to OpenAI tools and the growing capabilities of ChatGPT.

The strengthening relationship with OpenAI has bolstered Microsoft’s standing in a race with other big tech companies that also have been pouring resources into artificial intelligence to enhance existing products and develop new uses for businesses and consumers.

Alphabet Inc.’s

Google, in particular, has invested heavily in AI and infused the technology into its operations in various ways, from improving navigation recommendations in its maps tools to enhancing image recognition for photos to enabling wording suggestions in Gmail.

Google has its own sophisticated chatbot technology, known as LaMDA, which gained notice last year when one of the company’s engineers claimed the bot was sentient, a claim Google and outside experts dismissed. Google, though, hasn’t made that technology widely available like OpenAI did with ChatGPT, whose ability to churn out human-like, sophisticated responses to all manner of linguistic prompts has captured public attention.

Microsoft Chief Executive

Satya Nadella

said last week his company plans to incorporate artificial-intelligence tools into all of its products and make them available as platforms for other businesses to build on. Mr. Nadella said last week at a Wall Street Journal panel at the World Economic Forum’s annual event in Davos, Switzerland. Mr. Nadella said that his company would move quickly to commercialize tools from OpenAI.

Analysts have said that OpenAI’s technology could one day threaten Google’s stranglehold on internet search, by providing quick, direct responses to queries rather than lists of links. Others have pointed out that the chatbot technology still suffers from inaccuracies and isn’t well-suited to certain types of queries.

“The viral launch of ChatGPT has caused some investors to question whether this poses a new disruption threat to Google Search,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note last month. “While we believe the near-term risk is limited—we believe the use case of search (and paid search) is different than AI-driven content creation—we are not dismissive of threats from new, unique consumer offerings.”

OpenAI, led by technology investor

Sam Altman,

began as a nonprofit in 2015 with $1 billion in pledges from

Tesla Inc.

CEO

Elon Musk,

LinkedIn co-founder

Reid Hoffman

and other backers. Its goal has long been to develop technology that can achieve what has been a holy grail for AI researchers: artificial general intelligence, where machines are able to learn and understand anything humans can.

Microsoft first invested in OpenAI in 2019, giving the company $1 billion to enhance its Azure cloud-computing platform. That gave OpenAI the computing resources it needed to train and improve its artificial-intelligence algorithms and led to a series of breakthroughs.

OpenAI has released a new suite of products in recent months that industry observers say represent a significant step toward that goal and could pave the way for a host of new AI-driven consumer applications.

In the fall, it launched Dall-E 2, a project that allowed users to generate art from strings of text, and then made ChatGPT public on Nov. 30. ChatGPT has become something of a sensation among the tech community given its ability to deliver immediate answers to questions ranging from “Who was George Washington Carver?” to “Write a movie script of a taco fighting a hot dog on the beach.”

Mr. Altman said the company’s tools could transform technology similar to the invention of the smartphone and tackle broader scientific challenges.

“They are incredibly embryonic right now, but as they develop, the creativity boost and new superpowers we get—none of us will want to go back,” Mr. Altman said in an interview in December.

Mr. Altman’s decision to create a for-profit arm of OpenAI garnered criticism from some in the artificial-intelligence community who said it represented a move away from OpenAI’s roots as a research lab that sought to benefit humanity over shareholders. OpenAI said it would cap profit at the company, diverting the remainder to the nonprofit group.

—Will Feuer contributed to this article.

Write to Berber Jin at berber.jin@wsj.com and Miles Kruppa at miles.kruppa@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
The design app Microsoft Designer was misidentified as Microsoft Design in an earlier version of this article. (Corrected on Jan. 23)

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Science

Elon Musk’s SpaceX Prepares for Starship Launch

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SpaceX is gearing up for a key test of its immense rocket that is designed for commercial launches, as well as the Mars mission

Elon Musk

has long sought.

Near a beach east of Brownsville, Texas, employees at Mr. Musk’s space company are preparing for the inaugural orbital flight of Starship, the towering rocket system the company has been developing for years to one day launch into deep space. The initial test mission would last around 90 minutes, beginning with a fiery blast of the ship’s booster over the Gulf of Mexico, SpaceX has said in a regulatory filing. 

It isn’t clear when SpaceX will attempt the first flight, after dates Mr. Musk has discussed came and went. Some officials at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, a customer for a version of Starship, previously said they thought the mission could occur in early December. 

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off this month with a payload of 40 satellites for OneWeb’s broadband-satellite network.



Photo:

John Raoux/Associated Press

Mr. Musk, who acquired Twitter Inc. and recently delivered Tesla Inc.’s first all-electric semitrailer trucks, has described getting Starship into orbit as one of his main goals. At SpaceX, which Mr. Musk founded in 2002 and still leads, he has said the rocket system is consuming significant resources and faces formidable technical hurdles. 

The company is using new engines it developed on Starship and wants to be able to quickly and rapidly reuse the vehicle, akin to how airlines operate planes. Starship is also really big: Fully stacked, it stands taller than the rocket NASA recently used on its first Artemis moon mission. 

“There’s a lot of risks associated with this first launch, so I would not say that it is likely to be successful, but I think we’ll make a lot of progress,” Mr. Musk said last year, during an appearance before a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine panel.  

A spokesman for Space Exploration Technologies Corp., as the company is formally called, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

SpaceX’s Starship program has encountered setbacks on shorter-altitude flights, and it isn’t clear how much it would cost if something similar happened on an orbital mission.

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa plans a journey around the moon on Starship.



Photo:

philip fong/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The company’s strategy of accepting potential failures, and learning from them, has helped it develop spacecraft like Falcon 9, the workhorse rocket the company used on almost 60 launches this year through mid-December, former employees said.

“It’s better to lose them now than to lose them because you left data on the table, because you were too scared to have a failure in public during the development phase,” said Abhi Tripathi, who worked in several director roles at SpaceX and currently serves as mission operations director at the University of California-Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory.

At SpaceX, “risk taking, as long as it is safe to personnel and to property, is highly encouraged,” Mr. Tripathi said. 

Jeff Bezos

‘ space company Blue Origin LLC is also working on its own large rocket, as is United Launch Alliance, the launch company jointly owned by

Boeing Co.

BA 0.53%

and

Lockheed Martin Corp.

SpaceX’s Starbase launch site in Texas.



Photo:

ADREES LATIF/REUTERS

If it works, SpaceX’s vehicle would lower the cost to get to orbit and give the company a sophisticated new rocket system, Mr. Musk said earlier this year. If it doesn’t, the program could threaten to become a money pit for a company that already has two proven rockets—Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy—that are partially reusable, according to space-industry analysts and executives. 

NASA is a major backer for Starship, providing deals valued at more than $4 billion to use a moon-lander version of the vehicle for Artemis exploration missions. Senior agency officials have said the company has been meeting milestones under its contract. 

Technology entrepreneur Jared Isaacman and the Japanese billionaire

Yusaku Maezawa

have both said they purchased flights using the vehicle. A Japanese satellite operator said in August that it would use Starship to deploy a company satellite. 

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Will SpaceX ever send humans to Mars? Join the conversation below.

Starship is made up of a 230-foot-tall booster called Super Heavy that would power a 164-foot-tall spacecraft, also called Starship, into orbit, according to SpaceX. The latter ship is designed to carry cargo or crew, with a user’s guide touting room for up to 100 people. The spacecraft is designed to be refueled in orbit, enabling longer-distance flights, according to company and NASA presentations. 

SpaceX is spending heavily on the Starship program, according to space industry analysts. The privately held company has raised significant funds lately, selling at least $6.1 billion in stock over the past three years, according to securities filings. SpaceX recently began marketing employee shares for sale at a price that would value the company at around $140 billion.  

Mr. Musk has warned that SpaceX could face bankruptcy if a severe global recession made capital and liquidity difficult to obtain while the company was investing in Starship and Starlink, its satellite-internet business.

Technical challenges with new rockets are common. In July, the company had to deal with a fiery blast underneath one of the Super Heavy boosters, though last month SpaceX said it completed a significant engine test. SpaceX also has lost Starship prototypes. Two years ago, a Starship spacecraft flew a short-altitude test flight without a booster, but smashed into the ground when trying to land. 

In May 2021, the company landed a Starship spacecraft for the first time after another short flight.

For the first orbital test, SpaceX expects to bring the booster down in the Gulf of Mexico and land the Starship spacecraft in the Pacific Ocean, near a Hawaiian island, according to a company filing with the Federal Communications Commission. 

Jeff Thornburg, a former SpaceX propulsion executive, said the company’s biggest challenge is ensuring the Starship spacecraft can safely return to Earth. The vehicle will endure enormous stress and heat as it re-enters the atmosphere from orbit, he said, but is designed to be used quickly and repeatedly.

“Reusability brings a lot of complicated engineering, because it can’t just survive once. It’s got to survive 10, 20, 100 plus times,” he said.

After months of delays, the FAA released its long-awaited environmental assessment of SpaceX’s South Texas Starbase launch site. WSJ’s Micah Maidenberg explains what the decision means for SpaceX and the company’s Starship program going forward. Photo Illustration: Alexander Hotz/WSJ

Write to Micah Maidenberg at micah.maidenberg@wsj.com

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World

Russia Launches New Drone Attacks as Partnership With Iran Deepens

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Russia launched fresh attacks with Iranian-made drones early Saturday over Ukraine, where the country’s southern command said it shot down 10 of the unmanned aerial systems, an indication that Moscow has replenished its supply of the drones as the two countries move toward what the U.S. has called a full defense partnership.

Ukraine’s southern command said it shot down four Shahed-136 drones in the Kherson region, four more in the Mykolaiv region and two in the Odessa region.

Maksym Marchenko, the governor of Odessa, said the drones had attacked energy infrastructure and civilian housing overnight.

“There is no electricity in nearly any of our region’s districts and communities of our region. Energy workers are already working on restoring the damaged infrastructure,” he said.

Russia purchased hundreds of Iranian Shahed and Mohajer series drones over the summer, which Moscow has used to attack Ukraine’s front-line positions and civilian infrastructure. Ukrainian air defenses, however, adapted quickly, shooting the entire batch down over a series of months.

The reappearance of the UAVs on the battlefield this week shows that Russia has resupplied its stocks as the West sees greater defense cooperation between Moscow and Tehran.

Russia has targeted Ukraine’s power grid in an attempt to break civilians’ will.



Photo:

Andrew Kravchenko/Associated Press

The streets of Kyiv in darkness during one of the city’s periodic blackouts to conserve power.



Photo:

oleg petrasyuk/Shutterstock

The Biden administration warned Friday that military ties between Russia and Iran were expanding into “a full-fledged defense partnership” and said the two nations were considering establishing a joint production line to provide lethal drones in Russia.

The U.S. said it believed Iran was considering selling hundreds of ballistic missiles to Russia, and described the military relationship between the two nations as moving beyond simply Iran supplying drones to Russia for use in the war in Ukraine.

The U.K.’s Defense Ministry warned Saturday that the missiles would be used to buttress Russia’s dwindling supply following months of sustained large-scale attacks on Ukraine’s power infrastructure, meant to freeze Ukrainians ahead as winter temperatures dip. Russia has highly likely expended a large proportion of its stock of its own SS-26 Iskander short-range ballistic missiles, which carry a 500 kilogram warhead up to 300 miles, the ministry said.

“If Russia succeeds in bringing a large number of Iranian ballistic missiles into service, it will likely use them to continue and expand its campaign of strikes against Ukraine’s critical national infrastructure,” the ministry said on Twitter.

The worst of the strikes cut water supply in major cities and knocked out half of Ukraine’s power grid, forcing rolling blackouts across the country.

This week, Russian President

Vladimir Putin

admitted to targeting Ukraine’s power infrastructure, despite previously repeatedly asserting that Russia’s forces don’t hit civilian targets. He vowed to continue the campaign. 

A Ukrainian soldier takes a break from the front line near the Donbas city of Lyman.



Photo:

STRINGER/REUTERS

Fighting has increased around Donbas, which Ukrainian forces retook this fall.



Photo:

STRINGER/REUTERS

“There’s a lot of noise about our strikes on the energy infrastructure of a neighboring country,” Mr. Putin said. “Yes, we do that.”

Criticism of the strikes would “not interfere with our combat missions,” he said.

Russia’s deployment of drones in Ukraine’s south came as its forces are working to make incremental gains in the country’s eastern Donbas region, with much of the fighting concentrated around the city of Bakhmut. With much of Russia’s artillery ammunition running low, Russia has been forced to make gains on foot. 

Russian troops have also boosted fighting around the Donbas city of Lyman, which Ukrainian forces took earlier this fall, causing large portions of the Russian front line to crumble.

The “Russian enemy suffered the greatest losses of the past day near Bakhmut and Lyman,” Ukraine’s general staff said in a statement. 

Late Friday Ukrainian President

Volodymyr Zelensky

held a meeting with officials from the Vatican City, following

Pope Francis

‘ increasingly harsh condemnation of the war. The pope has compared the suffering of Ukrainians to 20th century genocides.

Write to Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com

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Health

Why You Can’t Find Wegovy, the Weight-Loss Drug

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Novo Nordisk

NVO 0.61%

A/S flubbed the launch of its buzzy new weight-loss drug Wegovy, missing out on hundreds of millions of dollars in sales and squandering a head start before a rival could begin selling a competing product.

Wegovy is among a new class of drugs that health regulators have approved to cut the weight of people who are obese, a goal long sought by doctors and patients. Their weight-dropping potential became a viral sensation on social media. Elon Musk tweeted about Wegovy in October. And a related drug for diabetes, Ozempic, is a hot topic in Hollywood among celebrities seeking to stay thin, according to doctors.

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Will Novo Nordisk A/S be able to retain its competitive edge with its weight-loss drug? Why or why not? Join the conversation below.

Yet Denmark-based Novo underestimated how big demand for the drug would be, and wasn’t ready to make enough to fill the prescriptions that flooded in after U.S. approval last year. Then a contract manufacturer halted production to address inspection issues.

“We should have forecasted better, which we did not,” Novo Chief Executive

Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen

said. “Had we forecasted that, we would have built a different supply chain.”

The missteps have proven costly for Novo, which was forced to ration Wegovy to patients who already had started taking it. The company has recorded around $700 million in sales to date, well short of the $2 billion in 2021 and 2022 sales that some analysts had projected before supply issues hit.

Novo Nordisk Chief Executive Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen admits the drug company misjudged how popular Wegovy would be.



Photo:

Carsten Snejbjerg/Bloomberg News

Amber Blaylock, a music teacher from Springfield, Mo., said she has been trying to get Wegovy to help her reduce weight since hearing about the drug on TikTok and YouTube. She asked her doctor in September to prescribe it, but hasn’t been able to find it. 

“Frustrated and impatient for sure,” said Ms. Blaylock, 29 years old.

To turn things around, Mr. Jørgensen said Novo has increased its capacity to make Wegovy and plans a “relaunch” early next year, which should fulfill all orders.

Novo, however, lost valuable time establishing a beachhead in the lucrative obesity-drug market before rival

Eli Lilly

LLY 1.20%

& Co. can enter. Lilly is expected to launch a similar, competing drug named Mounjaro late next year or in early 2024.

The market for anti-obesity drugs, now worth $2.4 billion worldwide, could reach $50 billion in 2030, Morgan Stanley estimates.

“Novo has left the door open for Lilly,” said BMO Capital Markets analyst Evan David Seigerman. 

Mr. Jørgensen said the company can regain lost ground because of high demand for Wegovy and the large potential for what is still a mostly untapped market. He said he was unconcerned with the looming competition with Lilly’s drug, because there is room for both products.

“We disappointed physicians and patients in the first round,” he said. “The company wants to be better prepared for the second round.” Novo lists Wegovy at $1,349 a month. Some commercial insurers cover the drug.  

Wegovy works by imitating a hormone called GLP-1, which occurs naturally in the body and suppresses appetite, among other effects. 

Novo developed GLP-1 drugs to treat diabetes. In 2017, the company began selling semaglutide, the active ingredient in Wegovy, under the brand name Ozempic to treat diabetes. 

During the drug’s development, Novo found that weight loss was a side effect, prompting the company to probe using semaglutide to treat obesity. A key trial found that Wegovy helped people with a high body-mass index shed up to 15% of their weight, surpassing the results for older obesity drugs like Novo’s Saxenda. 

Saxenda and other older weight-loss drugs had sold modestly, partly due to their limited weight loss, as well as some unpleasant side effects and the refusal of many health insurers to pay up. 

Novo worked with Catalent to fill its Wegovy weight-loss drug into syringes.



Photo:

yara nardi/Reuters

Given the experience, Novo figured Wegovy sales would increase gradually. To augment its own production, Novo contracted with a single manufacturer,

Catalent Inc.,

to fill the drug into syringes. Novo said it thought it would have time to add manufacturing capacity to meet a gradual increase in demand.

Wegovy may be superior to older drugs, but “we thought it would still be a journey to open up the market,” Mr. Jørgensen said. 

When Novo started selling Wegovy in the U.S. in June last year, however, demand took off. Doctors with large followings on social media touted Wegovy as groundbreaking, while users posted photos holding injection pens and shared their progress losing weight. 

“Demand for these new agents has been unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my time in medicine,” said Dr. Michael Albert, a physician specializing in weight-loss treatment at telehealth provider Accomplish Health who has consulted for Novo. Many of his patients began asking about Wegovy, he said, after they heard about it in Facebook groups or on TikTok.

It took only five weeks for doctors to write new prescriptions for Wegovy at the same weekly volume that Saxenda took four years to reach, according to Mr. Jørgensen. “It’s a completely different ballgame that we’re in,” said Ambre Brown Morley, the company’s vice president of media and digital global communication. 

Within weeks, supplies were strained. Novo warned that patients might experience delays in receiving their prescriptions. Then in December 2021, Catalent temporarily stopped deliveries and manufacturing at its plant after Food and Drug Administration inspections found faulty air filters and damaged equipment.

To date, Novo has recorded around $700 million in Wegovy sales compared with the $2 billion in 2021 and 2022 sales that some analysts had projected before supply issues emerged.



Photo:

JACOB GRONHOLT-PEDERSEN/REUTERS

Many people who couldn’t get Wegovy for weight loss have sought prescriptions for Novo’s Ozempic and Lilly’s Mounjaro, according to analysts, even though the FDA hasn’t approved the latter two drugs for such use. Ozempic sales increased so much that certain doses are in short supply through at least January, the FDA said.

Lilly is studying Mounjaro, its GLP-1-containing drug for diabetes, for weight loss. 

Novo and Lilly said they don’t promote their diabetes drugs for the “off-label” use treating obesity.

A Catalent spokesman said the company is still making improvements to the plant and working with customers to limit the impact of supply constraints on patients. The company restarted filling Wegovy syringes at the facility in the spring. 

Novo has been amassing a sufficient inventory before the Wegovy relaunch, Mr. Jørgensen said. When Wegovy relaunches, he said, insurance coverage will be broader than when the drug first went on sale. 

Write to Peter Loftus at Peter.Loftus@wsj.com and Denise Roland at denise.roland@wsj.com

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Business

Opinion: This record number in Nvidia earnings is a scary sight

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Nvidia Corp.’s financial results had a bit of a surprise for investors, and not on the good side — product inventories doubled to a record high as the chip company gears up for a questionable holiday season.

Nvidia reported fiscal third-quarter revenue that was slightly better than analysts’ reduced expectations Wednesday, but the numbers weren’t that great. Revenue fell 17% to $5.9 billion, while earnings were cut in half thanks to a $702 million inventory charge, largely relating to slower data-center demand in China.

Gaming revenue in the quarter fell 51% to $1.57 billion. Nvidia said it is working with its retail partners to help move the currently high-channel inventories.

While the company was writing off the inventory for China, its own new product inventory was growing. Nvidia
NVDA,
-4.54%
reported that its overall product inventory nearly doubled to $4.45 billion in the fiscal third quarter, compared with $2.23 billion a year ago and $3.89 billion in the prior quarter. Executives cited its coming product launches, designed around its new Ada and Hopper architectures, when asked about the inventory gains.

In the semiconductor industry, high inventories can make investors nervous, especially after the industry had so many supply constraints in recent years that quickly swung to a glut of chips in 2022. With doubts about demand for gaming cards and consumers’ willingness to spend amid sky-high inflation this holiday season, having all that product on hand just amps up the nerves.

Full earnings coverage: Nvidia profit chopped in half, but tweaked servers to China offset earlier $400 million warning

Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress told MarketWatch in a telephone interview Wednesday that the company’s high level of inventories were commensurate with its high levels of revenue.

“I do believe….it is our highest level of inventory,” she said. “They go hand in hand.” Kress said she was confident in the success of Nvidia’s upcoming product launches.

Nvidia’s revenue reached a peak in the April 2022 quarter with $8.3 billion, and in the past two quarters revenue has slowed, with gaming demand sluggish amid a transition to a new cycle, and a decline in China data-center demand due to COVID-19 lockdowns and U.S. government restrictions.

For its data-center customers, the new architectures promise major advances in computing power and artificial-intelligence features, with Nvidia planning to ship the equivalent of a supercomputer in a box with its new products over the next year. Those types of advanced products weigh on inventory totals even more, Kress said, because of the price of the total package.

“It’s about the complexity of the system we are building, that is what drives the inventory, the pieces of that together,” Kress said.

Bernstein Research analyst Stacy Rasgon believes that products based on Hopper will begin shipping over the next several quarters, “at materially higher price points.” He said in a recent note that he believes Nvidia’s numbers were likely hitting a bottom in this quarter.

“We remain positive on the Hopper ramp into next year, and believe numbers have at this point likely reached close to bottom, with new cycles brewing and an attractive secular story even without China potential,” Rasgon said in an earnings preview note Tuesday.

Read also: Warren Buffett’s chip-stock purchase is a classic example of why you want to be ‘greedy only when others are fearful’

Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang reminded investors on a conference call that the company’s inventories are “never zero,” and said everyone is enthusiastic about the upcoming launches. But it doesn’t take too long of a memory to conjure up a time when Nvidia went into a holiday with an inventory backlog that included new architecture and greatly disappointed investors: Four years ago, Huang had to cut his forecast for holiday earnings twice amid a “crypto hangover” with similar dynamics to the current moment

Investors need faith that this holiday season will not be the same, even as demand for some videogame products declines after a pandemic boom just as the market for cryptocurrency — some of which has been mined with Nvidia products — hits a rough patch. Huang said that Nvidia’s RTX 4080 and 4090 graphics cards based on the Ada Lovelace architecture had an “exceptional launch,” and sold out.

Nvidia shares gained more than 2% in after-hours trading Wednesday, suggesting that some are betting that this time will be different. That enthusiasm needs to translate into revenue for Nvidia so that this big gain in inventories does not end up being part of another write-down at some point in the future.

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Business

Elon Musk Defies Management Mantras With His Rapid Overhaul at Twitter

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In

Elon Musk’s

first week at Twitter Inc., he flouted much of the advice management gurus have dished out for decades.  

The billionaire’s swift actions stand in contrast to those of many new leaders, who often use the first 90 days to meet with employees, listen to concerns and assess how to improve a company’s products before embarking on strategy shifts, executives and corporate advisers say.  

“At a minimum, this is an untraditional approach,” said

Joel Peterson,

the former chairman of

JetBlue Airways Corp.

, who has served on dozens of corporate boards and advised chief executives across industries. “It’s iconoclastic, it’s unusual, it’s not what everybody would do—but I don’t really fault him for it.” 

Sweeping layoffs at Twitter have eliminated roughly half of the company’s workforce.



Photo:

Leonardo Munoz/VIEWPress/Getty Images

Mr. Musk—who once described himself to The Wall Street Journal as a “nano manager” steeped in the smallest details—appears to be employing many of the management tactics he deployed in building his other companies,

Tesla Inc.

and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., executives and advisers say. Those include a hands-on obsession over product decisions, a distaste for corporate structures and a focus on speed. Tesla is now the world’s most-valuable car company, and SpaceX is the world’s busiest rocket-launch operation.

Management specialists have long said that the first few months of an executive’s tenure are critical, a time when corporate chiefs can plot their agenda and begin to reset a corporate culture. Well-known books on the subject, such as “You’re in Charge—Now What?” say that new leaders should strike a balance, setting expectations internally and shaping their management team, while learning about the organization, too. 

Peter Crist,

chairman of Crist Kolder Associates, an executive-search firm, said new leaders typically spend the initial months looking to understand the talent within a company, learning employees’ strengths and weaknesses before making changes to staffing.

“Normally, a CEO from the outside coming in isn’t going to wipe the slate clean on the first day,” Mr. Crist said, adding that swift personnel changes can create uncertainty for the workers that remain. “There has to be both a stabilization of the enterprise model and importantly a stabilization of the talent, and it’s got to get done relatively soon,” he said.

Mr. Musk is hardly the first corporate iconoclast. He is also more than familiar with Twitter, having more than 100 million followers. 

Twitter Purchased by Elon Musk: A Timeline of How It Happened

On top of that, he is acquiring a company that for years lagged behind its rivals in attracting users and generating revenue, and the industry broadly is facing a slowdown in growth and other challenges that have slashed the valuations of companies such as

Facebook

owner Meta Platforms Inc. 

Some of Mr. Musk’s early actions struck corporate veterans as routine. He spent part of his week meeting with advertisers on video calls and in other settings, aiming to reassure customers that the platform remained a safe place for brands, the Journal reported. Several large advertisers, including

General Mills Inc.

and

Pfizer Inc.,

temporarily paused their advertising. Mr. Musk tweeted on Friday that Twitter had experienced a massive drop in revenue, which he said was due to “activist groups pressuring advertisers.”

Hubert Joly,

former CEO of retailer

Best Buy Co.

, said listening tours with customers and employees can be helpful in the initial period of engineering a turnaround. When Mr. Joly took the reins of Best Buy in 2012, he spent days in retail stores observing customer behavior and holding pizza meetings with staffers. In those gatherings, he asked three questions to employees: “‘What’s working? What’s not working? What do you need?’” Mr. Joly said.

Elon Musk has purchased Twitter, ending a monthslong saga over whether or not he would go through with his offer to acquire the social media platform. WSJ takes an inside look at the tweets, texts and filings to see exactly how the battle played out. Illustration: Jordan Kranse

Mr. Joly said that while he wanted to act fast, he resisted the temptation to quickly close stores or cut head count, as some proposed, or to immediately impose his ideas on the organization without understanding the existing dynamics. “My job was easy: Show up, ask these questions, listen carefully, take notes, and do what I was told because they had all of the answers,” he said of employees.

Mr. Musk has solicited feedback from some Twitter users, including prominent ones. He asked the author Stephen King whether he would consider paying a price of $8 a month to have his account verified. Members of Mr. Musk’s team also polled Twitter users about a subscription feature. 

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What do you think of Musk’s management style? Join the conversation below.

Twitter on Saturday said it has begun rolling out software updates to charge users $7.99 a month for its Twitter Blue subscription service, up from $4.99 currently. Subscribers get their accounts verified, a service that has been free and offers a blue check mark to notable accounts.

Mr. Musk has said in the past that he believes CEOs err when they allocate too much of their schedule to meetings, rather than focusing on refining a product. “Spend less time on finance, spend less time in conference rooms, less time on PowerPoint and more time just trying to make your product as amazing as possible,” he said in a Journal interview in 2020. 

During an executive’s first few days at a company, though, leaders can become overwhelmed, advisers say. Some say it is important to focus on key strategic decisions, assemble a team and then delegate. 

At an investment forum in New York on Friday, Mr. Musk said that after buying Twitter, he is now working 120 hours a week instead of his typical 70 or 80 hours. Still, he expected that to eventually change. “Once Twitter’s set on the right path, it’ll be much easier to manage than SpaceX or Tesla,” Mr. Musk said.

Write to Chip Cutter at chip.cutter@wsj.com

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Health

Pig’s Heart Took Longer to Generate a Beat in Transplant Patient

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A genetically modified pig heart transplanted into a severely ill person took longer to generate a heartbeat than those of typical pig or human hearts, research showed, another potential challenge for doctors aiming to conduct clinical trials of pig-organ transplants.

Doctors took daily electrocardiograms of

David Bennett,

a 57-year-old handyman and father of two who received a gene-edited pig heart in an experimental surgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore in January. Mr. Bennett died in March from heart failure, but doctors still aren’t sure why the pig heart thickened and lost its pumping ability.

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Doctors involved in the groundbreaking surgery have been studying data from Mr. Bennett’s case, which is being closely watched in the wider transplant community. Researchers reported in May that a common pig virus was detected in the pig heart transplanted into Mr. Bennett. They said there is no evidence the virus infected Mr. Bennett, but its presence in the pig heart could have caused inflammation that contributed to the cascade of events that led to his death from heart failure.

Researchers analyzed Mr. Bennett’s EKG data as part of efforts to understand his decline after the transplant, direct future research and determine a possible path toward opening clinical trials. Widely used tests that measure electrical signals that cause the heart to beat, EKGs can help diagnose heart attacks, irregular heart rhythms and other possible abnormalities.

Researchers reported unexpected findings in two aspects of Mr. Bennett’s EKG data: the time it takes electricity to travel from the top to the bottom chamber of the heart and across the bottom chambers, which pumps blood through the heart, and the time it takes the lower chambers of the heart to go through a full electrical cycle, which is associated with a heartbeat.



The surfaces of pig cells contain a sugar molecule that triggers the human immune system to attack the organs. Scientists are using the gene editing tool Crispr to overcome this obstacle.

Here’s one approach:

…and then insert the edited DNA into a pig egg cell whose nucleus has been removed. The egg cell is then transferred to the uterus of a sow. The sow gives birth to pigs whose cells—including those in their organs— contain the edited genes.

Crispr acts like scissors cutting DNA at a specific place

scientists edit troublesome genes in pig DNA…

…and sometimes add human genes…

ORGAN OPTIONS

Researchers are trying various techniques that might allow transplantation of gene-edited pig hearts, kidneys and livers into humans. Recent studies on pig organ transplantation in baboons and people have focused mainly on hearts and kidneys.

HEART TO HEART

Pig and human hearts have similarities—but also some differences.

Pigs can be bred to have hearts of similar size as human hearts.

Pig and human hearts each have four pumping chambers—two small ones known as atria and two large ones known as ventricles.

The wall of tissue separating the ventricles is thicker in pig hearts than in human hearts.

Pig and human hearts each are attached to a large artery known as the aorta as well as to a large vein known as the vena cava.

A pig’s inferior (lower) vena cava joins a pig heart’s right atrium at an angle. The vein is longer in pigs than in humans.

EASING ORGAN REJECTION

The surfaces of pig cells contain a sugar molecule that triggers the human immune system to attack the organs. Scientists are using the gene editing tool Crispr to overcome this obstacle. Here’s one approach:

Crispr acts like scissors cutting DNA at a specific place.

Scientists edit troublesome genes in pig DNA…

…and sometimes add human genes…

…and then insert the edited DNA into a pig egg cell whose nucleus has been removed. The egg cell is then transferred to the uterus of a sow. The sow gives birth to pigs whose cells—including those in their organs—contain the edited genes.

ORGAN OPTIONS

Researchers are trying various techniques that might allow transplantation of gene-edited pig

hearts, kidneys and livers into humans. Recent studies on pig organ transplantation in baboons and people have focused mainly on hearts and kidneys.

HEART TO HEART

Pig and human hearts have similarities—but also some differences.

Pigs can be bred to have hearts of similar size as human hearts.

Pig and human hearts each have four pumping chambers—two small ones known as atria and two large ones known as ventricles.

The wall of tissue separating the ventricles is thicker in pig hearts than in human hearts.

Pig and human hearts each are attached to a large artery known as the aorta as well as to a large vein known as the vena cava.

A pig’s inferior (lower) vena cava joins a pig heart’s right atrium at an angle. The vein is longer in pigs than in humans.

EASING ORGAN REJECTION

The surfaces of pig cells contain a sugar molecule that triggers the human immune system to attack the organs. Scientists are using the gene editing tool Crispr to overcome this obstacle. Here’s one approach:

Crispr acts like scissors cutting DNA at a specific place.

Scientists edit troublesome genes in pig DNA…

…and sometimes add human genes…

…and then insert the edited DNA into a pig egg cell whose nucleus has been removed. The egg cell is then transferred to the uterus of a sow. The sow gives birth to pigs whose cells— including those in their organs—contain the edited genes.

ORGAN OPTIONS

Researchers are trying various techniques that might allow transplantation of gene-edited pig

hearts, kidneys and livers into humans. Recent studies on pig organ transplantation in baboons and people have focused mainly on hearts and kidneys.

HEART TO HEART

Pig and human hearts have similarities—but also some differences.

Pigs can be bred to have hearts of similar size as human hearts.

Pig and human hearts each have four pumping chambers—two small ones known as atria and two large ones known as ventricles.

The wall of tissue separating the ventricles is thicker in pig hearts than in human hearts.

Pig and human hearts each are attached to a large artery known as the aorta as well as to a large vein known as the vena cava.

A pig’s inferior (lower) vena cava joins a pig heart’s right atrium at an angle. The vein is longer in pigs than in humans.

The time intervals are typically shorter in pig hearts that are in pigs. But they took longer in the gene-modified pig heart inside a human. The time for the electricity to travel through the heart’s electrical system and generate a heartbeat also took longer than what is typical for human hearts, said

Timm Dickfeld,

a professor of medicine and director of electrophysiology research at the University of Maryland Medical Center, who was the leader of the EKG study.

What that might mean in the future for doctors caring for patients with gene-modified pig heart transplants is uncertain, said

Paul Wang,

director of the Stanford Cardiac Arrhythmia Service and a professor of medicine and bioengineering at Stanford University, who examined the data but wasn’t involved in the study.

“It has only been done once,” Dr. Wang said. “It needs to be done many more times for us to understand what these differences mean.”

The EKG data haven’t been published or undergone an outside vetting process. They are being presented by the Maryland team at an American Heart Association annual meeting starting Nov. 5. The Maryland team said they are studying the significance of the findings and hope to gather more data in future studies.

The fact that the electrical signals traveled through Mr. Bennett’s heart more slowly than expected “did not appear to be associated with a pathological outcome,” said

Bartley Griffith,

co-director of the cardiac xenotransplantation program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who performed Mr. Bennett’s transplant surgery.

Dr. Griffith added that if Mr. Bennett had survived longer and the time intervals became even slower, a pacemaker might eventually have become necessary.

Researchers have tried for decades to develop the transplantation of organs between different species, or xenotransplantation, to address a chronic shortage of organs. More than 3,500 people are on the waiting list in the U.S. for a heart transplant, according to a 2022 update from the American Heart Association.

Megan Sykes,

director of the Columbia Center for Translational Immunology in New York, said that although pigs are similar to humans in organ size and physiology, the EKG data illustrate that there are differences that may only emerge after doing transplants into humans.

“We have reached the point where we need human studies as well as animal studies,” Dr. Sykes said.

The Maryland team and other groups have met with the Food and Drug Administration recently to discuss how to start small clinical trials of genetically modified pig organs. The FDA has requested additional data from the Maryland team in baboons, said

Muhammad Mohiuddin,

the scientific program director of cardiac xenotransplantation at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Dr. Mohiuddin said they plan to gather additional EKG data as part of the research.

Write to Amy Dockser Marcus at amy.marcus@wsj.com

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Business

Americans Take Ketamine at Home for Depression With Little Oversight

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Startups are prescribing ketamine online to treat serious mental-health conditions, raising concern among psychiatrists about the safety of taking the mind-altering anesthetic without medical supervision, sometimes at high doses that raise risks of side effects.

Ketamine is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to anesthetize people and animals and has been used safely in hospitals for decades. The out-of-body, hallucinogenic sensations it produces made it popular as a party drug known as Special K. Some doctors prescribe ketamine off-label to treat patients with conditions including severe depression, suicidal thoughts and post-traumatic stress disorder.

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Is there enough support available for people taking ketamine at home because of mental-health concerns? Join the conversation below.

Generic ketamine isn’t approved for those conditions. Studies have shown it can rapidly alleviate symptoms of severe depression when other treatments have failed.

There is less data on ketamine’s effectiveness for other conditions including anxiety and PTSD, and little data on its long-term use.

The FDA has approved a chemically related version of the drug, called esketamine, from

Johnson & Johnson

for treatment-resistant depression with suicidal thoughts.

Clinics that are certified to administer J&J’s nasal spray must monitor patients for two hours afterward.

People taking generic ketamine at home aren’t subject to the same oversight.

Clinics specializing in ketamine treatment for depression and other mood disorders have popped up across the U.S. in recent years. WSJ visits a clinic to learn why some entrepreneurs are betting that demand for ketamine will continue to rise. Photo illustration: Laura Kammermann

Mindbloom Inc., Nue Life Health PBC and Wondermed LLC are among around a dozen companies now selling ketamine tablets or lozenges online, making use of relaxed restrictions on the prescription of controlled substances during the pandemic.

The companies work with clinicians who prescribe ketamine to patients based on a questionnaire and virtual evaluation. The generic ketamine pills or lozenges are mailed to patients’ homes. The companies say they instruct people to take the medication with someone nearby, among other safety measures.

Taking ketamine at home without medical supervision increases risks of patients falling and hurting themselves or taking more of the drug than prescribed, doctors said. Ketamine can be addictive, and patients might not get the help they need if they have a distressing experience while taking the drug, psychiatrists said.

“Places that are doing virtual ketamine are negotiating a compromise between accessibility and safety,” said Dr.

Benjamin Yudkoff,

medical director of the ketamine and esketamine program at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital in Boston.

Ketamine increases heart rate and blood pressure, raising the risk of rare complications including stroke or heart attack at the higher doses that some telehealth patients have been prescribed, medical experts said.

“Giving any drug like that has the potential to cause general anesthesia at home in a completely unmonitored environment,” said Dr.

Michael Champeau,

president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists.

The companies said prescribing ketamine-assisted therapy at home can help fill a need for people who don’t respond to existing medications or can’t reach or afford treatment in person. Ketamine blocks a receptor in brain cells important for brain adaptability, which researchers say might help facilitate changes in mood and mind-set.

Ketamine was prescribed for Leon New Valentine, who said it alleviated symptoms of treatment-resistant depression and PTSD.



Photo:

Tara Pixley for The Wall Street Journal

Mindbloom and Nue Life cited peer-reviewed research they published suggesting that many patients reported feeling better after taking ketamine and that few reported problems related to taking the drug.

Mindbloom, Nue Life and Wondermed said they decline to treat people who have symptoms that are too severe or histories of conditions such as substance-use disorder, psychosis or uncontrolled hypertension. Nue Life said it sometimes consults with a patient’s doctor before prescribing ketamine, and Mindbloom said it often asks for medical records. Wondermed said patients can choose to have their doctors work with the company during treatment.

“‘Places that are doing virtual ketamine are negotiating a compromise between accessibility and safety.’”


— Dr. Benjamin Yudkoff, Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital

Nue Life said it starts patients at around 125 milligrams and prescribes at most 750 milligrams for a dose. Wondermed said it prescribes patients between 100 milligrams and 400 milligrams for a dose. Mindbloom said that it starts patients at around 400 milligrams and that some patients graduate to doses of around 1,000 milligrams.

Doses of around 1,000 milligrams heighten risks for severe side effects including rare seizures, hemorrhages or strokes, said

Ari Aal,

a psychiatrist in Boulder, Colo., who prescribes ketamine at lower doses to patients who take it under supervision at his clinic.

“That’s way too much of a dose to be doing at home and probably at all, and way too much without a practitioner watching you,” Dr. Aal said.

Mindbloom and Wondermed said they provide blood-pressure monitors for patients to use before and during treatment. Nue Life said it instructs patients with controlled hypertension to monitor their blood pressure.

A ketamine kit provided by Mindbloom for Courtney Gable.



Photo:

Courtney Gable

Timothy Mitchell,

a 40-year-old patient advocate from Ballston Lake, N.Y., said Mindbloom started him on an 800-milligram dose last year. He said he is undergoing his third course of a six-dose regimen with Mindbloom at 1,200 milligrams a dose. The treatment helped quiet suicidal thoughts, he said.

Wondermed said it charges $399 for a month of ketamine tablets or lozenges and telemedicine treatment. Mindbloom said it charges around $1,000 for around three months of ketamine and telemedicine care. Nue Life said it charges as much as $2,999 for ketamine tablets and telemedicine treatment over four months. Health insurers usually don’t reimburse people for the off-label treatments.

Amanda Itzkoff,

a psychiatrist and chief executive of Curated Mental Health, which administers ketamine in clinics, said she declined to be on Mindbloom’s advisory board in part because she was concerned that at-home use might not include enough patient supervision.

Making a comparison with a crackdown on psychedelic-drug research decades ago, she said that if companies recklessly prescribe ketamine for home use, they could set back adoption of a valuable treatment. “We could blow it again,” Dr. Itzkoff said.

A spokesman said that Mindbloom ended its relationship with Dr. Itzkoff and that she didn’t raise safety concerns. Mindbloom’s medical director, Dr.

Leonardo Vando,

said striking the right balance between expanding access to ketamine and safe prescribing practices is critical to Mindbloom.

Courtney Gable,

47, said her husband checked on her when she took ketamine that Mindbloom prescribed for her this year to treat chronic pain and depression. The 400-milligram dose was higher than initial doses prescribed at a clinic where she works in Philadelphia, she said.

“There’s a safety net, but the spaces between the net are a little wider,” Ms. Gable said.

Leon New Valentine,

a 32-year-old actor and videogame model in Los Angeles, was prescribed 100 milligrams of ketamine online last year by Peak Health Global Inc., and took the medication with someone nearby. Mx. Valentine, who uses they as a pronoun, said they graduated to 150-milligram doses and took that alone. Ketamine alleviated symptoms of treatment-resistant depression and PTSD, Mx. Valentine said.

“Things are joyful again even though I’m in pain,” Mx. Valentine said. Peak said it would close in November because it expects rules allowing controlled substances to be prescribed remotely to be tightened soon.

Write to Brianna Abbott at brianna.abbott@wsj.com and Daniela Hernandez at daniela.hernandez@wsj.com

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Technology

Apple introduces new iPad and iPad Pro with speed enhancements

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Apple Inc. quietly announced upgrades to two of its iPad models Tuesday, through announcements lacking the fanfare of the company’s recent iPhone 14 debut.

Instead of hosting an event to reveal the iPad updates as it did for the iPhone, Apple
AAPL,
+0.94%
simply announced the refreshed devices in a series of press releases. The company is enhancing its iPad Pro with the inclusion of its faster M2 chip and also delivering speed upgrades in its new base-level iPad.

The M2 chip seems to be the biggest change in the new iPad Pro. Apple says the chip has a central processing unit (CPU) that’s up to 15% faster than what was on the prior-generation M1 chip, while the graphics processing unit (GPU) can bring up to 35% faster graphics performance.

Apple suggests the chip will prove helpful to power users, such as “photographers editing massive photo libraries and designers manipulating complex 3D objects.”

The iPad Pro also supports a “hover” feature for the Apple Pencil, which detects the pencil up to 12 millimeters above the display so that users can see a preview of their mark before they touch the screen to draw or write.

The 11-inch iPad Pro will begin at $799 for the Wi-Fi version and $999 for the cellular version, while the 12.9-inch iPad Pro starts at $1,099 with just Wi-Fi and $1,299 with the cellular option.

Apple also updated its base iPad model, this time moving the front-facing camera to the landscape edge of the device in what Apple says is a first for any of its iPads.

“Whether users are on a FaceTime call or recording a video for social media, they will always be looking right toward the camera,” Apple said in the release. The camera has a 12-megapixel sensor and a 122-degree field of view.

Apple is putting its A14 Bionic chip in the new base-level iPad, which the company says will bring improvements in CPU and graphics performance. Apple is also moving the Touch ID reader to the top button on the iPad.

The device will come in blue, pink, yellow, and silver color options. The Wi-Fi version starts at $449 and the cellular-connected version begins at $599.

Both refreshed models are currently up for preorder, with availability beginning Oct. 26.

The upgrades come as Apple looks to once again drive growth in the iPad category. The device proved popular during the pandemic as people sought new electronics that would help them work and study from home, but now momentum is harder to come by: Apple posted $7.22 billion in iPad revenue during its June quarter, down from $7.37 billion a year before.

The company refreshed its 4K Apple TV as well on Tuesday, giving a performance boost with the A15 Bionic chip that the company says will make gameplay faster.

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Business

Elon Musk Unveils Prototype of Tesla’s Humanoid Robot Optimus, Says It Will Cost Less Than a Car

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Mr. Musk first laid out the vision for the robot, called Optimus, a little more than a year ago at Tesla’s first-ever AI day. At the time, a dancer in a costume appeared onstage. This time, Mr. Musk presented a prototype at the gathering that unfolded late Friday in Palo Alto, Calif.

The early prototype, which still had wires showing, took a few steps, waved to the crowd, and performed some basic dance moves.

Tesla’s robot is expected to cost less than a car, with a price point below $20,000, Elon Musk said.



Photo:

Tesla

Mr. Musk quipped the robot could do a lot more, but limited its activity for fear it could fall on its face. The robot’s appearance on stage marked the first time it operated without a tether, Mr. Musk said.

“Our goal is to make a useful humanoid robot as quickly as possible,” he said, with the aspiration of being able to make them at high volume and low cost. “It is expected to cost much less than a car,” he said, with a price point below $20,000. Customers should be able to receive the robot, once ordered, in three to five years, Mr. Musk said. It isn’t yet for sale.

He later showed off a nonfunctioning, sleeker model that he said was closer to the production version.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done to refine Optimus,” he said, saying that the concept could evolve over time. “It won’t be boring.”

The battery-powered robot should be able to handle difficult chores, Tesla said, including lifting a half-ton, 9-foot concert grand piano. Mr. Musk added it would have conversational capabilities and feature safeguards to prevent wrongdoing by the machine.

Elon Musk last year unveiled the idea of the robot Optimus with a dancer in a costume.



Photo:

TESLA/via REUTERS

“I’m a big believer in AI safety,” said Mr. Musk, who has previously expressed concerns about how such technology could be used. He said he thinks there should be a regulatory authority at the government level.

The Tesla boss painted a vision of Optimus as helping Tesla make cars more efficiently, starting with simple tasks and then expanded uses. He has also suggested the robot could serve broader functions and potentially alleviate labor shortages.

“It will, I think, turn the whole notion of what’s an economy on its head, at the point at which you have no shortage of labor,” Mr. Musk said Aug. 4 at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting. On Friday, he added: “It really is a fundamental transformation of civilization as we know it.”

Elon Musk unveiled a prototype of Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, part of an effort to shape perception of the company as more than just a car maker. The Tesla CEO said the robot is expected to cost less than a car. Photo: Tesla

When he first unveiled the Optimus concept, Mr. Musk said such a robot could have such an impact on the labor market it could make it necessary to provide a universal basic income, or a stipend to people without strings attached.

Tesla has also encountered problems with automation. Early efforts to rely heavily on automated tools to scale up vehicle production suffered setbacks, and the company had to rely more heavily than planned on factory workers. Mr. Musk later tweeted: “Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.”

One of the big questions around Tesla’s humanoid robot is its central purpose, said

Chris Atkeson,

a Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor. If Tesla’s main goal is to improve manufacturing, a quadruped likely would have been easier to build than a humanoid robot, in part because additional legs make it easier to balance, he said.

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Mr. Musk, who has been instrumental in popularizing electric vehicles and pioneered landing rocket boosters with his company SpaceX, also has a record of making bold predictions that don’t immediately pan out. Three years ago at an event about automation, he projected that more than a million Tesla vehicles would be able to operate without a driver by the middle of 2020, positioning the company to launch a robot taxi service. That hasn’t happened.

Mr. Musk for some time has said Tesla aimed to be more than just a car company and reiterated that message on Friday. He called the company “a series of startups.”

Mr. Musk billed the latest event, like last year’s, as one aimed at recruiting engineers in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics and chips.

Tesla has long bet on automation to keep the company ahead of competitors. The company’s cars are outfitted with an advanced driver-assistance system, known as Autopilot, that helps drivers with tasks such as maintaining a safe distance from other vehicles on the road and staying centered in a lane.

Tesla engineers detailed some of the AI work the company is doing, including to underpin its driver-assistance technology. Mr. Musk said the company’s development of a powerful, AI-focused computer could allow Tesla to offer the number-crunching capability as a service to others, not unlike cloud-computing offerings provided by the likes of

Amazon.com Inc.

The company is developing and selling an enhanced version of Autopilot that brings more automated driving into cities. Tesla calls the system Full Self-Driving, or FSD, although it doesn’t actually make vehicles autonomous and the company tells drivers to keep their hands on the wheel while operating the car.

Tesla said Friday that it now has 160,000 customers with the software. Mr. Musk said rollout of the technology beyond the U.S. and Canada depends on gaining regulatory approval, though it should be feasible from a technology perspective by year-end.

Tesla has steadily raised the price of FSD, which now retails for $15,000. AI has been at the heart of Tesla’s efforts to develop more advanced driver-assistance features and, eventually, fully autonomous vehicles.

Tesla said the software that is used to take on more driving functions also underpins operations of the humanoid robot.

Tesla’s pursuit of automation has increasingly come under scrutiny. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which regulates auto safety, opened a probe into Autopilot last year after a series of crashes involving Teslas that struck first-responder vehicles stopped for roadway emergencies.

Two U.S. senators have also asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether Tesla has been deceptive in its marketing of Autopilot and FSD.

The electric-car maker has long said that driving with Autopilot engaged is safer than doing so without it. Tesla points to internal data showing that crashes were less common when drivers were using Autopilot, though some researchers have criticized the company’s methodology.

Write to Meghan Bobrowsky at Meghan.Bobrowsky@wsj.com and Rebecca Elliott at rebecca.elliott@wsj.com

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