• Apple has lured away 36 Googlers with AI expertise since 2018, the Financial Times reported.
• It's part of a broader talent war among Big Tech firms seeking to bolster their AI capabilities.
• The battle could escalate when Microsoft opens an AI hub on Google DeepMind's home turf in London.

Apple has convinced at least 36 Googlers with AI expertise to jump ship since 2018, according to a Financial Times analysis of LinkedIn profiles.

An Apple research paper on multimodal large language models published last month listed six authors who were former Google staff and had been recruited in the past two years, the report says.

Nine of the 31 authors listed on the research paper had Google listed as their last employer on their LinkedIn profiles, Business Insider found, and two authors came from Microsoft.

The discovery comes amid a broader AI talent war among Big Tech firms as they seek to bolster their capabilities.

Google successfully enticed OpenAI's former head of developer relations, Logan Kilpatrick, to join its ranks this month.

One AI worker previously told BI they had received a call from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to persuade him to join the company behind ChatGPT. He accepted the offer.

Even Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been trying to poach Google's AI researchers by sending them personal emails, The Information reported last month.

Some senior Microsoft leaders have also departed to join other firms in roles with an AI focus, Fortune recently reported. They include former executive Gurdeep Singh Pall, who became software management firm Qualtrics' AI president earlier this month.

The battle for AI expertise could further intensify as Microsoft recently revealed plans for an AI hub on Google Deep Mind's home turf in London. It aims to hire "exceptional individuals" soon.

It's not just the Big Tech firms competing for AI talent. Even startups are trying to secure expertise that will help them to expand.

The newly appointed CEO of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleyman, told the FT last month: "It is hyper-competitive at both ends of the spectrum. At the small, start-up scale everybody is on fire in terms of their creativity. And at the big end, everyone's going head-to-head there, too. I think it's just a ferociously competitive time to be working in tech."

Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

Are you a tech worker with insights to share? Contact this reporter at jmann@businessinsider.com

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• New York, Austin, and LA were the top cities tech talent moved to in 2023, according to a report.
• San Francisco, Seattle, and Boston lost the greatest share of relocating tech workers.
• Several places attracting tech workers are "blue island" cities in red states.

Tech talent making moves aren't just ending up in Austin and Miami.

In fact, the No. 1 place tech workers moved to in 2023 was New York City, according to a recent SignalFire report.

While the San Francisco Bay Area is still the center of the tech world, a migration of tech employees out of California has continued since the rise in remote work.

Among tech workers who relocated last year, the most common states for them to end up included New York, Texas, California, and Florida, according to the SignalFire report.

The top nine cities tech workers relocated to were:

• New York City, New York

• Austin, Texas

• Los Angeles, California

• Denver, Colorado

• San Diego, California

• Miami/Fort Lauderdale, Florida

• Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas

• Nashville, Tennessee

• Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida

New York had a net gain in tech talent of about 3.5%, while Austin had a gain of about 1.5%. In third was Los Angeles, with a net gain of around 0.5%

Meanwhile, the nine cities tech workers moved away from were:

• San Francisco, California

• Seattle, Washington

• Boston, Massachusetts

• Phoenix, Arizona

• Washington, DC

• Sacramento, California

• Portland, Oregon

• Detroit, Michigan

• Provo, Utah

San Francisco saw a net loss in tech talent of over 3.5%, while Seattle lost just under 2.5%, and Boston lost more than 0.5 percent.

Fifteen percent of all tech employees who moved between 2023 and 2024 went to New York, according to the report. New York drew a significant share of the tech workers who relocated from San Francisco, Boston, and Seattle, among other cities.

The trend of people moving out of San Francisco and California, generally, to cities in Texas and Florida, has been partially explained by a desire to escape high costs of living. But New York City managed to draw the biggest share of tech workers who moved last year despite its high housing prices and cost of living.

Several of the cities attracting tech workers also happen to be "blue island" cities located in red states, such as Austin, Nashville, Tampa, and Miami.

In addition to the cities in the report, there are also smaller cities across the US that have growing tech scenes, including places in Utah, Idaho, and Arkansas.

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• An emergency exit slide came off a Delta Air Lines Boeing 767 on Friday.
• A lawyer, whose firm is suing Boeing over the Alaska blowout, spotted it outside his home two days later.
• He told the New York Post the firm hasn't decided if the slide is relevant to its case.

An emergency slide that came off a Delta Boeing 767 was found by a lawyer whose firm is suing Boeing, the New York Post reported.

"Our case is all about safety issues at Boeing, and this slide is literally right in front of my house," Jake Bissell-Linsk told the newspaper.

The wild coincidence happened on Sunday, two days after the slide fell off the Boeing 767 operated by Delta Air Lines.

Flight 520 was flying from New York's JFK Airport to Los Angeles on Friday, April 26 — but was forced to turn back after the incident. It was only in the air for around an hour.

A warning on the flight deck and a "non-routine sound from near the right wing" alerted the crew to a problem before the missing slide was observed upon landing, a Delta spokesperson previously told Business Insider.

Bissell-Linsk, a partner at law firm Labaton Keller Sucharow, told the Post he was looking out the window of his oceanfront home in Queens when he spotted the slide.

"We are right on the beach and I saw it was sitting on the breakers," he added. Bissell-Linsk said a crew of Delta workers turned up to pull it out of the water about five hours later.

A Delta spokesperson confirmed to the Post that it had retrieved the slide and added, "we will fully cooperate with all relevant investigations."

Bissell-Linsk's firm is representing Boeing shareholders in a case, filed on January 30, that claims the planemaker made misleading statements about safety following the Alaska Airlines blowout.

That incident, which saw a door plug come off a 737 Max 9 in midair, has marred Boeing's reputation and resulted in its CEO resigning.

However, it should be noted that since the Delta Boeing 767 was built in 1990, the incident points to a maintenance issue rather than the planemaker's fault. By contrast, the Alaska 737 was delivered to the carrier just 66 days before the blowout.

"We haven't decided if the slide is relevant to our case," Bissell-Linsk told the Post.

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• The Federal Reserve is expected to once again hold interest rates steady on Wednesday.
• Some predictions also do not forecast any interest rate cuts until the second half of the year.
• Powell has emphasized the importance of more data before deciding to cut rates.

It's probably still not time for the nation's central bank to cut interest rates just yet.

On Wednesday, the Federal Open Market Committee will announce whether it will continue holding interest rates steady or give Americans some relief, and it's looking likely it will choose the former — according to the CME FedWatch Tool, which estimates the market's views on probabilities for interest rate changes, there is a 97.1% chance rates will remain unchanged as of Monday morning.

It all comes down to the data. Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, told Business Insider after the jobs report published earlier in April that it was "the Fed's holy grail: strong job market with non-inflationary growth."

That report showed average hourly earnings growth cooled in March, the unemployment rate wasn't too high, and there was strong job growth, with 303,000 jobs added. In addition to the growth in January and February, these monthly job gains indicate that 2024 has had a strong labor market so far.

However, even with the strong data, inflation isn't quite where it needs to be. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said he needs to see more consistent proof that the economy is moving in the right direction before cutting interest rates, stressing that it's best to hold off rather than cut too early — and risk having to hike rates again.

Inflation based on the consumer price index and the personal consumption expenditures price index both accelerated in March — the CPI rose 3.5% year-over-year in March after a 3.2% reading in February.

"The recent data have clearly not given us greater confidence and instead indicate that it's likely to take longer than expected to achieve that confidence," Powell said during a panel discussion in Washington in April.

Thursday's news release from the Bureau of Economic Analysis about GDP showed the US economy continued to slow. Real GDP growth at an annualized rate ended up cooling down more than expected — with an estimate of 1.6% compared to the 2.5% forecast.

Given that inflation is still above the Fed's 2% target, it's looking like rate cuts might not come until the second half of 2024. According to the CME FedWatch Tool, there's an 88.4% chance rates will remain steady again after the Fed's next meeting in June, with just an 11.3% chance of a rate cut.

"Right now, given the strength of the labor market and progress on inflation so far, it's appropriate to allow restrictive policy further time to work," Powell said during the April panel discussion. His cautious remarks have some experts predicting that cuts will likely not come until July at the earliest.

"With Powell indicating the Fed should allow restrictive policy further time to work and a clear majority of policymakers favoring two or fewer rate cuts, we expect only two 25bps rate cuts in 2024 in July and November," Gregory Daco, EY's chief economist, said in a recent commentary.

Still, some Democratic lawmakers have been urging Powell to consider cutting rates sooner rather than later to provide relief to Americans who are struggling with high prices. Ahead of the FOMC's March decision to hold rates steady, a group of 23 Democrats asked Powell to "seriously consider the harmful economic consequences of maintaining excessively high interest rates for an unnecessarily long period of time."

For now, proceeding carefully is Powell's core focus — and it'll likely mean the relief Americans want will not come until the second half of this year.

"Despite evidence that economic growth is beginning to slow, the Federal Reserve isn't as close to cutting interest rates as they thought they might be at their last meeting in March," Greg McBride, chief financial analyst for Bankrate, said in a statement. "Inflation has continued to run hot and there is no compelling need for the Fed to cut interest rates until they're comfortable with where inflation is headed."

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Over the past year or so, pretty much everyone who's looked for a job has told me the same thing: The job market is brutal right now. They've applied to dozens if not hundreds of openings, only to get one or two callbacks. No one's hiring, they tell me. I've never seen it this bad.

Listening to them, you'd think we were in the middle of a recession. But the confusing thing is we're nowhere close to one. Unemployment is near a five-decade low. The economy is adding hundreds of thousands of jobs each month. Wages are growing faster than inflation. By all the standard measures, the job market is doing just fine. So why am I hearing such a different story from people on the ground?

The dissonance finally started to make sense to me when Vanguard, the investment-management company, released its latest report on hiring. By looking at the enrollment and contribution rates of its 401(k) retirement plans, Vanguard is able to calculate a national hiring rate broken down by income level. And what the numbers show is a two-tier job market — one divided between a blue-collar boom and a white-collar recession.

Among Vanguard's lowest earners — those who make less than $55,000 — the hiring rate has held up well. At 1.5%, it's still above pre-pandemic levels. But among those who make more than $96,000? It's pretty depressing. Hiring has slowed to a dismal 0.5%, less than half the peak it reached in mid-2022. Excluding the dip in the early months of the pandemic, that's the worst it's been since 2014. If you make a six-figure salary, it really is a bad time to be looking for a job.

The question here is why. Why are companies hiring so few white-collar workers right now? Several possible explanations come to mind. It might be that fewer people in corporate jobs are quitting right now, which would mean companies have fewer openings they need to fill. It might be that the industries that are struggling the most — tech and finance — are the ones that employ a lot of high-earning professionals. Or it might be that CEOs are making good on their threats to cut back on what they see as corporate bloat — what Mark Zuckerberg has called "managers managing managers, managing managers, managing managers, managing the people who are doing the work."

But there could be a bigger, more worrisome explanation for the downturn in white-collar hiring. Maybe companies are anticipating tough times ahead and trimming their budgets accordingly. "If you need to pull back on costs," says Fiona Greig, the global head of investor research and policy at Vanguard, "pulling back on expensive workers will reduce costs to a greater extent than pulling back on your lower-income workers." Translation: The more you earn when budgets are tight, the less an employer wants to hire you.

Now, you could argue that a slowdown in white-collar hiring doesn't really matter in the current economy, even for white-collar workers. Sure, Vanguard's data show that things are tough for professionals who are looking for a job. But there aren't that many people who actually need a new job right now: The unemployment rate for people with a college degree is 2.1%, and the national layoff rate is below what it was pre-pandemic. When the vast majority of professionals already have a job — and are able to keep their jobs — maybe it's OK that companies aren't hiring.

But that argument doesn't take into account one important factor: What if the job you have is one you hate? I have several friends who are unhappy in their current jobs, but they can't quit because no one is hiring. Some observers have called this combination of lower hiring and less quitting "the Big Stay," suggesting a kind of equilibrium after the chaos of the Great Resignation. But my colleague Emily Stewart has a better name for it: the "trapped in place" economy. I think professionals feel this trapped-in-placeness particularly acutely. After all, it wasn't that long ago that they were enjoying a "take this job and shove it" swagger, which was fun to watch. During the Great Resignation, they knew it'd be easy to find a new job, which meant it'd be easy to walk away from their current one. Even if they weren't planning to leave, the job market gave them a sense of freedom — the feeling that they no longer had to put up with a bad boss, or a brutal workload, or an arbitrary return-to-office mandate.

This, I think, is what explains what people are calling the "vibecession": the weird state of feeling like we're in a recession even though all the standard metrics show we're not. What we're experiencing is actually a slowdown in white-collar hiring — and white-collar professionals (me and my angsty friends) are the people who shape the public discourse about the economy. "People feel that things are moving in the wrong direction," says Guy Berger, the director of economic research at the Burning Glass Institute, which analyzes the labor market.

And for the most elite professionals, things could get worse before they get better. Berger tells me he doesn't expect a full-on recession anytime soon. But he's keeping an eye on the unemployment rate for people with advanced degrees. Pretty much everyone else is doing OK, job-wise — but there's been a slight uptick for all the smarty-pants with master's degrees and doctorates. They aren't exactly struggling right now. "We're still talking about the people that have the highest pay in the job market and the lowest unemployment rate," Berger says. But for them, hiring is headed in the wrong direction. And as AI tools increasingly encroach on professionals' tasks — writing, coding, coordination, analysis — we'll likely see a lot more weakness at the higher end of the income scale than at the lower end.

This isn't the story we're used to hearing about employment. For decades the economy has been leaving workers with lower incomes and less education behind while professionals have reaped all the gains. But now those roles are reversed, and it's the high earners who are taking the hit. No wonder everyone is confused about how the economy is doing. "We're having some trouble collectively digesting that," Berger says. And the longer the white-collar hiring lull continues, he warns, the more the resentment will build.

"Even if there's no big surge in layoffs, people are just going to get grumpier and more dissatisfied," Berger says. "If it continues for three or four more years, it's going to cause a lot of discontent and low morale in corporate America."

Aki Ito is a chief correspondent at Business Insider.

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• Tesla is set to launch its robotaxi on August 8, 2024.
• The date, Elon Musk says, was chosen partly because it is a "lucky number in China."
• Musk's interest in China isn't surprising considering its major influence on Tesla's fortunes.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk might've been hoping for some much-needed good fortune when he picked the robotaxi's projected August 8 launch date.

"I did partly pick it because 8/8 is a lucky number in China!" Musk told X user Michel de Guilhermier on Monday. This was after the latter pointed out the date's significance in Chinese culture.

The date, Musk added, was also chosen because it is the birthday of his triplets. Musk fathered the triplets — Kai, Saxon, and Damian — with his first wife, Justine Musk.

The number eight is seen as an auspicious digit in Chinese culture. This is because it has a similar pronunciation to the Chinese word for wealth and prosperity. When China hosted the Olympics in 2008, they opened the games officially at 8 p.m., on August 8.

Musk's interest in Chinese culture isn't that surprising if one considers the huge impact China has on Tesla's fortunes.

The Asian giant has become an increasingly important part of Tesla's operations. In April 2023, Musk unveiled plans for a new battery factory in Shanghai, per a report from China's state-run Xinhua News Agency.

With Tesla's growing troubles over sluggish sales and declining revenue, the Chinese market is now of vital importance to the company's survival and growth.

Musk also received a critical lifeline from China over the weekend, when officials gave their in-principle approval for Tesla to roll out its Full Self-Driving technology in the country, Bloomberg reported on Monday citing an individual familiar with the matter.

The billionaire swung the deal during an unexpected trip to China after canceling an earlier planned trip to India. While in China, Musk met several Chinese officials, including the country's second-highest-ranking politician, Li Qiang.

Musk's warmth toward China, however, does not extend to his rivals there.

Last week, Tesla reduced the price of is Model 3, S, X, and Y by 14,000 yuan, or about $1,930. Musk's company has been waging a price war amid heightened competition from Chinese automakers like BYD and Li Auto.

"The Chinese car companies are the most competitive car companies in the world," Musk said of his competitors during Tesla's earnings call in January.

"If there are no trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world," he continued.

Representatives for Tesla didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

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• Timothy Gamble left his VP role at Walker & Dunlop to cofound HelloData.ai in 2022.
• Gamble's decision was driven by a desire for continual growth and the opportunity to innovate in AI.
• Despite earning less, Gamble is happy with his decision to leave his 9-5.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Timothy Gamble, a 26-year-old cofounder at HelloData.ai based in Washington, DC. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I'm a cofounder and the head of data engineering at HelloData.ai, which uses real-time data on more than 25 million multifamily units nationwide to suggest the most relevant comparable properties and analyze real-estate assets.

My career kicked off in 2016 at Enodo, a real-estate analytics company, as a freshman in college with just a few months of computer science under my belt. I gathered and normalized real-estate data, but my role quickly expanded, and I was soon in charge of the data infrastructure that processed billions of real-estate data points daily.

By the time I graduated, Enodo was approached with an acquisition offer, which was accepted. I then joined Walker & Dunlop, a provider of financing services to owners of commercial real estate, as a lead data engineer in February 2019.

I played a key role in incorporating Enodo's technology into Walker & Dunlop's data-driven products. In August 2021, I was promoted to VP of data engineering.

From the outside, it might've looked like I had it all, but inside, something was missing

Although I enjoyed the stability of my role, I reached a point where I felt my growth had plateaued, and I wanted to get back into the startup scene.

At the end of 2022, I quit to cofound HelloData.ai with Nico Lassaux, head of machine learning, and Marc Rutzen, CEO.

Nico left W&D one year before me, but we kept in touch. When I left W&D, we decided it made sense to start a real-estate AI company since we both had an entrepreneurial spirit, strong engineering backgrounds, and real-estate domain expertise.

We started with six separate ideas before moving forward with HelloData.ai. Marc kept in touch with us and decided to join our venture.

Leaving a stable job and cofounding HelloData.ai wasn't a quick decision

Deciding to leave my stable job took a year of wrestling with questions, especially from my family. Security, prestige, and a steady paycheck — why trade those for the unknowns of a startup?

There was no one answer, but I had several realizations I couldn't ignore. First, I craved the startup energy. The constant challenges and rush of innovation lit a fire in me. My job was comfortable, but I missed the adrenaline of pushing boundaries and overcoming hurdles.

Then there was my role at W&D, which had shifted from creating to maintaining. Building new systems and implementing fresh ideas were the activities that fueled my passion. I needed to be challenged, and the corporate ladder didn't offer that kind of growth. Managing a bigger team or getting a "senior" title was less appealing than the chance to learn and innovate in a rapidly changing field.

Finally, there was AI. It was starting to sweep across industries, and I didn't want to be a bystander.

Deciding to leave my VP role was scary but the fear of complacency and the prospect of looking back with regret for not pursuing my passions were far greater motivators.

I knew I needed to challenge myself to grow

Walking away from a role that may seem perfectly set up for you, especially when it feels like golden handcuffs, requires a deep understanding of what you value most. For me, it was about continual growth and not wanting to get left behind as the pace of engineering, especially in AI, began to accelerate.

Don't shy away from the discomfort of leaving security behind. In that discomfort, you'll find the most significant opportunities for growth and innovation. Trust in your ability to navigate the unknown, and remember that the skills and resilience you build through this process are invaluable assets.

I'm now earning less than I was before, but that's because we're reinvesting all profits back into the business. We're very proud to be bootstrapped yet profitable and continue to grow.

I've learned a lot as an entrepreneur

I've made plenty of mistakes in my career, but my most recent one was in January when I built a system and unexpectedly racked up over $5,000 in computing costs.

The issue was resolved after editing a few lines of code, but it showed me just how important it is to forecast what a new system will cost before deploying it.

If I were to distill one piece of concrete advice for people itching to leave their corporate jobs, it would be this: embrace the challenge of leaving a comfortable position not as a loss, but as a critical step toward personal and professional growth.

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• McKinsey & Co. held an internal event to rally partners amid a challenging year, Bloomberg reports.
• The event was soundtracked by Bob Marley, Eminem, and a 1990s cult British classic. 
• Like many major consulting firms, McKinsey has announced layoffs as demand for its services has fallen. 

The management consulting giant McKinsey has turned to the music of Eminem and Bob Marley to try to pump up its disgruntled partners, according to a report from Bloomberg.

The firm, which has faced a challenging eighteen months, held an event earlier in April in Copenhagen for around 750 senior partners, the report said.

During the event, Bob Sternfels, global managing partner at McKinsey, reportedly admitted that the last 18 months had been challenging but said that 2024 was looking better for the firm.

According to a source who spoke to Bloomberg, McKinsey was at a "turn the page" moment, Sternfels announced at the event.

To accompany the positive message hits by the American rapper Eminem and singer Bob Marley were played during the night, Bloomberg reported.

Also on the playlist was 1997 cult hit "Tubthumping" by British band Chumbawamba, famed for its chorus: "I get knocked down, but I get up again. You are never gonna keep me down."

McKinsey is not alone in facing difficulties. Major consulting firms across the board are seeing waning demand for their services. After pandemic-era hiring sprees, the slowdown has left staff numbers at many firms bloated.

In April, McKinsey gave some 3,000 staffers poor performance ratings, which are internally known as "concerns." Employees who receive a "concern" generally have about three months to improve their performance, or they will be "counseled to leave."

The company has also announced hundreds of redundancies and layoffs in its technology and other divisions. Recent efforts to cut headcount have included offers for nine months' worth of pay and career-coaching services.

"The irony of my time at McKinsey is that they're constantly giving right-sizing advice to their clients but completely miss the mark themselves," one former employee previously told Business Insider.

But McKinsey partners have reportedly been unhappy with how leadership has handled the role reductions, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.

Sternfels appeared to address their grievances, reportedly telling the audience, "I hope we shout out. I hope we engage. I hope we wrestle with stuff together."

Alongside redundancies, McKinsey is also facing a criminal investigation.

Last week, it was reported that the US Department of Justice was conducting an investigation into McKinsey's role in the US opioid epidemic.

Two days later, a former partner filed a lawsuit against the firm, accusing it of defamation and scapegoating him for its work with opioid manufacturers like Purdue Pharma. The suit seeks damages from McKinsey and Sternfels.

McKinsey did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

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• Saudi Arabia's Neom project secured a $2.7 billion credit line from local lenders. 
• The Saudi finance minister said the kingdom was "very pleased" with progress on Vision 203 goals. 
• He said "challenges" meant adjustments would be made to some aspects as required.

Saudi Arabia is trying to counter reports that its Neom project is struggling.

Finance minister Mohammed Al Jadaan told a World Economic Forum meeting in Riyadh on Sunday that the kingdom was "very pleased" with the progress made in its Vision 2030 plan, of which Neom is the centerpiece.

While he said 87% of the targets in the ambitious plan were on track, "challenges" meant adjustments would be made to some aspects as required.

"We don't have ego, we will change course, we will adjust, we will extend some of the projects, we will downscale some of the projects, we will accelerate other projects," the minister said during a session on global economic growth.

His comments came as Neom announced a new revolving credit facility worth 10 billion riyals ($2.7 billion) — from local lenders.

Officials said in a press release that the credit line will support Neom's short-term financing requirements, including the development of Trojena, The Line, and the luxury island destination Sindalah.

Neom's CEO, Nadhmi Al-Nasr, said: "This new credit facility, backed by Saudi Arabia's leading financial institutions, is a natural fit within our wider strategy for funding. We continue to explore a variety of funding sources as we deliver transformational infrastructure assets while supporting the wider Vision 2030 program."

Neom did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Recent reports have indicated that Saudi Arabia may be struggling to realize some of the ambitious projects included in Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 plan.

Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that Saudi Arabia had reduced estimates for the number of people expected to live in The Line. That decision had led to at least one contractor starting to lay off workers employed on the site, according to the report.

The Wall Street Journal reported in February that Saudi had also started borrowing to help fund Neom and other Vision 2030 megaprojects.

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• Elon Musk just made a quick trip to China, where he met with senior officials and struck a deal.
• The Beijing visit comes as trade tensions have ratcheted up between China and the US, including over EVs.
• And Musk notably skipped a recent visit to India, underscoring how important China is for Tesla.

Elon Musk's two-day trip to Beijing looks like a mutually-beneficial win for Tesla and for China — and a snub for India.

The tech billionaire made his second trip to China in less than a year. He left on Monday after meeting with senior officials including Premier Li Qiang, China's second-highest-ranking politician, to discuss the rollout of Tesla's Full Self-Driving technology in the world's biggest auto market.

China's search engine giant Baidu agreed to grant Tesla access to its mapping license so Tesla can collect data on China's roads, Reuters reported. And Tesla's vehicles cleared a key hurdle with a Chinese data security regulator on Monday.

That's a big step for Tesla toward launching FSD in the country, a potential revenue booster just as the company wraps up one of its most tumultuous months. Tesla's stock is down 23% year to date.

In April, Tesla reported disappointing first-quarter deliveries, went through a messy 10% global layoff, recalled nearly 4,000 Cybertrucks because of faulty accelerators, and cut prices — a move reciprocated by Chinese EV rivals, who cut theirs even further.

Tesla has 1.6 million cars in China, representing a huge potential market for FSD. Other carmakers could also pay to license the technology.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told the Financial Times that the FSD approval in China was a "watershed moment" for Tesla. The company's huge valuation — hundreds of billions of dollars more than other automakers — hinges on autonomous technology, Ives said.

Local regulators may keep a particularly close eye on Tesla's software. In January, the company had to recall all of its cars in China made from 2014 to 2023 to fix problems with its Autopilot feature and locks. Both problems could be fixed with a free software update.

A win for China and a slight for India

Musk has long been eager to make nice with China, sometimes with antics that would raise eyebrows for other CEOs.

To celebrate a new Shanghai factory in 2020, he performed what a BI reporter at the time deemed a "dad-dance striptease." On the hundredth anniversary of the Communist Party in 2021, he tweeted fawning praise of the country.

China, for its part, has given him a royal welcome on past trips. His May 2023 trip included a 16-course meal with a battery executive and a storm of local social media praise.

As Tesla expands in China, the country must balance its desire to work with the US juggernaut with its inclination to protect local giants, like BYD. In the first quarter, Chinese automakers' profit jumped 32% from a year ago, per statistics released Saturday.

Musk needs China — but China also needs Musk, as a sign that the country is open for business with high-profile US companies.

Trade tensions between China and the US have ratcheted up in the last year amid US concerns about Chinese manufacturing and data security.

Janet Yellen, the US treasury secretary, and Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, visited China in the past month. They warned of Chinese companies undercutting other manufacturers through overproduction, including in electric vehicle and battery production.

China has ramped up EV production, a major threat to Tesla. BYD beat Tesla as the best-selling EV maker last year, and Musk said in January that Chinese EVs would "pretty much demolish" other American carmakers if allowed to enter the US.

Tesla's work in China may help the country court foreign investment. Businesses have been scared off by government crackdowns — including raids on top global firms like Bain — and by roiling property and stock markets. This year, weakened consumer demand has hit companies from Gucci to Apple, which have built big businesses as Chinese consumers' disposable income has risen.

While Musk made time for this quick trip to Beijing, he skipped a planned trip to India earlier this month to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Musk's visit was going to include an announcement about Tesla entering India, Reuters reported.

"Unfortunately, very heavy Tesla obligations require that the visit to India be delayed, but I do very much look forward to visiting later this year," Musk posted on X.

A key Tesla executive who was helping to lead the company's entrance into India left this month, Reuters reported.

Musk's India visit would have been a win for Modi, who is seeking to boost India's status as a manufacturing hub, especially as businesses leave China.

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