Rough week for Elon Musk. First Tesla revealed a cash crunch ahead of its merger with SolarCity (also having liquidity problems), sending shares in both tumbling. Then one of his SpaceX rockets blew up during a launch pad test, taking with it the satellite that Mark Zuckerberg's Internet.org was going to use to bring broadband to sub-Saharan Africa. Between the stock loss and putting up $489 million of his Tesla and SolarCity shares as collateral for personal borrowings, Bloomberg estimates, Musk saw his personal fortune shrink by $779 million on Thursday.
[Johana Bhuiyan | Recode]
Samsung is recalling its flagship Galaxy Note 7 phones, which it introduced last month to glowing reviews, after reports of exploding batteries. It may be the most significant phone recall ever, and it's happening just days before Apple rolls out its new iPhone.
[Ina Fried | Recode]
Calling the EU's $14.5 billion tax clawback against Apple "total political crap," CEO Tim Cook said the company was ready to bring "several billion dollars" of its overseas cash hoard back to the U.S., "and right now I would forecast that repatriation to occur next year." As an Apple rep later clarified, that's if there's a tax holiday or changes to the U.S. code — no shift in Apple's longstanding position.
[Paul Hannon and Sam Schechner | Wall Street Journal]
HP Enterprise is in talks to sell its software division to buyout firm Thoma Bravo, hoping to get $8 billion to $10 billion in the deal. The move would fit into CEO Meg Whitman's efforts to focus HPE's strategy on networking, storage, data centers and related services.
[Greg Roumeliotis and Liana B. Baker | Reuters]
On this week's episode of Too Embarrassed to Ask, Recode's Kara Swisher and The Verge's Lauren Goode talk about Fitbit's newly announced Flex 2 and Charge 2 wearables, and whether their new features are worth paying for.
[Eric Johnson | Recode]
