• Criticized for spending too much time with President Trump and not enough running Tesla, Musk hosts an emergency all-hands meeting where he unveils his dream of building legions of Optimus robots that usher in a utopian age of ‘sustainable abundance’ in which mankind will want for nothing.

The image Elon Musk posted to X in the early hours of Thursday explained a lot of the criticism he’d been receiving. As Tesla faced its biggest crisis since the 2017 launch of the Model 3 nearly bankrupted the company, the serial entrepreneur decided to show off his new office as head of President Trump’s DOGE initiative. 

The posting of the DOGE photo came at a time when Tesla customers were afraid to leave their car unattended because of increasing vandalism against them, and his personal baby, the Cybertruck, had just suffered its eighth formal recall in 15 months. Company analysts and investors had also begun to worry that he wasn’t paying attention to his EV company, with several telling him the ‘clock struck midnight‘ and it was time to find a ‘suitable CEO’ to replace him at Tesla.

Musk appears to have gotten the message, because he returned to the company’s Austin headquarters in Texas to host an emergency all-hands meeting on Thursday, which he uploaded live to his social media platform.

Thanking his staff, Musk told everyone gathered and across Tesla the world over they are part of an elite club of handpicked people destined to make history: they will be the ones to forge a new utopian age in which humans will want for nothing.

Meeting served as important hand-holding for Tesla investors

“What I’m here to tell you is that the future is incredibly bright and exciting,” he said, “and we’re going to do things that no one I think has even dreamed of.” 

Tesla superbull Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities breathed a sigh of relief that Musk had recognized the severity of the “dark brand crisis tornado” and engaged in what he called some “important hand holding” of investors to soothe their frayed nerves. 

“Elon Musk took a major and much needed step forward by hosting a rare all-hands meeting for employees, which was quickly put together and broadcast live on X,” Ives wrote afterwards.

Ives had hiked his price target to $550 immediately after the Trump inauguration, just as the stock began its unprecedented descent to its current $230 price.

Ten ‘legions’ of Optimus robots scheduled for production

Musk touched on Tesla’s production milestone of over 7 million cars to date with another three million to come before the next year is out. He also promised the Model Y would once more be the best-selling car of any kind in 2025 for the third year running. 

In addition, he said Tesla’s unique competitive edge stems from its ability to be the only company able to manufacture the world’s most sophisticated humanoid robot at scale. Tesla’s Optimus, he promised, would one day be the biggest product ever by far and launch mankind into a new era where our every heart’s desire would be fulfilled by millions of Musk’s automatons at our beck and call.

Musk said Tesla would usher in this utopian age—no one else—because only his company could manufacture humanoid robots by the “legion”, choosing the Roman empire’s term for an army for 5,000 soldiers.

“It’s kind of a cool unit,” he said, saying he hoped to already expand production of Optimus robots next year to 10 full legions.

Musk’s vision: ‘You can literally just have anything you want’

For the first time Musk publicly wove a narrative thread spanning the company’s stated mission of accelerating the transition to sustainable energy through its EVs and storage batteries to his new vision he described as “sustainable abundance”.

There will be no more scarcity of resources, Musk said. Mankind across the world will live as kings and serving them will be a Tesla Optimus in every household.

Powered by a Tesla battery and fed renewable energy from a Tesla solar roof, Optimus would autonomously produce goods and services “basically with no limit” while being butler to its owner’s every whim, educating his child and serving as a part-time buddy on the side. 

“It sounds impossible, it sounds like surely such a thing cannot be the case. What I’m here to tell you is that will indeed be the case,” Musk explained. “The future we’re headed for is one where you can literally just have anything you want.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The alert system on a Delta Air Lines jet that flipped upside down and burst into flames as it tried to land in Toronto last month indicated a high rate of descent less than three seconds before touchdown, a preliminary report said Thursday.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada, which issued the report, continues to investigate the Feb. 17 crash-landing in which 21 people were hospitalized.

All 76 passengers and four crew members survived when the Delta plane arriving from Minneapolis burst into flames after flipping over and skidding on the tarmac.

The TSB of Canada report says that when the plane’s ground proximity warning system sounded 2.6 seconds before touchdown, the airspeed was 136 knots, or approximately 250 kph (155 mph). It says the plane’s landing gear folded into the retracted position at touchdown and the wing detached from the fuselage, releasing a cloud of jet fuel, which caught fire as the plane slid along the runway.

The fuselage rolled upside down and a large portion of the tail came off in the process, the report says.

“Accidents and incidents rarely stem from a single cause,” TSB chair Yoan Marier said in a video statement Thursday. “They’re often the result of multiple complex, interconnected factors, many extending beyond the aircraft and its operation to wider systemic issues.”

The crew and passengers started evacuating once the plane came to a stop, the report says, adding that some of the passengers were injured when they unbuckled their seatbelts and fell to the ceiling.

The TSB says it’s not aware of any issues with the seatbelts or seats during the incident.

The cockpit door was jammed shut, forcing pilots to escape through the emergency hatch on the ceiling of the cockpit after everyone else was out, the report says.

Emergency response personnel then went into the fuselage, and there was an explosion outside the plane near the left wing root shortly afterward, the TSB says. The cause of the explosion has not yet been determined.

So far, the investigation has found no pre-existing problems with the flight controls, though some components were damaged in the crash, the board said.

The safety board says its ongoing investigation is focusing on several key areas, including metallurgical examination of the wing structure, landing techniques, pilot training and the passenger evacuation process.

All of those who were hospitalized were released within days of the crash.

At least two lawsuits have been filed in the United States, and a law firm in Canada has said that it’s been retained by several passengers.

Delta declined to comment on the preliminary report.

“We remain fully engaged as participants in the investigation led by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada. Out of respect for the integrity of this work that will continue through their final report, Endeavor Air and Delta will refrain from comment,” the airline said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Good morning!

Companies are already facing major pressure to scrap or change their DEI programs. Now further guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) is encouraging employees to join in on the fight by investigating DEI policies at their own companies. 

On Wednesday, the agencies released two documents entitled “What You Should Know About DEI-Related Discrimination at Work” and “What To Do If You Experience Discrimination Related to DEI at Work.” These new resources describe what counts as “DEI-related discrimination,” and how to report it to the EEOC. Perhaps most important though, they encourage the public to speak up if they can provide “a fact-specific basis” around why they believe certain policies or practices related to DEI violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. 

“These technical assistance documents will help employees know their rights and help employers take action to avoid unlawful DEI-related discrimination,” EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas wrote in a statement about the new guidance. The move follows similar recent anti-DEI efforts from Lucas. On Monday, she sent letters to 20 law firms requesting information about their diversity, equity, and inclusion-related employment practices. 

What do the new DOJ and EEOC employee guidelines mean for workplaces around the U.S.? They add to the heightened culture of fear for employers who are already nervous about trying to preserve their DEI policies in a tough political climate, says David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at New York University

“Employers are already very nervous, and feeling threatened with civil compliance investigations,” he says. “This latest guidance is pouring fuel on an already raging anti-DEI fire.”

But while these documents seem daunting at first glance, he notes that they don’t change any current laws. And he says that the bar for claiming DEI-related discrimination is very high. 

“I think guidance like this could make people unnecessarily worried about, ‘Oh no, what if our DEI trainings are creating a hostile work environment?’ When 99.9% of trainings don’t actually do that,” he says. 

In short, companies should make sure that their programs are bulletproof, but avoid scrapping them altogether, says Nonnie L. Shivers, attorney and office managing shareholder at legal firm Ogletree Deakins. She says many court cases have supported an employer’s right to train their employees, and create an equal opportunity workplace. 

“Employers should continue to conduct privileged assessments of their DEI programs and evaluate risk, leaning into existing civil rights law for what is legal as the law has not changed,” she says.

Brit Morse
brit.morse@fortune.com

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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