General Motors (NYSE: GM) is eliminating 500 jobs at its CAMI assembly plant in Ontario, Canada, the automaker announced Friday, as it cuts production of its all-electric BrightDrop delivery vans due to waning demand. The plant will reduce from two shifts to one shift and will then idle starting next month through October. The plant's battery pack assembly segment will also halt manufacturing the week of April 24 and April 28 to prepare for the shutdown. GM said the decision to wind down operations is not in response to President Donald Trump's tariffs, but is "directly related to responding to market demand and re-balancing inventory," according to a statement. GM expected BrightDrop to generate $1 billion in revenue in 2023, but that projection was likely not achieved -- GM declined to disclose its revenue -- as the automaker only sold about 2,000 vans in 2023 and 2024, according to sales reports.

A new study published by Microsoft Research (NASDAQ: MSFT) on Thursday found that leading artificial intelligence models from companies like OpenAI and Google-backed (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG) Anthropic fail to debug common issues in programming tasks, signaling that computer models are still no match for human software developers. The study tested nine different generative AI models tasked with solving a set of 300 software debugging tasks from SWE-bench, a programming benchmark for real-world coding issues. According to the researchers, AI agents failed to complete more than half of the debugging task successfully, with Anthropic's Claude 3.7 Sonnet having the highest average success rate of 48.4%, followed by OpenAI's o1 with a rate of 30.2%. The researchers believe the models lack "sequential decision-making processes," in their current training data, compared to expert human developers.

JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon said Wednesday that he believes the U.S. economy is headed towards a recession as a result of President Donald Trump's tariffs and their impact on global markets. "Markets aren't always right, but sometimes they are right," Dimon said on Fox Business' "Mornings With Maria," show on Wednesday. "I think this time they are right because they're just pricing uncertainty [at] the macro level and uncertainty [at] the micro level, at the actual company level, and then how it affects consumer sentiment. It's hard to tell." Following the unveiling of Trump's "reciprocal" tariffs on trading partners on April 2, JPMorgan economists raised their global recession risk this year to 60% from its previous forecast of 40%, citing declining consumer and business confidence worldwide.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed several executive orders in effort to boost domestic coal production to support growing energy demands from artificial intelligence. "We will rapidly expedite leases for coal mining on federal lands and we'll streamline permitting, we will end the government bias against coal and we're going to unlock the sweeping authorities of the Defense Production Act to turbo charge coal mining in America," Trump said at a signing ceremony at the White House. Coal plants have closed across the United States in favor of other fuel sources due to their high carbon dioxide emissions. Coal stocks including Peabody Energy (NYSE: BTU), Core Natural Resources (NYSE: CNR) and Ramaco Resources (NASDAQ: METC) all rose on Tuesday on the news.

Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone 16 Pro Max could see a price hike of as much as $350 in the United States due to President Donald Trump's tariffs on key trading partners, UBS analyst Sundeep Gantori estimated on Monday. The high-end iPhone currently retails for $1,199, and the firm is forecasting a nearly 30% price increase for units manufactured in China. "Based on the checks we have done at a company level, there is a lot of uncertainty about how the increased cost sharing will be done with suppliers, the extent to which costs can be passed on to end-customers, and the duration of tariffs," Gantori wrote in a note. Apple is one of the most exposed companies to Trump's global trade war, as it manufactures most of its products in China and Southeast Asia. Shares of the tech giant have cratered nearly 20% over the past three trading sessions, effectively erasing about $640 million of its market capitalization.

President Donald Trump extended the deadline for ByteDance's TikTok ban by 75 days on Friday, stating that it will allow for more time to finalize a deal. "My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress," Trump wrote in a post on his social media platfrom Truth Social. "The Deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed, which is why I am signing an Executive Order to keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days." This is the second time TikTok's ban deadline has been extended, with the original sell date set by former President Joe Biden for Jan. 19 and the second deadline made for April 5. Bloomberg reports that U.S. investors for the sale include Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL), Blackstone (NYSE: BX), and Andreessen Horowitz as of Wednesday. Other names include Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Walmart (NYSE: WMT).

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) will no longer have professional fact-checkers in the United States starting Monday, Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan announced Friday. "In place of fact checks, the first Community Notes will start appearing gradually across Facebook, Threads & Instagram, with no penalties attached," Kaplan wrote in a post on X, echoing similar moderation efforts of Elon Musk's social media platform. The policy change follows CEO Mark Zuckerberg's announcement back in January that its social media platforms were loosening their moderation. The change also coincided with President Donald Trump's inauguration, where Zuckerberg attended and donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund; Zuckerberg and Trump historically have had a contentious relationship after Facebook banned Trump's accounts following the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capital.

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) lost more than $250 billion in market value on Thursday, as shares fell over 9% in response to President Donald Trump's wide ranging tariff policy. The White House unveiled tariffs of at least 10% on most countries, with some having even higher rates -- China notably having its duties climb to 54% -- effective April 5. Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives called the tariffs "worse than a worst case scenario for tech investors," will Apple taking a considerable hit. "Apple produces basically all their iPhones in China, and the question will be around exceptions and exemptions on this tariff policy if those companies are building more operations, factories, and plants in the U.S. like Apple announced in February," Ives wrote in a note following the tariff announcement.

Roblox (NASDAQ: RBLX) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) announced a new partnership on Tuesday to allow advertisers to use Google Ad Manager to market on the gaming platform. The ads, which include Roblox's Rewarded Video format, will give brands and agencies access to Roblox's "tens of millions" of Gen Z users that are active daily on the platform. Rewarded Video ads -- an up to 30 second fullscreen video advertisement displayed in both games and online experiences for user rewards --- have a completion rate of over 80% for users, according to Roblox. "This new format is a win-win-win for brands, creators, and users, and we've been excited by the early results of our tests which have proven this out," said Stephanie Latham, Vice President of Global Brand Partnerships and Advertising at Roblox, in a statement. "We are continuing to remove barriers for brands and agencies that are quickly realizing the massive potential of immersive gaming platforms like Roblox where Gen Z are increasingly spending their time."

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) on Monday released a new AI agent that can take control of a web browser and perform multi-step actions independently. The agent, called Nova Act, is also released alongside a developer toolkit to build agents called Nova Act SDK. The tech giant's latest AI release will directly compete with OpenAI's Operator and Anthropic's Computer Use, with each of these companies efforts aimed at making AI chatbots more useful by expanding their web navigating capabilities. Amazon says developers building with Nova Act SDK would be able to automate basic web tasks, like allowing the agent to fill out onboarding forms or pick dates for dinner reservations from a calendar. Nova Act is the first public product released by Amazon's AGI Lab, lead by former OpenAI researchers David Luan and Pieter Abbeel.

Billionaire Elon Musk announced Friday that his artificial intelligence startup xAI has merged with his social media platform X in an all-stock deal that values the companies at $80 million and $33 billion, respectively. Musk noted that the purchase price was $45 billion less due to $12 billion in debt. "xAI and X's future are intertwined," Musk wrote in a post on X. "Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent." Musk added that the merger would, "unlock immense potential by blending xAI's advanced AI capability and expertise with X's massive reach." As the companies are both private, the deal essentially further combines the two in a stock swap, as xAI's products like AI chatbot Grok have already been closely tied to the social media platform. Musk also leads EV maker Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), space exploration company SpaceX, and brain-computer interface maker Neurolink.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) rolled out a new Facebook Friends tab on Thursday, the first new feature that is part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's effort to bring back the original focus of the social networking platform. "The new Friends tab is a throwback to OG Facebook when you only saw friends' status updates," Zuckerberg said in a post. "More OG Facebook coming soon." The new tab will show users the latest content from their friends instead of "recommended content," the company said in a blog post, with the content including stories, reels, posts, birthday announcements and friend requests. Back in January, Zuckerberg said during an earnings call with analysts that the company wants to refocus Facebook back to its roots, and make the app "more culturally influential than it is today."

Support for a TikTok ban in the United States is declining, according to a Pew Research Center study, with about a third of U.S. adults polled in favor of a national ban compared to 50% in March 2023. Most in support cite concerns about data security and China as the major reasons behind their opinion on the short-video sharing app, according to the study, while most who oppose believe a ban would violate their First Amendment rights of freedom of speech. Moreover, the share of Americans that see TikTok as a threat to national security has also declined -- from 59% in 2023 to 49% in the latest survey. Pew found that Americans who do not use TikTok are nearly four times more likely to support a ban. President Donald Trump postponed ByteDance's sale of the app from its original deadline of Jan. 19 to April 19, with U.S. companies like Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) are speculated to buy TikTok. ByteDance has not announced plans for a sale.

Chinese automaker BYD (OTC: BYDDY) reported annual revenue of 777 billion yuan ($107 billion) for 2024, outpacing key rival Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), which posted an annual revenue of $97.7 billion for the same period. The automaker's revenue rose 29% from the previous year, BYD said in a filing publish on Monday, with President Wang Chunfu highlighting the company's "rapid development" throughout the year pushed it to become the first globally to deploy 10 million new energy vehicles in November. "BYD has become an industry leader in every sector from batteries, electronics to new energy vehicles, breaking the dominance of foreign brands and reshaping the new landscape of the global market," Wang said in a statement.

Genetic testing company 23andMe (NASDAQ: ME) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a Missouri federal court on Sunday, and Chief Executive Officer Anne Wojcicki has resigned from her role, effective immediately. Current Chief Financial and Accounting Officer Joseph Selsavage will serve as interim CEO, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. "We have had many successes but I equally take accountability for the challenges we have today," Wojcicki wrote in a post on X on Monday. "There is no doubt that the challenges faced by 23andMe through an evolving business model have been real, but my belief in the company and its future is unwavering." 23andMe, once valued at $6 billion, has struggled to maintain recurring revenue in recent years. Its market capitalization is about $25 million as of Monday.