Elon Musk says Tesla will use humanoid robots from next year; Google’s $23bn bid for Wiz rebuffed – business live

Mark Sweney

Full story: The Tesla chief executive, Elon Musk, has claimed the company will produce “genuinely useful” humanoid robots to start working in its factories next year.

The world’s richest person, who has a penchant for making overambitious claims on social media, posted on his platform X, formerly Twitter, that he also hoped to expand into “high production” mode to make robots with a humanlike form available sell to other companies in 2026.

Musk, who owns X and is also the boss of SpaceX, has previously made bold claims about when the robot, called Optimus, would be ready for commercial use.

In 2021, the billionaire, estimated by Forbes to be worth $250bn (£194bn), said he expected the mechanoid to be ready for use in Tesla factories the following year.

Optimus is about 1.7 metres tall and weighs 56kg; it is designed to do “boring, repetitious and dangerous” work.

The name is an allusion to Optimus Prime, the powerful and benevolent leader of the Autobots in the Transformers media franchise.

Optimus is not the only Musk project to be running behind his initial projections. In 2019, he said he felt “very confident” Tesla would have self-driving taxis on the road the following year.

Read more here:

Cooper prices have fallen to their lowest level in three months, amid concerns over the slowdown in consumer demand and economic growth in China.

Official figures released last week showed the Chinese economy expanding at an annual rate of 4.7% in the second quarter – much weaker than the 5.1% expected by the financial markets.

The central’s bank’s decision to cut interest rates yesterday also failed to ease concerns.

Jitters over what this could mean for demand for commodities and metals has now hit copper prices, with the three month copper on the London Metal Exchange falling 1% to $9,123 per metric ton this morning

It has in turn hit mining giants, which tumbled to the bottom of the FTSE 100.

Glencore is down 2.2%, Anglo American is down 2.1%, Rio Tinto is down 1.4%, Antofagasta is down 1.3%

High street lender TSB suffered a 24.5% drop in profits in the first half of the year, after being hit by heightened competition and a slowdown in the mortgage market.

Profits fell to £111.6m in the six months to June, down from £147.9m a year earlier.

The bank said it reflected “lower mortgage margins in challenging market conditions” as well as a jump in the money paid out to savers as it tried to avoid an outflow of deposits to rival banks offering higher rates. Year-on-year, customer deposits were down by £4m to £35bn.

Mortgage lending was impacted by high interest rates, which caused fewer consumers to borrow. But it meant banks were left to compete fewer customers, which put further pressure on lenders to reduce the cost of borrowing where possible.

It squeezed TSB’s net interest margin to 2.62%. That was 22 basis points lower than H1 2023, when it sat at 2.84%. Total income fell 6.1% to £548.7m.

The bank also took a £19m impairment loss on bad loans.

TSB CEO Robin Bulloch said.

Our focus in 2024 is making TSB simpler and easier to bank with and I’m delighted to see more customers choosing TSB.

We continue to make good progress against our strategy, and I’d like to thank everyone at TSB for their continued efforts to support our customers and communities, helping them feel more money confident.

The results comes as TSB prepares to defend itself in court today in a case related to historic mortgage debts.

A group of about 2,500 Northern Rock customers are seeking compensation from TSB’s subsidiary Whistletree, which bought their loans after Northern Rock collapsed. They say the became “mortgage prisoners” after being forced to pay inflated interest rates on their debts.

My colleague Hilary Osborne has the full story here:

Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.

We start the day with comments from none other than Tesla boss Elon Musk, who has revived the prospects of his company rolling out humanoid robots.

In comments made on his social media platform X, Musk claimed the electric carmaker will start using and eventually selling “useful humanoid robots” from next year.

It could be a lucrative business plan, though Musk has previously said that Tesla could mass produce the robots and sell them for less than $20,000 each.

But whether he can meet the self-imposed deadline remains to be seen. Remember that Musk previously said he expected Tesla would have self-driving taxis on the road within a year…that was back in 2019.

Meanwhile, Google’s parent company Alphabet has had its $23bn offer for Israeli cybersecurity firm Wiz have been rebuffed.

It would have been the biggest deal in Alphabet’s history, and the largest takeover of a venture capital-backed company.

While there has bene no public statement explaining why Wiz walked away from talks, the company reportedly sent an employee-wide email on Monday, saying:

While we are flattered by offers we have received, we have chosen to continue our path to building Wiz.

However, reports suggest there were also internal disagreements. Some board members at both companies were said to be concerned over whether the deal would gain approval from regulators, while other directors actively opposed the takeover.

Wiz, which was founded by alumni of Israel’s cyber intelligence unit, and was last valued at $12bn, will now pursue an initial public offering, according to reports.

The agenda