The European Central Bank (ECB) on Thursday (30.01.2025) reduced its main interest rate by 0.25 percentage point to 2.75 %to respond to poor economic growth and decreasing inflation in the euro area.
This reduction, which represents the lowest level since the beginning of 2023, followed the administration of Eurostat that the euro area economy in the last quarter of 2024 has not shown no growth.
In its statement, the ECB stated that “the economy is still facing obstacles”, stressing that the decline in inflation is “on the right track. which would not even support the economy.
Analysts assume that the ECB will continue to reduce rates during 2025. The deposit rate is expected to decline to 1.5 %, the reason for concerns about the economic growth of the euro area and the expected further weakening of inflation. This year’s economic growth of the euro area should reach only 1.1 %, compared to 0.7 % in 2024.
The ECB also indicated that the gradual alleviation of restrictive measures could over time support demand through higher real revenues and lower loan costs. Inflation in the euro area fell from the top of 10.6 % in 2022 to 2.4 % in December 2024.
ECB’s basic interest rate (%)
Tesla disappointed
Elon Musk predicts the recovery of Tesla sales in 2025 after the weak year of 2024. He promises significant progress in the field of artificial intelligence to allow the operation of autonomous vehicles unattended in Texas in June.
Despite optimistic statements, the results for the fourth quarter of 2024 did not meet expectations. Profit and revenue lagged behind the estimates, followed by the first year of decline in Tesla electric vehicles in more than a decade.
Musk announced plans to launch an autonomous taxi service in Austin within six months. At the same time, it plans to introduce the prototype of the Humanoid Robot Optimus and start the production of a fleet of autonomous “cybercabs” in 2026.
The CEO emphasized key investments in production, AI and robotics in 2024, which he believes will bear “huge fruits” in the future. It predicts the “epic year 2026” and “Incredible years 2027 and 2028”.
Tesla plans to introduce an improved model, the best -selling car in the world, along with “more affordable models” in the first half of 2025 to revitalize declining sales. Musk is convinced that Tesla has the potential to become the most valuable company in the world.
However, analysts are less optimistic. They point out that Tesla did not specify the specific goal of growing the sale of vehicles, unlike Musk’s previous statements of 20-30% growth.
Tesla also revealed a significant increase in AI spending. Capital expenditures increased by $ 21% to $ 2.8 billion as the company is building a computing cluster “Cortex” with 50,000 NVIDIA H100 chips for the development of completely autonomous management technology.
Despite the big plans in the field of robotics, Tesla still generates approximately 80% of its sales sales. The Company recorded an increase in revenue from the sale of regulatory credits to competitors by 60% to $ 692 million. A rapidly growing energy production division has doubled sales to $ 3.1 billion per quarter.
Softbank is considering a billion -dollar investment in Openai
Softbank is negotiating a significant investment in Openai, the creator of the popular Chatgpt. The investment could reach up to $ 25 billion, making SoftBank the largest financial supporter of Openai.
This partnership is born in the context of the recently announced Stargate project, an ambitious artificial intelligence initiative (AI) with a planned investment of up to $ 500 billion over the next four years. The project, which has received support for US President Donald Trump, is due to start an initial investment of $ 100 billion.
Masayoshi Son, the founder of Softbank, sees a key opportunity in this investment to strengthen the position of his company in AI. The close cooperation with Openai and its CEO itself is a part of the son’s vision of the development of the so -called. superinteligencies.
This potential agreement could help Openai reduce the addiction to Microsoft, the current largest shareholder. At the same time, Openai is considering transforming into a profitable model, which would allow further investment to attract.
The Stargate project plans to use a combination of its own capital and loans to finance extensive AI infrastructure, including the construction of large data centers. This initiative has the potential to significantly influence the future of the development of artificial intelligence on a global scale.
The author is a portfolio manager
