Forbes Daily: Tesla Founders Are Making Another Bet On The EV Market

Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard founded Tesla, and now they’re backing the next generation of electric vehicles.

The pair is funding EV startup TELO, which is bringing a truck to market that’s roughly the size of a MINI Cooper. The whimsical vehicle, starting at $41,520, stands in contrast to Tesla’s brutalist Cybertruck. But the company is borrowing a page from Tesla’s early playbook by starting small, with plans to make just 500 units before scaling up.

The repeat founders are betting that the U.S. EV market is ready for new players and products. “This goes back to Steve Jobs, who said you have to delight the customer,” Tarpenning said.

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First Up

President Donald Trump’s new wave of tariffs went into effect shortly after midnight Friday, impacting 60 countries over alleged forced-labor violations, and prompting pushback from major U.S. trading partners.
Trump said he’s “close” to making a decision on whether to launch a “massive attack” on Iran, even as oil prices surged and the House voted again to limit his war powers.
In a lawsuit filed this week, three public pension funds accused Uber’s executives of knowingly concealing the scale of the sexual misconduct problem with its drivers, and allegedly failing to disclose nearly 400,000 incidents.

Business + Finance

Capital One’s $51 billion acquisition of Discover last year is bringing the company a windfall thanks to a quirky financial regulation, and Truist analyst Brian Foran thinks it’s made them an estimated $1 billion in annualized revenue. Most of it stems from the fact that Discover is exempt from a rule that caps fees for cards issued by large banks running on Visa and Mastercard’s networks, a setup so lucrative that the Wall Street Journal reports megabanks recently discussed trying to form their own payments network.

Tesla shares had their worst day in over a year after a disappointing earnings report, sending Elon Musk’s net worth plunging by more than $18 billion. Analysts were critical of a lack of “tangible” results for its burgeoning robotics and robotaxi businesses.

Wealth + Entrepreneurship

Google cofounder Sergey Brin’s net worth fell by more than $17 billion Thursday as parent company Alphabet’s bigger-than-expected increase in AI spending spooked investors. Google was also hit with a $1 billion antitrust fine from the European Union, and Alphabet shares closed down 7%.

Tech + Innovation

AI insurance startup Corgi has raised money from investors for the third time in less than three months, valuing the company at $4 billion—nearly doubling its worth since May. The company, which uses AI to generate insurance quotes for clients, has become something of a poster child for the frenzy of San Francisco’s current AI boom, with a seven-day workweek policy and the all-night cafe it operates.

Money + Politics

President Donald Trump welcomed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the White House on November 18, 2025.

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

As the Trump administration conducted nuclear negotiations with Saudi Arabia, the president’s private licensing business expanded in the kingdom. The Trump Organization announced a hotel, golf and residential project bearing Donald Trump’s name in a development helmed by the Saudi crown prince.

Daily Cover Story

This Billionaire Made $360 Million Selling His Psychedelic Company To Eli Lilly

Christian Angermayer

Levon Biss

Twelve years ago, Christian Angermayer took a mushroom trip that inspired him to build a biotech that is trying to turn psychedelic drugs into FDA-approved medicines. Now, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly is betting billions on his vision.

Lilly, the maker of depression blockbuster Prozac and the weight-loss drugs Zepbound and Mounjaro, will acquire Angermayer’s pharma company AtaiBeckley for $2.8 billion. As part of the deal, Eli Lilly could pay an additional $1 billion in milestone-related payments.

Angermayer’s 15% stake in AtaiBeckley means he will receive around $360 million (pre-tax) from the deal. Eli Lilly will now own the experimental drug BPL-003, a fast-acting nasal spray containing mebufotenin benzoate (a form of 5-MeO-DMT) that is in Phase III development as a medicine for treatment-resistant depression. Phase III trials are expected to start in 2029.

The AtaiBeckley acquisition by Eli Lilly is the largest deal in the psychedelics space. It comes just under a year after AbbVie bought Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals’ lead candidate bretisilocin, an analogue of DMT, for $1.2 billion. Taken together, these deals signal that psychedelics have shed their hippie stigma and are now being taken seriously by Big Pharma as potential FDA-approved medicines. With the success of Spravato, Eli Lilly hopes to create a psychedelic blockbuster with BPL-003, says Karen Andersen, the director of healthcare research at Morningstar.

“We see this as a multibillion-dollar market quite easily, with Spravato alone surpassing $3 billion by 2030,” says Andersen, explaining that there are 4 million people in the U.S. with treatment-resistant depression.

WHY IT MATTERS “The multi-billion dollar AtaiBeckley acquisition by Eli Lilly is a sign that Big Pharma is now taking psychedelic drugs seriously,” says Forbes senior writer Will Yakowicz. “After decades of research, stigma and being on the wrong side of the law, the future of psychedelic drugs is clear: FDA-approved medications for hard-to-treat illnesses.”

MORE He Sold His Sports Equipment Company To New Balance. Now He’s Changing The Cannabis Game

Facts + Comments

Eli Lilly, the maker of Mounjaro and Zepbound, could soon add another GLP-1 to its lineup. The pharmaceutical giant announced plans to file for FDA approval of its powerful retatrutide weight-loss drug:

Nearly 56 lbs: How much weight study participants lost on average after 80 weeks on the medication

First quarter of 2027: When Lilly said it will file for approval of the drug

$3.8 billion: How retatrutide could generate in sales in 2030, according to estimates from TD Cowen analysts

Strategy + Success

Landing an offer in today’s job market can be difficult, so it could be worth expanding your geographic horizons. A new ranking from LinkedIn shows that job growth—and the resulting migration—are spreading outside of the usual tech hubs, driven in part by lower housing costs.The 25 small and mid-sized metro areas are small Rust Belt cities, state capitals and college towns, including Augusta, Ga., Harrisburg, Pa. and Richmond, Va.