• Tesla posted footage of its robotaxi driving without a safety driver ahead of its Q3 earnings call.
• Two of the clips included footage of a Waymo robotaxi and Avride encroaching on Tesla's path.
• The clips showed the Tesla Robotaxi slowing down.

Tesla took some subtle jabs at its robotaxi competitors ahead of its third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday.

On a website Tesla created for its robotaxi safety report, the company uploaded clips of its self-driving cars maneuvering in real-world conditions without a driver behind the wheel. Obstacles and hazards included stormy weather, a pedestrian crossing at a green light, stray pets, and rival robotaxis getting in the way.

Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla's VP of AI, also posted the video on X, calling it "Robotaxi B-roll."

At around the 1:44 mark of Elluswamy's post, the video shows a robotaxi coming to a complete stop in its own lane as a Waymo makes a wider-than-usual right turn. The Waymo can be seen encroaching into Tesla's lane before it returns to its own path.

A Waymo spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

In another short clip, the Tesla robotaxi is seen driving at night, braking for an Avride car that pulled up from the right, a little too far into the Tesla's path.

Avride is a robotaxi company that offers robotaxi rides through Uber in Dallas and is testing rides with a safety driver behind the wheel in Austin.

A spokesperson for Avride did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tesla posted the footage as it seeks to make its case publicly on robotaxi safety. The company began offering a limited number of autonomous rides without an in-car safety monitor in Austin in January.

In the newly posted safety report, Tesla said its robotaxi service has driven 3.3 million miles autonomously — relatively small compared to Waymo's more than 271 million miles driven as of June.

Tesla said during its Q3 earnings call that it will launch unsupervised Cybercabs in Dallas in November.

• Tesla has begun production of its humanoid robot, Optimus, in Fremont, California.
• Musk said he expects to begin delivering Optimus to customers at the end of 2027.
• Musk said it will take at least a year to produce 20,000 Optimus units a week.

Tesla has begun producing its long-awaited humanoid robot, Optimus, at its Fremont factory, the company said in its quarterly earnings report.

"The bots coming off this line are the first production-quality bots that we have manufactured," Tesla said, saying the current manufacturing process is "suitable for a commercial product."

"There's still some things we need to tweak about the design, because you need to deliver a robot that is safe and reliable and has long duration," CEO Elon Musk said on Tesla's Q3 earnings call. "It can't, like, wear out after a month."

Musk said the company will take at least a year to scale up Optimus production to 20,000 units a week in Fremont. He said he expects to begin delivering Optimus to customers at the end of next year.

Musk tempered expectations about how quickly Tesla can scale up Optimus production because it is "such a radically new product." He said the early stages of production will be "somewhat bumpy" because "there's like 10,000 things that have to go right" to build the robot. One of the big challenges Musk outlined is building robot hands.

Musk said Tesla is building an "Optimus Academy," where robots will practice tasks and generate data to improve the AI models that power them. The company also plans to install its next-generation AI5 chip in Optimus in April, which will give the robots more computing power and be a "big step change in intelligence," Musk said.

The latest version of Optimus has not been unveiled. Musk said he expects to release a video of Optimus within one or two months. He previously said Tesla was keeping the robot under wraps to prevent competitors from copying its design.

Tesla stopped producing the Model S and Model X at its Fremont, California, plant earlier this year to make room for an Optimus line designed to eventually produce a million robots a year. A second line under construction in Austin is planned to have an annual capacity of 10 million robots.

Tesla is competing in a crowded humanoid market. Agility Robotics, which plans to go public, has deployed its Digit robot across nine customer facilities, while Figure AI has announced deployments in logistics and distribution centers this year. Sunday Robotics, 1X, and Weave Robotics are preparing to ship robots into homes this fall.

Have a tip? Contact Rya Jetha via email at rjetha@businessinsider.com or Signal at rjetha.07. Use a personal email address and a non-work device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

• Tesla is facing some profitability headwinds.
• Its operating income fell 56% year over year as AI and research and development costs climbed.
• The company is still in the green, and it surprised earlier this month by delivering 486,532 vehicles in the third quarter.

Tesla is still selling plenty of cars. Making the same amount of money on them is getting harder.

On Wednesday, the Elon Musk-led automaker reported that its operating income fell 56% year over year to $718 million in the third quarter — below Wall Street's estimates of $746.3 million — while overall revenue of $28.05 billion came in a smidge below analysts' estimates.

Tesla pointed to higher operating expenses tied to its AI efforts, or "SI"/"Super Intelligence" as Trump prefers, and other R&D projects. Lower regulatory credit revenue and weaker energy storage gross profit also weighed on profitability, while lower vehicle prices hurt revenue.

"While we continue to execute on innovations to reduce the cost of manufacturing and operations, over time, we expect our hardware-related profits to be accompanied by an acceleration of SI, software and fleet-based profits," the company reported.

It's not all bad news for Tesla's profits. The company is still solidly in the green, and it beat on the bottom line. Tesla reported 48 cents in adjusted earnings per share, above the 44-cent analyst consensus estimate. Free cash flow of $1.5 billion was also a surprise after Wall Street had expected negative free cash flow of $4.92 billion.

The automaker also sees areas of profit growth in its future: autonomy subscriptions are trending up, and Tesla said it's offering the right, region-specific product mixes.

During the earnings call, Tesla's chief financial officer, Vaibhav Taneja, said the company is experiencing its "highest backlog" of vehicles in four years. The company, he said, is trying to increase vehicle production.

He also added that Tesla has secured $30 billion of borrowing to support expected capital expenditures, but the company doesn't expect to "make any draws under any of the new facilities in this calendar year."

"The main takeaway is that Tesla's surprisingly positive cash flow quarter did not come from stronger profits," Thomas Monteiro, senior analyst at Investing.com, said after the report.

"Added to the equation is the fact that Tesla's AI spending remains broadly inefficient, with research costs up nearly 70% and operating margins down to just 2.6%, while at SpaceX AI is already one of the biggest sources of revenue," the analyst added.

The new quarter has already made waves

The Tesla story continues to play out in real time, and it's had a busy month since the fourth quarter kicked off in October.

On Tuesday, during SpaceX's earnings call, Musk said that Tesla and SpaceX had each formed committees to explore a potential merger. Both companies are helmed by Musk — and he owns billions of dollars in stock of each.

Anticipation of the potential mega-merger has been building around the companies for much of 2026, and has only increased since SpaceX went public. Musk said he was not included in those committees and that calling the merger a foregone conclusion "would be overstating it."

It also came less than a week after Tesla held its high-flying demo for the Roadster. The sports car performed a gymnastics routine, including briefly jumping into the air and twirling over a lineup of other Tesla vehicles.

It came nine years after Tesla first promised to relaunch the Roadster. Musk first showed off a prototype of the vehicle in 2017 and predicted a 2020 product launch.

Tesla-SpaceX, Musk punta alla maxifusione

Elon Musk e gli analisti di Wall Street vedono molti vantaggi nella fusione tra Tesla e SpaceX. Ma sulla strada dell’accordo ci sono numerosi ostacoli, tra cui due commissioni speciali a cui Musk non può partecipare e il voto degli azionisti di Tesla che lui stesso ha definito difficile da superare.

Un’altra incognita è il prezzo, ossia quale sarebbe il premio che dovrebbero ricevere gli azionisti di Tesla. E qui gli analisti si dividono: si va da zero fino al 35%. Ovvio però che questa sia una questione chiave per il buon esito dell’operazione, con Tesla che capitalizza in Borsa 1.500 miliardi di dollari.

Musk ha detto che le commissioni devono ancora concordare i termini e che l’operazione non è certa, anche se Wall Street si aspetta un accordo entro la fine del prossimo anno. Le due società stanno sviluppando congiuntamente lo stabilimento di chip Terafab, mentre l’intelligenza artificiale rappresenta ormai più della metà dei ricavi di SpaceX, che prevede una spesa compresa tra i 35 e i 40 miliardi di dollari nel quarto trimestre per finanziare un’ulteriore espansione.

“Ritengo che una fusione tra Tesla e SpaceX abbia senso – ha detto un gestore che ha investito in entrambe le società –. È una mossa molto strategica perché entrambe si stanno rapidamente orientando verso l’intelligenza artificiale e i sistemi autonomi e stanno anche lavorando a enormi progetti infrastrutturali. Inoltre, si taglierebbero ridondanze e il tempo che Musk impiega a destreggiarsi tra le due società, riducendo così le spese generali, i costi legali e gli oneri amministrativi tipici delle società quotate in Borsa”.

Tra gli esempi citati anche la presentazione della Roadster la scorsa settimana, in cui un’auto Tesla dotata di propulsori SpaceX ha oltrepassato in volo un camion, dimostrando ciò che le due società insieme potrebbero essere in grado di produrre.

La possibilità di esercitare un maggiore controllo potrebbe anche essere parte del motivo per cui Musk, che detiene circa l’85% dei diritti di voto di SpaceX attraverso azioni privilegiate, mentre in Tesla ne possiede solo circa il 20%, è favorevole alla fusione, cosa che gli garantirebbe circa il 57% dei diritti di voto, ipotizzando un rapporto di cambio di 0,7 azioni SpaceX per ogni azione Tesla. Questo è però solo un livello calcolato da Barclays.

Ovviamente per una simile operazione non mancherebbero questioni di governance e di regolamentazione. Intanto in Borsa SpaceX, dopo i buoni risultati trimestrali, è in rialzo di oltre il 10% e Tesla del 3%.

L'articolo Tesla-SpaceX, Musk punta alla maxifusione. Ma il prezzo dell’accordo divide Wall Street proviene da Affaritaliani.it.

Un unico gruppo da 3.600 miliardi di dollari di capitalizzazione e circa 155mila dipendenti con attività che spaziano dalle auto elettriche ai razzi spaziali, dai satelliti all’intelligenza artificiale. E con un fabbisogno finanziario altrettanto imponente. Il progetto di fusione tra Tesla e SpaceX, i due gioielli dell’impero del multimiliardario Elon Musk, potrebbe ridisegnare gli equilibri dell’industria tecnologica e finanziaria. Per chi possiede direttamente azioni delle due società, ma pure per i risparmiatori esposti indirettamente attraverso fondi comuni, Etf e fondi pensione.

L’uomo più ricco del mondo ha definito l’unione una “buona idea” e ha annunciato la creazione di comitati ad hoc nelle due società per valutarla: lui non ne fa parte essendo in conflitto di interessi. L’obiettivo sarebbe riunire sotto un’unica struttura Tesla, impegnata nelle auto elettriche, nella robotica e nella guida autonoma, e SpaceX, protagonista dei lanci spaziali e dei servizi satellitari, con importanti contratti pubblici negli Stati Uniti. Quotata a giugno, quest’ultima ha archiviato il terzo trimestre in grande spolvero, con ricavi in crescita del 161% a 14,6 miliardi di dollari e utile in salita a 4,4 miliardi, più del doppio dei due miliardi attesi dagli analisti e in forte accelerazione rispetto al rosso di 1,1 miliardi dello stesso periodo dello scorso anno. Ma anche le spese in conto capitale per sostenere i progetti spaziali e quelli legati all’intelligenza artificiale sono salite a 19,6 miliardi dai 18,4 miliardi del secondo trimestre.

Secondo il Financial Times, che cita le stime degli analisti raccolte da Visible Alpha, il nuovo gruppo avrebbe ricavi per 153 miliardi di dollari ma un flusso di cassa negativo per almeno 54 miliardi. Vuol dire che gli investimenti e le altre uscite di cassa potrebbero superare le risorse generate dalla gestione, rendendo necessario finanziare il buco con liquidità disponibile, debito o nuovi capitali.

Il primo nodo per gli investitori sarà il prezzo attribuito alle due società e il rapporto di cambio con cui le azioni verrebbero convertite. Se il mercato giudicasse SpaceX sopravvalutata o temesse che Tesla si accolli rischi e investimenti eccessivi, l’operazione potrebbe penalizzarli. C’è poi la questione del controllo. Musk dispone di circa l’84% dei diritti di voto di SpaceX grazie alle azioni con supervoto, mentre in Tesla la sua influenza è inferiore. La fusione rafforzerebbe ulteriormente il suo potere. Questo mentre già da tempo, nota il Ft, “gli investitori si interrogano sulla capacità di Musk di concentrarsi su tutti i suoi progetti” e “gli azionisti non riescono a capire dove stia investendo la maggior parte delle sue energie o del suo denaro”.

L’operazione dovrebbe inoltre superare l’esame delle autorità regolatorie e ottenere il consenso degli azionisti. Oltre agli Stati Uniti, servirà il via libera di giurisdizioni come Unione europea, Regno Unito e Cina. Pechino è un ostacolo particolarmente delicato: secondo il Ft Tesla ha generato nel Paese 21 miliardi di dollari di ricavi nel 2025, circa il 22% del totale, mentre SpaceX è un importante contraente della difesa americana.

Le conseguenze della fusione potrebbero toccare anche chi non ha mai comprato un’azione Tesla. Il titolo è presente in numerosi indici azionari e può quindi entrare nei portafogli di fondi comuni, Etf e gestioni patrimoniali. Raggiungendo anche chi investe per la pensione integrativa. I possibili caveat, al netto dell’eventuale oscillazione del titolo, comprendono anche la concentrazione del rischio in un gruppo sempre più legato alle scelte di Musk, alle aspettative sull’intelligenza artificiale e alle politiche industriali e militari statunitensi.

L'articolo Musk punta a fondere SpaceX e Tesla: obiettivo un gruppo da 3.600 miliardi. E più potere nelle mani del multimiliardario proviene da Il Fatto Quotidiano.

Elon Musk says that Tesla and SpaceX have each set up special committees to discuss a possible merger between the two companies he leads as CEO.

The post Elon Musk Says Tesla, SpaceX Form Committees to Weigh Merger appeared first on Breitbart.

• Elon Musk says it's "no longer impossible" that SpaceX will generate $1 trillion of revenue in 2028.
• The SpaceX CEO said in August that his company projected that much revenue for 2030.
• SpaceX would have to grow its revenue 53-fold in three years to reach Musk's new figure.

Elon Musk always shoots for the moon, but he's aiming even higher with his latest suggestion.

"As crazy as this sounds, $1T in SpaceX revenue in 2028 is no longer impossible," the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said in a Tuesday post on X.

That's an even more ambitious timeframe than Musk has previously given. He said in August that SpaceX was internally projecting $1 trillion of revenue in 2030, and there was a "non-zero" chance it could reach that amount in 2029.

Musk made his latest pronouncement within hours of saying on SpaceX's third-quarter earnings webcast that annual recurring revenue could reach between $500 billion and $1 trillion by the end of 2027.

In a post-earnings note, JPMorgan forecast SpaceX would generate $254 billion of revenue in 2027.

If SpaceX were to generate $1 trillion in revenue in 2028, that would represent a 53-fold increase in three years. It earned just under $19 billion in 2025. It shared its historical financials prior to going public this summer.

After the bell on Tuesday, SpaceX — the company behind Falcon rockets, Starlink satellites, X, and AI chatbot Grok — posted close to $15 billion in revenue last quarter, up 161% from the same period of 2025.

The key driver was its super-intelligence division, where revenue surged 830%, from around $800 million to $7.6 billion. SpaceX attributed the growth to new cloud services agreements, around $600 million of revenue from its recent Cursor acquisition, and increased Grok adoption by enterprises.

To put Musk's $1 trillion revenue figure in context, Amazon and Walmart, the two highest-revenue companies on the planet, both generated a little over $700 billion in net sales last financial year.

Musk is floating the possibility that SpaceX could generate more than 40% more revenue than either of them did last year, in about two years' time.

It's unclear whether Musk is including Tesla, which generated about $95 billion of revenue last year, in his newest revenue figure. He revealed on Tuesday that Tesla and SpaceX have formed committees to explore a potential merger.

Susannah Streeter, Wealth Club's chief investment strategist, told Business Insider by email that a tie-up could "combine expertise in AI, chips, robotics and connectivity."

But she added that "bringing two enormous businesses with very different operations and capital demands under one roof would be a hugely complex undertaking."

Streeter said that notching $1 trillion in annual revenue in 2028 would be a "very tall order" and require an "extraordinary leap in the scale of the business."

"Moving the goalposts from 2030 to 2028 suggests he is increasingly confident that several growth drivers could accelerate at once, but there is a difference between a target that is technically possible and one that is commercially realistic," she added.

Neil Wilson, UK investor strategist at Saxo Bank, told BI by email that Musk's latest revenue figure is "pushing it" and "would imply such an enormous pull-forward in demand as to defy credibility."

Wilson added that he'd "never say never" about SpaceX hitting $1 trillion of revenue, "but by 2028 I'd say the chance is zero, whatever Elon says!"

• Tesla accounted for more than half of US electric-vehicle sales in the third quarter.
• Its quarterly sales increase exceeded the entire market's gain, Cox estimates show.
• High gas prices are helping EVs compete, though sales remain below last year's levels.

Tesla is taking a bigger slice of America's electric-vehicle market as high gas prices give drivers another reason to consider ditching the pump.

The company sold an estimated 144,094 vehicles in the US in the third quarter, up from 124,800 in the previous three months, according to Cox Automotive's latest sales report.

That increase was bigger than the gain for the rest of the US EV market. Put another way: Tesla drove the recovery. Everyone else, taken together, went backward.

The figures offer a new twist on the EV comeback I wrote about in July. Back then, sales had finally improved after the slump that followed the end of federal incentives in the US. Several manufacturers were benefiting, but only those with the fortitude to stick with EVs after federal government support waned.

While recovery continued in the third quarter, it became more dependent on Tesla.

Americans bought 262,649 new EVs during the period, about 6% more than in the second quarter. Sales outside Tesla fell roughly 3%, based on a comparison of Cox's latest counts with its second-quarter report.

Tesla's own sales rose about 15% from the second quarter. It supplied 54% of the country's new EVs in the third quarter, extending its lead from the previous period.

High gas prices help make the case for going electric, according to Cox.

"With gas prices well above $4 a gallon, electric vehicles look better than ever," Stephanie Valdez Streaty, Cox's director of Industry Insights, said in the company's analysis of the quarter.

Expensive gasoline and diesel make running a conventional vehicle more painful. For drivers who can charge cheaply, particularly at home, an EV offers a valuable alternative to repeated trips to the pump.

There's an important caveat to the comeback story: Sales are improving from a depressed level.

Total US EV sales were down almost 40% from a year earlier. Last year's third quarter was unusually strong because buyers rushed to claim federal incentives before they disappeared.

Tesla's sales were down about 20% against that comparison. The company remains heavily dependent on two vehicles. The Model Y and Model 3 accounted for roughly 97% of its US sales in the latest quarter.

The Cybertruck sold over 4,300 units, and Tesla has stopped making the Model S and X. (There's a Roadster, though not until 2028).

So Tesla's growing dominance isn't a story of every model flying out of showrooms, or of selling more cars than a year ago.

For now, it is winning a larger share of a smaller market. As Americans return to EV shopping, Tesla is capturing more of their business.

Sign up for the AI Insider newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com

• SpaceX and Tesla have each established exploratory committees to discuss a possible merger, Elon Musk said.
• Musk, who said he can't participate in the talks, gave the update during Tesla's Q3 earnings call.
• Musk said he thinks a merger is a good idea, but cautioned investors that shareholder approval is "quite a high hurdle."

Houston, we have an update on all that SpaceX-Tesla merger chatter.

During SpaceX's Tuesday earnings call, Elon Musk said both of the companies had created "special committees of independent directors" to discuss a potential merger.

Musk, who helms both companies and owns billions of dollars in stock of each, said he can't be part of those exploratory groups.

"Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes," he said on the call. "But at the end of the day, the shareholders have to be supportive of this, and particularly on the Tesla side, we will need a 50% vote of all shares, not just those who vote, but of all shareholders."

He said clearing that bar would be "quite a high hurdle."

It's the most detailed update investors have received yet on the idea of a tie-up, which has been the subject of much chatter since SpaceX went public earlier this year. If the companies ultimately decide to merge, it would further consolidate Musk's business empire, often referred to as Musk Inc.

His businesses have been on a consolidation kick. In 2025, xAI acquired Musk's social media company, X (formerly Twitter), and in February, SpaceX acquired xAI.

Musk also runs the brain-chip startup, Neuralink, and the tunnel-building firm The Boring Company. Both operate independently, but have had business collaborations within Musk Inc.

Tesla and SpaceX's stocks were up in after-hours trading following the news. SpaceX was up around 6.6% and Tesla 1.6%.

Musk sees clear benefits in tying the knot

"I do think there's a lot of merit to combining the companies as we are pretty much in the superintelligence singularity," Musk said during the call.

SpaceX and Tesla have worked together on a host of projects, including artificial intelligence software, chip design, TeraFab manufacturing efforts, robotics, Starlink satellite connectivity, and SpaceX's ability to launch payloads into orbit, Musk and SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said.

The most recent result of that partnership: On Thursday, Tesla demoed its long-awaited Roadster, which includes a version with SpaceX technology. The high-powered sports car's top trim will include cold-gas thrusters. The car launched, hovered, and flipped in the air during the demo.

While Musk is for the two companies tying the knot, he said investors shouldn't think it's a sure thing.

"I don't think we should necessarily assume that a SpaceX and Tesla merger is a certainty," he added. "That would be overstating it."