Investor's Corner
Elon Musk personally thanks Tesla owners and supporters amid Q3’s record profits
Tesla surprised Wall Street on Wednesday after revealing a $312 million profit and Model 3 margins of more than 20% for the third quarter. Amidst another earnings call that featured a controlled, calm Elon Musk, the market’s optimism with Tesla was palpable, as shown by TSLA shares’ rise in Wednesday’s after-hours and Thursday’s pre-market trading.
Musk was in light spirits on Twitter after the earnings call. Before he signed off, Musk expressed his sincere thanks to Tesla’s supporters, particularly electric car owners who pitched in to help the company deliver as many vehicles as possible before Q3 ended. In his Twitter post, Musk stated that Tesla would not be around if it weren’t for the support of its community.
Massive thanks to Tesla owners & supporters. We wouldn’t be here without you.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 25, 2018
Musk’s Twitter announcement came just hours after the CEO highlighted the help Tesla received from owners and supporters in the recent earnings call. As Tesla was facing what Elon Musk described as “delivery logistics hell” in September, owners volunteered to offer their help in delivering vehicles to reservation holders. While volunteers were unable to help with paperwork, they did conduct orientations so newcomers can familiarize themselves with the features and functions of their electric cars. All the way until the end of the month, Tesla’s volunteer-augmented delivery initiative was in full throttle, allowing the company to deliver a total of 83,500 vehicles, comprised of 55,840 Model 3, 14,470 Model S, and 13,190 Model X.
During his opening remarks in the recent earnings call, Elon Musk stated that Tesla’s impressive performance and figures were the results of efforts from employees across the board, as well as members of the Tesla community who paid it forward. His voice slightly breaking in the call, Musk admitted that the dedication of Tesla’s owners and supporters “chokes (him) up.”
“This quarter was made possible by the incredible execution of our employees across the Board from sales, production, delivery, service, energy engineering finance and all of our G&A teams, really every part of the business executing incredibly well. And when I think I want to gain probably incredibly hard work, especially I want to thank customers who helped — it’s like many of you haven’t heard of this, maybe this has happened before, but I’ve never heard of it a case where a company’s customers actually cared about the future of the company so much that they volunteered their time to help the company succeed. I think that’s amazing, just don’t see that anywhere. So, yeah, like really it chokes me up, actually.”
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Tesla has only been in the auto business for 15 years, and as such, it is still a newcomer compared to automotive veterans like Ford and GM. Despite its short tenure, Tesla has developed a following that is almost comparable to some of the tech industry’s most iconic brands such as Apple, thanks to products that incite a certain level of dedication practically unheard of in the auto industry. As shown in its volunteer-boosted delivery weekends in September, Tesla had all but transformed itself into a movement, a company that inspires optimism and loyalty among its supporters.
Ultimately, Musk’s statements, both in the third quarter earnings call and on Twitter, show a CEO who, instead of doing an arguably well-deserved victory lap, opted instead to give credit where it is due. And that, at the end of the day, shows a great deal of maturity on the part of the visionary CEO.
Elon Musk
Tesla AI boss reveals how big Optimus is going to get
Tesla’s Optimus chief corrected himself on X, confirming a staggering 10 million robot production target.
![Tesla Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tesla-optimus-gen3-diner.jpg)
Tesla’s Optimus program has a new number attached to it, after Ashok Elluswamy, the executive who has run the humanoid robot program since June 2025, posted a three word correction on X Thursday, “Correction, 10 million robots.”
The line clarifies the long term annual capacity Tesla is building toward its planned second Optimus production line at Gigafactory Texas, a figure Musk has cited repeatedly since last year’s shareholder meeting.
The scale is worth noting, because ten million robots a year would mean Tesla building more units annually than most countries sell in new cars. Tesla has framed this as a second line, not the first. The buildout is happening in two phases: a roughly one million unit per year line inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, installed on the floor space vacated when Model S and Model X production ended earlier this year, and a much larger dedicated facility under construction at Giga Texas that broke ground on its first steel structure in May. That Texas facility is the one Elluswamy’s correction refers to, and is expected to reach volume production sometime in 2027.
Correction, 10 million robots https://t.co/0z4nyQNTzp
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) July 30, 2026
Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress
Elluswamy took over Optimus from Milan Kovac last summer and has spent the months since talking up the program’s trajectory. Elon Musk has also floated the ten million figure at Tesla’s 2025 shareholder meeting.
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Ending Model S and Model X production to make room for the first Optimus line was one of the more consequential manufacturing decisions in the company’s recent history, retiring two flagship vehicles in favor of a robot that has yet to enter mass production. Musk has previously estimated per unit production costs at $20,000 to $25,000 once Tesla reaches a million units a year, though he hasn’t said what that cost looks like at ten times the volume.
SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
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Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) got an absolutely crazy price target rating from Raymond James after the company experienced a tough first few weeks following its Initial Public Offering (IPO).
Despite the tumultuous start, SpaceX has plenty of believers, and the company’s massively successful Starship launch last Friday, its 13th test flight of the massive rocket, went so smoothly that Raymond James analysts pushed its price target on the company to roughly 7 times its current trading level.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
The firm officially put a “Strong Buy” rating and an $800 price target on the stock. It currently trades at around $113. Its all-time high is $225.64, reaching this trading level shortly after shares first went public.
Raymond James’ price target is tied to the firm’s confidence after Starship’s 13th test flight. Analysts at the firm said it was an incremental step that reduces engineering risks, citing the widely successful heat shield test that CEO Elon Musk recently detailed, the smooth deployment of Starlink V3 satellites, and a successful in-space engine relight.
SpaceX also managed to see Starship splash down safely in the Indian Ocean, while the Super Heavy Booster fell down to the Gulf of America with no incidents.
It is interesting to see these launches have such a tremendous impact on the stock and what investors think of it. After SpaceX initially delayed the Starship launch last week, shares fell tremendously. Most probably did not realize that the stand-down is a standard practice, especially if everything is not perfect.
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The mission was initially aborted due to an issue with Raptor engines. This was resolved, and Starship launched last Friday after another delay on Thursday, which was caused by weather.
Now that analysts have seen what SpaceX launches are capable of and how impressive the feat is, firms are adjusting their price targets accordingly, making it known that they have high expectations for the space exploration company.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk denies ridiculous Gigafactory Shanghai rumor
![Tesla Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tesla-optimus-gen3-diner-80x80.jpg)
Tesla AI boss reveals how big Optimus is going to get
