Investor's Corner
The epic battle between Elon Musk and the Tesla haters
In a fascinating article in Institutional Investor, Michelle Celarier writes that Tesla [NASDAQ: TSLA] is: “the biggest short in the U.S. market; about 27 percent of Tesla’s free float is short, for a value as high as $10 billion” according to S3 Analytics, a firm that tracks short sales. That said, “the stock has soared more than 1,300 percent since Tesla went public in 2010. It is the first automaker to go public since Ford in 1956, making it one of the darlings of the post-financial-crash bull market.”
Photo credit: Tesla
It turns out that one of the most notorious Tesla shorts is Mark Spiegel. And Spiegel hasn’t even driven a Tesla yet. He says, “I’m more into sports cars.” According to Celarier, “Spiegel has become something of a zealot on Tesla. His small hedge fund, Stanphyl Capital Management, runs a mere $8.5 million, given that it was down 20 percent this year through August. That’s largely due to his short of Tesla, which had gained 74 percent this year, making it the worst-performing short of the year.”
However, there are bigger players out there shorting Tesla. Celarier reports that: “Everyone who’s anyone in Wall Street’s small and clubby world of short sellers has been short Tesla at one point or another… In the past, some of them also shorted Google and Amazon — other high flyers who weren’t making a profit — and somewhat sheepishly [now] admit they were wrong. Clearly, these guys are not dreamers from California’s La La Land, and Musk’s grand plans and his ‘save the world’ ethos can elicit a few eye rolls.”
Another well-known Tesla short, James Chanos of Kynikos Associates, “has been railing against Tesla for at least two years on CNBC and at numerous conferences. He has gone so far as to call Tesla a cult.” Speaking of Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk, Chanos proclaims, “People want to believe he’s some sort of visionary… In a milieu of boring people, they think he is changing the world. He’s not boring. He’s somebody they can attach their hopes and dreams to.”
Photo credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
So why does Tesla attract so many arguments on Wall Street? On the one hand, “Looking at its balance sheet, Tesla is [considered] the perfect short. But its pioneering status in an industry facing wrenching technological upheaval, and its charismatic CEO, has won it legions of admirers and turned it into a battleground stock. Sure, Tesla’s lofty stock price makes it a risky buy — but also a perilous short.”
Anger and hope permeate both camps of investors. “Short sellers berate Tesla investors as momentum chasers, tree-huggers, or simply Elon Musk groupies, but these investors have bought into a vision that has already made great leaps toward building a sustainable energy ecosystem — a costly endeavor that has no shortage of well-heeled enemies.”
And while an army of short sellers persist, plenty of Wall Street’s power players remain steadfast Tesla longs: “The biggest holders, aside from Musk, are mutual funds like Fidelity Investments, which has owned the stock since the IPO. With a current 12.8 percent stake (down from a high of 15 percent), the mutual fund giant is the largest institutional investor in Tesla, and portfolio manager Kyle Weaver says Fidelity has a long-term perspective on the company that is playing out largely as expected.”
Tesla fleet lined up outside of the service center in Amsterdam [Photo credit: Teslarati App]
“It was the worst short I’ve ever had,” says Whitney Tilson, managing partner of Kase Capital Management, who was short when the stock went from $35 to $205. Last month, Tilson told investors he’s shutting down his funds due to poor performance. Tilson explains, “I can do the numbers and see how much money the company is losing, but you’re short an incredibly maniacally driven CEO, with maniacally driven engineers assaulting the world’s largest industry. If they succeed, Tesla could be a $400 billion market cap company.”“The internal combustion engine is toast long term. It’s game over. The costs of making an internal combustion engine do not go down, while the cost of battery technology has gone down every year,” says Fidelity’s Weaver. “The secular trends that will drive Tesla’s fundamentals are a decades-long trend.” He also applauds Tesla’s environmental mission, “I don’t want to bet against that in an emotional sense.”
Musk is also not afraid to openly attack Wall Street’s short sellers. Let’s not forget, “Musk, who has talked about being bullied as a child, seems to delight in taunting his tormentors. In 2013 he gloated on Twitter, ‘Seems to be some stormy weather over in Shortville these days,’” and once cautioned short sellers that a “tsunami of hurt” was coming in a televised interview.
Celarier writes, “To be sure, a mania surrounds Tesla… [and] betting against Musk is a tough proposition. Tesla has already survived near-bankruptcy events, and Musk has plenty of friends in tech companies with much higher valuations, like Larry Page at Google, that could afford to partner with Tesla or take it over. (Google had struck a handshake deal to buy Tesla during a near-death moment in 2013, according to Vance’s biography.)”
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There’s also massive opportunity for Tesla in China: “Earlier this year, China’s Tencent Holdings took a 5 percent stake in Tesla. China is proposing to mandate a zero-emissions standard in 12 percent of new cars by 2020 and is considering letting wholly owned foreign electric-car companies operate there. The Chinese market is expected to be huge, and Tesla is charging ahead there. It is already building a new supercharger network in the country and plans to both build and sell cars there.”
Such realities make shorting Tesla, for all its financial shortcomings, a difficult call. As Tilson puts it, “I don’t want to be short open-ended situations. The tail risk is just too high.”
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Note: Article by Matt Pressman, originally published on evannex.com
Source: Institutional Investor
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Cybertruck
Tesla Cybertruck production snaps back after ugly supplier fight
Cybertrucks are piling up again at Giga Texas after Tesla’s court win against a parts supplier.
Cybertruck production at Giga Texas is showing its first visible recovery since Tesla sued a supplier last month over withheld manufacturing tooling.
Aerial observer Joe Tegtmeyer flew over the Austin factory Wednesday morning and counted roughly 100 or more Cybertrucks filling the outbound lot, a sharp jump from the thin numbers seen in recent weeks. The flyover came a day after a judge granted Tesla a temporary restraining order against Angstrom Automotive Group, the parts supplier at the center of the dispute.
Tesla filed an emergency lawsuit in late July after Angstrom told the automaker it planned to close the Troy, Texas facility where Tesla’s die-cast tools, trim dies and other Cybertruck stamping equipment were housed. According to Tesla’s complaint, a shipment of 700 finished parts never left the building, and when Tesla sent representatives to retrieve its equipment, accompanied by law enforcement, they were turned away. Angstrom allegedly then asked for an extra $250,000 a week to keep operating, which Tesla’s filing described as holding its own property for ransom.
TESLA: U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Wolfe of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Waco Division granted Tesla a Temporary Restraining Order and Writ of Replevin in its dispute with Angstrom Automotive (Case No. 6:26-cv-00477).
The order authorizes… https://t.co/E1DKcQSxMn pic.twitter.com/LR8aAiV2Og
— S.E. Robinson, Jr. (@SERobinsonJr) August 5, 2026
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The restraining order gives Tesla immediate right of entry to Angstrom’s facility to recover the tooling. It is temporary, with a fuller hearing still to come, but the speed of Wednesday’s rebound suggests the Angstrom shortage was indeed the main bottleneck limiting Cybertruck output. Outbound lot counts are an imperfect measure of actual production, since finished trucks can sit for days before shipping, but a lot that full after a lean stretch is a meaningful signal.
Cybertruck output at Giga Texas has fluctuated all year as Tesla worked through supply issues and introduced new trims, including a cheaper Dual Motor AWD version that drew strong early demand.
Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya has cautioned investors shorting SpaceX shares, drawing a direct parallel to the intense short-selling pressure Tesla faced in its early public years.
Responding to reports of elevated short interest in the newly public rocket, satellite, and AI company, Palihapitiya noted that similar dynamics played out with Tesla, where aggressive short sellers ultimately “went broke.”
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) went public on June 12, 2026, in the largest IPO on record, pricing at $135 per share. Shares quickly surged to an all-time high of $225.64 just days later, briefly implying a valuation exceeding $2 trillion. The stock has since retreated sharply amid valuation concerns, lockup expiration fears, and broader market dynamics.
By early August, it traded near $108–$125, representing a roughly 50 percent decline from the peak and bringing the market capitalization closer to the $1.5–1.7 trillion range. On August 4, shares closed up more than 9 percent at $125.33 ahead of earnings before facing pressure in after-hours and premarket trading.
Short interest has climbed dramatically. According to S3 Partners data widely cited in market reports, short positions reached approximately 219.3 million shares by late July, about 34 percent of the limited public float of roughly 640 million shares, and represented a notional value of around $24.6 billion.
Utilization of shares available to borrow hit 95 percent, with borrow fees rising. This level of shorting exceeded the dollar value of short bets against Tesla at the time and built rapidly ahead of two catalysts: the company’s first post-IPO earnings and an August 6 lockup expiration that could free up to 911.5 million additional shares.
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CEO Elon Musk has issued warnings of his own. In mid-July, as short interest approached one-third of the float, he posted that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” reiterating his view that the company could ultimately be worth more than Earth if it achieves its goals.
On August 4, just before earnings, Musk responded to the latest short-interest data by saying, “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
SpaceX delivered its first quarterly results as a public company after the close on August 4. Second-quarter revenue rose 92 percent year-over-year to $7.8 billion, beating consensus estimates near $6.8–6.9 billion.
The net loss narrowed to $541 million, or 9 cents per share, better than the roughly 23–24 cent loss expected. Starlink/connectivity contributed about $4.3 billion (up 66 percent), while the AI business generated $2.6 billion (up roughly 250 percent). Capital expenditures were heavy at $18.4 billion, largely tied to AI infrastructure. Management projected a $100 billion annualized revenue run rate by year-end 2026 and outlined a path toward $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030.
The combination of Chamath’s historical reminder, Musk’s repeated alerts, and the company’s ambitious growth targets underscores the high-stakes debate surrounding SPCX. Short sellers are positioned for near-term supply pressure from the lockup, while long-term bulls point to Starlink scale, Starship progress, and AI compute expansion as reasons the bears may ultimately face the same fate as many early Tesla skeptics.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX and Nvidia team up on Musk’s orbital AI bet
SpaceX revealed a new Nvidia satellite partnership, then Musk pledged an exclusive Nvidia hardware commitment.
SpaceX and Nvidia are now working together on the hardware that will power Musk’s orbital data center ambitions. SpaceX announced on X on Tuesday that it is partnering with Nvidia to design the compute payload for Starmind AI1, the first satellite in a planned constellation built to run AI workloads directly in orbit. Each Starmind satellite will carry Nvidia’s Rubin GPUs and Vera CPUs, according to the post, which included renderings of the payload design.
The announcement landed hours before SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company, where Musk went further, saying the company has committed to building its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware. “We think the Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture. We think it’s the best AI computer, and we greatly value our close cooperation and partnership on many levels with Nvidia,” Musk told investors on the call,. “So we’re exclusive to Nvidia.”
Musk said SpaceX plans to deploy Nvidia’s Vera Rubin NVL72 rackscale system, codenamed Kyber, both on the ground and in space. He set a target of 2 gigawatts of compute capacity online by the end of this year, scaling to roughly 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027.
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
Starmind has been in development since Musk confirmed the name in June, following an xAI trademark filing that tipped off the project before SpaceX made it official. The idea is massive in scope and instead of moving data down to ground based servers, satellites equipped with onboard processors and large solar arrays would compute AI workloads in orbit and beam results back to Earth. SpaceX has already filed with the FCC for a constellation of up to one million satellites to support the effort, citing constant solar power and the absence of zoning restrictions as advantages over terrestrial data centers.
The Nvidia exclusivity marks a shift in tone from just two weeks ago, when Musk was busy knocking down a report that SpaceX had ordered $52 billion worth of Nvidia GPUs through Foxconn, calling it fake news at the time. The dollar figure in that rumor may have been wrong, but the underlying direction seems correct. SpaceX’s AI division already leases Colossus compute capacity to Anthropic and Google, and Tuesday’s earnings report showed AI revenue climbing sharply as those deals ramp up.
Nvidia shares rose roughly 3% in Tuesday trading on the news, while SpaceX stock climbed nearly 9% during the day before giving back gains after hours as investors digested the earnings report’s capital spending figures.
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Tesla Cybertruck production snaps back after ugly supplier fight
Space finally faced the people living next to its next Terafab mega-project
