Investor's Corner
Ron Baron discusses Tesla, SpaceX, and a curious move by GM
Renowned mutual fund manager and investment icon Ron Baron of Baron Capital is well-known for his conservative, long-term approach to stock picking over his 46 year career. He’s been compared to Warren Buffett (both for his investing style and outstanding track record) and recently created a bit of a stir when he predicted Tesla stock could hit $1,000 by 2020.
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Elon Musk being interviewed by Ron Baron at the 2015 Baron Capital conference (Image: Baron Funds)
Baron Funds second quarter commentary (via Valuewalk) includes a letter from Ron Baron highlighting some fascinating insights surrounding Tesla. To understand businesses, Baron notes the importance of, “the individuals who lead those businesses; and of the character and talent of the individuals… In the end, we think it’s all about people.” Baron cites an unnamed Tesla executive who told him, “It is amazing to me how little most people know about Tesla.”
Baron explains, “Few institutional investors have met with Elon and JB. Fewer still, we’re guessing, have met with the co-founder’s teaching instructor at Stanford. We believe fewer and fewer in the investment industry are performing even the most basic research on businesses… Our meeting with Dr. Yadigaroglu is one example of Baron Funds’ differentiated primary research approach.”
Above: Tesla co-founders, CEO Elon Musk and CTO JB Straubel, in the early days driving Tesla’s Roadster “P1” (Images: Tesla)
Furthermore, it turns out that, “while at Stanford, Ion was the teaching instructor for JB Straubel, Tesla’s CTO and chief engineer. Ion believes JB and his team are better at battery technology than anyone else. It was lucky for Ion that he met both Elon and JB. Ion invested in Tesla when it was just beginning, and so far has made a lot more than he did in eBay. After meeting Ion, we concluded it was lucky for Elon and JB they met Ion as well.”So who is Dr. Yadigaroglu? Baron elaborates, “As part of our ongoing effort to gain further insight into Tesla’s prospects, we recently met with Dr. Ion Yadigaroglu, a venture capitalist. Ion is an engineer with a doctorate in physics from Stanford. Ion has been programming since he was eight years old! Ion’s dad is a prominent nuclear scientist. So much for Ion’s creds. When Ion studied at Stanford graduate school, his roommate founded eBay. Ion’s $1,300 investment in the eBay startup became worth millions. In 1992, at the dawn of the Internet, Ion met Elon Musk. Elon had come to Palo Alto to research battery technologies in Stanford’s labs.”
In studying Tesla, Baron also points out parallels with SpaceX. SpaceX, as Musk had originally envisioned it, has been able to reinvent the aerospace industry by reducing costs and, ultimately, saving millions with it’s reusable rockets. Baron reminds us, “Elon Musk’s SpaceX were [also] awarded contracts to design, build, and fly new spacecraft to ferry U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS)… The cost of commercial flights to the ISS will be a fraction of the cost of previous government flights, in part because rockets will be reusable.”
Similar to SpaceX, Musk’s emphasis on driving down costs remains mission critical at Tesla. Baron notes, “Despite Tesla’s requirements [for] functional design resulting in minimal waste, it often obtains better pricing for outsourced parts than its competitors. We believe its parts vendors try to accommodate this unique and fast growing company because they think Tesla’s engineering skills and designs will make them better suppliers! Further, since Tesla can insource production, it has the advantage of knowing exactly what a product should cost and how to produce it.”
And, according to Baron, GM is now following Tesla’s lead on this front. He notes that, “Mary T. Barra, General Motors’ CEO who has been trained as an engineer, has instructed her supply chain to ‘use Tesla suppliers…even if they cost more!’ Her rationale is that despite incurring higher costs to build a car, maintenance and warranty costs will be lower; car safety will be improved; and GM’s reputation will be enhanced.” That said, it might be worth pondering whether or not this move was executed strictly for reasons Baron stated in his letter — after all, GM has a tense, and sometimes adversarial, history with Tesla.
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Note: Article originally published on evannex.com, by Matt Pressman
Source: Valuewalk via Baron Funds
SpaceX stock did the opposite of what most of Wall Street expected this week, when the day designed to be its most dangerous turned into a rally, and the rally kept going.
Thursday marked the first major lockup expiration since SpaceX’s June IPO, making roughly 911.5 million insider held shares eligible to trade for the first time, more than doubling the company’s public float. Analysts and short sellers had spent weeks bracing for a flood of selling, especially after the stock fell 13 percent following its first earnings report as a public company on Tuesday. Instead, shares rose 6.1 percent Thursday to close at $114.92, and by Friday they were trading near $129, up more than another 12 percent on the day.
SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles
The setup made the outcome notable. Short interest had climbed to roughly 34 percent of the float heading into earnings, among the highest of any large cap stock, with about 95 percent of available shares to borrow already on loan. CEO Elon Musk warned short sellers twice in the weeks before the lockup, writing on X that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” then following up on the morning of earnings with “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
When the newly unlocked shares hit the market and the selloff never showed up, some of that short position appears to have started unwinding. TipRanks reported that options activity shifted toward bullish strategies like put selling and risk reversals following the rally, with roughly $600 million in options premium trading Thursday alone. Retail buyers also stepped in during the earnings dip, according to Vanda Research.
The fundamentals behind the stock have not changed much in a week. SpaceX’s revenue nearly doubled year over year to $7.8 billion, with Starlink subscribers doubling to 12 million and the company’s AI segment growing 247 percent. What spooked investors on Tuesday was the spending side. Capital expenditures jumped to more than $18 billion for the quarter, up from $2.8 billion a year earlier, with AI investment alone rising from $749 million to $15.8 billion. Wall Street remains split on whether that spending is building infrastructure SpaceX needs or outrunning what the business can currently support, a debate Teslarati has tracked since shares first came under pressure.
None of that resolves the bigger question hanging over the stock. Thursday’s release was only the first of nine staggered lockup tranches, with roughly $800 billion worth of additional shares scheduled to become eligible through October, and Musk’s own stake stays locked until next June. If this week is any indication, the market is treating that supply as something it can absorb rather than something to fear, at least for now.
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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.
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