Investor's Corner
Tesla’s CAPEX efficiencies could pave the way for a fleet of ‘Alien Dreadnought’ factories
Tesla’s (NASDAQ:TSLA) Q3 10-Q Form for 2020 provided some interesting tidbits about the electric car maker’s plans for the coming years. Among these is the fact that the company is planning to increase its capital expenditures to about $4.5 to $6.0 billion in the next two fiscal years. These would be the highest expenditures that the company would be spending on its projects yet, with the amount rivaled only by 2017, when Tesla was dealing with the Model 3 ramp.
“Owing and subject to the foregoing as well as the pipeline of announced projects under development and all other continuing infrastructure growth, we currently expect our capital expenditures to be at the high end of our range of $2.5 to $3.5 billion in 2020 and increase to $4.5 to $6.0 billion in each of the next two fiscal years,” Tesla wrote.
While Tesla’s 10-Q Form noted that CAPEX will be higher than ever in the next couple of years, the company’s estimates still suggest that it has reached an incredible level of efficiency in terms of its expenses. It makes sense for Tesla’s CAPEX to be higher than it ever was, after all, since the company will be making more vehicles than ever before, and it would also be building factories in Berlin, Shanghai, and Texas. The company will be ramping its battery cell production capabilities as well.

As noted by Galileo Russell of YouTube’s Hyperchange channel, Tesla’s expectations for its CAPEX in 2021 and 2022 suggest that the electric car maker has become about five times more efficient on spending per unit of vehicle production compared to 2017. Interestingly enough, Elon Musk responded to the Tesla investor’s observations, lightly noting on Twitter that the company’s CAPEX efficiency back in 2017 was “trash.”
A look at Tesla’s capital expenditures over the years shows that Musk was telling the brutal truth. Back in 2017, Tesla’s CAPEX peaked at about $1.2 billion in one quarter as the company was launching the Model 3 in the Fremont Factory. Today, Tesla’s CAPEX has not broken this record, despite the electric car maker undergoing the Model Y ramp, the buildout of Gigafactory Shanghai, Giga Berlin, and Giga Texas, as well as an expansion of its battery production capabilities.
With this in mind, capital expenditures of $4.5 to $6.0 billion annually within the next two fiscal years seem to be a steal. This was mentioned by Russell on Twitter, and Musk responded by stating that the Tesla team has done excellent work over the years to make such progress possible.
What is rather remarkable is that Tesla is nowhere near done in the optimization of its operations. Over the years, and as the company attempts to hit its goal of producing millions of vehicles annually, there is a pretty good chance that Tesla would still improve and optimize its capital expenditures further. This would work in the company’s favor, especially as it attempts to build more factories and start the production of its upcoming electric vehicles like the Cybertruck, Semi, and the highly-anticipated $25,000 car.
If Tesla could accomplish these, the company would likely end up mastering the art of building electric car factories in a way that is frighteningly quick and capital-efficient, much like how it mastered the mass production of premium electric cars like the Model 3. This goes in line with Elon Musk’s statement back in July, when he noted on Twitter that the “Gigafactory is the product even more than the car.” The fact that every Tesla facility seems to be larger and more optimized than its predecessor highlights this idea.
During Battery Day, Elon Musk and Drew Baglino remarked that Tesla would need to produce an insane amount of batteries to achieve its goal of accelerating the advent of sustainable energy. This requires the company to build numerous factories at a rate that’s higher than ever before. With this in mind, there seems to be a good chance that Elon Musk’s “Alien Dreadnought” concept may see a resurgence in the near future. With a lineup of hyper-advanced factories that produce clean energy products at an optimal cost, after all, Tesla’s upcoming facilities may very well be considered as fleet of extraterrestrial machines that build machines.
Watch a discussion of Tesla’s CAPEX efficiency improvements in the video below.
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’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.
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.
Elon Musk
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
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.
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.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX gets an absolutely crazy price target after rough IPO
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.
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.

