Investor's Corner
Tesla partner Panasonic will add funding to Gigafactory if needed, says exec
On the heels of news that Tesla has managed to hit its target of producing 5,000 Model 3 per week, Panasonic Corp, the company’s battery partner, has stated that it would consider additional investment in the Nevada Gigafactory if requested by the electric car maker.
According to Yoshio Ito, the chief of Panasonic’s automotive business, the additional funding, if Tesla does request for it, would come on top of the ~$1.6 billion that the Japanese battery company is contributing to the $5 billion Nevada facility. Ito related Panasonic’s update during a media roundtable on Monday.
“We would, of course, consider additional investment if we are requested to do so,” Ito said, according to a Reuters report.
Panasonic currently stands as the exclusive battery cell supplier for Tesla’s electric cars and energy storage products. During a general shareholders meeting last week, Ito noted that the accelerating pace of the Model 3’s production has already been causing battery cell shortages.
Ito’s latest statement comes as the latest vote of confidence for Tesla, which recently confirmed via a leaked Elon Musk email that it has managed to produce 5,000 Model 3 on top of 2,000 Model S and Model X in seven days. With the confirmation from Elon Musk, the company has managed to produce 7,000 vehicles in a single week — a feat that has eluded the company since the Model 3 started production last year.
Tesla’s Gigafactory in Nevada is the lifeblood of the Model 3 production, considering that its battery packs and drivetrains are manufactured in the facility. While the massive factory has been growing from within this year so far, signs have been emerging that the site has been seeing a lot of activity as of late. At the end of May alone, reports emerged that Tesla was flying in six airplanes’ worth of robots and equipment from Europe to the United States. The robots, which were from Tesla Grohmann Automation in Germany, were reportedly installed at the Gigafactory, enabling the company to address production bottlenecks in the Model 3’s battery module line.
Tesla has also all but finished building a new, expansive parking lot on the North side of the facility. Considering that the company’s parking lots are currently located in close proximity to the Gigafactory, the newly-built parking spaces could very well tease a renewed physical expansion of the facility in the near future. The facility, after all, is still less than 30% complete, despite constructions costs for the Gigafactory reaching $1.3 billion as of February 2018. Once finished, the Nevada Gigafactory is expected to be the world’s largest building by physical footprint, covering 13 million square feet.
Elon Musk has also revealed plans to build Tesla’s next two Gigafactories, the first of which being in China and the next being established in Europe. Tesla has not revealed the specific sites of the next two Gigafactories, but expectations are high that the China facility will be built in Shanghai and the Europe factory will be established in Germany. As noted by Elon Musk during the company’s Q1 2018 earnings call, these next Gigafactories would incorporate both battery production and vehicles production, allowing Tesla to streamline its manufacturing in a single site.
There are a lot of Tesla bulls out there who have astronomical expectations for the company, especially as its arm of reach has gone well past automotive and energy and entered artificial intelligence and robotics.
However, some of the most bullish Tesla investors believe the company could become worth $100 trillion, and CEO Elon Musk does not believe that number is completely out of the question, even if it sounds almost ridiculous.
To put that number into perspective, the top ten most valuable companies in the world — NVIDIA, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, TSMC, Meta, Saudi Aramco, Broadcom, and Tesla — are worth roughly $26 trillion.
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Cathie Wood of ARK Invest believes the number is reasonable considering Tesla’s long-reaching industry ambitions:
“…in the world of AI, what do you have to have to win? You have to have proprietary data, and think about all the proprietary data he has, different kinds of proprietary data. Tesla, the language of the road; Neuralink, multiomics data; nobody else has that data. X, nobody else has that data either. I could see $100 trillion. I think it’s going to happen because of convergence. I think Tesla is the leading candidate [for $100 trillion] for the reason I just said.”
Musk said late last year that all of his companies seem to be “heading toward convergence,” and it’s started to come to fruition. Tesla invested in xAI, as revealed in its Q4 Earnings Shareholder Deck, and SpaceX recently acquired xAI, marking the first step in the potential for a massive umbrella of companies under Musk’s watch.
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Now that it is happening, it seems Musk is even more enthusiastic about a massive valuation that would swell to nearly four-times the value of the top ten most valuable companies in the world currently, as he said on X, the idea of a $100 trillion valuation is “not impossible.”
It’s not impossible
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2026
Tesla is not just a car company. With its many projects, including the launch of Robotaxi, the progress of the Optimus robot, and its AI ambitions, it has the potential to continue gaining value at an accelerating rate.
Musk’s comments show his confidence in Tesla’s numerous projects, especially as some begin to mature and some head toward their initial stages.
Elon Musk
Tesla director pay lawsuit sees lawyer fees slashed by $100 million
The ruling leaves the case’s underlying settlement intact while significantly reducing what the plaintiffs’ attorneys will receive.
The Delaware Supreme Court has cut more than $100 million from a legal fee award tied to a shareholder lawsuit challenging compensation paid to Tesla directors between 2017 and 2020.
The ruling leaves the case’s underlying settlement intact while significantly reducing what the plaintiffs’ attorneys will receive.
Delaware Supreme Court trims legal fees
As noted in a Bloomberg Law report, the case targeted pay granted to Tesla directors, including CEO Elon Musk, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, Kimbal Musk, and Rupert Murdoch. The Delaware Chancery Court had awarded $176 million to the plaintiffs. Tesla’s board must also return stock options and forego years worth of pay.
As per Chief Justice Collins J. Seitz Jr. in an opinion for the Delaware Supreme Court’s full five-member panel, however, the decision of the Delaware Chancery Court to award $176 million to a pension fund’s law firm “erred by including in its financial benefit analysis the intrinsic value” of options being returned by Tesla’s board.
The justices then reduced the fee award from $176 million to $70.9 million. “As we measure it, $71 million reflects a reasonable fee for counsel’s efforts and does not result in a windfall,” Chief Justice Seitz wrote.
Other settlement terms still intact
The Supreme Court upheld the settlement itself, which requires Tesla’s board to return stock and options valued at up to $735 million and to forgo three years of additional compensation worth about $184 million.
Tesla argued during oral arguments that a fee award closer to $70 million would be appropriate. Interestingly enough, back in October, Justice Karen L. Valihura noted that the $176 award was $60 million more than the Delaware judiciary’s budget from the previous year. This was quite interesting as the case was “settled midstream.”
The lawsuit was brought by a pension fund on behalf of Tesla shareholders and focused exclusively on director pay during the 2017–2020 period. The case is separate from other high-profile compensation disputes involving Elon Musk.
Investor's Corner
Tesla (TSLA) Q4 and FY 2025 earnings call: The most important points
Executives, including CEO Elon Musk, discussed how the company is positioning itself for growth across vehicles, energy, AI, and robotics despite near-term pressures from tariffs, pricing, and macro conditions.
Tesla’s (NASDAQ:TSLA) Q4 and FY 2025 earnings call highlighted improving margins, record energy performance, expanding autonomy efforts, and a sharp acceleration in AI and robotics investments.
Executives, including CEO Elon Musk, discussed how the company is positioning itself for growth across vehicles, energy, AI, and robotics despite near-term pressures from tariffs, pricing, and macro conditions.
Key takeaways
Tesla reported sequential improvement in automotive gross margins excluding regulatory credits, rising from 15.4% to 17.9%, supported by favorable regional mix effects despite a 16% decline in deliveries. Total gross margin exceeded 20.1%, the highest level in more than two years, even with lower fixed-cost absorption and tariff impacts.
The energy business delivered standout results, with revenue reaching nearly $12.8 billion, up 26.6% year over year. Energy gross profit hit a new quarterly record, driven by strong global demand and high deployments of MegaPack and Powerwall across all regions, as noted in a report from The Motley Fool.
Tesla also stated that paid Full Self-Driving customers have climbed to nearly 1.1 million worldwide, with about 70% having purchased FSD outright. The company has now fully transitioned FSD to a subscription-based sales model, which should create a short-term margin headwind for automotive results.
Free cash flow totaled $1.4 billion for the quarter. Operating expenses rose by $500 million sequentially as well.
Production shifts, robotics, and AI investment
Musk further confirmed that Model S and Model X production is expected to wind down next quarter, and plans are underway to convert Fremont’s S/X line into an Optimus robot factory with a capacity of one million units.
Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet has surpassed 500 vehicles, operating across the Bay Area and Austin, with Musk noting a rapid monthly expansion pace. He also reiterated that CyberCab production is expected to begin in April, following a slow initial S-curve ramp before scaling beyond other vehicle programs.
Looking ahead, Tesla expects its capital expenditures to exceed $20 billion next year, thanks to the company’s operations across its six factories, the expansion of its fleet expansion, and the ramp of its AI compute. Additional investments in AI chips, compute infrastructure, and future in-house semiconductor manufacturing were discussed but are not included in the company’s current CapEx guidance.
More importantly, Tesla ended the year with a larger backlog than in recent years. This is supported by record deliveries in smaller international markets and stronger demand across APAC and EMEA. Energy backlog remains strong globally as well, though Tesla cautioned that margin pressure could emerge from competition, policy uncertainty, and tariffs.
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