Investor's Corner
Tesla board backs Elon Musk as he faces the ‘most painful’ year of his career
Elon Musk is known for managing multiple companies, but even those who have the gift of multitasking have a limit. Amidst the fallout of his tweets about having funding secured for Tesla’s possible privatization, Elon Musk is starting to feel a little burned out.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO recently opened up in an interview with the New York Times. The publication noted that during the hourlong session, Musk acknowledged that he was getting exhausted, and that the past year had been incredibly difficult. Musk also admitted that the exhaustion, partly caused by 120-hour work weeks, was starting to take a toll on his physical health.
“This past year has been the most difficult and painful year of my career. It was excruciating. It’s not been great, actually. I’ve had friends come by who are really concerned. There were times when I didn’t leave the factory for three or four days — days when I didn’t go outside. This has really come at the expense of seeing my kids. And seeing friends,” he said.
Much like Tesla’s struggles with the Model 3 production ramp, a lot of the pressure Musk is currently feeling is caused by self-imposed goals. Elon Musk became Elon Musk due to his grit and determination, and he is never one to give up when faced with a seemingly insurmountable challenge. Musk’s relentless nature is one of the core reasons why SpaceX is currently working to conduct crewed demonstration flights of its Crew Dragon spacecraft as early as April 2019, and why the Model 3 is starting to make its presence known in the US auto market.
Jim Ambras, VP product development at Zip2, the first company that Elon and his brother, Kimbal, founded, recalls the insane amount of drive that fuels Musk. In a recent statement to WIRED, Ambras described how Musk would sleep on a bean bag close to his computer just to get work done. The former Zip2 executive also narrated that at one time, the Zip2 team invited Musk to go mountain biking. Unfortunately, the trail proved to be far more challenging than the team expected, even causing Elon’s athletic cousin Russ Rive to get sick when he reached the mountain’s top. Musk, who was not in any way conditioned to undertake such a physical task, was the last one to the summit. Musk finished the climb, but he pushed himself past his limits to do so.
“We’re all at the top waiting for him. We just assumed he turned around and went home. Then we see him coming up around the turn, and he was just completely red. Beet-red. He was riding his bike, he wasn’t walking his bike, and it was just clear that he was killing himself. He just looked like he was torturing himself,” Ambras said.
Well into 2018, Elon Musk is still doing much of the same thing. His hyper-aggressive targets for the Model 3, for one, ultimately caused delays in the vehicle’s production. Being a publicly-traded company, Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) felt these effects. Today, Tesla shares are known for their wild swings and overall volatility, as well as their penchant for attracting passionate short-sellers. Tesla is currently the most-shorted stock in the market, with more than 30 million shares being sold short. Musk has been affected by short-sellers’ activities, and in his recent interview with the NYT, he admitted that people betting against the company are giving him a lot of stress. Musk even noted that he expects the next few months to be even more difficult, as attacks against Tesla would likely increase.
“(I am) bracing for at least a few months of extreme torture from the short-sellers, who are desperately pushing a narrative that will possibly result in Tesla’s destruction. They’re not dumb guys, but they’re not supersmart. They’re O.K. They’re smartish,” Musk said.
True to Musk’s own predictions, the attacks against Tesla had only increased since talks about the company’s privatization emerged. Musk is currently facing an investigation from the SEC about his tweets, and reports from several media outlets suggest that Tesla’s board is trying to do damage control. In response to some of these reports, Tesla’s board issued a statement to the NYT expressing its full support for the embattled CEO.
“There have been many false and irresponsible rumors in the press about the discussions of the Tesla board. We would like to make clear that Elon’s commitment and dedication to Tesla is obvious. Over the past 15 years, Elon’s leadership of the Tesla team has caused Tesla to grow from a small start-up to having hundreds of thousands of cars on the road that customers love, employing tens of thousands of people around the world, and creating significant shareholder value in the process.”
For now, reports are emerging that Tesla is looking for a Chief Operating Officer that can support Elon Musk’s workload. SpaceX, after all, is pretty much working like a well-oiled machine, and a lot of it is due to the work and efforts of Gwynne Shotwell, the COO and President of the private space firm. Musk stated that to the best of his knowledge, there is no active search for a Tesla COO, though he did admit that a couple of years ago, the company approached Sheryl Sandberg, the second-highest executive of Facebook, about the position. Rounding out his recent interview, Elon Musk stated that he has no plans to let go of his position as Tesla’s CEO and Chairman, but he did state that if there is anyone that can “do a better job,” he is very much willing to hand over the reins of the company.
“If you have anyone who can do a better job, please let me know. They can have the job. Is there someone who can do the job better? They can have the reins right now,” Musk said.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk and Trump are closer than ever, and Tesla could be the big winner
Elon Musk sat beside Trump as AI leaders signed a voluntary White House safety accord.
Elon Musk had the seat right next to President Donald Trump on Tuesday as the White House hosted the leaders of America’s biggest artificial intelligence companies for a lunch that ended with a voluntary industry accord on AI safety.
A seating chart Trump posted on Truth Social placed Musk at the president’s left in the East Room, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on his right, according to an Associated Press reporter. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also attended, along with Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson.
🚨 Elon Musk is currently speaking to the media alongside President Trump after a meeting with AI Leaders in Washington today
Trump says AI is now being called “Super Intelligence” or SI pic.twitter.com/woJJqUVP9B
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) September 29, 2026
After the lunch, Trump told reporters outside the West Wing that the executives had signed “The White House Accord on Superintelligence: A Joint Commitment on Frontier SI Responsibilities.” Johnson described it as a voluntary statement of principles built on “robust internal controls and layers of internal and external review,” while Zuckerberg said company boards would independently review reports from outside auditors. Trump called the document “morally binding,” said he would name a new AI czar within days, and signed an executive order formally renaming artificial intelligence “super intelligence,” CNBC reported.
Musk was not in the room for Tesla alone. Since SpaceX absorbed xAI, he runs the company behind Grok and one of the largest AI training operations anywhere. On September 25, he said another 220,000 Nvidia GB300 chips would come online at Colossus 2 within a week, with more expected in November and December.
“I think it is worth highlighting the positive benefits of A.I. … S.I., pardon me.”
“Thank you.”@elonmusk catches his own slip after calling the technology “A.I.” while speaking alongside President Trump and other tech leaders, quickly correcting himself to “super… pic.twitter.com/fH7CFileNb
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 29, 2026
SpaceX confirms third massive compute deal at Colossus data center
Musk also used the trip to restate his energy ambitions. “SpaceX is aiming together with Tesla to do 200 gigawatts of solar production per year,” he said at an event in Washington. It is the same combined target he laid out that feeds directly into Terafab, the Tesla and SpaceX chip venture that will need enormous amounts of power.
The showing between Musk and Trump has come a long way, since the two had the very public split in mid 2025 after Musk opposed the “Big Beautiful Bill” and left DOGE. They reconciled at Charlie Kirk’s memorial that September, and Trump later called their relationship “good”. Since then, Musk has joined Trump’s China delegation in May and attended last week’s White House state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping.
For Tesla, that access to government official could pay dividends. As Teslarati noted in January, federal autonomy rules, NHTSA oversight and a single national standard for driverless vehicles all run through an administration Musk can more easily reach directly as Tesla works to scale Robotaxi and Cybercab beyond Texas.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) showrooms have been picked clean ahead of the end of the third quarter of the year, as demand looks to be strong and delivery estimates for new vehicles are pushed into late 2026 and early 2027.
Tesla appears to have sold out of many of its Model 3 and Model Y trim levels in the United States, as only the Model Y RWD and Model Y All-Wheel-Drive are available for delivery before the end of the year.
Additionally, many showrooms are either completely empty or void of all but just one demo unit within the buildings themselves in an effort to bolster what could be one of Tesla’s best quarters in vehicle deliveries in recent memory.
I’m at Tesla right now and when I walked into their showroom I was shocked to see it basically empty.
I asked one of the people working there where all of the cars are “Gone – it’s the end of the quarter and we’ve sold out of everything… including the display vehicles”So… pic.twitter.com/rN7s3gE6sJ
— Devin Olsen (@DevinOlsenn) September 25, 2026
All the cars are gone from Tesla Century City!
All they have is Model Y L, a self-driving video playing on the background. I guess the best product is no product. Either that or they just sold the showroom cars. pic.twitter.com/mzCjWaXwww
— Whole Mars Catalog (@wholemars) September 26, 2026
Show room is empty. I asked and they have sold the demo cars too. Delivery numbers better be outstanding! pic.twitter.com/jq5N28Q6tZ
— Electric Brawl (@3lectricBrawl) September 22, 2026
Additionally, when I spoke to the guys at Tesla Mechanicsburg two weeks ago, when I returned the Model Y L, their third hauler of the week had just arrived, and every vehicle on it, along with every vehicle in their delivery lot, was accounted for and had a name attached to it for delivery.
Talking to the guys at the Mechanicsburg showroom on Friday, they couldn’t believe they had ANOTHER hauler coming in of cars for delivery—and each was accounted for
No car just sitting in inventory. They’re expecting a BIG quarter, and this is more than just the Y L https://t.co/ce801GkKVv
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) September 21, 2026
Tesla saw a 25 percent increase in deliveries in Q2 compared to the same quarter the year before. The vast majority of the 480,126 units it delivered, 467,762 vehicles to be exact, were the Model 3 and Model Y.
In Q3 2025, Tesla delivered 497,099 vehicles, once again a figure that was dominated by the company’s two mass-market vehicles. Analysts have unusually wide predictions for this quarter, likely because so many firms missed the Q2 delivery figure by such a substantial margin; Wall Street predicted 408,000 cars, while Tesla delivered 480,000.
Goldman Sachs has Tesla slotted for 435,000 deliveries in Q3, while JPMorgan said it anticipates 482,000. The median guess is about 449,000 deliveries for Q3.
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Elon Musk
SpaceX turned a heralding moment for Starship into its greatest
Starship reached orbit despite losing an engine, deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites on Flight 14.
SpaceX’s Starship reached orbit for the first time on Monday, and for a few nail-biting minutes it looked like it wouldn’t. During ascent on Flight 14, one of Ship 41’s six Raptor engines shut down early, and SpaceX’s livestream host Dan Huot told viewers the team had decided not to commit to orbit. Minutes later, after what Huot described as a lot of conversation in the control room, the final poll came back in favor, and a roughly 19 second burn of a single Raptor pushed the ship into orbit about 170 miles up.
The reversal matters because SpaceX had written the exit ramp into the mission plan. The company said it would only fire the orbital insertion burn if flight controllers confirmed enough backup hardware remained for the deorbit burn, a condition Teslarati laid out ahead of the flight. Losing an engine was exactly the scenario that rule was built for.
Pressing forward fits Elon Musk’s history. Falcon 1 failed three straight times before its fourth launch reached orbit in 2008, with SpaceX nearly out of money, and Starship was developed by flying prototypes until they broke. What changed this year SpaceX going public, and with $SPCX sliding below its IPO price in July when Flight 13 slipped, the short interest climbed significantly, as Teslarati reported at the time. A Starship potentially lost today with revenue generating next-gen Starlink satellites aboard would have landed directly on shareholders.
Splashdown confirmed. Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on the first orbital flight of Starship! pic.twitter.com/urjmiwnvNl
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 28, 2026
That pressure showed up after orbit. SpaceX cut a flight planned to last nearly 10 hours to about three, moving splashdown from west of Chile to the North Pacific near Hawaii. SpaceX gave no reason, though Musk said this month the company was being extremely cautious about debris risk. The single Raptor for deorbit worked, and Ship 41 completed its flip and landing burn before breaking apart in the water, an outcome SpaceX expected. Musk has structured SpaceX’s governance to shield long term bets from market pressure.
The payload is the bigger business story. Musk posted that all 26 Starlink V3 satellites deployed and are “operating nominally.” Each V3 is rated for about 1 Tbps of downlink and 160 Gbps of uplink, so this single launch adds roughly 26 Tbps, about 10 times what a Falcon 9 load of V2 Mini satellites adds. The V3 is too large for Falcon 9, making Starship the only vehicle that can build out the planned 100,000 satellite constellation, at up to 60 per flight once it reaches routine service. Unlike the 20 V3 units on Flight 13, which reentered on a suborbital path, these will raise their orbits and could begin serving customers within weeks and bring in hundreds of millions of additional dollars in projected Starlink revenue.
SpaceX has already begun winding down Falcon 9 Starlink launches from Florida in favor of Starship. Reported targets put Flight 15 as early as October 19, leaving about three weeks to diagnose Monday’s engine shutdown before the next orbital attempt.
Starship’s 14th flight is set to launch on Monday, Sept 28. The 75-minute launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. CT. Live coverage of the mission starts ~35 minutes before launch → https://t.co/uQKQvgaTmJ
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 27, 2026
SpaceX set to launch astronauts and a classified Falcon Heavy mission on the same day
Tesla Cybercab and Semi have more in common than you might think
