Investor's Corner
Tesla has its heart set on Texas for upcoming Cybertruck Terafactory
Tesla will likely select Austin, Texas as the location for its next Cybertruck Gigafactory, but that doesn’t mean they’ll turn down offers from other regions that are vying for their attention, including Tulsa, Oklahoma.
First reported by Electrek, and later confirmed by Teslarati with multiple sources, Texas is the forerunner to become home to the company’s next US factory.
The Elon Musk-led electric carmaker has been scouting for land in the outskirts of Austin and in nearby Taylor, roughly 30 miles northeast of the city, since earlier this year. While there have been no property sale records that link back to Tesla or an entity related to the company, sources tell Teslarati that the company is considering the acquisition of several large parcels of land near the industrial zones in Taylor.
Indicators that Tesla was considering Texas as the site for its next US-based Gigafactory grew stronger in February when CEO Elon Musk tweeted a poll that teased the question, “Giga Texas?”
Musk would later confirm, in March, the company’s desire for a Cybertruck Gigafactory that will be located closer to the east coast than California.
And last week, the company held talks with politicians in the Lone Star State, as confirmed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
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“It’s true,” Abbott said over Twitter. “Texas is a perfect fit for Tesla.”
“I’ve had the opportunity to talk to Elon Musk, and he’s genuinely interested in Texas and genuinely frustrated with California. We’ve just got to wait and see how things play out,” the Texas Governor said in an interview with a local television station.
Other cities in Texas, like Fort Worth and Houston, have also welcomed Tesla by making suggestions to bring car manufacturing into their region. Houston stated that Musk could consolidate Tesla and SpaceX operations in its city, according to Mayor Sylvester Turner.
“As we continue our industrial evolution, I invite you to play a leading role in our story. As the only market that can immediately meet the production needs of Tesla and SpaceX, Houston provides a single solution for your operations,” Turner wrote. “Houston offers a broad innovative ecosystem in which industries coverage to solve the world’s greatest challenges in energy, manufacturing, logistics, and space.”
.@elonmusk Houston offers the #CompleteSolution to consolidate @Tesla and @SpaceX operations in one region. Join a city of innovators working to make the world better—just like you. #youbELONginHOU #HOUxTESLA
Read more here https://t.co/292AUyjW7Q pic.twitter.com/GhUZTPGvLs
— Houston Mayor's Office (@houmayor) May 15, 2020
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Tesla’s next Gigafactory in the Central US will be geared toward the mass production of its upcoming Cybertruck, and the production of its Model Y crossover for the East Coast market.
While all indicators point to Austin, Texas as being the site for the company’s Cybertruck Gigafactory, a source tells Teslarati that the company is also considering another central U.S. location that’s 450 miles north of Austin: Tusla, Oklahoma.
Recently, State Representative Ryan Martinez and Governor Kevin Stitt invited Tesla to come to the Sooner State.
“Oklahoma is a wonderful place to do business. We’ve got a low tax base, a low cost of living, great incentives and services, and plenty of space to build a manufacturing headquarters and house all of your people,” Martinez said.
Texas appears to be the favorite in the race to become home to Tesla’s next US factory, however, the largely rural areas of Tulsa is also being considered as a region for its manufacturing facility. By having Tulsa in the conversation, along with other states that continue to court the company, Tesla can only benefit through increased leverage in its negotiations for local incentives.
With economic activity taking a massive blow in the face of the ever-changing pandemic, local governments need the economic boom that a Tesla Gigafactory can otherwise spark for the region.
And with Musk at the helm, who’s no stranger to walking the cashflow tightrope and striking at a good deal when it presents itself, rest assured that there’s going to be plenty of FOMO among state politicians before Tesla ultimately picks Texas.
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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 Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tesla-optimus-gen3-diner.jpg)
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
![Tesla Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tesla-optimus-gen3-diner-80x80.jpg)
Tesla AI boss reveals how big Optimus is going to get
Autonomous vehicle red tape gets slashed by Trump Administration
