News
Tesla’s Elon Musk shares new insights on “funding secured” tweet as messages with Saudi PIF are revealed
Elon Musk recently shared some insights about his infamous 2018 “funding secured” tweet, which he posted when he announced his intentions to take Tesla private. The Tesla CEO’s recent comments came as text messages between Musk and the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund Head were shared online.
The text messages between Musk and the Saudi PIF Head Yasir Al-Rumayyan were revealed as part of a 300-page motion filed late last week by Alex Spiro, the Tesla CEO’s lead attorney. The messages were part of Musk’s deposition with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused the CEO of securities fraud.
In August 2018, Musk announced on Twitter that he was looking to take Tesla private at $420 per share (pre-split) and that he had funding secured. A blog post published soon after explained that Musk’s reference to funding being secured came from previous talks with the Saudi PIF. Musk eventually walked away from the take-private deal, despite Tesla’s financial advisers coming up with a possible list of investors which included Silver Lake and Volkswagen AG.
A look at Musk’s texts to the Saudi PIF Head showed that the CEO was extremely adamant about the sovereign fund confirming that it had shown interest in helping Tesla become a private company. The initial messages shared by Musk’s attorney were calm enough, with the Saudi PIF head confirming that any Tesla venture in Saudi will be 100% owned by the EV maker with no strings attached.
The next messages, which seemed to follow a report which alleged that the Saudi PIF had no interest in helping Tesla go private, were more aggressive.
During his appearance at TED 2022, Musk noted that he has an obsession with the truth. This is something that was extremely evident in his texts with the Saudi PIF Head. Musk confronted Al-Rumayyan about the report, noting that “This is false.” The Saudi PIF Head confirmed Musk’s statement, noting that the report was “Not true” and that “Nobody talked to them (the media).” The Saudi PIF eventually issued a statement, but Musk was not happy with its content and tone.
“This is an extremely weak statement and does not reflect the conversation we had at Tesla,” Musk sternly wrote, also adding later on that the Saudi PIF was “throwing me under the bus.”
-
Al-Rumayyan’s attempts at placating the Tesla CEO were evident in later messages, with the PIF Head assuring Musk that he was a friend and thus must not be treated like an enemy. “The last thing I want to do is ‘throw you under the bus.’ I am your friend. So, please don’t treat me like an enemy,” the PIF Head wrote to Musk.
Despite the back and forth, however, Musk remained aggravated about the situation. Even after Al-Rumayyan shared another article, Musk noted that the piece was “weak sauce and makes me sound like a liar.” Musk then noted that “There will be no further communication unless you fix the public perception of wishy washy support and interest from the PIF.” Al-Rumayyan’s last messages to Musk shared in Spiro’s filing stated that the Saudi PIF would be working on a statement, a move that the Tesla CEO stated meant “a great deal.”
In recent Twitter posts, Musk shared some more insights on his “funding secured” tweet. According to Musk, and just as the CEO stated in his text messages from 2018, “the head of Saudi PIF committed unequivocally to take Tesla private with me, as witnessed by the Tesla CFO and several others. That is why I said funding was secured.” Musk also posted some fresh criticism of the SEC’s San Fransisco Office, which he described as “puppets” of Wall Street short seller sharks.
Don’t hesitate to contact us with news tips. Just send a message to simon@teslarati.com to give us a heads up.
In a new note to investors on Tuesday, Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Percoco said that Tesla has one big financial question to answer for investors regarding its Robotaxi rollout, Full Self-Driving software, and Optimus.
Percoco said in the note that, for the most part, investors are still very positive about the direction the company is headed. However, there are some things the firm would like to see, and they have to do with financials.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla bulls are more than convinced that the company’s Full Self-Driving software is proof it can develop physical AI. Financially, however, there are still some questions, especially on elevated spending, which CEO Elon Musk said would occur as the company works to roll out Robotaxi faster and continue developing its Optimus robot.
The latter two are where Tesla will have to prove progress to investors, as Percoco writes that both projects “will require clearer evidence that Robotaxi is scaling and more tangible Optimus proof points to support the ROI on elevated capex.”
Percoco said the second quarter earnings call did not change his long-term thesis of where Tesla is positioned in the AI race, which is out in front. However, there are concerns that weaker gross margins and higher R&D spend will stress financials, and that has “sharpened our (and investors’) focus on measurable progress across Robotaxi and Optimus.”
Additionally, Robotaxi still needs to be proven with more operation in existing cities while maintaining safety but improving how many rides it gives in any given time, he said. For Optimus, Percoco wrote that he is “still looking for evidence beyond commentary around SOP.”
Morgan Stanley put Percoco in charge of covering Tesla after long-time analyst Adam Jonas transitioned to the automotive side.
Currently, Morgan Stanley has a $415 price target on Tesla and a ‘Hold’ rating on the stock. It is trading at around $330 at the time of publication, which was 2:30 P.M. on the East Coast.
SpaceX’s massive investment in AI will make it a big winner, Argus Research said after the company’s successful earnings call last week.
The firm also upgraded shares to a Buy from Hold and set a $160 price target.
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) is currently recovering from its heavy AI infrastructure investments, as it spent nearly $16 billion in Q2 alone. The company did this primarily by monetizing high-demand GPU compute capacity at a much faster pace than traditional data center economics would suggest.
Company CFO Bret Johnsen said that SpaceX would be able to pay back anything on new deployments within a year.
There are plenty of ways the company can do this:
Leasing excess compute capacity through contracts
SpaceX has already built Colossus and Colossus II, largely for its own model training. However, much of that capacity is already rented out to third parties. It already has major deals with Anthropic, Google, and Reflection AI. These partnerships are adding billions per month to SpaceX’s spreadsheet.
High utilization driven by industry-wide scarcity
The demand for advanced AI training and inference capacity continues to exceed what is available for use. SpaceX can fill new racks quickly after they come online, so the capital deployed converts into revenue with minimal idle time.
Additionally, management and outside observers have described the new compute capital as behaving more like a cost-of-goods-sold than traditional multi-year capex, especially because of this rapid monetization pattern.
Capacity has already scaled from ~0.4 GW a year to 1.4 GW annually by the end of Q2. There are targets of more than 2 GW by year-end.
High incremental margins on the rental business once capacity is online
GPU cloud providers often operate at strong gross margins. SpaceX can monetize capacity that was already partially built or can be added efficiently. This means that incremental EBITDA margins on the rental revenue are usually high. This accelerates cash recovery relative to the gross capital outlay.
Parallel monetization of its own AI software and applications
Beyond pure infrastructure rental, SpaceX also generates revenue from Grok through subscriptions and usage, from X through ads, data, and other related services, enterprise APIs, and the planned integration of the Cursor coding tools acquisition.
These application layers ride on the same compute infrastructure and provide additional high-margin streams that could offset build-out costs. AI-segment revenue overall rose sharply to about $2.6 billion in Q2, according to Motley Fool. This was driven primarily by the infrastructure contracts, but the software side is also partially responsible.
Efficient, large-scale deployment and vertical integration advantages
SpaceX has emphasized the rapid construction of power and cooling infrastructure and favorable cost-per-megawatt economics relative to industry benchmarks in some disclosures.
Combined with its ability to scale capacity aggressively and the fact that many contracts start generating revenue within months of capacity coming online, the effective payback compresses dramatically compared with more conventional multi-year data-center projects.
SpaceX’s dominant near-term recovery path will turn the AI clusters into a hyperscale-style compute rental business for other leading AI companies while still using a portion for internal models.
Tesla headlights have caused a recall of over 20,000 of the company’s two most popular vehicles, the Model 3 and Model Y, due to the low-beam bulb exceeding the maximum allowed intensity according to federal standards.
Tesla initiated the recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) this morning, stating that the low-beam output “exceeds the maximum allowed intensity in the outer upper-right and outer upper-left areas of the 10U and 90U zone, as prescribed in FMVSS No. 108.”
Tesla sourced the impacted headlights from Marelli Automotive Lighting, a Mexico-based company. The recall impacts 2020-2023 Model Y vehicles and 2017-2023 Model 3 vehicles. It is estimated that every VIN in this recall is impacted by the defect.
🚨 Tesla is recalling 20,349 2020-23 Model Y vehicles and 2017-23 Model 3 vehicles due to an excessively bright headlamp low beam.
Currently, there is no remedy plan in place, as it is still being developed. pic.twitter.com/y34cIO2U0B
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 11, 2026
Typically, Tesla would remedy recalls of this nature through an Over-the-Air software update, which has been a major focus of criticism by the company and its supporters because the NHTSA still refers to it as a “recall,” even though it requires no action by the vehicle owner. The fix is shipped over the internet and downloaded to the car.
However, there appears to be a potentially different solution for this problem. Tesla has not developed a remedy for this issue, so it could potentially be on the way. The big issue appears to be the fact that these recalled lamps are out of production, and this is an old body style for both vehicles. The headlights and front-end designs are completely different.
Tesla switched to another supplier when the affected headlight design was discontinued. It plans to begin notifying owners of their remedy options by September 15.
Tesla filed a petition protesting the recall to fix the vehicles’ headlight issue, but the NHTSA denied it. Now, Tesla will come up with a solution to fix it.
Tesla has one big financial question to answer for investors: Morgan Stanley
SpaceX AI investment gamble will make it a big winner, firm says
