Investor's Corner
Tesla’s Elon Musk pens open invite to TSLA short with surprise gift offering
Following a note to his investors alleging that Elon Musk continues to commit fraud, prominent TSLA short and hedge fund manager David Einhorn has received a response from the Tesla CEO. Musk’s letter, which he shared on Twitter, appears to be a snarky olive branch that offers Einhorn an opportunity to change his mind about the electric car maker.
Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital, which declined by 34% last year partly due to his bet against Tesla, lost its bet against the electric car maker once more in the third quarter. In a letter to his firm’s investors, Einhorn admitted that TSLA was one of its “material losers” of Q3’19 while accusing Elon Musk of “knowingly” orchestrating “significant fraud” with Tesla’s SolarCity buyout in 2016. The TSLA short also accused the electric car maker of failing to warn customers about its burning solar panels and its car battery fires.
Musk, who appears to be adopting a rather confident stance, shared a letter to the hedge fund manager on Twitter. Playfully calling Einhorn by the German translation of his name and dubbing himself as “Treelon Musk,” the Tesla CEO extended a rather snarky olive branch to the short seller. In his letter, Musk invited Einhorn to meet with him and see Tesla’s work firsthand, something that would be wise for the sake of Greenlight Capital’s investors.
😘 pic.twitter.com/w0BkNGbvQ1— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 8, 2019
Following is Musk’s letter in full.
Dear Mr. Unicorn (fabulous name btw),
We read your Greenlight Capital Q3’19 Investor Letter, in which you make numerous false allegations against Tesla. It is understandable that you wish to save face with your investors, given the losses you suffered from Tesla’s successful third quarter, especially since you’ve had several down years in performance and a sharp drop in assets under management from $15 billion to $5 billion. You have our sympathies.
We also recognize your desire to feel somehow relevant with your Tesla short position at a time when your friends in the Tesla short community have been noticeably recoiling from the public discourse, as the world is increasingly recognizing Tesla’s contributions to science, safety and a sustainable environment.
To the extent that you have any desire to learn about the amazing progress the people of Tesla are making, I would like to extend an open invitation to meet with me to discuss Tesla and tour our facilities. For their sake, I’m certain your investors would appreciate you getting smart on Tesla.
Finally, please allow us to send you a gift of short shorts to help you through this difficult time.
Regards,
Treelon Musk
Musk’s reference to Einhorn and a box of short shorts is based on a series of amusing events last year which began with Einhorn stating that he is not renewing the lease on his Tesla Model S due to tech issues with the car. Responding on Twitter, Musk stated that Tesla will “send Einhorn a box of short shorts to comfort him through this difficult time.” Following Elon Musk’s tweet, apparel maker Chubbies opted to send the hedge fund manager a literal box of shorts, most of which featured a very short 5.5-inch inseam.
on it fam. pic.twitter.com/KuiyscNu0e— Chubbies (@Chubbies) August 1, 2018
Sure enough, Einhorn received his shorts, and he promptly took to Twitter to thank the Tesla CEO for being a “man of his word.” Musk responded by playfully asking Einhorn to put them on and post a selfie, but the TSLA short-seller did not comply. Perhaps this year, things will be different, or maybe Chubbies would be up for the task once more, considering that Kyle Hency, one of the company’s founders, stated that they could keep sending short shorts to TSLA shorts if Elon Musk wishes.
Put them on & post a selfie— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 11, 2018
While Einhorn is a Tesla short and he continues to accuse Musk of fraud, among others, he appears to be a bit more level-headed compared to some of the angry, vapid TSLA retail and institutional short-sellers that populate Twitter. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Musk actually opted to invite Einhorn in what seems to be an attempt to change the hedge fund manager’s mind. Elon Musk’s letter might be rife with snark, but it may, if Einhorn opts to respond, save his fund from more painful losses in the near future.
Investor's Corner
Tesla Robotaxi gets a massive upgrade in Nevada
Nevada regulators just approved a massive expansion of Tesla’s robotaxi fleet across the entire county.
Tesla’s robotaxi footprint in Nevada just grew by roughly 500 times in a single regulatory vote.
The Nevada Transportation Authority approved Tesla’s full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit on Thursday, clearing the way for the company to deploy up to 5,000 driverless vehicles across Clark County over the next 12 months. The decision came during a four hour general session meeting that Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt watched live and reported on X, noting the vote replaces the interim order that had limited Tesla to just 10 robotaxis on a narrow stretch of the Las Vegas Strip.
EXCLUSIVE: Tesla has just officially received approval for its full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit in Nevada, clearing the way for Tesla to launch a paid public Robotaxi service in Las Vegas.
This officially allows @Tesla to deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis over the next… pic.twitter.com/DPs5UtUlrE
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 20, 2026
That earlier cap, covered here after it surfaced on August 13, came with restrictions that looked stricter than what Tesla runs in Austin: a 45 mph speed ceiling, no airport pickups, and a geofence confined to the Strip corridor. The new approval extends Tesla’s operating authority to all of Clark County, with room to request an even wider geofence across the state.
Tesla representatives at the meeting said they have no intention of putting 5,000 cars on the road right away. Commercial rides are expected to start within 30 days, pending vehicle inspections, insurance filings, and fare approval, the standard steps every robotaxi operator in Nevada has had to clear.
Tesla’s own Robotaxi account replied to the news with a short line, The golden future is upon us.
The timing lines up with Tesla’s broader robotaxi push this month. The company is preparing to open Cybercab rides to the public in Austin as soon as this month, and it opened a sweepstakes for riders to win a seat at the launch event. Tesla filed its original application for a 5,000 vehicle Nevada fleet back in June, a request regulators trimmed to 10 vehicles when they issued the interim order in July. Thursday’s vote effectively grants the number Tesla asked for from the start.
Zoox, the Amazon owned robotaxi operator, has run in Nevada since 2025 and was capped at 100 vehicles before Thursday’s decision. Tesla’s new ceiling puts it well ahead of that comparison on paper, though the company has said its actual fleet size will depend on how quickly FSD v15 rolls out, the software update executives have called the gateway to scaling unsupervised robotaxi operations nationwide.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s next trillion dollar bet has nothing to do with rockets, Musk tells staff
Elon Musk told SpaceX staff AI revenue will soon dwarf rockets and Starlink combined entirely.
Elon Musk told SpaceX employees this week that artificial intelligence, not rockets, will soon carry the company’s revenue. In a roughly 29 minute internal address posted on SpaceX’s X account on Tuesday, Musk said AI revenue will pass every other line of business at SpaceX “probably in September” and pull further ahead by the fourth quarter.
The numbers he gave are specific. SpaceX currently runs 1.4 gigawatts of AI compute capacity. Musk wants that at 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027, a jump he tied directly to revenue: “if we bring 10GW of AI online by the end of next year, it will be $300 billion to $500 billion a year in revenue.” He called those “big numbers,” which undersells a projection larger than what most countries produce in a year.
We made rockets reusable and are rebuilding the internet in space. The next challenge: making life multiplanetary and understanding the true nature of the universe
Watch @ElonMusk deliver a company update to @SpaceX employees pic.twitter.com/5c8rxoCQfu
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 11, 2026
Musk went further on where AI fits into SpaceX’s future. “Probably in four or five years, AI will be 99% of the value of SpaceX,” he told staff, adding that digital intelligence would eventually run “a trillion times” ahead of biological intelligence as computing scales. He tied that growth to the company’s founding mission, telling employees “we must win on AI, because the future is overwhelmingly AI and robots,” with the payoff meant to help fund Starship and a Mars program that increasingly runs through Terafab, the joint Tesla, SpaceX and xAI chip plant.
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
None of this is entirely new territory. SpaceX told investors much the same story during its first earnings call as a public company on August 4, where Musk moved the company’s $1 trillion revenue target up a year to 2030 and said Starlink could someday carry a majority of the world’s internet. What the all hands video adds is a hard deadline and a specific power figure Musk had not given publicly before, along with a franker pitch to his own workforce that AI, not launch cadence, is now the thing SpaceX is betting its future on.
The AI revenue itself is not coming from SpaceX training its own models. It is largely Starlink acting as the network layer for xAI’s workloads, plus SpaceX renting out compute capacity directly, the same approach behind the roughly $16 billion the company spent on AI infrastructure in a single quarter.
Musk closed the video with a pitch aimed at recruiting and retention rather than investors, telling employees that anyone who helps SpaceX win the AI race will eventually get the chance to go to the moon or Mars themselves. Whether SpaceX can turn 1.4 gigawatts into 10 in seventeen months is the more immediate question, and one that will show up in quarterly numbers well before anyone leaves Earth.
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.
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