Investor's Corner
Tesla Gigafactory 1 expands with massive new lot as site activity increases
Aerial photographs obtained by Teslarati have revealed that Tesla’s expansive new parking lot in Gigafactory 1 is practically complete. As seen in the latest images, which we obtained on June 1, Tesla is done overlaying its new lot with asphalt, and numerous electric posts now stand in the area.
Tesla started moving the land north of Gigafactory 1 sometime in March. As noted by avid members of the r/TeslaMotors community then, the new parking lot appears to be around 2,000 x 1,500 ft (roughly 600 m x 470 m). The massive parking lot seems to have been developed quickly as well, as aerial images captured a few weeks after initial reports of the project indicated that Tesla was halfway done overlaying the new lot with asphalt.
- An aerial photo of Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory as of June 1, 2018. [Credit: Joshua Mcdonald]
- An aerial photo of Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory as of June 1, 2018. [Credit: Joshua Mcdonald]
- An aerial photo of Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory as of June 1, 2018. [Credit: Joshua Mcdonald]
- A close up of Tesla’s expansive new parking lot at Gigafactory 1. [Credit: Joshua Mcdonald]
- An aerial photo of Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory as of June 1, 2018. [Credit: Joshua Mcdonald]
- A close up of Tesla’s expansive new parking lot at Gigafactory 1. [Credit: Joshua Mcdonald]
Overall, the latest developments in Gigafactory 1, together with the installation of solar panels at the facility’s roof, underscore increased activity within the factory itself. The site, after all, is working around the clock in order to ramp up production of the Model 3’s battery packs. Just last week, reports emerged that Tesla has flown in six airplanes’ worth of new robots and equipment from Europe, the first two of which had reportedly been delivered at the Sparks, Nevada facility.
According to people familiar with the matter, the deliveries of the robots were done “in a massive hurry.” One of the individuals, who spoke to Reuters, further noted that engineers from Grohmann, Tesla’s engineering arm in Germany, were also in Gigafactory 1 to help address production bottlenecks in the Model 3 battery pack line.
The Model 3 production ramp is Tesla’s primary objective this second quarter. Despite missing its goal of producing 2,500 Model 3 per week by the end of Q1 2018, Tesla has nonetheless maintained its expectations of producing the compact electric car at a rate of 5,000 per week by the end of Q2 2018. In order to accomplish this elusive goal, both Tesla’s Fremont factory and Gigafactory 1 have to work at optimum efficiency.
Recent signs of the developments in the Model 3 production line have been encouraging so far. In May alone, Tesla registered more than 18,000 new Model 3 VINs, a number that took the company until March to achieve, despite starting the production of the vehicle mid-2017. Apart from this, a leaked email from CEO Elon Musk to Tesla employees also revealed that the company has been producing the Model 3 at a consistent rate of 500 vehicles per day, or roughly 3,500 per week.
Optimizing Gigafactory 1 and refining the Model 3 production ramp are just a few steps in the company’s overall plans, however. During Tesla’s Q1 2018 earnings call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that the next Gigafactory would be built in China. What’s more, Musk also announced that the upcoming facility would have the capability to manufacture vehicles. Ultimately, Musk stated that “future Gigafactories will all incorporate vehicle production.”
Establishing its next Gigafactory in China is a strategic move for Tesla, considering that Elon Musk has specifically mentioned during Tesla’s Q3 2017 earnings call last November that the upcoming facility will be tasked with manufacturing the next vehicle in Tesla’s lineup — the Model Y, an all-electric, crossover SUV that is expected to have a demand that surpasses even that of the Model 3.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s biggest test yet arrives this week and it’s not a rocket launch
SpaceX will report second quarter results after the market closes on Tuesday, August 4, marking the first time the company has opened its books to the public since its record IPO in June. Management will host a live audio only webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET, streamed on X, with no dial in option.
The debut carries more weight than a typical first quarter as a public company. Two trading days after the release, on August 6, the first tranche of SpaceX’s lockup expires, freeing roughly 911.5 million insider and employee shares, worth well over $100 billion at current prices and the largest such release in Wall Street history. A second, larger tranche tied to the stock trading 30 percent above its $135 IPO price never triggered, since shares have spent most of July trading below that price.
Wall Street’s models point to revenue near $6.9 billion for the quarter, up sharply from the $4.69 billion SpaceX reported in the first quarter, with a narrower per share loss than the $1.27 posted three months earlier, according to estimates compiled by Motley Fool. Those numbers will be the first look at how SpaceX’s three segments, Starlink, launch and AI, are performing independently.
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
Investors heading into the call have a specific list of questions. How many net new Starlink subscribers did SpaceX add after ending March with 10.3 million, and is average revenue per user holding up as the service expands into lower income markets. How much of the AI segment’s revenue reflects contract signings with Anthropic, Google and Reflection AI this year, deals that combined could annualize to nearly $28 billion if fully ramped. Whether capital expenditures, which nearly doubled in the AI segment alone between 2024 and 2025, are still accelerating or starting to plateau. And whether management offers any forward guidance at all, something SpaceX has never done publicly.
The report will also land days after Elon Musk publicly denied a Wall Street Journal report describing internal planning to separate Tesla’s China business ahead of a potential Tesla-SpaceX merger. Whether Musk or SpaceX executives address that speculation on the call, even indirectly, maybe something investors will be listening for on Tuesday.
As Teslarati reported after Musk’s own warning to short sellers last week, the CEO has made clear he expects skeptics to be proven wrong over time. Tuesday will be the first chance for the numbers themselves to make that case.
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’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.
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.
Elon Musk
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
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.
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.







