Investor's Corner
Tesla continues Gigafactory 3 preparations with new hiring initiative, $145M real estate bid
Tesla’s preparations for Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai, China are underway, with the company recently listing a number of new job postings for the upcoming facility. The new Shanghai Gigafactory 3 job openings come amidst reports that Tesla is also in the process of acquiring a site where the battery and electric car facility would be constructed on.
Tesla has posted job openings for the Shanghai Gigafactory in the past. That said, the electric car maker posted a new set of job listings for the upcoming facility on October 11, including positions for Senior Managers for Construction, Mechanical Design Engineers for Building Infrastructure, and Electrical Design Engineers. These postings were listed on Tesla’s Careers page on its website, as well as the company’s official WeChat account. Overall, the updated Gigafactory 3 job listings invoke the idea that Tesla is assembling the team it needs to break ground and start the construction of the facility.
From the official recruitment advertisement of Tesla, the Shanghai Gigafactory has entered the stage of preparation for construction. Thanks @congcongcui1 for the info $TSLA #TeslaChina pic.twitter.com/rtTmJHbNAa
— vincent (@vincent13031925) October 12, 2018
The ongoing hiring ramp for Gigafactory 3 goes in line with Tesla’s recent statement in its Q3 2018 vehicle production and deliveries report. When the electric car maker released its findings for the past quarter, the company mentioned that it was accelerating the construction of the Shanghai factory. The update augmented the company’s initial timeline for the project, which estimated vehicle production to start two years after initial construction begins. In its Q3 report, Tesla noted that it expects Gigafactory 3 to be capital efficient, considering the lessons that were learned with the Model 3 ramp.
“We are accelerating construction of our Shanghai factory, which we expect to be a capital efficient and rapid buildout, using many lessons learned from the Model 3 ramp in North America,” Tesla wrote.
Apart from an ongoing hiring ramp, Tesla is reportedly attempting to acquire land for Gigafactory 3. Reports citing individuals familiar with the proceedings have indicated that Tesla is bidding on a plot of land with an auction price of $145 million. If Tesla’s bid is successful, the Shanghai government could formally allocate the land to the electric car maker as early as this month.
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Despite the company being faced with a stream of skepticism and controversies over the online actions of CEO Elon Musk, the progress of Gigafactory appears to have been consistent over the past months. Last September, for example, a reporter from Beijing Business Daily noted that around 30% of Gigafactory 3’s initial capital has been secured. Reports from China’s local media also suggested that the Shanghai government is assisting Tesla in obtaining loans from local banks to help fund the construction of the battery and electric car factory.
Gigafactory 3 would be Tesla’s first major facility that combines both battery and electric vehicle production. Despite its vehicle production capabilities, Elon Musk noted during the Q3 2018 earnings call that he expects Gigafactory 3’s cost to be “closer to $2 billion” at the 250,000 vehicle-per-year rate, making it less capital-intensive as Gigafactory 1 in Nevada, which is expected to cost $5 billion when complete. One done, Tesla expects Gigafactory 3 to produce up to 500,000 vehicles per year.
It should be noted that while Tesla’s targets for Gigafactory 3 are incredibly aggressive, the company’s timeline is not that farfetched. Gigafactory 3, after all, does not need to be fully completed before it begins vehicle production. This is exhibited by Gigafactory 1, which is less than 30% complete but is already operating and supporting the battery needs of the Model 3 production ramp. Gigafactory 3 is also being built in China, a country with a construction workforce that has earned Elon Musk’s approval for its near-surgical efficiency and quickness.
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Cybertruck
Tesla Cybertruck production snaps back after ugly supplier fight
Cybertrucks are piling up again at Giga Texas after Tesla’s court win against a parts supplier.
Cybertruck production at Giga Texas is showing its first visible recovery since Tesla sued a supplier last month over withheld manufacturing tooling.
Aerial observer Joe Tegtmeyer flew over the Austin factory Wednesday morning and counted roughly 100 or more Cybertrucks filling the outbound lot, a sharp jump from the thin numbers seen in recent weeks. The flyover came a day after a judge granted Tesla a temporary restraining order against Angstrom Automotive Group, the parts supplier at the center of the dispute.
Tesla filed an emergency lawsuit in late July after Angstrom told the automaker it planned to close the Troy, Texas facility where Tesla’s die-cast tools, trim dies and other Cybertruck stamping equipment were housed. According to Tesla’s complaint, a shipment of 700 finished parts never left the building, and when Tesla sent representatives to retrieve its equipment, accompanied by law enforcement, they were turned away. Angstrom allegedly then asked for an extra $250,000 a week to keep operating, which Tesla’s filing described as holding its own property for ransom.
TESLA: U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Wolfe of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Waco Division granted Tesla a Temporary Restraining Order and Writ of Replevin in its dispute with Angstrom Automotive (Case No. 6:26-cv-00477).
The order authorizes… https://t.co/E1DKcQSxMn pic.twitter.com/LR8aAiV2Og
— S.E. Robinson, Jr. (@SERobinsonJr) August 5, 2026
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The restraining order gives Tesla immediate right of entry to Angstrom’s facility to recover the tooling. It is temporary, with a fuller hearing still to come, but the speed of Wednesday’s rebound suggests the Angstrom shortage was indeed the main bottleneck limiting Cybertruck output. Outbound lot counts are an imperfect measure of actual production, since finished trucks can sit for days before shipping, but a lot that full after a lean stretch is a meaningful signal.
Cybertruck output at Giga Texas has fluctuated all year as Tesla worked through supply issues and introduced new trims, including a cheaper Dual Motor AWD version that drew strong early demand.
Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya has cautioned investors shorting SpaceX shares, drawing a direct parallel to the intense short-selling pressure Tesla faced in its early public years.
Responding to reports of elevated short interest in the newly public rocket, satellite, and AI company, Palihapitiya noted that similar dynamics played out with Tesla, where aggressive short sellers ultimately “went broke.”
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) went public on June 12, 2026, in the largest IPO on record, pricing at $135 per share. Shares quickly surged to an all-time high of $225.64 just days later, briefly implying a valuation exceeding $2 trillion. The stock has since retreated sharply amid valuation concerns, lockup expiration fears, and broader market dynamics.
By early August, it traded near $108–$125, representing a roughly 50 percent decline from the peak and bringing the market capitalization closer to the $1.5–1.7 trillion range. On August 4, shares closed up more than 9 percent at $125.33 ahead of earnings before facing pressure in after-hours and premarket trading.
Short interest has climbed dramatically. According to S3 Partners data widely cited in market reports, short positions reached approximately 219.3 million shares by late July, about 34 percent of the limited public float of roughly 640 million shares, and represented a notional value of around $24.6 billion.
Utilization of shares available to borrow hit 95 percent, with borrow fees rising. This level of shorting exceeded the dollar value of short bets against Tesla at the time and built rapidly ahead of two catalysts: the company’s first post-IPO earnings and an August 6 lockup expiration that could free up to 911.5 million additional shares.
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CEO Elon Musk has issued warnings of his own. In mid-July, as short interest approached one-third of the float, he posted that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” reiterating his view that the company could ultimately be worth more than Earth if it achieves its goals.
On August 4, just before earnings, Musk responded to the latest short-interest data by saying, “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
SpaceX delivered its first quarterly results as a public company after the close on August 4. Second-quarter revenue rose 92 percent year-over-year to $7.8 billion, beating consensus estimates near $6.8–6.9 billion.
The net loss narrowed to $541 million, or 9 cents per share, better than the roughly 23–24 cent loss expected. Starlink/connectivity contributed about $4.3 billion (up 66 percent), while the AI business generated $2.6 billion (up roughly 250 percent). Capital expenditures were heavy at $18.4 billion, largely tied to AI infrastructure. Management projected a $100 billion annualized revenue run rate by year-end 2026 and outlined a path toward $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030.
The combination of Chamath’s historical reminder, Musk’s repeated alerts, and the company’s ambitious growth targets underscores the high-stakes debate surrounding SPCX. Short sellers are positioned for near-term supply pressure from the lockup, while long-term bulls point to Starlink scale, Starship progress, and AI compute expansion as reasons the bears may ultimately face the same fate as many early Tesla skeptics.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX and Nvidia team up on Musk’s orbital AI bet
SpaceX revealed a new Nvidia satellite partnership, then Musk pledged an exclusive Nvidia hardware commitment.
SpaceX and Nvidia are now working together on the hardware that will power Musk’s orbital data center ambitions. SpaceX announced on X on Tuesday that it is partnering with Nvidia to design the compute payload for Starmind AI1, the first satellite in a planned constellation built to run AI workloads directly in orbit. Each Starmind satellite will carry Nvidia’s Rubin GPUs and Vera CPUs, according to the post, which included renderings of the payload design.
The announcement landed hours before SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company, where Musk went further, saying the company has committed to building its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware. “We think the Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture. We think it’s the best AI computer, and we greatly value our close cooperation and partnership on many levels with Nvidia,” Musk told investors on the call,. “So we’re exclusive to Nvidia.”
Musk said SpaceX plans to deploy Nvidia’s Vera Rubin NVL72 rackscale system, codenamed Kyber, both on the ground and in space. He set a target of 2 gigawatts of compute capacity online by the end of this year, scaling to roughly 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027.
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
Starmind has been in development since Musk confirmed the name in June, following an xAI trademark filing that tipped off the project before SpaceX made it official. The idea is massive in scope and instead of moving data down to ground based servers, satellites equipped with onboard processors and large solar arrays would compute AI workloads in orbit and beam results back to Earth. SpaceX has already filed with the FCC for a constellation of up to one million satellites to support the effort, citing constant solar power and the absence of zoning restrictions as advantages over terrestrial data centers.
The Nvidia exclusivity marks a shift in tone from just two weeks ago, when Musk was busy knocking down a report that SpaceX had ordered $52 billion worth of Nvidia GPUs through Foxconn, calling it fake news at the time. The dollar figure in that rumor may have been wrong, but the underlying direction seems correct. SpaceX’s AI division already leases Colossus compute capacity to Anthropic and Google, and Tuesday’s earnings report showed AI revenue climbing sharply as those deals ramp up.
Nvidia shares rose roughly 3% in Tuesday trading on the news, while SpaceX stock climbed nearly 9% during the day before giving back gains after hours as investors digested the earnings report’s capital spending figures.
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Tesla Cybertruck production snaps back after ugly supplier fight
Space finally faced the people living next to its next Terafab mega-project
