Investor's Corner
Over 5.8k Tesla investors representing $4.1 billion are speaking out in support of Elon Musk
Thousands of retail Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) investors have banded together to express their support of CEO Elon Musk’s and his 2018 compensation plan, which was rescinded by a Delaware judge last week. The judge’s decision, which concluded a legal complaint started by a thrash metal drummer with nine Tesla shares, was met with polarizing reactions.
The Tesla investors’ goal was simple. They wanted to specifically affirm their vote of support for Musk’s 2018 compensation plan, whose targets have already been met, and they also requested that the Tesla Board of Directors design a new compensation plan for Musk that could take him back to 25% of the EV maker’s voting shares. The group also expressed their support to the idea of Tesla moving its state of incorporation from Delaware to Texas.
The initiative was admirable. What started as a collaborative effort on social media led by accounts such as Alexandra Merz (@TeslaBoomerMama) and Amy Steffens (@_sftahoe) ballooned to 5,821 Tesla shareholders representing 23,337,127 shares signing a letter addressed to the Tesla Board of Directors in just four days. The Tesla investors’ accumulated shares are substantial, as it corresponds to over $4 billion worth of shares as of Monday’s intraday.
?
Have never heard of a company able to mobilize
– in only 4 short days (including a weekend)
the commitment of
– 5,821 shareholders with
– 23,337,127 shares.
Retail investors showing their deep appreciation of @elonmusk and @Tesla's Board of Directors.
Now Austin bound. pic.twitter.com/s9Nr36Yn5m— Ale?andra Merz (@TeslaBoomerMama) February 5, 2024
The Tesla shareholders’ letter can be viewed below.
Shareholder Letter to Tesla’s Board of Directors
The shareholders (listed in the attachment)
- Support unequivocally that Tesla’s state of incorporation is changed from Delaware to Texas, where Tesla is already headquartered. Tesla staying incorporated in Delaware is untenable if Shareholder Votes will be rescinded.
- Would like the Board to explore options to affirm the shareholder vote in support of keeping the Tesla’s 2018 CEO Compensation Plan active and in place. Tesla shareholders don’t want their votes disenfranchised. Tesla shareholders elected the Tesla Board of Directors and were aware of the Board members’ relationship with Elon Musk. The shareholders chose them. The recent decision by Judge McCormick to rescind the 2018 CEO compensation plan is a dangerous precedent for all shareholders in American corporations.
- Would like the Board to design a new CEO Compensation Plan along the lines of the 2018 Plan. The new Plan tranches will require Tesla to achieve ambitious performance and market cap milestones.
- The performance milestones could include FSD reaching level 5 autonomy, Tesla Energy achieving annual kWh goals, the next generation EV platform reaching volume production, and Optimus in volume production. The market capitalization milestones could reflect each $500 billion- or $1 trillion-dollar increase in Tesla’s overall value, or whatever intermediate milestones make sense, as well as one for surpassing the combined value of Saudi Aramco and Apple. The new Plan’s tranches will vest shares to Mr. Musk in such a way as to ultimately grant him 25+ percent of voting shares. If Tesla incorporates in a State allowing super voting shares, we endorse this, too.
The shareholders filling out this form agree that their name and details will be disclosed to the Board of Directors of Tesla and may become public.
TESLA SHAREHOLDER LETTER:
?Final numbers! ?? over 5800 investors representing over 23,335,217 Million Shares. (Or 4.3 BILLION Dollars of shares at current market value).
?Letter is being mailed to Tesla Corporate Secretary. Final letter & Cover Letter and note re:… https://t.co/57KPRJIYSK pic.twitter.com/g3XQHjBHCK— Amy (@_SFTahoe) February 5, 2024
What is quite remarkable about the Tesla investors’ efforts is the fact that it included shareholders from across the spectrum. As per the group’s letter, the 5,821 Tesla shareholders comprise investors that hold anywhere from one TSLA share to thousands of TSLA shares. They also include investors who have been with the EV maker since 2010 and those who only bought shares last month. Overall, the retail investors’ efforts are quite admirable, and they show that Tesla still has a dedicated following among its shareholders until today.
Don’t hesitate to contact us with news tips. Just send a message to simon@teslarati.com to give us a heads up.
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.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX gets an absolutely crazy price target after rough IPO
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.
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.

