Investor's Corner
Tesla Q1 Earnings Call: The return of superstar CFO Deepak Ahuja
Deepak Ahuja may not be a household name, but he’s a key player in the storied history of Tesla [NASDAQ: TSLA]. He was the company’s first CFO, and was at the financial helm through the near-death experience of 2008 and the triumphant IPO in 2010. Ahuja retired in 2015. Jason Wheeler, Google’s former VP of Finance, took over for Ahuja but recently announced his departure in order to pursue interests in the public sector. In turn, Ahuja came out of retirement to become Tesla’s CFO once again. Today, you’ll hear Ahuja’s voice on Tesla’s much-anticipated earnings call.
Ahuja had originally left a comfortable position at Ford, and moved his family from Michigan to Silicon Valley, to join a company that at the time could only have been described as a quixotic startup. As was the case with other key execs, it was Elon Musk’s sincere commitment that convinced Ahuja to jump into the ocean. “Meeting Elon Musk, and understanding his vision of Tesla, was a game-changing moment in my life,” Ahuja recently told graduates at his alma mater, Northwestern University. “I felt passion about this opportunity in a way that I hadn’t felt before.”
Photo credit: TepperCMU
Tesla’s feats of acceleration tend to get most of the press, but expert financial guidance has been one of the keys to the company’s success from the beginning, so Mr. Ahuja’s contribution may have been (and be) greater than anyone outside the Tesla boardroom will ever know. Ahuja discussed some of his unique personal history and challenges working at Tesla as part of a panel discussion about ‘How to build unicorn companies’ in Silicon Valley.
In a recent presentation at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business, Ahuja spoke about the gathering wave of disruption in the traditionally slow-moving auto industry. He discussed three major trends driving the transformation: electric vehicles, battery storage and autonomous driving. “We are at the early part of the steep S curve of innovation in each of these changes, which is what makes it really exciting.”
Above: Clips from Ahuja’s panel discussion (Source footage: diyatvusa / Vimeo)
From the beginning, Tesla has worked not only to make superlative cars, but also to transform the process by which those cars are produced. The company hired the best process and manufacturing engineers it could find. “What that enabled Tesla to do was to build completely new manufacturing processes in a cost-efficient manner, to get a better ROI than the other car companies,” Ahuja said.
For electric vehicles (EVs) to truly compete with legacy vehicles, everyone agrees they need to get cheaper. The key to that, says Ahuja, is reducing the cost of energy storage. He estimates that a cost of $100 per kilowatt hour could be achieved within five years, and predicts that this will be “the natural inflection point at which EVs become an economic no-brainer.” This milestone will be “really transformational” for the industry.
Autonomous driving will also disrupt the motor trade in many ways. Ahuja points out that 95 percent of auto accidents are caused by human error, so autonomous cars will help reduce medical and insurance costs. They will also use transportation infrastructure more efficiently, because cars will be able to travel faster and closer together. “The thing to keep in mind is that self-driving cars don’t have to be perfect to change the world,” says Ahuja. “They just have to be better than human beings.”
A big thanks to EVANNEX for providing us with this story. This story was originally published on their site at EVANNEX.com
Elon Musk
Tesla stock gets latest synopsis from Jim Cramer: ‘It’s actually a robotics company’
“Turns out it’s actually a robotics and Cybercab company, and I want to buy, buy, buy. Yes, Tesla’s the paper that turned into scissors in one session,” Cramer said.
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) got its latest synopsis from Wall Street analyst Jim Cramer, who finally realized something that many fans of the company have known all along: it’s not a car company. Instead, it’s a robotics company.
In a recent note that was released after Tesla reported Earnings in late January, Cramer seemed to recognize that the underwhelming financials and overall performance of the automotive division were not representative of the current state of affairs.
Instead, we’re seeing a company transition itself away from its early identity, essentially evolving like a caterpillar into a butterfly.
The narrative of the Earnings Call was simple: We’re not a car company, at least not from a birds-eye view. We’re an AI and Robotics company, and we are transitioning to this quicker than most people realize.
Tesla stock gets another analysis from Jim Cramer, and investors will like it
Tesla’s Q4 Earnings Call featured plenty of analysis from CEO Elon Musk and others, and some of the more minor details of the call were even indicative of a company that is moving toward AI instead of its cars. For example, the Model S and Model X will be no more after Q2, as Musk said that they serve relatively no purpose for the future.
Instead, Tesla is shifting its focus to the vehicles catered for autonomy and its Robotaxi and self-driving efforts.
Cramer recognizes this:
“…we got results from Tesla, which actually beat numbers, but nobody cares about the numbers here, as electric vehicles are the past. And according to CEO Elon Musk, the future of this company comes down to Cybercabs and humanoid robots. Stock fell more than 3% the next day. That may be because their capital expenditures budget was higher than expected, or maybe people wanted more details from the new businesses. At this point, I think Musk acolytes might be more excited about SpaceX, which is planning to come public later this year.”
He continued, highlighting the company’s true transition away from vehicles to its Cybercab, Optimus, and AI ambitions:
“I know it’s hard to believe how quickly this market can change its attitude. Last night, I heard a disastrous car company speak. Turns out it’s actually a robotics and Cybercab company, and I want to buy, buy, buy. Yes, Tesla’s the paper that turned into scissors in one session. I didn’t like it as a car company. Boy, I love it as a Cybercab and humanoid robot juggernaut. Call me a buyer and give me five robots while I’m at it.”
Cramer’s narrative seems to fit that of the most bullish Tesla investors. Anyone who is labeled a “permabull” has been echoing a similar sentiment over the past several years: Tesla is not a car company any longer.
Instead, the true focus is on the future and the potential that AI and Robotics bring to the company. It is truly difficult to put Tesla shares in the same group as companies like Ford, General Motors, and others.
Tesla shares are down less than half a percent at the time of publishing, trading at $423.69.
There are a lot of Tesla bulls out there who have astronomical expectations for the company, especially as its arm of reach has gone well past automotive and energy and entered artificial intelligence and robotics.
However, some of the most bullish Tesla investors believe the company could become worth $100 trillion, and CEO Elon Musk does not believe that number is completely out of the question, even if it sounds almost ridiculous.
To put that number into perspective, the top ten most valuable companies in the world — NVIDIA, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, TSMC, Meta, Saudi Aramco, Broadcom, and Tesla — are worth roughly $26 trillion.
Will Tesla join the fold? Predicting a triple merger with SpaceX and xAI
Cathie Wood of ARK Invest believes the number is reasonable considering Tesla’s long-reaching industry ambitions:
“…in the world of AI, what do you have to have to win? You have to have proprietary data, and think about all the proprietary data he has, different kinds of proprietary data. Tesla, the language of the road; Neuralink, multiomics data; nobody else has that data. X, nobody else has that data either. I could see $100 trillion. I think it’s going to happen because of convergence. I think Tesla is the leading candidate [for $100 trillion] for the reason I just said.”
Musk said late last year that all of his companies seem to be “heading toward convergence,” and it’s started to come to fruition. Tesla invested in xAI, as revealed in its Q4 Earnings Shareholder Deck, and SpaceX recently acquired xAI, marking the first step in the potential for a massive umbrella of companies under Musk’s watch.
SpaceX officially acquires xAI, merging rockets with AI expertise
Now that it is happening, it seems Musk is even more enthusiastic about a massive valuation that would swell to nearly four-times the value of the top ten most valuable companies in the world currently, as he said on X, the idea of a $100 trillion valuation is “not impossible.”
It’s not impossible
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2026
Tesla is not just a car company. With its many projects, including the launch of Robotaxi, the progress of the Optimus robot, and its AI ambitions, it has the potential to continue gaining value at an accelerating rate.
Musk’s comments show his confidence in Tesla’s numerous projects, especially as some begin to mature and some head toward their initial stages.
Elon Musk
Tesla director pay lawsuit sees lawyer fees slashed by $100 million
The ruling leaves the case’s underlying settlement intact while significantly reducing what the plaintiffs’ attorneys will receive.
The Delaware Supreme Court has cut more than $100 million from a legal fee award tied to a shareholder lawsuit challenging compensation paid to Tesla directors between 2017 and 2020.
The ruling leaves the case’s underlying settlement intact while significantly reducing what the plaintiffs’ attorneys will receive.
Delaware Supreme Court trims legal fees
As noted in a Bloomberg Law report, the case targeted pay granted to Tesla directors, including CEO Elon Musk, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, Kimbal Musk, and Rupert Murdoch. The Delaware Chancery Court had awarded $176 million to the plaintiffs. Tesla’s board must also return stock options and forego years worth of pay.
As per Chief Justice Collins J. Seitz Jr. in an opinion for the Delaware Supreme Court’s full five-member panel, however, the decision of the Delaware Chancery Court to award $176 million to a pension fund’s law firm “erred by including in its financial benefit analysis the intrinsic value” of options being returned by Tesla’s board.
The justices then reduced the fee award from $176 million to $70.9 million. “As we measure it, $71 million reflects a reasonable fee for counsel’s efforts and does not result in a windfall,” Chief Justice Seitz wrote.
Other settlement terms still intact
The Supreme Court upheld the settlement itself, which requires Tesla’s board to return stock and options valued at up to $735 million and to forgo three years of additional compensation worth about $184 million.
Tesla argued during oral arguments that a fee award closer to $70 million would be appropriate. Interestingly enough, back in October, Justice Karen L. Valihura noted that the $176 award was $60 million more than the Delaware judiciary’s budget from the previous year. This was quite interesting as the case was “settled midstream.”
The lawsuit was brought by a pension fund on behalf of Tesla shareholders and focused exclusively on director pay during the 2017–2020 period. The case is separate from other high-profile compensation disputes involving Elon Musk.
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