Investor's Corner
Tesla (TSLA) starts strong recovery amidst Musk’s SEC settlement, Model 3 delivery estimates
Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) is exhibiting a strong recovery on Monday, trading up 15.40% at $305.54 per share during the opening bell. With its meteoric rsie, Tesla has practically recovered the losses it incurred last week after the SEC announced that it was filing a lawsuit against Elon Musk over his “funding secured” Twitter announcement last August.
Tesla shares took a steep dive last Friday, plunging 13.90% amidst news of the SEC’s lawsuit against the outspoken CEO. Amidst reports that Musk reportedly rejected a settlement from the government agency, Friday’s trading ultimately ended at $264.77 per share. Despite Friday’s plunge, though, Musk seemed to be in light spirits on Friday, expressing his gratitude to the Tesla community and even posting a “Don’t Panic” message on Twitter.
As developments over the weekend would prove, Elon Musk’s “Don’t Panic” message seems to be well-founded. On Saturday, the SEC released an update announcing that Musk had accepted a settlement for his lawsuit. The settlement involved a hefty fine worth a total of $40 million, as well as Musk’s resignation as Chairman for Tesla’s Board of Directors, but it did allow him to keep his post as CEO. The appointment of two new Board members, as well as the creation of a committee tasked with “placing additional controls and procedures to oversee” Musk’s communications, were warmly received by the Tesla community as well.
Loup Ventures Managing Partner Gene Munster noted that the SEC settlement is the best outcome possible from Elon Musk’s “funding secured” fiasco. Munster pointed out that the terms of the settlement actually works in Tesla’s favor, as the appointment of a new, capable Chairman of the Board could help Tesla reach sustainability, as well as become the wake-up call that Musk needs with regards to his behavior online.
“It’s not often that an SEC lawsuit could be viewed as an opportunity, but this is one of those rare cases. There are two key potential outcomes from the lawsuit. First, Musk stepping down as chairman of the board is something we wrote about before. The open board chairperson role creates an opportunity for Tesla to potentially put someone in place that is capable of influencing Musk and helping Tesla reach sustainability. Second, the lawsuit could serve as a wakeup call for Musk to tone down some of his public-facing behavior, particularly on Twitter. If Musk can step away from the external stuff that doesn’t matter, he’ll make the game that much easier for himself, and that will be good for everyone, just like this settlement.”
Apart from Musk’s settlement with the SEC, Tesla also seemed to have ended the third quarter on a strong note. The actual delivery figures for the Model S, 3, and X are yet to be released, but based on the company’s end-of-quarter push, it appears that Tesla has delivered a record number of vehicles to reservation holders during the final weeks of Q3. An email from Musk to Tesla employees sent over the weekend even noted that the company is “very close” to profitability, and that a strong Sunday delivery push would allow Tesla to “achieve an epic victory.”
What was rather remarkable is that Tesla and its employees were not alone in the company’s end-of-Q3 delivery blitz. Just like the past week, delivery centers received a boost from electric car owners who volunteered their time to orient newcomers with the features and functions of their electric cars. Even as the company approached the end of the third quarter, reports from the Tesla community still pointed to a continued delivery push, thanks to dedicated employees and owners who are willing to pitch in when help was needed.
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Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.
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 Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tesla-optimus-gen3-diner.jpg)
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
Tesla Model Y L’s new features flexed at unveiling event at Diner
Tesla CEO Elon Musk denies ridiculous Gigafactory Shanghai rumor
![Tesla Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tesla-optimus-gen3-diner-80x80.jpg)
