Investor's Corner
Tesla (TSLA) files for capital raise, Elon Musk to acquire $10 million in shares
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) filed for an offering of common stock and convertible notes on Thursday. In a filing, the company indicated that it would raise up to $2 billion, with $650 million estimated to come in the form of new equity and the other $1.35 billion in convertible notes.
TSLA shares initially fell in pre-market trading when Tesla put out a filing indicating that it will be offering a mix of equity securities and debt. When a separate filing indicated that CEO Elon Musk planned to buy about $10 million of the company’s stock in the new offering, TSLA reversed course, trading as high as 5% on Thursday’s pre-market.
Tesla’s total equity is for 2.7 million shares of TSLA stock. Elon Musk’s $10 million purchase will give him 41,896 additional shares of the company. Tesla’s filings indicate that the offering is being underwritten by Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Societe Generale, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, and Wells Fargo.
As of writing, Tesla shares are trading +2.59% at $240.08 per share in Thursday’s pre-market.
Tesla has issued a press release on its recent capital raise, a copy of which could be found below.
PALO ALTO, Calif., May 02, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Tesla, Inc. today announced offerings of $650 million of common stock and $1,350 million aggregate principal amount of convertible senior notes due in 2024 in concurrent underwritten registered public offerings. In addition, Tesla has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 15% of each offering. Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, will participate by purchasing $10 million of common stock.
The aggregate gross proceeds of the offerings, assuming full exercise by the underwriters of their option to purchase additional securities, would be approximately $2.3 billion before discounts and expenses. Tesla intends to use the net proceeds from the offerings to further strengthen its balance sheet, as well as for general corporate purposes.
The notes in this offering will be convertible into cash and/or shares of Tesla’s common stock at Tesla’s election. The interest rate, conversion price and other terms of the notes are to be determined. With respect to the notes, Tesla intends to enter into convertible note hedge transactions and warrant transactions to limit dilution of its common stock. In connection with establishing their initial hedge of the convertible note hedge and warrant transactions, the hedge counterparties or their affiliates expect to enter into various derivative transactions with respect to Tesla’s common stock concurrently with or shortly after the pricing of the notes, including with certain investors in the notes.
Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and Citigroup are acting as lead joint book-running managers for the offering, with BofA Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank Securities, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse acting as additional book-running managers, and Societe Generale and Wells Fargo Securities acting as co-managers.
An effective registration statement relating to the securities was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 2, 2019. The offering of these securities will be made only by means of prospectus supplements and the accompanying prospectus. Copies of the preliminary prospectus supplements and the accompanying prospectus may be obtained from (i) Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Attn: Prospectus Department, 200 West Street, New York, NY 10282, telephone: 866-471-2526, facsimile: 212-902-9316 or email: prospectus-ny@ny.email.gs.com or (ii) Citigroup Global Markets Inc. c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, New York 11717, telephone: 800-831-9146.
This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. The securities being offered have not been approved or disapproved by any regulatory authority, nor has any such authority passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of the registration statement, the prospectus contained therein or the prospectus supplements.
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements in this press release, including statements regarding the proposed public offerings of common stock and notes, the convertible note hedge and warrant transactions, and Tesla’s intended use for the proceeds of the offerings, are “forward-looking statements” that are subject to risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements are based on management’s current expectations, and as a result of certain risks and uncertainties, actual events or results may differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Please refer to the registration statement on Form S-3 on file with the SEC and the prospectus and prospectus supplements included or incorporated by reference therein, as well as the other documents Tesla files on a consolidated basis from time to time with the SEC, specifically Tesla’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. These documents contain and identify important factors that could cause the actual results for Tesla on a consolidated basis to differ materially from those contained in Tesla’s forward-looking statements. Tesla disclaims any obligation to update information contained in these forward-looking statements.
Featured
Tesla Cybercab is coming to Asia this month as US service officially begins
Tesla Asia says Cybercab will be on display in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai this month.
Tesla’s Cybercab is heading to Asia. The official Tesla Asia account posted on X Thursday, inviting Cybercab fans to “Come experience the future of autonomy in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing & Shanghai.” The post went up within hours of Tesla’s own Cybercab milestone in Texas, where the company said Thursday it had begun offering rides in across Austin.
Exact dates and venues for the Asia tour haven’t been released yet, though Tesla Hong Kong replied to the announcement with “Cybercab will be on display in Hong Kong soon,” while Tesla Japan’s response pointed fans to a sign up page for updates. Neither post mentions test rides or a service area, and nothing so far suggests Tesla is launching Robotaxi operations in any of the four cities. Based on how Tesla has run past Cybercab tours, in Europe in late 2024 and at US shopping centers that same December, the Asia stops are almost certainly static displays at Tesla stores or public venues as a means to stimulate buzz for its future driverless ride-hailing service in the big cities.
Cybercab will be on display in Asia this month!
Come experience the future of autonomy in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing & Shanghai. pic.twitter.com/wGmmEastfX— Tesla Asia (@Tesla_Asia) September 4, 2026
The timing lines up with Tesla’s only prior Cybercab appearance in the region, a booth at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai last November, which Teslarati covered at the time. At that event, Tesla’s regional general manager for Shanghai framed the car as evidence of the company’s broader mission, a message Tesla has since formalized in its Master Plan Part IV, which states that “autonomous vehicles have the capacity to dramatically improve the affordability, availability and safety of transportation while reducing pollution, particularly in our increasingly dense global cities.” The same document is where Tesla lays out its “sustainable abundance” framing for Cybercab and Optimus alike, describing the two as the hardware behind an AI driven push to cut the cost of transportation and labor at scale.
Whether Cybercab actually operates as a robotaxi anywhere in Asia remains an open question, considering China has already pushed an autonomous ride-hailing market that’s run on homegrown players like Baidu’s Apollo Go and Pony AI. For now, the four city tour reads as a marketing push timed to Austin’s momentum.
Elon Musk
OpenAI cites distrust of SpaceX in decision to drop Cursor partnership
OpenAI will cut SpaceX-owned Cursor’s model access in November, citing Musk’s history of broken contracts.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced late Friday that it is ending its partnership with Cursor, cutting off the coding tool’s access to its models on November 12. The move comes two weeks after SpaceX completed its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor’s parent company, Anysphere, folding the popular AI coding assistant into Elon Musk’s growing SpaceXAI division.
In a post on its website, OpenAI said the decision came down to trust, not technology. “We cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk’s companies violating contracts,” the company wrote. OpenAI pointed to two specific incidents: X, now part of SpaceX, allegedly breaking the terms of an existing OpenAI contract after Musk bought Twitter.
That lawsuit is the backdrop for all of this. Musk cofounded OpenAI in 2015, left the board in 2018, and sued Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2024, arguing they abandoned the company’s nonprofit mission for profit. A federal jury sided with OpenAI in May, finding Musk waited too long to sue rather than ruling on the merits of his claims. Musk said at the time he would appeal to the Ninth Circuit, calling the outcome a “calendar technicality” rather than a real judgment.
SpaceX’s interest in Cursor predates that verdict by weeks. The company first struck a deal with Cursor in April, securing an option to acquire it for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for joint development work instead. As Teslarati reported at the time, the logic was straightforward: Cursor was paying retail prices to Anthropic and OpenAI, two of its most direct competitors, every time a developer used its product, while SpaceX had idle capacity on its Colossus supercomputer, roughly the equivalent of a million Nvidia H100 GPUs, that Cursor could use to train its own models instead. SpaceX exercised the option in June, days after its own IPO, and the deal closed in mid-August.
Once it closed, Musk moved fast. On an all-hands call with more than 1,000 Cursor employees, he reportedly told staff that SpaceXAI’s Grok was playing catchup in the AI race, unlike Tesla and SpaceX in their own markets, and singled out Anthropic as the company to catch. Cursor CEO Michael Truell now reports directly to Musk inside SpaceXAI.
Losing OpenAI’s models leaves Cursor leaning harder on Anthropic’s Claude, which has its own compute agreement with SpaceX, and on Cursor’s in-house Composer model, the one SpaceX’s compute was supposed to accelerate in the first place. OpenAI framed the November deadline as maximum notice under its contract, and said it wants to “go above and beyond” to help developers through the transition. Whether Anthropic makes the same call is now the open question in AI coding.
Investor's Corner
Tesla Robotaxi gets a massive upgrade in Nevada
Nevada regulators just approved a massive expansion of Tesla’s robotaxi fleet across the entire county.
Tesla’s robotaxi footprint in Nevada just grew by roughly 500 times in a single regulatory vote.
The Nevada Transportation Authority approved Tesla’s full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit on Thursday, clearing the way for the company to deploy up to 5,000 driverless vehicles across Clark County over the next 12 months. The decision came during a four hour general session meeting that Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt watched live and reported on X, noting the vote replaces the interim order that had limited Tesla to just 10 robotaxis on a narrow stretch of the Las Vegas Strip.
EXCLUSIVE: Tesla has just officially received approval for its full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit in Nevada, clearing the way for Tesla to launch a paid public Robotaxi service in Las Vegas.
This officially allows @Tesla to deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis over the next… pic.twitter.com/DPs5UtUlrE
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 20, 2026
That earlier cap, covered here after it surfaced on August 13, came with restrictions that looked stricter than what Tesla runs in Austin: a 45 mph speed ceiling, no airport pickups, and a geofence confined to the Strip corridor. The new approval extends Tesla’s operating authority to all of Clark County, with room to request an even wider geofence across the state.
Tesla representatives at the meeting said they have no intention of putting 5,000 cars on the road right away. Commercial rides are expected to start within 30 days, pending vehicle inspections, insurance filings, and fare approval, the standard steps every robotaxi operator in Nevada has had to clear.
Tesla’s own Robotaxi account replied to the news with a short line, The golden future is upon us.
The timing lines up with Tesla’s broader robotaxi push this month. The company is preparing to open Cybercab rides to the public in Austin as soon as this month, and it opened a sweepstakes for riders to win a seat at the launch event. Tesla filed its original application for a 5,000 vehicle Nevada fleet back in June, a request regulators trimmed to 10 vehicles when they issued the interim order in July. Thursday’s vote effectively grants the number Tesla asked for from the start.
Zoox, the Amazon owned robotaxi operator, has run in Nevada since 2025 and was capped at 100 vehicles before Thursday’s decision. Tesla’s new ceiling puts it well ahead of that comparison on paper, though the company has said its actual fleet size will depend on how quickly FSD v15 rolls out, the software update executives have called the gateway to scaling unsupervised robotaxi operations nationwide.
Tesla Robotaxi will be a 24/7 service: here’s when
Tesla Full Self-Driving will now overtake manual driving to avoid disaster
