Investor's Corner
Tesla’s Q3 2018 earnings call: What we expect to see
In a rather surprising announcement on Monday, Tesla revealed that it was releasing its Q3 2018 earnings report after the closing bell on Wednesday. The earlier-than-expected earnings call appears to have fostered positive sentiments among the company’s investors, and coupled with a change of heart from a staunch TSLA short-seller, Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) saw a 12.72% rise on Tuesday, bringing the company within reach of the $300-per-share-mark once more.
While Tesla was able to hit its production and delivery targets in Q3, questions remain about whether the company was able to turn a profit as promised by CEO Elon Musk. That said, Wall Street analysts polled by FactSet expect Tesla to post revenue of $6.05 billion and a GAAP EPS of -$0.95, partly due to a major increase in Model 3 deliveries in the third quarter. Non-GAAP EPS consensus is a more favorable -$0.03.
With these in mind, here are some pertinent updates and information we are expecting to see in Tesla’s Q3 2018 earnings call.
Profitability and Cash-Flow Updates
Earlier this year, Elon Musk boldly declared that Tesla would be profitable and cash-flow positive in the second half of the year. The company went through great lengths in its efforts to achieve this ambitious target, from laying off 9% of its employees last June to allowing owners to help out the company deliver as many vehicles as possible in the final weeks of the third quarter.
Wall Street analysts polled by FactSet expect the company to report a modest amount of positive free cash flow for the third and fourth quarter. Non-GAAP EPS is also expected to improve to $0.78 in Q4. In the upcoming earnings call, Tesla would likely offer some updates on its profit outlook in its shareholder letter.
Model 3 Production and Margins
In Tesla’s Q2 shareholder letter, the company stated that it is aiming to grow Model 3 production to 10,000 units per week as soon as it can. Tesla also aimed to produce the Model 3 at a rate of 6,000 per week by late August — a goal that the company was unable to attain. In today’s earnings call, Tesla is expected to provide an updated guidance for the Model 3 ramp.
Back in August, Tesla noted that it expects Model 3 gross margins (GM) to improve to 15% and 20% in Q4. These figures are a bit more conservative than Tesla’s initial forecasts for the vehicle, which estimated gross margins to be at 25% when production is stabilized at 5,000 units per week. The upcoming earnings call should provide some guidance as to where the Model 3’s gross margins are at this point, and where it could be at the end of Q4.
The $35,000 base Model 3 and the Model Y
Tesla has pretty much hit its stride with the production of the Long Range RWD, Dual Motor AWD, and Dual Motor Performance Model 3. Earlier this month, the company also revealed the Mid Range RWD Model 3, a vehicle that places the electric car’s price closer to Elon Musk’s $35,000 starting price for the electric sedan. Considering that the company has left its self-imposed production hell, the time might be right for Tesla to provide some updated guidance as to when the long-promised $35,000 Model 3 would enter production.
Updates on other upcoming vehicles are also expected, particularly the next car in the company’s lineup — the Model Y. Considering that Elon Musk has teased an unveiling sometime early next year for the crossover SUV, there is a good chance that the upcoming Q3 2018 earnings call would provide a more concrete date for the highly-anticipated vehicle’s unveiling.
Tesla Energy Updates
Tesla Energy does not attract as many headlines as the company’s electric car business. Despite this, the company’s executives including CEO Elon Musk and CTO JB Straubel have both noted that Tesla’s energy storage business would likely match the company’s electric car division in the near future. This was highlighted recently by legendary investor Ron Baron, who stated that Tesla could become a $1 trillion company by 2030, comprised of a $500 billion electric car division and a $500 billion battery storage business.
Wall Street analysts’ consensus for Tesla Energy estimates the business to post revenue of $377 million (up 19%), and a gross profit of just $20 million. Announcements on upcoming battery storage projects are also expected to be discussed in the upcoming call.
Tesla’s New Chairman
As part of his settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Elon Musk agreed to step down as Tesla’s Chairman. Reports eventually emerged that board member James Murdoch was in line to take on Musk’s role. These reports were eventually debunked by Elon Musk himself on Twitter, though, leaving Tesla’s next chairman still a large question mark.
On Wednesday’s earnings call, expectations are high that the company would provide some updates on its search for a new Chairman to replace Elon Musk. Other terms of the CEO’s settlement with the SEC, particularly the addition of two new independent board members, would likely be discussed as well.
Tesla’s Q3 Update letter would be posted on Tesla’s Investor Relations website after markets close today. At 3:30 pm Pacific Time (6:30 pm Eastern Time), Tesla would start its Q3 earnings call.
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.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s next trillion dollar bet has nothing to do with rockets, Musk tells staff
Elon Musk told SpaceX staff AI revenue will soon dwarf rockets and Starlink combined entirely.
Elon Musk told SpaceX employees this week that artificial intelligence, not rockets, will soon carry the company’s revenue. In a roughly 29 minute internal address posted on SpaceX’s X account on Tuesday, Musk said AI revenue will pass every other line of business at SpaceX “probably in September” and pull further ahead by the fourth quarter.
The numbers he gave are specific. SpaceX currently runs 1.4 gigawatts of AI compute capacity. Musk wants that at 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027, a jump he tied directly to revenue: “if we bring 10GW of AI online by the end of next year, it will be $300 billion to $500 billion a year in revenue.” He called those “big numbers,” which undersells a projection larger than what most countries produce in a year.
We made rockets reusable and are rebuilding the internet in space. The next challenge: making life multiplanetary and understanding the true nature of the universe
Watch @ElonMusk deliver a company update to @SpaceX employees pic.twitter.com/5c8rxoCQfu
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 11, 2026
Musk went further on where AI fits into SpaceX’s future. “Probably in four or five years, AI will be 99% of the value of SpaceX,” he told staff, adding that digital intelligence would eventually run “a trillion times” ahead of biological intelligence as computing scales. He tied that growth to the company’s founding mission, telling employees “we must win on AI, because the future is overwhelmingly AI and robots,” with the payoff meant to help fund Starship and a Mars program that increasingly runs through Terafab, the joint Tesla, SpaceX and xAI chip plant.
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
None of this is entirely new territory. SpaceX told investors much the same story during its first earnings call as a public company on August 4, where Musk moved the company’s $1 trillion revenue target up a year to 2030 and said Starlink could someday carry a majority of the world’s internet. What the all hands video adds is a hard deadline and a specific power figure Musk had not given publicly before, along with a franker pitch to his own workforce that AI, not launch cadence, is now the thing SpaceX is betting its future on.
The AI revenue itself is not coming from SpaceX training its own models. It is largely Starlink acting as the network layer for xAI’s workloads, plus SpaceX renting out compute capacity directly, the same approach behind the roughly $16 billion the company spent on AI infrastructure in a single quarter.
Musk closed the video with a pitch aimed at recruiting and retention rather than investors, telling employees that anyone who helps SpaceX win the AI race will eventually get the chance to go to the moon or Mars themselves. Whether SpaceX can turn 1.4 gigawatts into 10 in seventeen months is the more immediate question, and one that will show up in quarterly numbers well before anyone leaves Earth.
OpenAI cites distrust of SpaceX in decision to drop Cursor partnership
Tesla Theater might be getting plenty more streaming platforms
