Investor's Corner
Tesla short-seller goes long on TSLA: “The story has become too compelling to ignore”
Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) is up more than 5% on Tuesday’s intraday amidst news that prominent activist short-seller Andrew Left of Citron Research, who currently has a lawsuit against Elon Musk over his “funding secured” tweet last August, has gone long on the electric car maker. In a recent note published on Tuesday, Citron noted that it is reversing its opinion on Tesla because the company’s story has “become too compelling to ignore.”
Citron Research states that while mainstream media had been largely focused on Elon Musk’s “eccentric, outlandish and at times offensive behavior,” it has failed to notice that the auto industry is currently being disrupted by Tesla, particularly the Model 3. Left notes that simply speaking, “Tesla is destroying the competition,” as shown by the dominance of the Model 3 in the United States’ midsize luxury car market and the Model S’ reign in the large luxury car segment.
“It is in that spirit, and with a great deal of analysis and due diligence that we can say for the first time, Citron is long Tesla as the Model 3 is a proven hit, and many of the TSLA warning signs have proven not to be significant.”
A key driver of Citron’s turnaround for Tesla is the lack of legitimate competitors in the premium electric car segment. In his classic bold fashion, Left noted that when it comes to electric vehicle sales in the United States, “it looks like it is the competition that is taking the Ambien.” Citron further stated that a deep dive into vehicle sales data reveals that the Model 3’s demand is new this year, and that it’s pulling directly from Tesla’s competitors. Left also pointed out that the declining sales figures of Tesla’s competitors at a time when the Model 3 is being ramped show that consumers seem to be moving away from legacy brands.

“People who are making their current car choices are moving away from other brands. – It is not just pent-up demand from people on the reservation list. If it were pent-up demand, those car classes wouldn’t be exhibiting such sharp declines year over year. TSLA is not just pulling customers from BMW and Mercedes but also from Toyota and Honda. Like a magic trick, while everyone is focused on Elon smoking weed, he is quietly smoking the whole automotive industry.”
Ultimately, Citron Research notes that it would not wish to be short TSLA at this point in the company’s history. Even if Tesla does not meet its profitability goals this Q3, Citron states that the company’s Gigafactory 3 project in Shanghai, the impending entrance of the Model 3 to the European market, Gigafactory 4 in Europe, the upcoming Tesla Semi and Model Y, and the rollout of the company’s first autonomous features with later iterations of Software V9, could allow the electric car maker to be added to the S&P 500 sometime next year.
Apart from the dominance of Tesla’s electric cars in their respective segments, Left also states that recent moves by the company’s largest shareholders suggest confidence in TSLA’s future. Among these are T Rowe Price, Baillie Gifford, and Fidelity — all of which are sticking with the company despite the controversies surrounding Elon Musk. T Rowe Price even increased its stake on Tesla in Q3, buying 5.5 million shares last quarter.
“Tesla is dominating the industry with no advertising, no unions, no dealer network. Tesla has the most miles driven data by several orders of magnitude. No tequila, flamethrowers, or short shorts- just a revolution in the transportation industry.”
Citron Research points out that it is still pushing through with its case against Elon Musk over his “funding secured” tweet last August. Nevertheless, Left admitted that while he is not a fan of Tesla’s “overconfident CEO, (Citron) cannot dismiss what we are seeing in the marketplace.”
Tesla has been showing signs that it is hitting its stride with the Model 3 production ramp — an endeavor that has cost the company and its CEO greatly. The company’s struggle to bring the Model 3 to market — aptly dubbed by the CEO as “manufacturing hell” — has been described by Elon Musk as one of the most painful and difficult experiences he’s ever had in his career. Tesla appears to have hit its stride in Q3, though, producing a total of 80,142 electric cars including 53,239 Model 3, as well as delivering a total of 83,500 vehicles, comprised of 55,840 Model 3, 14,470 Model S, and 13,190 Model X.
Since then, Tesla has been exhibiting signs that its production ramp for the Model 3 is going smoothly. This October has seen multiple large batches of VIN registrations this month so far, and the company has also unveiled a new variant of the Model 3 aimed at more budget-conscious reservation holders. Tesla has also announced that its Q3 2018 earnings call will be held this Wednesday, October 24, 2018, at 3:30 p.m. Pacific Time (6:30 p.m. Eastern Time). As noted by Citron in its note, the last time Tesla held an earnings call on an October, “revenue beat the consensus by 21%.”
As of writing, Tesla stock is up 5.85% at $276.22 per share.
Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.
Elon Musk
X changed how everyone gets paid, and this lawsuit shows why
X sued a Bitcoin account network over fake payouts as its creator pay model shifts
Elon Musk’s X has taken a Bitcoin-focused engagement ring to court, and the case doubles as a receipt for how differently the platform pays creators today. The company filed suit in the High Court of England and Wales against Vivek Kumar Sen and Zamyang Sherpa, alleging the pair ran six accounts, including @Vivek4real_, @Bitcoin_Teddy and @TrendingBitcoin, as one coordinated operation to fake the kind of engagement that used to translate directly into money.
According to the filing, first reported by Gizmodo, the accounts posted near identical “BREAKING” crypto headlines seconds apart, in one case 11 seconds, then had three more handles like, reply to and repost the material to manufacture what X called “a false appearance of genuine, human communication and interaction.” X says the scheme pulled in at least £207,384, about $278,000, and pegs its own investigation and remediation costs at another £75,000. The accounts were suspended August 18. X general counsel James Burnham announced the case on X last weekend, writing that the company “will act forcefully to protect our platform and the earnings of genuine creators.” Musk’s own reaction, posted shortly after, was three words: “Don’t mess with 𝕏.”
Don’t mess with 𝕏 https://t.co/HSmd5hL6aQ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 21, 2026
The timing lines up with a a recent update to how X pays its creators. The program these accounts allegedly gamed, Creator Revenue Sharing, launched in mid 2023 and paid out based on how much a post got engaged with. Originality was never part of the formula, which is exactly how the platform ended up flooded with recycled clips, copy pasted “BREAKING” posts and replies engineered purely to farm reactions from paying subscribers.
X tried patching the model more than once, including an April cut to aggregator payouts and a March regional weighting change that Musk personally paused hours after it was announced. X retired Creator Revenue Sharing for good on September 7 and opened its replacement, Original Content Rewards, the next day.
Today, we’re launching Original Content Rewards.
The reality is that Revenue Sharing had reached a point where its incentives were misaligned. Creators should be focused on bringing net new content to the platform instead of maximizing payouts. We could have kept adding more… pic.twitter.com/VJIxqlPrjm
— Allegra Jacchia (@allegrajacchia) August 7, 2026
The new math is stricter. Payouts now come only from qualified impressions, meaning unique Home Timeline views from Premium subscribers where at least half the post is visible, and replies no longer count toward eligibility at all. Copied posts, reuploaded media and reposts without meaningful changes are explicitly excluded. Allegra Jacchia, senior product manager for Creators at SpaceXAI, which now runs X’s product and AI work following xAI’s acquisition of the platform, put it bluntly, saying the goal is to reward creators who bring original ideas and perspective, “not those who have become best at gaming the system.”
Read that way, the lawsuit isn’t really about six crypto accounts. It’s X putting a dollar figure on what the old incentive structure cost, then suing to collect it right as the new one goes live. For live updates on how the case and the new rewards program shake out, follow @Teslarati on X.
Elon Musk
Why automakers keep turning down Elon Musk’s Tesla Full Self-Driving offer
Elon Musk confirms no automaker has ever accepted Tesla’s offer to license Full Self-Driving software.
Elon Musk gave a brief answer on X Monday that confirmed that Tesla’s standing offer to license Full Self-Driving to other automakers still has zero takers. Sawyer Merritt wrote that “Tesla has for years openly invited other automakers to license FSD. None of them have accepted,” responding to a prediction from Boom Supersonic founder Blake Scholl that Tesla would eventually open FSD the way it opened its Supercharger network to rival brands. Musk’s reply to Merritt was one word: “Exactly.”
It is not the first time Musk has made this point. He said something similar in November, when he called legacy automakers reluctance to adopt FSD “crazy,” and Tesla has floated the offer publicly since at least 2021. Scholl’s prediction touches on something real. Once NACS became the de facto charging standard, adoption from Ford, GM, Rivian and others followed within about a year. FSD licensing was supposed to work the same way once Tesla built enough of a lead that switching made sense for everyone.
Tesla has for years openly invited other automakers to license FSD. None of them have accepted. https://t.co/kgz4idpoUM
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) September 22, 2026
The case for licensing now is stronger than it was two years ago. Waymo and Zoox are logging hundreds of thousands of unsupervised autonomous miles, along with Tesla’s own Robotaxi fleet. Every automaker still selling driver assist systems that lag FSD has given the robotaxi conversation to Tesla, Waymo and Zoox by default. Licensing FSD would let a GM or a Ford compete on the same field without spending a decade and billions of dollars building a stack from scratch, the same argument Tesla made when it opened the Supercharger network to bring more EVs onto its chargers.
But FSD is not a connector standard. As one reply to Musk’s post pointed out, licensing FSD is not a software license the way NACS was a plug spec. It requires adopting Tesla’s eight camera layout and its onboard compute architecture, meaning a licensee’s cars would effectively become Tesla hardware wearing someone else’s badge. That is the visible obstacle. The less visible one is data. A licensed FSD stack would report back the same telemetry Tesla collects from its own fleet, giving Tesla a continuous read on how a competitor’s cars are actually driven, where they struggle, and how often drivers intervene. For an automaker trying to build its own autonomy program, or simply trying to keep its build quality and safety record private, handing Tesla that visibility could be a bigger cost than the hardware bill. It is the reason the Supercharger comparison only goes so far. Opening a charging plug cost Tesla very little. Opening FSD would cost a rival something it cannot get back.
Elon Musk
Tesla eyes supply partners for Optimus mass production
Tesla certified three Chinese suppliers for Optimus mass production, signaling its robot timeline is accelerating.
Tesla’s robotics team traveled to Ningbo, in China’s Zhejiang province, on September 16 and spent the following day auditing component suppliers for Optimus, according to a Bloomberg report cited by RobotAIGeek. The visit moved three manufacturers from provisional status to certified mass production partners: Tuopu Group, which handles actuators and chassis components, Ningbo Joyson Electronic, a sensor supplier, and Zhejiang Sanhua Intelligent Controls, which builds thermal management systems. All three already supply parts to Tesla’s electric vehicles, and the audit reportedly came with fresh orders that supply chain reports put at an initial batch of roughly 5,000 units.
Tuopu, Joyson, and Sanhua built their manufacturing base serving the automotive industry, where tolerances and volume requirements are already close to what a mass produced humanoid robot demands. Sanhua in particular has history here. Teslarati reported last October that the company had received a roughly $685 million order for linear actuators tied to Optimus, a volume industry watchers estimated could cover around 180,000 robots once production ramped.
Supply chain reports tied to this week’s audit put Tesla’s near term production goal at about 1,000 Optimus units a week by late September, rising to 2,000 to 2,500 units a week by the end of the year. That pace would put real weight behind the timeline Tesla has been building toward since May, when it wound down Model S and Model X production at Fremont to convert that floor space into a dedicated Optimus line targeting one million units annually. JPMorgan analysts who toured the factory in August confirmed the conversion took roughly four months, a pace Musk has called unprecedented for a facility that size.
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
Fremont is only the first phase. A second, larger Optimus plant is rising at Gigafactory Texas, where drone footage shared by Joe Tegtmeyer last week showed the structural steel nearing completion on the north end of the building. Tesla has said that facility is meant to eventually support production of up to 10 million units a year, though volume output there is not expected before 2027.
Commercial sales of Optimus are still targeted for the second half of 2027, but production is expected to start well before then. JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta has said Tesla’s “Optimus Academy” program, which uses early units to collect real world training data inside Tesla’s own facilities, is expected to be running later this year. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Ian Ma described the Ningbo audits as “a positive commercialization signal for China’s humanoid supply chain,” noting that sentiment could improve further if the visit leads to confirmed supplier nominations and larger orders. The Solactive China Humanoid Robotics Index rose about 1.4% on the news, though it remains down roughly 30% for the year.