Investor's Corner
The finer points of Tesla’s (TSLA) S&P 500 Inclusion
This week, it was announced that Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) would join the S&P 500 Index on December 21st. The news shot the stock up nearly $100 in just two days, with most of the surge coming directly after the Tuesday announcement. While it is impressive enough that Tesla is finally being included in the S&P, some finer points aren’t being discussed, like Tesla’s young age compared to other companies in the index and its massive size going into the inclusion date.
Tesla’s 2020 performance on Wall Street has been more than impressive, and it was only a matter of time before larger, more prestigious investment indexes would look to acquire the electric car company. After soaring from $86 to over $500 throughout the year, Tesla broke yet another record this week after beating its all-time high price per share on Thursday.
Tesla could be the 6th most valuable company in the Index
With the surge in stock price comes an extreme growth in terms of company market cap, and the substantial increase in price per share has contributed significantly to Tesla’s valuation. If Tesla were to be added to the S&P today, it would be the sixth-largest company in the Index, in front of Berkshire Hathaway and behind Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company.
The only companies that would be considered more valuable than Tesla would be Alphabet Inc. Class A Shares, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple, all of which are the leaders in their respective industries. Although Apple and Microsoft could be considered a 1-2 punch in the tech world, the other companies are all surely at the head of the pack in their respective sectors.
Tesla will be one of the youngest companies in the Index
With Tesla being founded in 2003, it will be 17 years old when it joins the S&P 500 Index in December. That makes the company’s addition even more significant because its impact in such a short span of time is evident. While many of us recognize Tesla as the EV tech leader, the company could be considered the leader in the automotive sector altogether. This is simply incredible when you consider that Tesla has only had cars on the road since 2008 and has only been a mass-market carmaker since 2017 when the Model 3 was introduced.
However, Tesla has a tremendous influence on other car companies. Legacy automakers are fighting to stay relevant and admitting that they must make a transition to electrification. With Tesla leading that charge, new tricks are being taught to old dogs. It is just a matter of whether the old dogs choose to continue learning “new tricks.” If they don’t, they will slowly fade away as EVs become more popular on the road.
This is a preview from our weekly newsletter. Each week I go ‘Beyond the News’ and handcraft a special edition that includes my thoughts on the biggest stories, why it matters, and how it could impact the future.
A big thanks to our long-time supporters and new subscribers! Thank you.
Tesla is one of the only car companies in the Index
Tesla will join GM and Ford, two of the biggest names in the automotive sector, in the Index. The S&P 500 inclusion requirements are lofty, like an $8.2B market cap, have at least 10% of its shares outstanding, have its most recent quarter be profitable, and have a consecutive string of at least four profitable quarters.
2020 has not been the most forgiving year for many companies, and automotive manufacturers are no exception. Demand for new vehicles has effectively fallen off the table because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it has caused many once-successful car companies to taste the losses of momentum. Companies that make affordable, petrol-powered sedans also are experiencing dropoffs in demand because people cannot afford new vehicles.
Because of this, large car companies that are publicly listed on NASDAQ are missing out on their opportunities to string together consecutive quarters and provide profitable margins to their investors. But Tesla isn’t having this issue because their cars are more than just vehicles. They are software devices. They are new ways to get from Point A to Point B. And, with many people worried about climate issues, electric cars are the only acceptable way to travel.
Tesla is joining the S&P during a year where growth was virtually impossible
To grow on the past points made, this year was supposed to be dramatically difficult for almost every company on the planet that wouldn’t increase work efficiency in a pandemic. Early winners were companies like Zoom, who created communication possibilities while not being near other people. Nobody would have thought that a company selling $35,000+ cars would see this much growth, but it has.
Tesla’s company mission attacks more than one issue in today’s world. Many investors and firms alike forget this fact: Tesla isn’t just a car company. They’re making solar panels, big batteries, and cars. Not to mention, their energy products are suitable for both commercial and residential use, making them desirable for a large market.
If we all could go back to the beginning of the pandemic, we would bet that car companies wouldn’t do well this year. They didn’t. But Tesla did, and it is because their identity as a true tech company has helped surge them past the label of “automaker” or “sustainable energy company.” Tesla is bigger than that, and when investors realize it, their portfolios will benefit.
I use this newsletter to share my thoughts on what is going on in the Tesla world. If you want to talk to me directly, you can email me or reach me on Twitter. I don’t bite, be sure to reach out!
Update: Revisions made to third subsection at 9:45 EST.
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.