Investor's Corner
Tesla is a wake-up call for rivals and their ‘awful’ software, says longtime finance host
As Tesla stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) battled a fresh wave of criticism following the release of its Q1 2019 vehicle production and delivery report, the company saw a supporter from a rather unlikely place. During a segment on Fox Business Network‘s Mornings with Maria, one of the show’s panels boldly defended Tesla, calling for more support for the company due to its industry-changing innovations.
Tesla and Elon Musk’s court appearance with the SEC was the primary topic in the segment, and the show brought on ARK Invest analyst Tasha Keeney to get her insights on the electric car maker. ARK is among the most bullish supporters of Tesla, with the firm setting a $4,000 price target for the company’s stock provided that it enters the autonomous ride-sharing market. Speaking to the show’s hosts, the ARK analyst reiterated her firm’s stance on the company as a potential leader in the self-driving market.
Dagen McDowell, a longtime finance journalist and one of the panels in Mornings with Maria, pointed out that Tesla’s edge is evident even at its current state where it does not have a consumer-ready full self-driving suite. McDowell argued that among the prominent automakers today, Tesla is the leader when it comes to vehicle software, an emerging industry that could be worth up to $1.2 trillion by 2030.
“You don’t even need to look ahead to autonomous vehicles. I had this discussion with someone I’m close to over the weekend who works in Silicon Valley. Every other automaker, even luxury automakers in Germany, Japanese, and American, they are awful at software. There is no other car and no other car company that compares to a Tesla. We all, as drivers and consumers, ought to be rooting for this company. You don’t have to own stock in it, but you ought to root for them because hopefully, all these automakers will realize, ‘Oh, our software stinks,’” McDowell said.
There is no doubt that Tesla is still learning several key aspects of the vehicle manufacturing process. The company is only turning 16 years old this year, and over that time, it has transformed itself from a niche carmaker that made a very quick and expensive car for the rich to a company that is on the brink of disrupting the mass market auto industry. At its core, Tesla is still a young company, and its lack of expertise in areas such as fine manufacturing processes is understandable, especially considering the number of vehicles it is producing today.
What Tesla has mastery of is vehicle software. Since the days of the first-generation Model S, the company has proven to be far ahead of competitors. Keeney named Tesla’s free over-the-air updates as a prime example of this, since the company’s more experienced rivals are largely still unable to implement the same system on their own vehicles. McDowell proved bolder, flat-out stating that traditional automakers simply don’t know how to make tomorrow’s vehicles. “It’s because they’re dug in and they don’t know how to run a car company in the new century. That’s literally what these companies look like. I’m surprised that Apple and Google haven’t done more to try and manufacture a car or produce software for one,” she said.
Tesla might be ending the week as volatile and polarizing as ever, but the company seems to be heading towards some calmer waters ahead. With the first quarter done, Tesla can now focus more on producing and delivering its vehicles in the second quarter. The over 10,000 vehicles in transit at the end of Q1 could actually work in Tesla’s favor in Q2, as the company will be starting the quarter with over 10,000 electric car sales.
Apart from this, Elon Musk and the SEC’s court hearing proved to be far less dramatic than what the company’s critics have wished. Prior to Musk’s appearance in court, speculations among Tesla skeptics pointed to the possibility that he would be stripped off the CEO’s title, and possibly even fired from the company. Over the course of the hearing, Judge Alison Nathan proved incredibly objective, asking the SEC to clarify if Musk would need to get approval for tweets that reiterated information that had already been disclosed. She also asserted that government lawyers must take all steps necessary to reach a resolution before invoking contempt.
At the end of the hearing, the judge urged Elon Musk and the SEC’s legal team to “take a deep breath, put your reasonableness pants on, and work this out.” Musk did not speak during the hearing, though he did state that he was “very impressed with Judge Nathan’s analysis” as he was leaving the courthouse.
As of writing, Tesla stock is trading +2.01% at $273.15.
Watch the recent Tesla segment in Fox Business Network‘s Mornings with Maria in the video below.
Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk handed Grok something no other AI company can get their hands on
Elon Musk says SpaceX will feed engineering data into Grok’s next model, avoiding restricted material.
Elon Musk said Tuesday that SpaceX will feed its internal engineering data into the next major training run for Grok, the AI model now folded into SpaceX following February’s merger. In a post on X, Musk wrote that SpaceX’s “massive corpus of world-class engineering data,” excluding anything restricted under U.S. arms export law, will be added during supplemental training of what he called the “2T run,” a reference to a roughly two trillion parameter model that would nearly double the parameters behind the latest Grok 4.5 that’s rolling out.
SpaceX’s massive corpus of world-class engineering data (excluding material blocked by ITAR) will be added during supplemental training of the 2T run.
This will dramatically improve Grok’s engineering capabilities. https://t.co/BbQEViFByn
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
The excluded material that Musk is referring to would fall under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which restricts export of technical data tied to defense and space hardware. That likely rules out propulsion specifics for Merlin and Raptor engines along with guidance and control details for SpaceX’s launch vehicles, but leaves manufacturing knowledge, materials science, and Starlink hardware design on the table.
The announcement extends a pattern that has been building since SpaceX’s Nasdaq debut in June, when the company went public with Grok and xAI’s Colossus supercomputer folded into the pitch to investors.
Days after that listing, SpaceX closed its $60 billion all stock acquisition of coding startup Cursor, giving xAI both enterprise software distribution and a stream of real world developer data to train on. Grok 4.5 launched July 8 running partly on that Cursor training data, with Musk describing it as roughly comparable to Anthropic’s Opus 4.7 but faster and cheaper to run.
Feeding SpaceX’s own engineering data into the next AI model follows the same logic Musk has applied across xAI’s sister companies. Tesla supplies real world driving data and manufacturing expertise, X supplies conversational data, and now SpaceX supplies aerospace engineering data built up since 2002.
Musk did not give a release date for the upcoming AI model, referred to elsewhere as Grok 4.6. He has said the two trillion parameter run is in its final training phase and expected to wrap this week.
In a pointed message on X, Elon Musk warned that firms maintaining significant short positions in SpaceX over time face “very low” survival probability.
The statement comes amid post-IPO volatility for the rocket company, now trading under the ticker $SPCX.
The survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 17, 2026
Five weeks after what was described as the largest IPO in history, the stock had fallen roughly 30% from its peak above $2.6 trillion, briefly surpassing Microsoft and Amazon in market value. Short sellers celebrated gains of about $8.7 billion, but Musk’s reply underscores his long-term conviction.
The warning directly echoes a detailed bullish analysis arguing that Starship’s cost reductions could unlock a multi-trillion-dollar space economy. Projects ranging from solar power beamed from orbit and asteroid mining to orbital data centers and Mars terraforming were projected to create over $100 trillion in new market capitalization.
In this vision, SpaceX acts as the essential infrastructure provider, akin to AWS for cloud computing, capturing monopoly-like revenues from launches, crew transport, and data traffic across a rapidly expanding frontier.
This is far from the first time Musk has targeted short sellers. With Tesla, he has repeatedly framed persistent bears as destined for major losses. In July 2024, Musk declared that once Tesla achieves full autonomy and volume production of Optimus robots, “anyone still holding a short position will be obliterated. Even Gates,” referencing Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ reported short bets.
Elon Musk reveals what Tesla stock surge could do to Bill Gates
Earlier, in 2018, he taunted shorts that they had “about three weeks before their short position explodes,” a remark followed by sharp stock gains. Musk has also called short selling “value destroying” and once suggested it “should be illegal,” viewing it as betting against innovation and progress.
Critics often dismiss Musk’s optimism as hype, especially when near-term metrics like quarterly deliveries or stock fluctuations disappoint.
Yet his pattern remains consistent: framing short positions against his companies as fundamentally misjudging exponential technological leaps. For SpaceX shorts, the message is clear: betting against multi-planetary ambitions and the infrastructure monopoly they enable carries existential risk for the firms involved.
As Musk and supporters see it, the space economy’s upside dwarfs Earth-bound valuation models, making today’s dips temporary in a decades-long ascent.
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship Flight 13 aborted at Zero and Musk just told us what broke
Four Raptor engines failed to ignite at T-zero, forcing SpaceX to scrub Starship Flight 13 Thursday.
SpaceX scrubbed the Starship Flight 13 launch attempt Thursday evening at the last possible moment, after four of the Super Heavy booster’s 33 Raptor 3 engines failed to ignite during the startup sequence. The 90-minute window had opened at 6:45 p.m. EDT from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, and the countdown had proceeded without issue all day, with more than 11.5 million pounds of liquid methane and liquid oxygen being fully loaded into the rocket before the automated abort triggered. SpaceX’s launch directors posted on X, “Standing down from today’s flight test attempt,” and shut down the livestream shortly after.
Musk confirmed the root cause within hours. “Some of the engines didn’t start, triggering an automatic launch abort,” he wrote on X. “To be confident of a good flight, 2 Raptors will be removed and replaced. Most probable launch timing is early next week.” SpaceX engineers began draining propellant tanks immediately and Booster 20 was rolled back to its hangar for inspection.
The timing adds a layer of significance that did not exist during any of the previous 12 Starship flights. This is the first time SpaceX has attempted to launch Starship since the company made its stock market debut in June, listing under ticker SPCX at $135 per share. Public investors are now watching every Starship outcome in real time, and a last-second abort carries more visibility than it would have six months ago.
Flight 13 was designed to be one of the most consequential tests in the program’s history. It was set to carry 20 Starlink V3 satellites, the first operational payload Starship has ever attempted to deploy. Six of those satellites carried external cameras to photograph Starship’s heat shield from the outside during flight, which would act as a self-inspection approach SpaceX has never attempted before. The mission also needed to complete a Raptor engine relight in space, a step SpaceX skipped on Flight 12 in May after losing an engine during ascent. That Flight 12 booster also flipped 90 degrees off course during its boostback burn when five engines failed to reignite.
SpaceX has not announced an official next launch date. Musk’s “early next week” window points to July 21 or 22 at the earliest, pending the engine swap and a return to the pad.
Elon Musk handed Grok something no other AI company can get their hands on
Tesla expands ridesharing service in California to new hotspot
