🚨 A REMARKABLE STORY ABOUT ELON MUSK’S SECRET GENERALS IN CHINA: THE TWO MEN WHO BUILT THE SHANGHAI MIRACLE 🏆 🌑 In 2018, Tesla had entered its darkest hour. In the United States, severe production crises and low yield rates had put Elon Musk on the hot seat. Wall Street magnates circled the company, eyeing it for short-selling, waiting for the inevitable collapse. 🌏 Across the Pacific, the situation was equally dire. In the massive Chinese market—which accounted for nearly half of global new energy vehicle sales—Tesla was struggling to gain traction. Faced with dismal sales of only 120 cars a month, an enraged Musk even considered disbanding the entire Chinese team. 🧱 The market was notoriously difficult to crack. Because all Teslas were imported, the starting price of 499,000 yuan for the Model 3 deterred most consumers. To lower prices, domestic production was essential. However, the premise for foreign companies to produce cars in China was to establish a joint venture—a compromise the maverick Musk was unwilling to make. 🔮 Tesla needed a miracle in China. That miracle would require two distinct phases spearheaded by two very different men: Robin Ren, the diplomat who would unlock the forbidden door, and Tom Zhu, the commander who would build an empire behind it. PHASE ONE: THE DIPLOMAT AND THE BREAKTHROUGH 🕵️‍♂️ Secretly, Musk began looking for a "China hand" to navigate the complex political landscape. Robin Ren (Ren Yuxiang), a fellow alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania, had long been on Musk's radar. Since 2012, Musk had repeatedly invited Ren to join Tesla, convinced he was the missing link. 🎓 Initially, Ren was surprised by the olive branch. He admitted he "knew almost nothing about the automotive industry" and found it hard to imagine that, 20 years after graduation, Musk would suddenly ask to have lunch. But Musk was persistent. As the 22nd International Physics Olympiad champion and Musk's former laboratory partner at UPenn, Ren was held in high regard by the CEO, who once noted that Ren was the only classmate whose physics was better than his own. 🤝 Ren finally joined in May 2015 as Vice President of Tesla Asia Pacific. Musk was set on him not just for his intellect, but for his unique leverage: his identity as a native Shanghainese with deep government relations. 🏛️ He became the unsung hero of the Shanghai project. Under Ren's mediation, Musk began frequently meeting with high-ranking Chinese officials. In April 2017, Ren first articulated the crucial argument that a wholly-owned factory "benefits the upgrading of China's automotive industry," persuading officials that Tesla's technology could drive the local supply chain. With theories of technological independence and industrial chain driving effects, Ren slowly loosened the customary domestic joint venture model. ✈️ By February 2018, the plan was ready. Ren flew to the US to report to Musk with a detailed blueprint for the Shanghai factory, including location maps, financing commitments, and transaction terms. Unfortunately, Musk was deep in the "production hell" phase of the Nevada battery factory. When they finally met, Musk didn't even look at Ren’s slides. He just stared at him and asked, "Are we doing this right?" 🚦 Ren was taken aback. He thought the heavy lifting was done, but realized Musk needed reassurance, not data. Giving a firm affirmative answer, Ren secured the green light. 🔓 In April 2018, the breakthrough arrived. The Chinese government lifted foreign ownership restrictions on new energy vehicles, and Ren seized the opportunity. By July, the Shanghai Municipal Government and Tesla signed a memorandum of cooperation. While Shanghai Mayor Ying Yong and Musk unveiled the project publicly, it was Ren who signed the agreement, quietly cementing his pivotal role. ✍️ Ren secured three extremely favorable terms that forcefully broke the established joint venture model. First, he negotiated land concessions, obtaining 860,000 square meters of land in Lingang at a 90% discount from the market price. ⚡ Second, he secured low-interest loans, obtaining credit support totaling over 16 billion yuan with an interest rate of just 3.9%. Third, he ensured rapid approval, taking only half a year from signing the contract to commencing construction. Robin Ren had successfully delivered Tesla's first taste of "China speed." PHASE TWO: THE COMMANDER AND THE WAR FOR SPEED 🏗️ With the door successfully opened, someone had to walk through it and build. While Ren moved in high-level diplomatic circles, the on-the-ground reality for Tesla China was chaotic. 🔌 In early 2014, the company was struggling with a "charging anxiety" crisis that was killing sales before they could start. Consumers refused to buy electric cars without a reliable network. Into this breach stepped Tom Zhu. Unlike the diplomatic Ren, Zhu was a man of the earth. 🌍 Born in China but educated in New Zealand with an MBA from Duke University, Zhu had cut his teeth managing tough infrastructure projects in Africa. He was used to dust, delays, and difficult environments. He joined Tesla in April 2014 to build the Supercharger network, but his pragmatic, military-style execution caught Musk’s eye immediately. Despite having zero automotive experience, he was put in charge of Tesla’s entire China operation by the end of the year. ⚔️ If securing the land was Robin Ren's victory, building the factory was Tom Zhu's war. The timeline Musk demanded was widely considered impossible: transform a muddy field in Lingang into a world-class vehicle factory in under a year. 🏠 Zhu moved to the front lines. Known for his no-fuss style and often seen wearing a standard-issue Tesla fleece jacket and a buzz cut, Zhu rented a small, government-subsidized apartment just 10 minutes from the construction site. He paid less than 2,000 yuan ($300) a month for rent, purely so he could be the first one in and the last one out. 🚀 Under his watch, "China Speed" became a reality. He orchestrated a 24/7 construction schedule that stunned the industry. In January 2019, the site was dirt. By October 2019—just 10 months later—the factory was complete and starting trial production. It was a miracle of manufacturing engineering that saved Tesla’s cash flow at a critical time. 💰 The results were undeniable. Two years later, the Shanghai factory contributed half of Tesla's global production capacity, and costs were sharply reduced by 65%. Through the Gigafactory, Tesla solved its production and profitability issues in one fell swoop, eventually surpassing a market value of $1 trillion in October 2021. UNSTOPPABLE: THE MIRACLE OF SHANGHAI 🌟 While Robin Ren left the company in 2020, Zhu’s star continued to rise. His defining moment came in 2022 during the severe Shanghai COVID-19 lockdown. The city was paralyzed, and factories everywhere were shutting down. For Tesla, a halt in Shanghai meant cutting off half its global cash cow. 🛌 Zhu made a decision that mirrored Musk’s own famous "sleeping on the factory floor" days. He implemented a "closed-loop" system, moving into the factory and sleeping on the floor alongside thousands of his workers. 🥣 For over two months, they lived, ate, and worked inside the facility, cut off from the outside world to keep the assembly lines humming. While other automakers flatlined, Zhu’s army kept delivering cars. By 2022, Giga Shanghai was Tesla's primary export hub, producing over 710,000 vehicles that year—more than half of Tesla's global output. 🤠 Musk, who values "hardcore" commitment above all else, saw in Zhu a mirror image of his own relentless drive. In late 2022, when Tesla's Texas and Berlin factories were struggling to ramp up, Musk didn't hire a local expert. He flew Tom Zhu to Austin. 🦺 Zhu arrived with a team of his most loyal lieutenants from Shanghai, famously appearing at the US factories in their signature Tesla visibility vests, ready to instill "China efficiency" into American operations. 🏆 In April 2023, the former project manager who built charging stations was named Senior Vice President of Automotive. Today, Tom Zhu sits at the very pinnacle of Tesla's hierarchy, effectively serving as the global No. 2, overseeing all global production and sales. ☯️ Ultimately, the miracle of Shanghai wasn't just about steel and software; it was about the collision of two distinct forces. Robin Ren was the velvet glove who rewrote the rules of the game, while Tom Zhu was the iron fist who built the arena. One conquered with handshakes, the other with grit. Musk may have provided the vision, but without his Diplomat to open the gate and his Commander to hold the line, the future would have remained just a dream.

GOOD NEWS 🇪🇺 Tesla posted massive numbers in Europe this September, completely blowing past broader auto industry averages 🔥 Official ACEA data shows Tesla registered 68,776 new vehicles across the EU, UK, and EFTA in September, marking a huge 72.5% jump year over year 🔥 To put that in perspective, Tesla added roughly 28,900 more registrations in a single month compared to around 39,870 units in September 2025 🔥 What really stands out is how sharply Tesla decoupled from the rest of the pack. Total European passenger car registrations rose 10.2% to 1.36 million units, meaning Tesla grew roughly seven times faster than the industry overall 🔥 Quarter-end delivery pushes are standard for Tesla, but pulling off a 70%+ surge at this scale shows serious momentum across Europe heading into Q4 🔥

BOOM 🆘 2027 is shaping up to be the brilliant year that Tesla's AI ambitions become real 🔥 On the Q3 earnings call, Elon and the team put dates on almost everything enthusiasts have been waiting for, and the biggest one is about the car already sitting in your garage 👀 🚗 Unsupervised FSD could start reaching customer cars around Q2 2027. Ashok Elluswamy said Cybercab and the Model Y Robotaxis already run the same software, which is coming to customers soon in the V15 release. Around Q2 2027, Tesla expects the first customer cars to join the Robotaxi fleet and drive fully autonomously within Tesla's geofences and fleet management system. It starts inside Tesla's network rather than everywhere, but this is the moment owners have waited years for. The cars they already own are now on a real path to autonomy. 🤖 Tesla expects to start delivering Optimus to outside companies around the end of 2027. Elon said the remaining AI, design, and durability challenges should be solved around the end of 2027, when deliveries to other companies begin. The first jobs will be dangerous, repetitive industrial work that runs around the clock, with home robots coming later. Before then, Elon expects to release an Optimus video in a month or two showing tasks that aren't pre-programmed. Tesla also plans to put its AI5 chip into Optimus around April 2027, with about ten times the compute of AI4. The hand is still the hardest part. Tesla is setting up an "Optimus Academy" where 10,000 to 20,000 bots will learn by practicing tasks, and it's building a second Optimus factory in Austin that can make far more robots than Fremont. CFO Vaibhav Taneja said Optimus costs are trending toward where Tesla expects Cybercab costs to land. Elon sees Optimus's usefulness as dexterity, AI software, and AI chip multiplied together, all improving fast, with robots eventually helping build future robots. He expects humanoid robots to someday outnumber humans. The video is the proof point to watch. Real, unscripted work would answer the biggest doubt about humanoid robots, and a robot that costs about as much to build as a Cybercab could work for a huge number of businesses. 🚕 Robotaxi is about to expand fast, with Dallas up next. Ashok said Cybercab launches in Dallas next month, and Vaibhav said more cities should follow before the end of the year. Elon said the Austin Cybercab fleet has grown about ten times since launch. Service hours extend to 2am soon, with 24/7 operation, highways, and more weather conditions planned by the end of this year. Cybercab's AI was trained mostly on Model 3 and Model Y data, so Tesla didn't need a big Cybercab fleet to get it ready. Vaibhav said other vehicle types will join the Robotaxi fleet over time, with the goal of covering every kind of ground transportation. Lars Moravy said Cybercab has 50% fewer parts than any Tesla before it, and the real line capacity is well above the 125,000 a year in the deck, though Tesla is building only as fast as Robotaxi needs. The first Cybercabs should reach customers by the end of 2026, starting small, but Elon said most will stay Tesla-owned and be offered as transport as a service. Elon expects Robotaxi revenue to become noticeable around Q2 2027 and a big deal by Q3 or Q4. Rides are already priced below rideshare in most markets, which Vaibhav said works because there's no driver and Tesla builds its own cars. Tesla isn't at its 30-cents-per-mile cost target yet but sees a clear path there. Production isn't the bottleneck. Ashok said software sets the pace today, with regulators likely becoming the limit in early 2027. Elon predicts Tesla will eventually handle most passenger miles in any country that lets it operate freely. 🗺️ Tesla is building its own AI-powered maps and navigation. Answering a shareholder question about speed limits, parking, and routing, Ashok said Tesla is replacing third-party maps with its own AI-based mapping and navigation. You'll be able to talk to it and ask for routes, and it will learn your preferences along with what the whole fleet learns. It starts with the beginning and end of trips in V15, then takes over navigation, parking, and destination handling over the next several months. It targets exactly the everyday issues shareholders raised, and every FSD user will feel the difference. 🌍 Elon expects FSD (Supervised) approval across the EU by around Q1 2027. Elon said EU-wide approval could come within a few months, and he'd be surprised if it takes past Q1 2027, though the timeline isn't Tesla's to control. Meanwhile, Tesla is offering benefits on certain cars in Europe to grow its fleet before approval, and it's working with regulators in China, where FSD already runs on some cars. FSD has over 1.7 million paid customers worldwide, with half on subscriptions for the first time. Every new car in North America includes a free month, yet over 75% of buyers still signed up for paid FSD at delivery. Tesla called FSD its biggest demand driver, with showroom visitors now asking for FSD test drives, and it plans to share more FSD metrics, including revenue. An analyst estimated FSD is nearing $1 billion in annual recurring revenue and could at least double each car's lifetime profit, and Vaibhav said his numbers were correct. Vaibhav added that competitor CEOs who took FSD drives in the US were blown away. Tesla has also published a Robotaxi safety report, and Ashok doesn't expect anyone to match unsupervised FSD for several years. Paying on day one with a free month already included is about as strong a vote of confidence as a product can get. 🧠 Tesla's Terafab aims to make its first test chip around mid-2027. The Austin research fab will start commissioning equipment in the first half of 2027, with a first test chip around May or June and a goal of useful chips at volume around Q3 2028. Most of the first equipment is already ordered. Elon expects tens of billions in spending through early 2028 and likely over $100 billion long term, with the cost split between Tesla and SpaceX still being worked out. He called it potentially the most valuable building in the world and key to scaling Optimus by easing bottlenecks in memory, packaging, and logic chips. Owning its chip supply would remove one of Tesla's biggest limits on building robots and cars, and the SpaceX cost split hints at shared infrastructure between the two companies. 🏭 Tesla is aiming for 5 million vehicles a year by around 2030. Elon said demand is exceeding production by a wide margin, and Tesla has a good shot at about 5 million vehicles a year by 2030. That's more than 2.5 times Q3's annual pace of about 1.95 million. Factories hit record rates, Tesla applied for permits to expand Giga Berlin, and a new Semi factory has started in Reno. Q3 also marked the first time Tesla topped 480,000 deliveries two quarters in a row. Based on preliminary data, Model Y was likely Europe's best-selling EV and South Korea's best-selling passenger car. And Elon called the Roadster unveiling arguably the coolest product demo ever. 🔋 Megapacks are almost sold out for 2027. Elon said Megapacks are almost sold out for 2027, production is ramping as fast as possible, and margins should rise meaningfully. Vaibhav said data center demand is extreme and expects better pricing ahead. Q3 energy margin jumped to 33.1% from 20.4% in Q2, mainly from tariff refunds and a warranty adjustment with a cell supplier, and the refund money is going into US production capacity. On the possible "Megapod" product, Elon said it's still early, with more clarity around Q1 or Q2 2027. Selling out a year ahead gives Tesla real pricing power, and data center demand isn't slowing down. 💵 Tesla lowered its 2026 capex guidance and lined up $30 billion in borrowing capacity. Vaibhav said 2026 capex should land around $20 billion, down from roughly $25 billion previously, funded mainly by operating cash. Tesla also secured up to $30 billion in borrowing capacity but doesn't plan to draw on it this year. Opex will keep rising until new products are commercialized, and capex will grow in the coming years with Robotaxi vehicles, Optimus capacity, solar manufacturing, AI compute, and the chip fab. The team declined to discuss a possible SpaceX merger. Spending less than planned while lining up a big credit line tells me Tesla is gearing up for a much bigger investment wave on its own terms. 🚀 Tesla has never looked better positioned. For years, the question about Tesla's AI ambitions was when. This call answered with dates: unsupervised FSD on customer cars, Robotaxi revenue taking off, Optimus heading to customers, and Tesla's first homemade chip. Add sold-out Megapacks, demand outrunning production, and a path to 5 million cars a year, and Tesla's foundation is stronger than ever. As Elon put it, after years of grind, Tesla is now headed for a lot of fun and significant growth.

BOOM 🚨 Lars Moravy, Tesla's VP of Vehicle Engineering, just shut down claims that the Rocket variant of the new Roadster can never reach production 🔥 Pushing back against critics who insist a thruster-equipped sports car is pure fantasy, Lars made one thing clear: Tesla never shows off hardware they cannot build on the factory line 🆒 The engineering behind it really just comes down to simple math. Lars pointed out that the cold gas thruster system unleashes over 80 kN of raw thrust. Even under an extreme scenario where the car weighs a hefty 2,500 kg with the pressurized gas tanks and hardware packed inside, the thrusters still generate over triple the force needed to heave the vehicle off the tarmac 💨 When lift crushes curb weight by that wide of a margin, getting off the ground is a breeze. As Lars emphasized, having that huge cushion of surplus thrust over time leaves plenty of reserve air to stabilize, maneuver, and even pull off midair flips ⚡ This isn't staying locked up as a concept, either. Tesla is preparing to assemble the machine right at Giga Texas inside a dedicated facility dubbed Roadster Factory Texas (RFTX), proving this rocket-powered beast is an actual production program heading down the line 🚀

AI grabbed all the headlines, but the rest of $TSLA's Q3 deck tells a second story that is just as exciting: the core businesses funding all that AI is only getting stronger 🔥 💳 Tesla's services business just posted record profits. Services and other revenue hit $4.6 billion, jumping 33% year over year. Gross profit reached an all-time high of $734 million at a 15.9% margin. Powered by charging, insurance, and parts sales, that is roughly double the $366 million Tesla brought in a year ago. Every Tesla on the road keeps generating cash long after it leaves the lot. As the fleet expands, this high-margin business scales right alongside it. 💰 Tesla's core auto business just got a lot more profitable. Automotive gross margin, excluding regulatory credits, surged to 18.1%, up from 16.3% in Q2 and 15.4% a year ago. By Tesla's own numbers, the average cost per vehicle dropped to around $34,500, shaving off roughly $1,100 compared to both last quarter and last year. Here is the kicker. Average selling prices actually went down, yet margins still climbed. That means Tesla is cutting manufacturing costs faster than it is lowering prices. And with regulatory credits dipping to just $113 million, this margin boost is pure operational muscle. 📈 Demand is running much hotter than expected. Tesla closed out Q3 with its largest passenger vehicle backlog in four years. The company set delivery records in Canada, Australia, Japan, and Taiwan, hit peak production at Giga Berlin, and trimmed inventory down to just 11 days of supply compared to 15 in Q2. Right now, Tesla says battery supply, not buyer demand, is the main bottleneck holding back volume. In the auto world, that is the exact kind of problem you want to have. 🔋 Energy revenue dipped, but the underlying business is firing on all cylinders. Energy revenue slipped 16% year over year, partly due to tariff-related customer refunds. Look under the hood, however, and Tesla is seeing its highest order rate and backlog ever. Megafactory Texas has kicked off production with 50 GWh of planned capacity, and the first Megapacks built entirely with Tesla's in-house LFP cells have already shipped out of Nevada. Even better, energy gross margins climbed to roughly 33%, up from about 31% a year ago. Tesla links this surging demand directly to power-hungry data centers. Plus, manufacturing LFP cells stateside will help insulate the business from tariff headaches down the road. ⚡ The Supercharger network is getting faster and cheaper to build. Tesla added over 2,100 net new stalls in Q3, expanding the network by 14% year over year, while its Supercharger for Business program blew past 600 stalls. Tesla also deployed its first Accordion Supercharger, which arrives pre-assembled from the factory to slash installation costs. Lower build costs mean faster network expansion, and that is a massive win for every Tesla driver on the road. 🚛 Tesla Semi is officially in volume production in Nevada. The top-tier rig delivers 500 miles of range hauling a full 82,000 lb load while burning just 1.7 kWh per mile. According to Tesla, that takes about a third of the energy a comparable diesel truck needs to pull the same weight. The Nevada line is built for 25,000 units of annual capacity, and Tesla just rolled out its first pre-assembled Megacharger to keep those trucks moving. Fuel and energy represent one of the biggest per-mile expenses in freight, so that massive efficiency gain goes straight to fleet operators' bottom lines. 🏎️ Tesla is calling the new Roadster "the best of the last human-driven cars." Following its October 15 unveiling, the Next-Gen Roadster is officially listed in design development, with a factory location still under wraps. That tagline is a bold statement on where Tesla sees the future of driving headed. 🚀 Tesla's core business is gaining momentum while it builds the future. Margins are climbing, demand is outpacing supply, and the Semi, Megapack, services, and Supercharger divisions are all hitting their stride. That gives Tesla a rock-solid foundation to bankroll its massive AI ambitions, and Q3 proves that foundation is only getting stronger.

BOOOM 🚨 $TSLA's Q3 2026 update is out. Non-GAAP EPS came in at $0.48, ahead of the roughly $0.43 to $0.45 analysts expected 🔥 But the most revealing parts of the deck have little to do with EPS. They show a company steadily shifting its weight from cars to robots, robotaxis, and AI 🔥 🧠 FSD is now on more than three out of four new cars in North America. Over 75% of new North American deliveries included FSD in Q3, up nearly 20 percentage points from Q2. Active FSD subscriptions reached 1.74 million, up from 1.48 million last quarter and 1.04 million a year ago. That count includes both upfront purchases and monthly subscriptions, and it leaves out free trials. Europe is opening up too. Croatia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia have approved FSD (Supervised) since the end of Q2, bringing the total to nine EU countries. More than 100,000 European customers have already driven over 160 million kilometers on it, or nearly 100 million miles. Tesla says FSD subscriptions helped lift revenue and that FSD is driving demand wherever it's available. Put those together, and software is becoming a real revenue stream that can grow across the cars already on the road, not just with new sales. The outlook points the same way, with Tesla expecting hardware profits to be joined by faster growth in SI, software, and fleet-based profits. 🤖 Optimus has moved from prototypes to a real production line. Optimus production has started on Tesla's high-volume lines in Fremont. The bots coming off that line are the first production-quality Optimus units Tesla has ever built, and Tesla says it has proven the current process is ready for a commercial product. The capacity table lists Fremont as "Early Ramp" and shows a second Optimus site already under construction in Texas. Tesla hasn't shared a capacity number for either one yet. This is the jump from prototypes to manufactured units, and that's the step that matters most for bringing costs down. Building a second site before the first one has even ramped suggests Tesla expects demand well beyond what Fremont can handle. The missing capacity figure is a reminder that the ramp is still early. 🚕 Cybercab is now giving rides in Austin, and unsupervised miles are growing fast. Tesla started Robotaxi rides with Cybercab in Austin on September 3. By the end of the quarter, the Robotaxi service had logged nearly 2 million cumulative unsupervised miles, eight times the total from three months earlier. Austin service now runs from 6am to midnight. Texas now shows more than 125,000 units of installed annual Cybercab capacity with "Production" status. Tesla points out that installed capacity isn't the same as the current production rate, and it says battery supply is still the main constraint on vehicle volumes. It's ramping 4680 cells specifically to support Cybercab and Semi. There's also a telling line in the outlook. Tesla says deliveries will depend partly on "allocation decisions between sale to customers and use for our owned and operated fleet." In plain English, Tesla is openly weighing how many cars to keep for its own network instead of selling them. With the tooling listed as in production, batteries look like what will set the pace for Cybercab. Inside the car, riders get Grok with voice access to their inbox, calendar, files, and tasks, and Tesla pitches the cabin as "a second living room." Tesla is clearly thinking about what riders do during the trip, not just the trip itself. ⚡ Tesla plans to grow its AI training compute by about 50% in a single quarter. Cortex 1 and Cortex 2 in Texas are rated at more than 105 MW and 120 MW, and Tesla has another 40 MW of compute on top of that, for roughly 265 MW in total. The goal is 400 MW by the end of the year, and Tesla says this compute trains autonomy software for both its vehicles and its humanoid robots. Tesla is also building its own chip fab in Austin and plans to start commissioning equipment there in 2027. It hasn't said yet which chips the fab will make. All of this shows up in the spending. R&D rose to $2.76 billion, up 69% from a year ago, and capex hit $4.73 billion, more than double last year's $2.25 billion. Even so, free cash flow stayed positive at $1.5 billion, and cash grew to $45.4 billion. Because one compute pool trains both FSD and Optimus, progress on one can feed the other. A chip fab is one of the boldest vertical integration moves Tesla has made, and staying cash-positive while building it makes that bet much easier to fund. 🔭 Tesla is building every piece of its next chapter at the same time. Robots are coming off a production line, driverless Cybercabs are carrying riders, FSD is turning into recurring software revenue, and the compute behind all of it is about to grow by half. Each piece makes the others stronger, and together they point to a Tesla whose future depends less on how many cars it sells and more on what its AI can do.

One of the best moments from @elonmusk’s conversation with Walter Isaacson on The Builders was about something surprisingly simple: growing vegetables and cooking dinner for friends 🌱 The question behind it is huge: if AI and robots eventually outperform us at everything, what will give our lives meaning? Elon admitted he struggles with that question, but his gardening example offers a hopeful starting point. People already choose to grow food they could easily buy at the store. There’s genuine joy in watching something grow, cooking a meal, and sharing it with people you care about. That same idea applies to art and whatever else we love doing. Even surrounded by extraordinarily capable machines, we can still paint, garden, experiment, and create simply for the joy of it. Imagine what we might discover about ourselves with more freedom to follow that curiosity. That’s an AI future worth looking forward to.

BOOM 🎐 SpaceX just set a sky-high bar for Tesla’s earnings call later today 🔥 From Starship’s next milestones and Starlink’s expansion to massive AI infrastructure plans, new products, and extraordinary revenue ambitions, SpaceX’s Q3 2026 earnings call with @elonmusk covered a lot of ground 🔥 Here’s everything you need to know from this awesome conversation: 🏭 Terafab’s internal targets call for a working test chip in 2027 and possible volume production in 2028. The Austin research fab aims to produce a functional test chip, potentially an SRAM chip, around May or June 2027. The internal aspiration for the main Terafab facility is volume production in Q3 2028, with Q3 or Q4 described as possible outcomes. Elon emphasized that these are aggressive targets with substantial execution uncertainty. He thanked ASML and other suppliers for accelerating equipment deliveries and referred to potential manufacturing breakthroughs without explaining them. The answer did not provide specific EUV machine order quantities or delivery dates. Terafab’s ultimate ambition is to manufacture a terawatt’s worth of superintelligence chips per year. 🤝 SpaceX and Tesla are exploring a potential merger through independent committees, but no transaction terms have been agreed. Elon said both companies formed special committees of independent directors at shareholders’ request. Because he is a conflicted party, he is excluded from those committees’ discussions. He supported the strategic rationale, citing superintelligence software, chip design, Terafab, robotics, connectivity, and the StarMind constellation. The committees had not agreed on terms, and Elon emphasized that a merger was not certain. He said Tesla approval would require support representing 50% of all shares, rather than only shares participating in the vote. 🚀 Starship’s next milestone is catching both stages, followed by upper-stage reuse and a rapid increase in launch frequency. Management described Flight 14 as Starship’s first flight to orbit, where it deployed operational Starlink V3 satellites. Flight 15, expected in November 2026, would attempt tower catches of both the booster and ship. Elon considered success more likely than not, while emphasizing that additional attempts were planned through year-end. Management expected the FAA license to cover return-to-launch-site operations and catches for both stages. The roadmap calls for recovering both stages during 2026, re-flying the upper stage in early 2027, and attempting on-orbit refueling in early 2027. Elon forecast weekly launches at some point in the first half of 2027, increasing to twice weekly or more during the second half. Initially, recovered vehicles would require some refurbishment; the eventual objective is to eliminate that work and achieve airplane-like turnaround. 🌎 The Louisiana spaceport is intended to expand Starship operations to dozens of towers and millions of tons delivered to space annually. Elon envisioned roughly 20 or more launch towers, eventually supporting millions of tons per year to orbit and beyond. The internal aspiration for the first launch is 2028. He described a first launch in 2029 as highly likely and expressed confidence that Louisiana could be launching at scale during 2029. SpaceX is also expanding Raptor engine and vehicle production, advancing Gigabay construction, and developing multiple launch pads at Starbase and Cape Canaveral. 🛰️ SpaceX reported 35 quarterly launches and additional contracts spanning crew transportation, national security, lunar delivery, and microgravity research. The 35 Q3 launches comprised 21 Starlink missions on Falcon 9, two Starship flights, and 12 customer missions. Customer missions included a Falcon Heavy launch of NASA’s Roman Space Telescope and six national-security launches. New business included three additional Dragon human-spaceflight missions extending through 2028, Starlink communications for NASA’s Artemis III mission, 18 national-security launch missions, a Starship lunar-payload delivery contract, and three Starfall missions on Starship. Management described Starfall as a capsule offering routine, relatively low-cost access to microgravity for scientific research, including cancer, diabetes, and treatment development. A Starfall mission had also flown on Falcon 9 on the day of the call. On October 1, SpaceX launched three Falcon missions from three sites within 13 hours: Crew-13 to the ISS, a Falcon Heavy NRO mission, and a rideshare carrying 130 payloads. Elon estimated SpaceX’s share of worldwide payload mass delivered to orbit at nearly 90%, versus approximately 6% for China and 4% for everyone else combined. 📶 Starlink V3 is expected to deliver sustained customer improvements by mid-2027 and enable a much larger expansion in constellation capacity. Flight 14 deployed 26 terabits per second of Starlink bandwidth, which Elon equated to approximately 10 Falcon 9 launches, despite Starship being only about half loaded. Management expects V3 deployment to increase through late 2026 and throughout 2027. Future Starship payloads are intended to deliver more than 20 times the downlink capacity of current Falcon 9 launches. Elon estimated that a few hundred V3 satellites would be needed before customers consistently feel the improvement, potentially achievable by mid-2027. With only a small number in orbit, improvements can be temporary as individual satellites pass overhead. His longer-term vision is approximately 100 times today’s constellation bandwidth within about three years, involving roughly 100,000 satellites with more than ten times the bandwidth per satellite. Additional capacity should also enable sales in currently constrained, high-demand markets. 📡 Starlink reached 13.6 million consumer subscribers while expanding availability and ramping production of new customer hardware. Starlink added 1.6 million consumer subscribers in Q3, reaching 13.6 million across 174 markets. New markets included Vietnam and Uganda. That figure covers consumer broadband subscribers; management separately referenced hundreds of thousands of enterprise subscribers and aviation customers. SpaceX began ramping V5 customer kits to ease inventory constraints. It prioritized retail-channel deliveries ahead of the holiday season, expecting those shipments to support additional Q4 activations. Management also highlighted connectivity for hundreds of thousands of students and teachers. During Q3, Starlink supported 25 crises, donated more than 1,400 kits, and provided emergency connectivity to over 250,000 people, including responses to earthquakes in Venezuela and western Colombia and a hurricane in Hawaii. 📱 Starlink Mobile is expanding an existing service into a larger satellite-and-terrestrial network, with Mobile V2 launches starting in 2027. Starlink Mobile surpassed 22 million monthly users, up 37% quarter over quarter. New carrier services launched in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kazakhstan, and Costa Rica. Management reported FCC approval for 15,000 Mobile V2 satellites and an agreement to acquire additional low-band spectrum. The plan is to launch Mobile V2 satellites on Starship during 2027 and integrate spectrum purchases to enable the expanded service in early 2028. The network strategy combines satellites, Wi-Fi, and terrestrial radios. Gwynne expected S-band to carry the majority of traffic, with 800 MHz low-band spectrum providing an important role in penetrating buildings. SpaceX also plans to use existing Starlink homes, businesses, and other tower locations for smaller terrestrial radios. Gwynne estimated that 85%–93% of mobile connectivity already occurs over Wi-Fi, highlighting the role Starlink broadband can play alongside cellular coverage. ✈️ Starlink aviation is scaling toward thousands of aircraft, while enterprise and government customers are becoming larger growth engines. Starlink had contracts covering approximately 12,000 aircraft, described as nearly one-quarter of the available market, and agreements with three of the four major U.S. carriers. Airlines named as operating their first Starlink-equipped aircraft during Q3 included Lufthansa, Swiss, Copa Airlines, Korean Air, and Austrian Airlines. One additional airline name was unclear in the recording. Aviation production had quadrupled since the start of 2026, with another doubling expected before year-end. Management said installation programs remained at an early stage with many major airlines and expected acceleration into 2027. Airline partners reported that connectivity increasingly influences booking decisions, with Starlink-equipped flights achieving higher passenger load factors. Fixed-site enterprise demand was also gaining momentum, and management expected enterprise and government connectivity revenue each eventually to exceed consumer connectivity revenue. 🌐 Management expects AI agents, connected vehicles, and robots to drive a dramatic increase in demand for Starlink’s capacity. Elon forecast that bandwidth demand could increase 1,000-fold over three to five years, reasoning that AI agents could substantially outnumber humans and use more bandwidth per agent. Management expects Starlink to carry a significant share of global internet traffic over time, supported by broadband, high-bandwidth direct-to-cell service, and terrestrial networks wherever SpaceX is permitted to operate. Elon saw a path to several hundred billion dollars in annual connectivity revenue. He said the complete strategy included elements not explained on the call and warranted a separate, longer presentation. 🌌 StarMind satellite launches are planned for 2027, with Bastrop identified as a future production location. Management said SpaceX would begin flying StarMind satellites in 2027, alongside the Mobile V2 rollout. The call originated from the Starlink factory in Bastrop, Texas, which was also identified as a future StarMind production site. Elon later cited the StarMind constellation and mass-to-orbit capabilities among the potential benefits of closer cooperation between SpaceX and Tesla. 🤖 Grok Bot is expanding rapidly, while Grok and Cursor are being integrated into a broader enterprise product offering. Grok Bot launched in August 2026 and reached 800,000 paid weekly users by early October, more than doubling over the preceding month. Elon described it as the fastest-growing product he had personally seen and said usage per user was increasing over time. B2B was the fastest-growing category, with customers using Grok Bot across sales, marketing, IT, and engineering. Broad enterprise deployment was expected within weeks, following early deployments with selected customers. Management said it was accelerating Grok’s model-release cadence, with significant performance improvements already delivered and more expected soon. Elon suggested Grok Bot could eventually consume most of SpaceX’s superintelligence compute. Cursor integration was progressing across both product capabilities and enterprise sales. SpaceX had introduced a combined plan covering Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor, and X Premium. The number of Grok enterprise customers generating more than $1 million in annualized revenue, including Cursor, increased 50% sequentially on a pro forma basis. ⚡ SpaceX’s compute roadmap targets approximately 13 gigawatts by the end of 2027, with a larger infrastructure ambition beyond that. SpaceX ended Q3 with 1.7 GW of nameplate compute capacity. Additional data halls were already online in early October, with targets of approximately 2.2 GW by October-end and 2.5–3 GW by year-end 2026. Elon described intensive work on Colossus 2 in Memphis, while management also cited infrastructure coming online in Southaven. He initially cited deployment of approximately 200,000 GB300 systems per month, then specified 220,000 per month during the Q&A. Deployment was expected to accelerate in 2027, with the hardware mix shifting primarily toward Vera Rubin. Elon expressed high confidence in adding 10 GW of compute during 2027, producing approximately 13 GW total. Separately, the stretch plan calls for 20 GW of additional power-and-cooling infrastructure, or roughly 23 GW total, if everything goes right. He described more than 20 GW of operational compute as a possible upside outcome. 🧠 A planned 440,000-system Vera Rubin training cluster is intended to strengthen Grok’s position at the frontier. SpaceX planned to bring a cluster containing 440,000 Vera Rubin computers online by the end of Q2 2027, configured for training. Elon described the ambition as having the most powerful training cluster, helping Grok potentially become the best model or, at minimum, remain highly competitive. The broader compute buildout serves both SpaceX’s own models and products and external cloud-services customers. 🔧 SpaceX is applying rocket-manufacturing expertise to the power and cooling bottlenecks limiting AI deployment. Elon argued that the biggest constraints are increasingly power, cooling, electrical equipment, and supporting infrastructure, rather than chips alone. A specific example is manufacturing gas-turbine blades and vanes using casting capabilities developed for rocket engines. He said those components were running 12–18 months behind the rest of the turbine supply chain, creating an opportunity for SpaceX to bring power online sooner. SpaceX is pursuing multiple power sources, including gas turbines, solar, and wind. Elon also described factory-built modular inference clusters with integrated power and cooling, which could be deployed across the country or globally. He said additional parts of the infrastructure plan were proprietary and declined to detail them. 💻 SpaceX is using flexible compute contracts to capture what management sees as rising demand and increasing value per watt. Elon described an approximate allocation of 50% of compute for internal use and 50% for external customers, with flexibility to move toward 60/40 in either direction. SpaceX favors short-term contracts at prevailing market rates. Management believes improving models increase useful intelligence per watt, raising the economic value of available hardware. Elon said short-term contracts were renewing at higher prices per watt, and cited H100 rentals costing more than when that hardware was new. He said customer demand could absorb SpaceX’s available capacity several times over. SpaceX had also tried to move some inference workloads to other providers to free its own capacity for training, but encountered shortages across GB300s, GB200s, TPUs, Trainium hardware, and H100s. 💰 SpaceX reported $14.6 billion in Q3 revenue, $4.4 billion in net income, and $8.8 billion in adjusted EBITDA. Revenue increased 161% year over year, from $5.6 billion to $14.6 billion. Net income improved by $5.5 billion, moving from a $1.1 billion loss to a $4.4 billion profit. Adjusted EBITDA increased 306%, from approximately $2.2 billion to $8.8 billion. Space revenue totaled $1.8 billion, up 6% year over year and 84% sequentially, helped by a favorable customer mix. Management expected strong full-year growth supported by Falcon and Dragon customer manifests. 📊 Connectivity revenue reached $5.2 billion, with higher customer spending and stronger profitability. Connectivity revenue increased 69% year over year and 22% sequentially. Consumer average revenue per user rose 5% sequentially to $69 per month, supported by favorable customer mix. Enterprise and government revenue increased 91% year over year and 18% sequentially, driven partly by the U.S. government’s Starshield program and aviation. Connectivity gross profit doubled year over year, and gross margin reached 55%. That included an approximately three-percentage-point one-time benefit, primarily from tariff refunds. Excluding one-time benefits, adjusted EBITDA margin improved by approximately two percentage points year over year. 📈 Superintelligence became the largest revenue segment, with cloud-services growth driving a substantial increase in profitability. Superintelligence revenue reached $7.6 billion, increasing $5 billion sequentially and $6.7 billion year over year. Solutions and infrastructure revenue totaled $7 billion, including $608 million from Cursor, acquired around mid-quarter. Excluding Cursor, solutions and infrastructure revenue still increased 192% sequentially. Segment adjusted EBITDA reached $5 billion, up $3.8 billion sequentially and $5.4 billion year over year. Operating income was $431 million, or approximately $1.6 billion excluding $1.2 billion in Cursor-related stock compensation. Advertising revenue grew 19% year over year, supported by the advertising technology platform introduced in Q2. 🧾 Cursor’s acquisition includes substantial employee-equity costs that will affect reported earnings over several years. Management stated that Cursor’s acquisition equity value was $60 billion. Approximately $23 billion related to employee retention and replacing outstanding equity awards, including arrangements requiring key executives to vest again. Those awards are expected to be recognized as stock-based compensation over approximately three years. 🏗️ SpaceX plans a major increase in capital spending, supported by cash generation, debt financing, and potential commercial partnerships. Q3 capital expenditure was $19.6 billion, primarily for compute infrastructure, Starship infrastructure, and satellite production. Management forecast $35–$40 billion of capital expenditure in Q4, reflecting additional capacity coming online. The main investment priorities remain superintelligence compute, Starship development and production, and next-generation broadband and mobile satellites. Management said new compute deployments currently had payback periods of less than one year, with pricing slightly above the high end of the previously discussed $30–$50-per-watt range. Elon described a six-month payback period during 2027 as possible, rather than a commitment. Funding sources include operating cash flow, multiple pools of debt capital, and potential supplier or customer partnerships. Management emphasized preserving investment-grade status and using early returns from new capacity to help fund further expansion. 🔮 Management’s financial outlook combines near-term revenue guidance with much larger ambitions for the end of 2027. SpaceX reaffirmed its target of $100 billion in annualized revenue by year-end 2026, calculated using December’s revenue rate. Management also forecast $33–$37 billion in revenue for Q1 2027. Elon separately said the planned expansion could imply $500 billion–$1 trillion in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2027. That was his assessment of the longer-term opportunity, distinct from the quarterly financial guidance. The company reported $63 billion in backlog at September 30, including $17.5 billion in deferred revenue, with approximately $42 billion expected to become revenue within the following year. Q4 company gross margins were expected to be closer to Q2 levels, reflecting the absence of some Q3 benefits from customer mix and one-time items. SpaceX’s next chapter could be far bigger than rockets. Reusable Starship, a vastly more capable Starlink network, and rapidly expanding AI infrastructure could reinforce one another—making space access cheaper, connectivity more abundant, and intelligence available at unprecedented scale. The expectations are enormous, and execution will decide how much becomes reality. But this call laid out an extraordinary ambition: SpaceX wants to build the infrastructure that powers the future, on Earth and beyond.

Source: renewablesnow.com/news/rsted…

GOOD NEWS 🇬🇧 Danish energy company Ørsted has finalized construction on its estimated $200 million Iceni energy storage facility in Norfolk, eastern England, which is now preparing for commissioning 🔥 Tesla Energy anchors the project with 170 Megapack units providing 300 MW and 600 MWh of storage capacity alongside the onshore converter station for the Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm 🎐 Sharing a single grid connection point with the wind farm allows the Megapack system to capture surplus clean power and smooth electricity flow into the UK grid 🆒 Crews are currently completing high-voltage cabling between the site's two sections and preparing to energize the main transformer as testing gets underway 🐰