Shares of Elon Musk’s embattled carmaker Tesla slid over 13 percent Thursday morning after posting dismal second quarter results the night before.
The stock is hovering at around $324 at the time of writing, down over 15 percent over the last five days and about 28 percent year to date.
The company missed Wall Street expectations, despite its core automotive segment generating just over $20 billion in revenue, up 23 percent from a year ago. However, the company’s gross profits dropped as operating expenses climbed far quicker than revenue, in large part thanks to AI-related capital expenses and other research and development — an intimately familiar refrain for the tech world in 2026.
In other words, investors are growing increasingly wary of Musk’s reinvention of his car business. The almost-trillionaire is trying to shift the company’s focus from selling cars to robotaxis, a humanoid robot called Optimus, and AI — a series of major undertakings that’re clearly weighing it down financially after multiple quarters of major losses.
Worse yet, Tesla’s woes are clearly having knock-on effects on his rocket company as well. SpaceX’s stock has had a bruising month since hitting an all-time high after going public in mid-June. An aborted Starship test launch and Musk’s dubious plan for orbital data centers have investors betting against the company in incredible numbers.
During Wednesday’s earnings call, the company claimed that production of its Optimus humanoid robot remains on track, but didn’t elaborate beyond promising that production is starting “soon.”
“This is going to be the hardest product to scale manufacturing that we’ve ever made at Tesla, because everything on the robot is new,” Musk said.
Tesla’s robotaxi service is also being rolled out to six major metropolitan areas across the country, but continues to lag far behind its key competitor, Alphabet’s Waymo.
Despite slightly more optimistic vehicle sales numbers, the company continues to burn through billions of dollars to keep all of those new plates spinning.
The elephant in the room during this week’s call was the long-rumored possibility of Musk merging Tesla and SpaceX — a doubling down on his portfolio that could set up some of the most unbelievable financial drama in economic history.
The mercurial entrepreneur didn’t rule out the possibility, saying that “we can’t talk about combining companies on an earnings call.”
“It’s got to be done with the appropriate process,” he added.
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