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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has spent months — years? — making an attempt to place his firm as one thing greater than only a maker of electrical autos. When Tesla acquired Solar City in 2016, he (and his comms workforce) pitched it as a sustainable vitality firm. Over the previous 12 months, he has pushed the concept of Tesla as an AI and robotics firm.
Musk’s aspirational branding has slammed proper up in opposition to monetary actuality: The bulk of its income comes from promoting EVs. Its newest earnings help this.
The firm generated $94.8 billion in income in 2025. Of that, $69.5 billion got here from promoting and leasing EVs in addition to associated regulatory credit. The remaining $25 billion is cut up almost down the center between its vitality technology (photo voltaic) and storage enterprise and “services and other,” which embody income from its Superchargers, elements gross sales, and Full Self-Driving subscriptions. That reliance on deliveries implies that as EV gross sales have dipped, so has Tesla’s total stability sheet. Its earnings in 2025 had been 46% decrease year-over-year.
Tesla has tried to develop its non-EV companies to compensate for the decline in gross sales, and its This autumn and full-year earnings report (and its accompanying name) signaled a shift past the persistent AI-robotics discuss and towards motion. For now, that motion entails spending cash, not making it. Musk repeatedly careworn that 2026 can be an enormous CapEx 12 months, greater than doubling spending to $20 billion, which might put them in negative-cash-flow territory.
For occasion, Musk introduced that Tesla is ending manufacturing of the Model S and Model X, which is extra symbolic than materials. Those two fashions characterize about 2% of Tesla’s gross sales quantity, some extent that Barclays analyst Dan Levy additionally makes in his most up-to-date observe. Still, it’s a notable end-of-an-era second for Tesla and the broader automotive business, which was ceaselessly modified when the Model S went on sale in 2012.
The extra materials transfer is what Tesla plans to do now.
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Tesla plans to fill the manufacturing void left by the Model S and X with its Optimus humanoid robots, which might be made at its Fremont, California, manufacturing facility. Musk additionally intends to scale Tesla’s robotaxi operations to extra cities in 2026 and even floated the necessity for Tesla to construct a TerraFab manufacturing facility to shore up chip provide.
But the merchandise that actually stood out to me — and a real Elon Inc round financial system deal — was Tesla’s plan to speculate $2 billion into one other Musk firm, xAI, and signaled plans to extra intently align these two firms. Meanwhile, different shops are reporting talks are underway to probably merge (in some mixture) three of Musk’s firms: SpaceX, Tesla, and xAI.
But let’s come again all the way down to earth for a second and evaluation Tesla’s present enterprise. Its gross sales are down year-over-year, whereas its smaller vitality storage enterprise made constructive beneficial properties.
A little bit fowl
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
We’re not fairly able to share the total particulars, however we’ve heard from one little fowl that there’s some exercise on the fundraising entrance for Waymo. You most likely noticed reporting final month about Waymo elevating as much as a $15 billion spherical led by its mum or dad firm Alphabet. Based on my conversations, it’s nonetheless in “the realm” of $15 billion and enormous portion is coming from Alphabet, and there may be excessive curiosity from exterior buyers to affix. One little fowl advised me one of many different buyers could also be an OEM (authentic tools producer.
Stay tuned for extra on this.
Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or my Signal at kkorosec.07, or e mail Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com.
Deals!
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
Waabi will get my “deal of the week” badge — and never simply due to the greenback figures hooked up. The autonomous automobile startup has raised $750 million in a Series C spherical co-led by Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners, plus one other $250 million in milestone capital from Uber to help the deployment of 25,000 or extra Waabi Driver-powered robotaxis solely on its platform.
Uber is already a Waabi backer, collaborating in certainly one of its earliest raises in 2021. But that is about greater than cash. When Waabi first launched, it targeted on making use of its autonomous automobile tech to self-driving vehicles. The take care of Uber is a declaration that it intends to scale its tech throughout a number of self-driving verticals with a single expertise stack.
Can Waabi do it? Others have tried and retreated. Waymo shuttered its self-driving vehicles program to concentrate on robotaxis; Aurora, which can also be an investor in Waabi, was engaged on each vehicles and robotaxis, too, earlier than deciding to focus simply on huge rigs.
Other offers that acquired my consideration …
Gatik AI, a startup growing autonomous vehicles targeted on the “middle mile,” has signed a take care of a significant (unnamed) consumer-goods firm. Here’s why it issues: The contract will ship $600 million in income over 5 years. And these are for driverless transport, that means no security driver is behind the wheel. These Gatik vehicles, which run 24 hours a day transferring ambient, refrigerated, and frozen items between distribution facilities and shops, have been working driverlessly since mid-2025. According to the corporate, it has accomplished 60,000 totally driverless orders with out incident.
Luminar’s lidar enterprise has been offered for $33 million to Redmond, Washington-based MicroVision. The firm, which is growing its personal sensors, beat out Quantum Computing in an public sale for the belongings. TC’s Sean O’Kane interviewed MicroVision CEO Glen DeVos about his plans for Luminar. The gross sales course of did have a little bit of last-minute intrigue when a thriller bidder, with a far bigger supply, made a play for Luminar’s lidar enterprise.
Rad Power Bikes, which began the chapter course of a couple of month in the past, reached a deal to promote itself to Life Electric Vehicles Holdings (or Life EV) for round $13.2 million. When accounting for Rad Power’s liabilities, the entire worth of the bid is $14.9 million. History lesson: Rad Power has raised $329.2 million since its founding and as soon as had a valuation of $1.65 billion.
Redwood Materials raised $425 million in a Series E spherical that features Google as a brand new investor. The spherical was led by enterprise agency Eclipse and features a strategic funding by Nvidia’s enterprise capital arm, NVentures, in addition to present buyers Capricorn and Goldman Sachs. Read the total story to study what Redwood plans to do with the capital.
Notable reads and different tidbits
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
Obi, an organization that aggregates real-time pricing and pickup instances throughout a number of ride-hailing providers, shared new knowledge on ride-hailing and robotaxis within the San Francisco Bay Area. There are a number of takeaways — so please go learn the total story — together with that the worth hole between Waymo and rides supplied by Uber and Lyft is narrowing.
Uber launched a brand new division referred to as Uber AV Labs, that’s not — as senior reporter Sean O’Kane factors out — a ploy to start out growing its personal robotaxis once more. This is a data-sharing play; sensor-equipped Uber automobiles will gather after which share knowledge with companions like Lucid, Waymo, and Waabi. Important observe: No contracts are signed but.
Waymo is now allowed to function a robotaxi service to and from the San Francisco International Airport (SFO). The firm will start providing entry to SFO to a choose variety of riders earlier than providing it to all clients within the coming months. That win comes with a little bit of tarnish, nevertheless. Waymo is underneath investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and National Transportation Safety Board after the corporate reported certainly one of its robotaxis struck a toddler close to an elementary college in Santa Monica on January 23.
The San Francisco Police Departmentis investigating an incident involving a Zoox autonomous automobile that crashed into the motive force’s-side door of a parked automotive.
One thing more …
It’s been a number of weeks since we’ve had a ballot and here’s a enjoyable one: What will the identify or ticker of Musk’s mixed supercompany be?
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