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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 automobiles. When Tesla acquired Photo voltaic Metropolis in 2016, he (and his comms staff) 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 majority of its income comes from promoting EVs. Its newest earnings assist this.
The corporate 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 break up practically down the center between its vitality technology (photo voltaic) and storage enterprise and “providers and different,” which embody income from its Superchargers, components gross sales, and Full Self-Driving subscriptions. That reliance on deliveries signifies that as EV gross sales have dipped, so has Tesla’s whole stability sheet. Its earnings in 2025 have 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 fall 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 includes spending cash, not making it. Musk repeatedly careworn that 2026 could be an enormous CapEx 12 months, greater than doubling spending to $20 billion, which might put them in negative-cash-flow territory.
For example, Musk introduced that Tesla is ending manufacturing of the Mannequin S and Mannequin X, which is extra symbolic than materials. These two fashions symbolize about 2% of Tesla’s gross sales quantity, some extent that Barclays analyst Dan Levy additionally makes in his most up-to-date notice. Nonetheless, it’s a notable end-of-an-era second for Tesla and the broader automotive business, which was without end modified when the Mannequin 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 Mannequin S and X with its Optimus humanoid robots, which shall be made at its Fremont, California, manufacturing unit. 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 unit to shore up chip provide.
However the merchandise that basically stood out to me — and a real Elon Inc round economic system deal — was Tesla’s plan to make investments $2 billion into one other Musk firm, xAI, and signaled plans to extra carefully align these two firms. In the meantime, different retailers are reporting talks are underway to presumably merge (in some mixture) three of Musk’s firms: SpaceX, Tesla, and xAI.
However let’s come again right down to earth for a second and evaluate Tesla’s present enterprise. Its gross sales are down year-over-year, whereas its smaller vitality storage enterprise made optimistic good points.
A bit chicken
We’re not fairly able to share the total particulars, however we’ve heard from one little chicken that there’s some exercise on the fundraising entrance for Waymo. You in all probability noticed reporting final month about Waymo elevating as much as a $15 billion spherical led by its guardian firm Alphabet. Based mostly 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 hitch. One little chicken advised me one of many different buyers could also be an OEM (unique gear producer.
Keep tuned for extra on this.
Bought a tip for us? Electronic mail Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or my Sign at kkorosec.07, or electronic mail Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com.
Offers!
Waabi will get my “deal of the week” badge — and never simply due to the greenback figures connected. The autonomous car startup has raised $750 million in a Sequence C spherical co-led by Khosla Ventures and G2 Enterprise Companions, plus one other $250 million in milestone capital from Uber to assist the deployment of 25,000 or extra Waabi Driver-powered robotaxis solely on its platform.
Uber is already a Waabi backer, collaborating in one in every of its earliest raises in 2021. However that is about greater than cash. When Waabi first launched, it centered on making use of its autonomous car 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 deal with 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 massive rigs.
Different offers that obtained my consideration …
Gatik AI, a startup growing autonomous vehicles centered on the “center mile,” has signed a take care of a significant (unnamed) consumer-goods firm. Right 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. In line with the corporate, it has accomplished 60,000 absolutely driverless orders with out incident.
Luminar’s lidar enterprise has been bought for $33 million to Redmond, Washington-based MicroVision. The corporate, 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 provide, made a play for Luminar’s lidar enterprise.
Rad Energy Bikes, which began the chapter course of a couple of month in the past, reached a deal to promote itself to Life Electrical Automobiles Holdings (or Life EV) for round $13.2 million. When accounting for Rad Energy’s liabilities, the full worth of the bid is $14.9 million. Historical past lesson: Rad Energy has raised $329.2 million since its founding and as soon as had a valuation of $1.65 billion.
Redwood Supplies raised $425 million in a Sequence 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. Learn the total story to study what Redwood plans to do with the capital.
Notable reads and different tidbits
Obi, an organization that aggregates real-time pricing and pickup occasions throughout a number of ride-hailing providers, shared new information on ride-hailing and robotaxis within the San Francisco Bay Space. There are just a few 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 begin growing its personal robotaxis once more. It is a data-sharing play; sensor-equipped Uber vehicles will accumulate after which share information with companions like Lucid, Waymo, and Waabi. Vital notice: No contracts are signed but.
Waymo is now allowed to function a robotaxi service to and from the San Francisco Worldwide Airport (SFO). The corporate will start providing entry to SFO to a choose variety of riders earlier than providing it to all prospects within the coming months. That win comes with a little bit of tarnish, nevertheless. Waymo is underneath investigation by the Nationwide Freeway Visitors Security Administration and Nationwide Transportation Security Board after the corporate reported one in every of its robotaxis struck a toddler close to an elementary faculty in Santa Monica on January 23.
The San Francisco Police Divisionis investigating an incident involving a Zoox autonomous car that crashed into the motive force’s-side door of a parked automobile.
Yet one more factor …
It’s been just a few weeks since we’ve had a ballot and here’s a enjoyable one: What’s going to the identify or ticker of Musk’s mixed supercompany be?
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