{"id":14290,"date":"2026-07-23T05:24:47","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T00:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=14290"},"modified":"2026-07-23T05:24:47","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T00:24:47","slug":"teslas-push-into-ai-and-robotics-is-proving-costly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=14290","title":{"rendered":"Tesla&#039;s push into AI and robotics is proving costly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.axios.com\/IepTsVgzi68amgbvWRIAEmqWciM=\/1366x768\/smart\/2020\/07\/15\/164554-1594831554463.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Tesla&#8217;s massive investments in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/01\/22\/elon-musk-tesla-optimus-robots\" target=\"_blank\">humanoid robots<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/local\/houston\/2026\/04\/21\/houston-tesla-robotaxi-service-launch\" target=\"_blank\">self-driving cars<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/03\/22\/musk-unveils-record-chip-building-plan\" target=\"_blank\">AI chips<\/a> are hurting profits, but the company says it&#8217;ll all pay off down the line.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why it matters:<\/strong> CEO Elon <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/business\/elon-musk\" target=\"_blank\">Musk<\/a> indicated he&#8217;s &#8220;never been more optimistic about the future,&#8221; but acknowledged the investments could lead to uneven results.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><strong>Zoom in:<\/strong> Tesla revenue jumped on record vehicle deliveries in the second quarter, but the company saw a significant dip in operating profit because of its heavy spending on R&amp;D.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tesla plans to spend more than $25 billion on capital investments this year, and that spending rate will grow over the the next two or three years, CFO Vaibhav Taneja told investors and analysts on a call late Wednesday.<\/li>\n<li>Additionally, Tesla plans to borrow as much as $30 billion to accelerate its investments in robotaxis, Optimus robots, semiconductors, solar manufacturing and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/technology\/automation-and-ai\" target=\"_blank\">AI<\/a> compute infrastructure, he said.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>&#8220;We&#8217;re investing a lot <\/strong>in growing the core business and really preparing for the future,&#8221; Musk said on the call. &#8220;So this is a massive capex year, but I&#8217;m confident that all the things that we&#8217;re investing in will yield incredible returns \u2014 really, maybe the best capex returns that we&#8217;ve ever seen.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>By the numbers:<\/strong> Tesla reported Q2 revenue of $28 billion, up 23% year over year. <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Net income was $1.1 billion, down 5% compared to a year ago, and essentially flat with the last three quarters. <\/li>\n<li>Operating margin fell to just 1.4%, compared to 4.1% a year ago.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>State of play:<\/strong> Tesla began production of its driverless Cybercab in Texas during the quarter, but Musk said its Robotaxi service is rolling out cautiously to ensure safety.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tesla Semi remains on track for production later this year at a new factory in Nevada, but Musk said autonomous trucking is not a priority until next year.<\/li>\n<li>The company said it&#8217;s making progress to expand battery pack manufacturing capacity, which it called &#8220;the main limiting factor to near-term vehicle production volume increase.&#8221; <\/li>\n<li>Tesla tore out assembly lines for its discontinued Model S and X cars at its Fremont, Calif., factory and expects Optimus humanoid robot production to begin there later this year.<\/li>\n<li>Musk acknowledged that scaling Optimus production will be difficult. &#8220;This is going to be the hardest product to scale manufacturing that we&#8217;ve ever made at Tesla, because everything on the robot is new.&#8221; <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The bottom line:<\/strong> Tesla&#8217;s focus is always over the horizon.<\/p>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tesla&#8217;s massive investments in humanoid robots, self-driving cars and AI chips are hurting profits, but the company says it&#8217;ll all pay off down the line. Why it matters: CEO Elon Musk indicated he&#8217;s &#8220;never been more optimistic about the future,&#8221; but acknowledged the investments could lead to uneven results. Zoom in: Tesla revenue jumped on&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.axios.com\/IepTsVgzi68amgbvWRIAEmqWciM=\/1366x768\/smart\/2020\/07\/15\/164554-1594831554463.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-political-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}