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It brings to mind that Musk is bearhugging industries that have long heritage of government interference and control, government expropriation, extreme regulation, censorship, trade controls, overtaxation, labor union capture, etc. Being involved in these industries on a global basis is a...

Also, there's a good chance that 100,000 H100s have been secured for Musk Inc. use, but many fewer have been bought. I think Dell and Oracle are leasing H100s to Musk's various enterprises. Maybe others as well.

Regardless, there's probably more there than meets the eye. Seems very possible that the required negotiations have not yet concluded. I am only peripherally aware of Indian business practices, but I have heard that an agreement in principle is just the start of the real negotiations.

Yes, those shareholding methods leave a lot to be desired for many. It's a shame that better methods cannot be devised. Do you have a general view of Starlink and Tesla marketing methods?

I would guess that Optimus will be walking on the moon much sooner than in 5 years.

The South China Morning Post is reporting that almost all of the Chinese layoffs are in the sales function rather than GF Shanghai. Doesn't square with a production reduction...

If my memory serves, you were also at one time an investor in SpaceX. Assuming that is true, did you also exit your SpaceX position for similar reasons? I have been following the ads trials and have wondered whether the Tesla and Starlink efforts are informing one another or are similarly...

Tesla has filed for GF Texas to be removed from Austin's ETJ (Extra-Territorial Jurisdiction). This means that environmental oversight will revert to Travis County. So perhaps no more trees needing to be moved and similar rules. I assume that also means that building permits and development...

We never pay any-one Dane-geld, No matter how trifling the cost; For the end of that game is oppression and shame, And the nation that plays it is lost!

I think we need to be very mindful of what the table stakes are for AI in general (not specific to self-driving) and whether Tesla can generate enough cash in its operations to secure a seat at the main table. ULA is not a fit company, meanwhile the AI players are killers with huge stacks.

I view it as Tesla still a bit behind the 8-ball. Several others each are spending tens of billions of dollars a year on AI compute.

Just to confirm in case it isn't clear: Tesla Dojo has nothing to do with inference. Rather, it is for training. I agree with you that Tesla's training computing appetite will be huge, so it would be a while if ever before an external offering is made other than to perhaps xAI. I will edit...

I've been thinking about how Tesla is approaching its AI computing needs. We and most others have focused on training needs (Dojo and H100s), but NVIDIA reports that 40% of its data center business is for inference rather than training. It seems likely that as AI use scales, a larger...

Here's Elon agreeing with James Douma, who is expressing the same as above. This appears to be the view of at least the top management of the company. Of course, you can discount this view as another in a line of bad predictions, but understand that the view is resulting in quite large...

If you are referring to "LLM tech" as anything other than shorthand, you are misidentifying the recent breakthrough and its underlying insight. The recent breakthrough is that machine learning passed the point where it is good and useful. The underlying insight is that machine learning quality...

Regarding the workshops, do most of them have collective agreements? Are there enough of those without collective agreements to service the Tesla vehicles that are on the road?

As @unk46 has mentioned in the past, BYD's financial reports are not as straightforward as Tesla's. We need to be careful about making comparisons, especially on the P&L. I think we can trust Tesla's free cash flow, but there are so many moving parts on this that I think we need to be careful...

Communications megaconstellations are inherently global and geopolitical in nature. People are playing dirty, in many cases for their own survival. There are no angels in war. Everybody's going to get muddy and if they're going to go against Musk, they're going to get especially muddy. He...

Like Kitty, I think you need to have a very specific quote. I don't understand that #2 is Musk's opinion. Rather, he thinks that the impediment to the transition is the cost of the underlying technologies. We are observing low costs transforming Tesla's business. But there are other...

Good list. Add Musk Foundation, which was incorporated in California, but was reincorporated in Texas. Non-profit 501(c)(3).

I have been following him since 2003, so I was never under the misimpression that he and I agreed on everything or even a large majority of things. I tried to invest with eyes wide open, and hope that I succeeded. He is a hero of mine, but I disagree with him on a fair bit. Some appear...

I think you are underestimating Musk. You need to take a step back and look at the big picture. This is not entirely about one $57 billion compensation package at Tesla. Not only is he CEO of Tesla, but he is also head of SpaceX, X, xAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, TITS, and probably many...

Regarding Texas incorporation, I have always vaguely understood the state to be a haven for the plaintiff's bar. My educated guess is that while this still might be true, because many of his operations are in Texas and Nevada, Musk is learning the Texas and Nevada legal contexts and how to...

I think it's wonderful to see the crowds in China looking at the Cybertruck. Heartwarming. Not that this really means anything hugely positive for the business (can't hurt), but it's just cool to see such enthusiasm for unique industrial design and widespread appreciation for the work of the...

Senior staff leaving is not necessarily negative, although it may warrant taking a close look to determine. Musk fired the whole top management of Starlink because it was going too slowly. Well, you know the results of that...

Your post is a little far out there, but not so far as to be unrealistic. SpaceX will be landing on the moon in 2025 or 2026. It will be the uncrewed precursor to the NASA crewed mission in 2026-2028. Tesla will have a great opportunity to get at least Optimus to the moon, if it is ready. A...

The table stakes for machine learning that Musk mentions are becoming eye-watering. I hope that the cash that the Tesla auto and energy business throws off can keep up. Microsoft is spending $50 billion a year on infrastructure, most of which appears to be going to AI, so it is not a foregone...

This is a very good post. He also links to a talk by Li Lu, which goes into some depth about the fact that our job as investors is to hold the minority view and/or operate as the minority do. There is no value in siding with the majority. As the vast majority of the market is focused on the...

Over the long run, almost all manual work is boring, repetitive, and dangerous, especially in an auto factory and in construction. Our human bodies break down under repetitive impact and sometimes we make dangerous errors. So I expect Tesla to focus on its own needs for a year or two at least...

After the first "wow," I started thinking about how clumsy the teleoperator must be. The teleoperator is no Marie Kondo, probably just some rando engineer with AR gloves. Solving the clothes folding task requires hiring a few Marie Kondos who are experts and dexterous at folding clothes and...

He finished the task early.

That moment when you realize your CEO has been working for free for the last few years...

A lot of people around here made a lot of money with that gigantic billion dollar comp package. If he wants to reup on the next $20 trillion, I would be amenable.

Which reminds me, the Delaware Chancery Court is about to rule on Musk's last comp package...

Hold on. Musk manages cash flow like no other businessperson of whom I am aware. He's superior. But like any startup founder, he does not necessarily manage to maximize free cash flow in the short or medium term. If he believes that there is an opportunity available and his pocketbook...

There are those Q1 comments, but I was thinking more about direct comments from the Q3 earnings call, for example. The context is that the company had just busted through capital expenditure guidance (despite some spending delays like you mention). And the company had just brought online its...

I am watching FCF like a hawk, because it is the best hard information available. But for me, it is becoming an increasingly unsatisfying metric. Musk indicated last year that he is managing more or less toward FCF break-even. Why would he do this? It seems to be because Tesla is pivoting...

One small news item over the past week that is interesting is the Palo Alto substation upgrades for which Tesla is splitting the costs with the city and is paying contractors to have the project expedited. Normally, electricity infrastructure upgrades have a very long lead time. For this...

In hindsight, it seems that Amazon wasn't working on the base technology. It wasn't cloud computing, or even silicon. It was energy. I think it's no coincidence that Microsoft is starting to talk about nuclear power investments, even though I think that's a bit misdirected because it can't be...

Aren't they increasingly similar subjects? Elon is talking about AI in terms of GW and MW, transformers, inverters, and the like. Even in the short term (1.5-2 years). AI data centers are being collocated with car and bot manufacturing facilities, photovoltaics, and megapacks. Done well...

Elon held a space with Peter Diamandis. Below is a link to a compressed version. See particularly at ~43:30 when Elon starts talking about the acceleration of AI computing growth. He notes a 10x 6-month growth rate in AI computing power industry-wide and says that it is the fastest technology...

Gizmochina is reporting that Tesla will be adopting TSMC's 3nm process next year for its FSD computer and that analysts project Tesla as TSMC's seventh largest customer. Does anybody here have insight into this? Is this report credible? Would this indicate that Tesla is stepping up the pace...

Last we knew, Tesla was ramping its computing capability with a vengeance. But its wants and needs are unlimited, up to and including human attainment of a Kardashev Level 1 civilization. It is taking months to train the FSD model. How often would they like to come out with a newly trained...

To be effective, a bully needs to go after the weakest. Did IF Metall believe Hedin and Bilia were stronger than Tesla? Or does IF Metall need to brush up on their bullying skills?

My guess is that the equity portion of compensation has a big impact in each worker's calculations. Vesting clauses would need to be closely examined. I also understand that employees get very favorable stock purchase terms. All of that goes away if you don't show up for work. I think...

That's an amazing admission that this is not quite going the way the union hoped or expected. The whole goal is to get more Tesla employees to join the union, not to have fewer! The current strike package is I believe 1.3x salary. So there must be a strong draw to continuing to show up for...

The future is unknown, but I think it's clear that that there is a huge imbalance right now between supply and demand on compute. It has been this way since the introduction of Chat GPT-3.5 earlier this year. The scrum has been intense. Tesla's CEO, its prior CFO, NVIDIA's financials, and...

Both Optimus and FSD are constrained by the amount of training compute that Tesla is willing and able to devote to each effort. For much of next year, it seems likely that FSD will be prioritized for these scarce resources. That said, Tesla is spending a huge amount on new computing resources...

Scary rhetoric aside, we seem to be a long way from Tesla exiting Sweden or the other Nordic countries. Tesla has been able to operate in many challenging jurisdictions and business conditions, both in the US and internationally. Generally speaking this is because the vast majority of...

V2 does look like a treat. That said, it appears that Tesla and other Musk, Inc. companies have an acute shortage of compute and Optimus is a bit down the line of priorities. You can see this with the quote from Larry Ellison about xAI's appetite for compute and Tesla's subdued free cash flow...