Tesla 's fourth-quarter and 2025 earnings reports, led by Elon Musk , reflected the impacts on the automaker's sales following factors such as the end of subsidies for electric cars in the US and the businessman's political activism, heavily focused on supporting far-right parties and politicians.
Among other issues, this melting pot helps explain the recent loss of leadership in the global electric car market to the Chinese company BYD . And it was the backdrop for the company's revenue in 2025 to fall by 3%, to US$94.8 billion, the first annual decline in its history.
On another line of the balance sheet, net income of US$3.7 billion last year represented a 46% decrease compared to the amount reported in 2024. Meanwhile, annual production fell 7% to 1.65 million vehicles, and deliveries dropped 9% to 1.63 million units.
These and other figures initially signal a tortuous path for the company. But other announcements included in the earnings release, held on the evening of Wednesday, January 28, indicate that Musk has a plan to recalculate Tesla's roadmap.
The path involves consolidating Tesla as a technology company, something Musk has always touted. And, at the expense of the electric car sales business, the focus is on advancing in areas such as robotaxis and humanoid robots , with artificial intelligence (AI) as the main driver.
“This will be a year of major investments,” Musk said during a conference call with analysts about the results, according to Reuters . “We are making huge investments for an epic future.”
Tesla will not, in fact, hold back in putting this plan into action. The company announced plans to invest more than $20 billion in 2026, more than double the $8.5 billion invested last year and well above the previous record of $11.3 billion, consolidated in 2024.
Of that total, in this shift, few resources will be allocated to the traditional sales of electric vehicles. A large part of that figure will go precisely to the robotaxis, dubbed Cybercabs, and the company's humanoid robots, which are named Optimus.
In one of the moves that reflects this transition, Musk and his colleagues announced the end of production of the Model S sedan and the Model X SUV. Located at the company's factory in Fremont, California, these lines will be redirected to the production of the Optimus, with a capacity of 1 million units per year.
Part of this figure will also be reserved for the Tesla Semi, the automaker's semi-trailer truck announced in 2022, but which is not yet in mass production. As well as for battery and lithium production plants.
It is here, however, that some of the barriers Tesla needs to overcome lie. Aside from Musk's speeches and catchy phrases – a recurring question mark over the company – virtually all of these lines now at the heart of the strategy remain just promises.
So far, the company hasn't produced a single Optimus unit. Last week, Musk stated that initial production of the robot, as well as the Cybercab, would be "agonizingly slow" before gaining traction. Yesterday, he said he doesn't expect significant Optimus volume until the end of this year.
On another path that is also proving bumpy, that of robotaxis, it will be necessary to accelerate to catch up with rivals such as Alphabet's Waymo , which has already implemented the service in several cities in the United States.
With several unfulfilled expansion projections, Tesla, for its part, is currently only in Austin, Texas. Musk told analysts that he expects to have the service deployed in an area of one-quarter to one-half of the United States by the end of 2026. The initial goal was the end of 2025.
At the same time, he stressed that he plans to start production of the Cybercabs in April. "We expect that, over time, we will produce far more Cybercabs than all our other vehicles combined," said the businessman.
Aside from these doubts and the fact that, in parallel, Tesla will have to deal with an increasingly competitive market for electric vehicles, its flagship brand, Andrew Rocco, equity strategist at Zacks Investment Research, told Reuters that he considers the $20 billion investment as "necessary spending".
“If Optimus is to be a best-selling product, the artificial intelligence needs to be trained in the best possible way,” said Rocco. He added that the planned investment gives him confidence that Musk’s “sometimes flexible deadlines will indeed be met.”
As part of this plan – and the essential role that artificial intelligence will play on all fronts of this transition – Tesla also announced a $2 billion investment in xAI, the AI startup also led by Musk.
In a statement, the two companies emphasized that they have signed an agreement to strengthen their relationship and "enhance Tesla's ability to develop and implement AI products and services in the physical world."
"With Tesla's traditional electric vehicle business slowing down, investors in the company can participate in the artificial intelligence boom," said Rocco of Zacks Investment Research. However, in November, Tesla shareholders had rejected an investment proposal in the startup.
Contrary to this initial rejection, Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak + Co, told Bloomberg that the investment in xAI will now likely be well received by many investors and will overshadow Tesla's results.
“If Tesla is going to perform as the optimists expect, it will be with robot taxis and robotics,” Maley said. “So this investment is exactly what the optimists wanted to hear.”
On Nasdaq, initial reactions give a measure of this equation. After rising more than 1% in pre-market trading, Tesla shares were down 1.87% around 10:25 AM (local time). Over 12 months, however, the shares have accumulated an 8.5% increase in value, giving the company a market capitalization of US$1.4 trillion.
