Tesla's quarterly operating profit fell 56% as it ramped up spending on AI and robotics — is that the right move for the company?
Tesla reported that third-quarter operating income dropped 56% to $718 million while R&D spending jumped 69% to $2.76 billion on AI projects like Optimus, the Cybercab and what it calls Super Intelligence.
It depends on what you mean by, "hurting the business?" Tesla was a hype focused company with poor build quality that exploited an untapped market. Once other manufacturers with better engineering processes moved into that market it began to fail. Now it's flailing at other hype businesses
Robots (potentially) good, LLMs bad.
Musk says their humanoid robots will be on the market in 2028. His track record says it'll probably be later, but I do think that could be a huge market for them. And their biggest competitors are from China so will probably be restricted from selling in US.