New Tesla Model 3 With Full Self-Driving Activated

(Matteo Della Torre/Getty Images)

After a record quarter, analysts point out that Tesla’s car sales don’t really matter anymore

Tell that to Apple and its iPhone.

10/23/25 4:00PM

Tesla currently makes 75% of its revenue — which reached a record last quarter — from electric vehicle sales, but increasingly analysts say that doesn’t matter. In other words, they’re buying what CEO Elon Musk, who has repeatedly said Tesla isn’t a car company but rather an autonomous and AI company, is selling.

Truist’s William Stein says Tesla’s auto delivery data and earnings are “decreasingly” relevant to its stock price.

“Most of the value of the shares is tied up in AI projects including (full self-driving), robotaxi, and especially Optimus,” Stein wrote. “All of the AI projects are at once quite unproven (close to zero revenue), and potentially extremely valuable.”

Barclays analyst Dan Levy, who has long argued that Tesla’s stock price is divorced from fundamentals and who has a price target for the stock at $350 (it’s currently trading at $445), says investors got the memo.

“Tesla missed on 3Q EPS, but it doesn’t matter. Because what is increasingly clear and understood is that the auto business is not the future emphasis for Tesla. Rather the focus ahead remains on Tesla’s growth endeavors in AI — autonomous and robots.”

Wedbush Securities analyst and Tesla bull Dan Ives is perhaps the biggest proponent of this narrative. From a pre-earnings note:

“The earnings/guidance on Wed are clearly important but take a backseat to the broader and important AI initiatives at Tesla. We continue to strongly believe the most important chapter in Tesla’s growth story is now beginning with the AI era now here. It starts with autonomous then robotics as we believe the autonomous valuation is worth $1 trillion alone to the Tesla story over the next few years that will start to get unlocked over the coming months.”

Tesla has long been a company that doesn’t trade on fundamentals. But that doesn’t mean car sales, which are currently integral to its top and bottom lines, are unimportant. Apple’s iPhone represents about half the company’s revenue, but Apple is still very much the “iPhone maker.” And, at least for now, Tesla is still a car company.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

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Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

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Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

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TAKING ACCOUNTS

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Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

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Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5