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BYD’s profit could double in Q1, as deliveries keep racing ahead of Tesla

The Chinese EV giant delivered 1 million+ cars in Q1 and continues to pull ahead on some pretty huge metrics.

4/9/25 11:28AM

In its preliminary earnings for the first quarter on Tuesday, electric automaker BYD revealed that net income could jump as much as 119% in the first 3 months of the year to 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion), after delivering more than 1 million EVs across Q1 — up almost 60% on the same period last year.

Easy ride

While Trump’s tariffs have been a major bump in the road for other automakers, BYD — which had no plans to sell cars in the US owing to existing tariffs, even before this latest round — has had a pretty smooth year so far, with shares hitting a record high in March, after the company announced its market-leading superfast charging tech.

Less than a week later, execs and investors at the Shenzhen-based company had even more to cheer, after the EV giant posted 777 billion yuan ($107 billion) in sales across 2024, surpassing US rival Tesla’s annual revenue figures for the first time in 7 years.

BYD lagging Tesla on that measure has often been down to the Chinese automaker’s comparatively cheap cars, too, with one of its most popular EVs starting around $10,000. On model deliveries overall, BYD has been pulling ahead for years now.

Per numbers from CnEV, a company that tracks China’s electric vehicle market, BYD delivered just over 1 million EV units in the first 3 months of 2025, compared to Tesla’s 336,681 shipments over the same period, which disappointed investors in Elon Musk’s car company. Although Tesla’s recent struggles around the world have certainly led to more daylight between the two EV makers in recent months, the gap has looked increasingly difficult for the American automaker to close ever since it first ceded the lead in 2022.

In bad news for Tesla execs and investors, some worry that tariffs might only widen the gulf between the two.

Thank you, Mr. President

Speaking with the New York Post recently, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said that they were “probably drinking champagne” at BYD headquarters as Trump announced the tariffs, adding that the new restrictions only “accelerate BYD’s success,” and estimating that the tariffs could force additional costs of as much as $100 billion on automakers like Tesla each year.

Investors took note of the company’s better-than-expected preliminary results, pushing shares up as much as 7.8% on Tuesday, with BYD up ~20% so far this year, while Tesla has declined more than 40% in the same period.

Jon Keegan8h

FT: Meta considering “tens of billions” in new capital to fund AI

Just days after Google announced a monster $85 billion upsized equity raise, the extremely profitable Meta is seeking to sell “tens of billions of dollars” in stock, according to a new report from the Financial Times.

Meta is planning on spending between $125 billion and $145 billion on AI capital expenditure this year alone.

Shares dropped more than 5% on the news.

Meta weighs big equity raising after blockbuster Google deal

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Meta is supercharging its subscription businesses

The free-app giant never really cared about recurring revenue. Now, it’s launching paid plans for all sorts of stuff.

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FT: Anthropic staff helping the NSA use Mythos for offensive cyberattacks

Anthropic’s Mythos AI model was deemed too dangerous to release to the public, with the company citing its ability to orchestrate novel cyberattacks.

And that’s just what the National Security Agency is doing, with the help of Anthropic staff embedded at the agency, according to a report from the Financial Times.

Only a small number of companies and US allies have been given access to the advanced model, which means America’s adversaries have not had the chance to shore up their defenses against the AI model’s new offensive capabilities.

The arrangement is especially unusual as the Pentagon has deemed Anthropic’s AI a national security supply chain risk — effectively blacklisting it for defense work — in response to the company’s refusal to allow its technology to be used for any legal application, which could include autonomous killing or mass surveillance. Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the determination.

US National Security Agency using Anthropic’s Mythos for cyber attacks

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Longtime Tesla bear JPMorgan upgraded Tesla and raised its price target to $475 from $145

For more than a decade, JPMorgan was Wall Street’s most stubborn Tesla skeptic, anchored by auto analyst Ryan Brinkman’s strict focus on traditional car fundamentals and near-term delivery numbers.

But JPM recently handed coverage of the stock to a new analyst, Rajat Gupta, who is throwing that playbook out the window. In a note Friday, the firm upgraded Tesla to “neutral” from “underweight” and raised its price target 228% to $475 from $145. (The analyst consensus on FactSet is $403.) Instead of focusing on the company’s struggling vehicle business, the new analyst is orienting himself more toward Tesla’s idea of the future, now modeling Tesla’s physical AI and robotaxi fleets all the way out to the year 2040.

Here are the main reasons for the capitulation:

Looking past the car lot: Gupta argues that Tesla “is at the forefront of physical AI, entering uncharted TAMs” and therefore “deserves the benefit of the doubt to be valued on LT earnings potential” rather than near-term speed bumps.
Unmatched vertical integration: Tesla’s control over everything from battery cells to custom silicon gives it a massive moat. JPM notes this starting point advantage is “unmatched at an industrial level scale” and “still somewhat under-appreciated and misunderstood.”
The AWS flywheel effect: Deploying Optimus robots inside its own factories “should not only lower COGS for the base automotive business, but more importantly, help validate the product at an industrial scale.” Gupta called it “a classic flywheel effect, somewhat analogous to AWS and Kiva at AMZN.”

For Tesla bulls who have argued for years that this is an AI company and not a carmaker, JPM’s sudden $3.9 trillion valuation model is the ultimate validation.

Anthropic ponders self-improving AI

Anthropic says Claude already writes 80% of its code. A new post asks what happens when the models can improve themselves — and whether anyone could stop them.

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