Musk says every Tesla is “capable of being a robotaxi.” But a report says the robotaxis are getting special parts.

Robotaxi hardware upgrades pour some water on Musk’s assertion that every Tesla could be a robotaxi.

6/25/25 8:17AM

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly painted a future where all Teslas would be autonomous and revolutionize the economics of car ownership.

“In the future, most people are not going to buy cars,” he said on the company’s last earnings call. Instead, most people would utilize the Tesla Network, a ride-hailing service that would be made up of company-owned and personally owned vehicles. For those still bullish on buying, their Teslas would become income-generating assets that they lease out to the network when they’re not in use. That’s supposed to include current Tesla owners.

“The vast majority of the Tesla fleet that we’ve made is capable of being a robotaxi,” Musk said on the same call.

Ahead of the company’s tiny but mostly successful robotaxi launch over the weekend, Musk reiterated that the vehicles consumers are buying now, which make up the vast majority of its revenue, are the same ones that will be part of the autonomous ride-hailing future.

“These are unmodified Tesla cars coming straight from the factory, meaning that every Tesla coming out of our factories is capable of unsupervised self-driving!” The robotaxi software, he said, which allows for unsupervised driving, was a “branch” of existing consumer software that would be rolled out to everyone “soon.”

But yesterday, Business Insider reported that Tesla is working on hardware modifications to its Model Ys specifically for the robotaxi program. That includes adding self-cleaning and more durable cameras, as well as a second telecommunications unit to “provide GPS coordinates for the vehicle and allow it to connect with remote operators,” among other changes.

The move suggests the obvious: the needs of a commercial vehicle are more demanding than that of consumer products. They’re also likely more expensive.

Musk has repeatedly knocked Google’s Waymo, which has a much bigger market so far than Tesla’s robotaxi, as costing too much. Indeed, the promise that every Tesla could be a robotaxi is central to the company’s promise to scale the service rapidly.

Presumably the company’s forthcoming Cybercabs — which are supposedly going into “volume production” next year — could bridge the gap between what is acceptable for individuals versus individuals hoping to lease their cars to the Tesla Network, but the BI report pours water on the idea that any car can be a robotaxi.

Jon Keegan59m

EU calls for bids to build “AI gigafactories” in 2026

The European Union wants to shore up its domestic AI infrastructure, and reduce its dependence on American tech companies.

To further this goal, the bloc is planning on accepting bids to build EU-based “AI gigafactories,” according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

EU Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna Virkkunen announced that bids would begin in January or February, according to the report.

As the AI arms race heats up, countries are racing to secure their own sovereign AI infrastructure, including building their own AI models that reflect countries’ culture and language, and control over cloud computing resources.

Europe is lagging behind the US and Asia in AI infrastructure. But it may be hard for the EU to fully break free of American tech — unlike the US and China, there is no European alternative for the powerful GPUs needed to train and run AI models. It’s very likely that any AI gigafactories in the EU will be filled with GPUs from Nvidia.

EU to Open Bidding for AI Gigafactories in Early 2026

EU Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna Virkkunen announced that bids would begin in January or February, according to the report.

Jon Keegan3h

Google’s AI chip business could be a $900 billion boon for the company

Google may be sitting on a massive new business that it has yet to fully exploit.

Google’s custom tensor processing unit (TPU) AI chips have been getting a lot of attention recently, making the tech world wonder if there are other ways to power its AI dreams rather than just by using Nvidia’s GPUs.

Bloomberg spoke with analysts who estimate that, if it does decide to sell its chips to others, Google could capture 20% of the AI market, making it a $900 billion business. For comparison, Google Cloud pulled in $43.2 billion of revenue last year.

Even if Google just sticks with renting access to its TPUs, it will continue to drive down costs and increase margins as it ekes out performance improvements, such as the 30x improvement in power efficiency that the latest generation of TPUs has delivered for the company.

Alphabet’s AI Chips Are a Potential $900 Billion ‘Secret Sauce’

Rani Molla4h

OpenAI’s Sam Altman has explored bringing his feud with Tesla’s Elon Musk to space

Billionaires, they’re just like us: they want to bring their terrestrial beefs to outer space.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has explored buying or partnering with a rocket company to compete with Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX, The Wall Street Journal reports. The two billionaires have had numerous public feuds over the years that have played out in the courts and on social media. They also both lead AI companies that have insatiable needs for data centers and have publicly discussed building data centers in space.

Altman seems like he thinks this could be more than science fiction. He reportedly reached out to rocket maker Stoke Space to potentially make equity investments in the company to get a controlling stake, though the talks are no longer active, WSJ reports.

Or perhaps he just wanted a Sherwood bobblehead of himself.

Jon Keegan5h

Report: Meta to slash metaverse, VR spending by up to 30%

Four years after changing its name to reflect its focus on the loosely defined “metaverse,” Meta is planning deep cuts to the company’s money-losing virtual reality efforts, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Meta’s Reality Labs division, home to the teams working on metaverse products — which include Quest VR headsets, Horizon Worlds, and its Ray-Ban Meta glasses — has lost about $70 billion since the company started breaking out the unit in 2020.

The company has struggled to get consumers to buy into CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of working and playing in virtual reality worlds, like the company’s Horizon Worlds platform.

Investors seem to love the news of the pivot, as shares shot up as much as 5% in early trading.

Meta’s recent hiring spree of AI superstars from competitors for its Meta Superintelligence Labs shows that the company’s attention is now all in on AI.

Meta’s Zuckerberg Plans Deep Cuts for Metaverse Efforts

The company has struggled to get consumers to buy into CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of working and playing in virtual reality worlds, like the company’s Horizon Worlds platform.

Investors seem to love the news of the pivot, as shares shot up as much as 5% in early trading.

Meta’s recent hiring spree of AI superstars from competitors for its Meta Superintelligence Labs shows that the company’s attention is now all in on AI.