Tech
California Is Ending The Clean Air Vehicle Decal Allowing Electric Vehicle Drivers To Go Solo In Carpool Lane
(Sarah Reingewirtz/Getty Images)
Electric current

Tesla just had its best month since the election

The stock is riding high on analyst upgrades and big expected third-quarter sales.

Rani Molla
Updated 9/30/25 5:25PM

November 2024 was a great month for Tesla. Its CEO threw his chips in for the winning presidential candidate, who was expected to slash federal red tape for Tesla’s white whale: self-driving cars.

September 2025 was nearly as good — at least in terms of the stock price’s increase from the month before.

Tesla closed at $444, 34% higher than it ended August. Tesla ended last November 38% higher than the month before, at $345. The company’s shares then hit an all-time high in December 2024 before a combination of falling sales and a fallout with President Trump, among other headwinds, sent the stock down. Tesla only went positive for the year earlier this month.

Lately, Tesla has been riding high on a series of analyst upgrades touting the company’s AI and autonomous ambitions. Last week, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives raised his price target for Tesla to a Wall Street high of $600, forecasting a $1 trillion “AI and autonomous opportunity.”

The company is also, for the first time in a while, selling a lot of regular vehicles, which make up the lion’s share of its existing revenue. That part is a bit bittersweet, since the reason for the rise ends tomorrow. Electric vehicles in general are flying off lots in the US, with record sales expected this quarter as would-be buyers pull forward purchases to take advantage of the $7,500 federal tax credits, which end tomorrow. Of course, that suggests sales will fall off in subsequent quarters. Still, it’s good news now for Tesla, which some analysts predict will have a record quarter that could push the stock even higher.

We’ll know for sure later this week, when Tesla discloses third-quarter delivery numbers.

Update (September 30, 4:00 p.m. ET): Piece has been updated to confirm Tesla did notch its best month since November 2024.

More Tech

See all Tech
tech

Report: OpenAI’s Q1 revenue was $5.7 billion, beating Anthropic

The neck-and-neck race between OpenAI and Anthropic as the AI companies barrel towards their expected IPOs this year, are shaking out some internal numbers for would-be investors to ponder.

The Information is reporting that OpenAI’s first-quarter revenue was about $5.7 billion, about $1 billion ahead of Anthropic’s revenue for the same period.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Anthropic is on course to more than double its first-quarter revenue of $4.8 billion to $10.9 billion in the second-quarter. It is not known what OpenAI is projecting for Q2.

Recently, The New York Times reported that Anthropic’s current fundraising round seeking raise between $30 billion and $50 billion comes with a valuation of up to $950 billion, putting it ahead of OpenAI’s latest reported valuation of $850 billion.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Anthropic is on course to more than double its first-quarter revenue of $4.8 billion to $10.9 billion in the second-quarter. It is not known what OpenAI is projecting for Q2.

Recently, The New York Times reported that Anthropic’s current fundraising round seeking raise between $30 billion and $50 billion comes with a valuation of up to $950 billion, putting it ahead of OpenAI’s latest reported valuation of $850 billion.

tech

Alphabet’s Waymos are still getting caught in floods after recall

Waymo, the self-driving subsidiary of Alphabet, has paused operations in Atlanta after a new report of a vehicle driving into a flooded roadway and getting stuck, TechCrunch reports. The news comes just weeks after the company recalled its fleet of nearly 4,000 driverless cars to deal with a previous flood incident in San Antonio, where the service is also paused.

After that incident, Waymo instituted an “interim remedy” to make the vehicles “exclude additional operating conditions that present an elevated risk of encountering a flooded, higherspeed roadway,” but added that it was still “developing the final remedy for this recall.”

As we’ve noted, Waymo has mostly kept its rollout — now public in 11 cities — to more temperate climates, as severe weather poses more challenges to autonomous vehicles.

After that incident, Waymo instituted an “interim remedy” to make the vehicles “exclude additional operating conditions that present an elevated risk of encountering a flooded, higherspeed roadway,” but added that it was still “developing the final remedy for this recall.”

As we’ve noted, Waymo has mostly kept its rollout — now public in 11 cities — to more temperate climates, as severe weather poses more challenges to autonomous vehicles.

tech

Report: Anthropic is in talks to use Microsoft’s custom AI chips

Anthropic is in talks to rent custom AI chips from Microsoft, according to a report from The Information, as the Claude coder’s scramble for compute continues.

During the first wave of the generative-AI boom, companies rushed to get their hands on Nvidia’s GPUs, as they were the only game in town if you wanted to build new models.

But as the role of inference has shifted to a top priority, with companies focusing on actually running models to make money, they’ve started shopping around, buying chips tailored for the task, and in some cases decided to make their own.

Additionally, Anthropic has become something of a victim of its own success at rolling out products that can be quickly adopted by enterprise clients. That rapid, wide-scale adoption has revealed significant compute constraints. Anthropic is now, effectively, looking for any and all compute capacity it can find, striking deals with CoreWeave, Amazon, Google and Broadcom, and even xAI.

Amazon and Google have both seen hot demand for their custom inference chips. But Microsoft is still trying to get its custom Maia chips into the mix, after encountering delays.

If Microsoft lands Anthropic as a customer for its Azure-based Maia computing services, it could open the door for other companies seeking another option for meeting the sky-high demand for AI inference, as agentic models gobble up trillions of tokens.

But as the role of inference has shifted to a top priority, with companies focusing on actually running models to make money, they’ve started shopping around, buying chips tailored for the task, and in some cases decided to make their own.

Additionally, Anthropic has become something of a victim of its own success at rolling out products that can be quickly adopted by enterprise clients. That rapid, wide-scale adoption has revealed significant compute constraints. Anthropic is now, effectively, looking for any and all compute capacity it can find, striking deals with CoreWeave, Amazon, Google and Broadcom, and even xAI.

Amazon and Google have both seen hot demand for their custom inference chips. But Microsoft is still trying to get its custom Maia chips into the mix, after encountering delays.

If Microsoft lands Anthropic as a customer for its Azure-based Maia computing services, it could open the door for other companies seeking another option for meeting the sky-high demand for AI inference, as agentic models gobble up trillions of tokens.

tech
Jon Keegan

WSJ: OpenAI IPO filing could be coming as soon as this week

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI could file for an IPO as soon as this week. The company is working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on the IPO, which is widely expected to be one of the largest ever. OpenAI is racing against rival Anthropic to be the first startup of the current generative-AI boom to go public.

OpenAI is targeting an IPO as soon as September, per the report.

Latest Stories

Sherwood Media, LLC and Chartr Limited produce fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and are fully owned subsidiaries of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, Robinhood Money, LLC, Robinhood U.K. Ltd, Robinhood Derivatives, LLC, Robinhood Gold, LLC, Robinhood Asset Management, LLC, Robinhood Credit, Inc., Robinhood Ventures DE, LLC and, where applicable, its managed investment vehicles.