(Patrick T. Fallon/Getty Images)

Tesla delivery miss puts margins and cash flow in focus

Tesla reports first-quarter earnings Wednesday.

4/21/26 9:58AM

Tesla is posting Q1 earnings Wednesday. Following its delivery miss earlier this month, in which the company produced 50,000 more vehicles than it sold, Wall Street has dialed back its forecasts.

Here’s the FactSet analyst consensus:

Revenue of $22.3 billion, up 15% year on year.
Earnings per share of $0.36.
Free cash flow of -$1.4 billion.

Pressure on free cash flow is a key focus this quarter. The expected decline reflects a combination of lower regulatory credit revenue, ongoing pricing pressure to move inventory, and rising capital expenditure, which is projected to climb significantly this year (to a record $20 billion before even factoring in its Terafab investment). Investors will also be watching how all of this affects margins.

On the earnings call, investors will be focused less on the quarter itself and more on Tesla’s longer-term autonomous and AI ambitions. That includes Robotaxi, which this week expanded limited service to Dallas and Houston, for a total of four markets. During its last earnings report, Tesla said it plans to grow to nine Robotaxi markets by the first half of this year.

Investors will also be listening for progress on Optimus, after Tesla said it plans to repurpose some existing vehicle manufacturing capacity toward humanoid robot production — part of CEO Elon Musk’s broader push toward an “autonomous future.”

By segment, analysts expect growth to be driven more by newer businesses than by autos, as investors weigh whether growth in higher-margin segments can help offset ongoing pressure on automotive margins and support cash flow. Automotive revenue is expected to rise 12% year over year to $15.7 billion, while energy and services are forecast to grow 22% and 24%, respectively, to about $3.3 billion each.

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