Tesla light show on December 29, 2025, in Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China (VCG/Getty Images)

Tesla stops selling self-driving technology as a one-off, pivoting to a subscription model amid slowing vehicle sales

Starting Valentine’s Day, Full Self-Driving will be subscription only.

1/14/26 7:04AM

“Tesla will stop selling FSD after Feb 14,” CEO Elon Musk announced in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. “FSD will only be available as a monthly subscription thereafter.”

The stock initially jumped on the news before sliding lower in early trading on Wednesday. The mixed reaction mirrors the announcement itself, which can be read in at least two very different ways, depending on how generous you want to be to Tesla and its Full Self-Driving technology.

The generous take: As FSD nears the ability for Teslas to actually drive themselves without human intervention, its value is going to skyrocket. Tesla will be able to charge much more per month as part of a handsome, high-margin recurring revenue stream, so it will no longer make sense for Tesla to sell one-off lifetime packages.

“The FSD price will continue to rise as the software gets closer to full self-driving capability with regulatory approval,” Musk said in 2020. At “that point, the value of FSD is probably somewhere in excess of $100,000.”

At current rates, Tesla owners can buy FSD for around $8,000 or pay $99 per month — quite a steal by Musk’s estimation.

Of course, from most accounts Tesla’s tech is not actually at the level of full self-driving. Take, for example, Tesla Robotaxis, which run a more advanced version of consumer FSD, but have missed the company’s own deadline to remove safety drivers from the front seats. In Austin, the fleet of roughly 30 Robotaxis has been involved in eight crashes since June, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The less generous take: Very few people were ever willing to shell out for FSD, and those who did were often left frustrated as Tesla repeatedly pushed the promise of true autonomous driving further into the future. That frustration is especially acute for owners of older Teslas, which may require hardware upgrades to run the latest versions of FSD.

So far only 12% of existing drivers pay for FSD — either through the one-off purchase or a subscription — the company reported in October. And Tesla already slashed the purchase price to $8,000 from $12,000 back in 2024, and halved the monthly subscription rate to $99 from $199. Note that in the 2020 quote, Musk is essentially admitting that Full Self-Driving doesn’t mean “full self-driving.”

In the past few years, Tesla’s revenue growth has largely come from energy generation and services, which includes FSD. In the third quarter of 2024, services revenue rose 25%, while automotive sales grew just 8% — and that was during a record delivery and revenue quarter. With fourth-quarter deliveries disappointing, those automotive numbers are likely to look even worse when Tesla reports earnings later this month, making predictable, high-margin subscription revenue all the more attractive.

Jon Keegan8h

Report: US Treasury wants to get a look at Anthropic’s Mythos model

Anthropic’s relationship with the US government is complicated — and the Treasury Department is reportedly looking to make it even more so.

The Pentagon has officially deemed the startup a national security supply chain risk after it refused to allow its Claude AI to be used for any and all national security applications, including domestic surveillance and autonomous killing.

But since Anthropic’s unusual announcement of its next model, Mythos, other parts of the US government want to get their hands on it.

Bloomberg reports that the US Treasury is interested in getting access to Mythos for its own security testing. Last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent summoned top Wall Street CEOs to Washington to discuss the cybersecurity implications of the new model.

Mythos has not yet been released to the public, as Anthropic has deemed its potential offensive cybersecurity capabilities to be too dangerous for wide release, and has opted to share the powerful new model only with a group of leading tech companies.

Anthropic wants these early access partners to test out the model, hoping to secure any major vulnerabilities before a public release. OpenAI also shared a forthcoming AI-powered cybersecurity tool with a select group of partners to shore up defenses in light of advances in detecting vulnerabilities.

European regulators were apparently left out of the loop from the Mythos announcement, and are also eager to test the new model.

US Treasury Seeking Access to Anthropic’s Mythos to Find Flaws

But since Anthropic’s unusual announcement of its next model, Mythos, other parts of the US government want to get their hands on it.

European regulators were apparently left out of the loop from the Mythos announcement, and are also eager to test the new model.

Nate Becker

10h

Quantum stocks rip as IonQ discloses new contracts, hits benchmark milestones

It’s also World Quantum Day.

Rani Molla12h

Report: SpaceX’s satellite internet business is propping up its rocket and AI businesses

Ahead of SpaceX’s highly anticipated IPO in June, new reporting from The Information reveals just how dependent the rocket and AI company is on its internet business.

According to the report, in 2025, Starlink generated $11.4 billion in revenue and $7.2 billion in adjusted EBITDA — a striking 63% margin — making it SpaceX’s only meaningful source of profit.

By contrast, the company’s core rocket launch business and its recently acquired AI unit, xAI, lagged far behind financially. The space launch business generated $4.1 billion in revenue and about $700 million in adjusted EBITDA, while the AI segment brought in $3.2 billion in revenue but lost roughly $1.2 billion on an EBITDA basis.

In other words, Starlink accounted for most of SpaceX’s revenue — and more than all of its adjusted profit.

Starlink’s profitability is already attracting rivals. Amazon on Tuesday agreed to acquire satellite company Globalstar in an effort to more directly compete with Starlink.

Jon Keegan

4/13/26

Stanford AI report: Model capability accelerating, China has closed the gap with the US

Stanford’s annual AI Index Report says “leading models are now nearly indistinguishable” from each other, and benchmarks used to evaluate them are falling behind their accelerating capabilities.

Rani Molla4/13/26

Meta will surpass Google in ad revenue this year, new industry data shows

In a world supported by digital ad dollars, Meta may soon be king. The Instagram owner’s net digital ad revenues are expected to hit $243.5 billion in 2026, surpassing Google’s projected $239.5 billion, according to new data from eMarketer.

The shift is happening as Big Tech companies, including Meta and Google, are increasing their spending on AI in hopes that AI will grow their top and bottom lines.

On the company’s last earnings call, Meta CFO Susan Li credited AI with driving performance gains, and said that growth will continue: “We expect the set of investments we’re making in 2026 will enable us to drive further gains as we continue to integrate AI across all layers of the marketing and customer engagement funnel.”

“In surpassing Google, Meta has essentially had many of its core strategies validated,” said Max Willens, principal analyst at eMarketer. “Meta has long understood that scale, network effects, and habits are more important than anything else in digital media. It has carefully built and defended the advantages it has in all three areas.”

Tesla stops selling self-driving technology as a one-off, pivoting to a subscription model amid slowing vehicle sales

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Report: US Treasury wants to get a look at Anthropic’s Mythos model

US Treasury Seeking Access to Anthropic’s Mythos to Find Flaws

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