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Electric Shock

The many reasons Tesla’s stock is down

Does it even need an excuse anymore?

3/18/25 11:19AM

These days Tesla doesn’t really need a single reason to see its stock plunge. Its headwinds are many, and many of them are evergreen. Today the stock is down about 6%. Why? Here are some potential recent options:

BYD just blew Tesla’s Superchargers out of the water by unveiling charging tech that’s more than twice as fast as Tesla’s.
Chinese rivals Zeekr and Xpeng became the first to offer level 3 autonomous driving, meaning drivers can take their hands off the wheel.
Even Tesla’s leadership is selling the stock — to the tune of more than $100 million in recent weeks.
Sales have plunged around the world this year, making the company’s promised “return to growth” seem more remote.
Analysts keep lowering their forecasts for full-year deliveries.
The brand has become more unpopular than ever among the general population of the US, which is its biggest market, thanks in part to the political actions of its CEO, Elon Musk.
People around the world are boycotting the company.
A YouTuber just demonstrated how Tesla’s choice to use only cameras as sensors makes its vehicles less smart than a “Looney Tunes” character.
The company halted deliveries of its “bullet-proof” Cybertrucks after the vehicles’ trim started flying off and turning into projectiles.
There’s been a market-wide breakdown among momentum stocks.
Tesla is one of the worst-performing stocks in the S&P 500 this year.

There are probably other reasons, but any one of these, or a combination of them, can easily pummel the stock.

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SpaceX and Tesla’s Terafab could cost $119 billion — far more than expected

The initial phase of SpaceX and Tesla’s joint chip production effort, called Terafab, could cost $55 billion, with additional phases adding up to $119 billion in capital investment, Reuters reports, citing a notice posted on a Texas county website. Ultimately the goal of Terafab is to build enough in-house AI chip capacity to supply both companies.

The price tag is also higher than expected. Morgan Stanley had previously estimated Terafab would cost $34 billion to $45 billion.

Fortunately for Tesla, whose capex is expected to skyrocket this year, much of the early spending will sit on SpaceX’s balance sheet.

Here’s Musk on the last earnings call:

“SpaceX is going to take care of like the initial phase of the scaled up Terafab... Any kind of intercompany thing has to be approved by both the SpaceX and Tesla board of directors. It’s got to go through a conflict resolution. It’s going to have, unfortunately, a lot of complexity because we’ve got to make sure Tesla shareholders are served and SpaceX shareholders are served, and strike the right balance there.”

SpaceX files plan for $55 billion Terafab chip facility in Texas

The price tag is also higher than expected. Morgan Stanley had previously estimated Terafab would cost $34 billion to $45 billion.

Fortunately for Tesla, whose capex is expected to skyrocket this year, much of the early spending will sit on SpaceX’s balance sheet.

Here’s Musk on the last earnings call:

“SpaceX is going to take care of like the initial phase of the scaled up Terafab... Any kind of intercompany thing has to be approved by both the SpaceX and Tesla board of directors. It’s got to go through a conflict resolution. It’s going to have, unfortunately, a lot of complexity because we’ve got to make sure Tesla shareholders are served and SpaceX shareholders are served, and strike the right balance there.”

Rani Molla22h

Apple to let users choose between Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI models

Apple has been inching toward letting outside AI power its devices — and now it’s going further.

The company plans to let users choose between rival AI models across iOS 27, due this fall, expanding beyond ChatGPT to include players like Google and Anthropic, Bloomberg reports. The difference this time: deeper integration, with outside models powering features like Siri, writing tools, and image generation across the system.

Currently, Apple’s voice assistant, Siri, gives users the ability to query ChatGPT, but doing so requires a clunky extra step and usage has been poor. Meanwhile, Apple’s own AI tools have fallen short. (Apple has decided to use Google’s Gemini to power Siri in the future.) It’s not clear users care which AI is under the hood — as long as it works.

Apple to Let Users Choose Rival AI Models Across Its iOS 27 Features

Rani Molla5/5/26

FactSet and S&P Global fall after Anthropic releases financial services agents

FactSet and S&P Global are trading lower after Anthropic unveiled a set of AI agents meant to automate financial services work. Both stocks also sold off earlier this year after Anthropic’s Claude introduced financial research tools.

The 10 agents handle tasks like earnings analysis, market research, financial modeling, and auditing — tasks that mirror how analysts use FactSet and S&P Global’s data and research platforms.

Agents for financial services and insurance

Rani Molla5/5/26

Big publishers sue Meta over AI training

A group of major publishers, including Elsevier, McGraw Hill, and Hachette, sued Meta on Tuesday, alleging the company used millions of pirated books and journal articles to train its Llama models. The case escalates earlier lawsuits led by individual authors, bringing in deeper-pocketed players with more coordinated legal firepower.

Meta says AI training qualifies as fair use and plans to fight the class-action lawsuit. But the stakes are rising: a similar case against Anthropic settled for $1.5 billion last year, and courts have yet to determine a consistent standard for evaluating such claims.