Tesla says it now has 1.74 million active “Full Self-Driving” subscriptions, up 67% from a year ago. A footnote in its Q3 2026 shareholder letter explains how it gets there: the metric follows “our 2025 CEO Performance Award” and “includes both upfront payment and monthly subscriptions.”
So owners who bought FSD outright, some of them years ago, count as subscribers. That matters because 10 million active FSD subscriptions is one of the milestones Elon Musk has to hit to earn his 2025 pay package. It also matters because hundred of thousands of those FSD “subscribers” were sold unsupervised self-driving, which Tesla has yet to deliver.
As the smoke clears from its outrageous Roadster demo, Tesla reported Q3 earnings on Wednesday - and the cold reality is that revenue has flatlined.
Tesla said it earned $1.7 billion in net income on $28.0 billion in revenue in the quarter that ended in September 2026. Revenues were flat, while profits dropped 4 percent compared to the third quarter of 2025, when the company earned $1.4 billion in net income on $28.1 billion in revenue. Tesla's revenue came in above Wall Street expectations of $27.9 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG. Tesla's own company-compiled expectations predicted Q3 revenues of $28.3 billion.
Tesla (TSLA) released its financial results and shareholders’ letter for the third quarter (Q3) 2026 after market close today. We’re updating this post with all the details from the financial results, shareholders’ letter, and the conference call later tonight.
The earnings call with management is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. ET.
A Wall Street Journal report said SpaceX CEO Elon Musk ordered the Starlink throttling that blindsided Ukraine's air assault forces last week, despite Musk's claim that all decisions on the military version of Starlink are made by the US military and President Trump.
Trump denied ordering the restrictions. While Musk may have spoken to Trump and administration officials before the decision, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Musk made the final call. The decision came after both Musk and Trump criticized Ukraine for attacking Russian diesel refineries.
"Elon Musk ordered the slowdown of a military-grade version of Starlink relied on by Ukraine, a decision that sparked panic in Kyiv and confusion inside the Trump administration," the WSJ wrote, citing unnamed US officials and people familiar with the matter. The report said that "Musk capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite-based network... rendering some offensive drones and interceptor drones virtually useless."
Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI is stuck facing a lawsuit over alleged data center pollution after Donald Trump failed to convince a judge that his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has complete control over all Clean Air Act lawsuits and can dismiss any suit at whim.
Soon after unpermitted gas turbines were discovered powering Musk’s giant Colossus data center in Memphis, Tennessee, the NAACP sued. Its lawsuit sought an injunction requiring xAI (which, following a merger, is known now as SpaceXAI) to use the best available pollution control technology when operating the turbines and ordering penalties up to $124,426 per day per violation. Without such remedies, the turbines risked drastically spiking pollution in already vulnerable neighborhoods housing predominantly Black communities nearby, the NAACP argued.
To block the lawsuit, Trump tried to intervene, arguing that the EPA had the power to unilaterally dismiss lawsuits any time the president decides against enforcing the Clean Air Act. According to Trump, it would supposedly “not serve the public interest” if citizens were allowed to seek massive civil penalties to punish polluting AI firms that were trying to get data centers operational as fast as possible to support Trump’s AI Action Plan.
As Elon Musk tries to save face by claiming he’ll give every American child a chunk of SpaceX stock, here’s a chilling reminder of what he did that affected millions of children the second he had a whiff of federal power.
In a new interview, the documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, who directed a just-released four-hour look at the billionaire’s life titled “Musk,” discussed the staggering death toll of Musk’s cuts to USAID, calling it a “crime against humanity.”
“There was an estimate that what [Musk] did by so suddenly cutting USAID would cost through disease and starvation as many as 14 million lives,” he told journalist Katie Couric. “Even if you discount that by an enormous amount, we know that within about a year of those summary cuts — where they were literally burning food that had already been paid for that was going to starving children — 500,000 children died.”
Musk, to Gibney’s astonishment, even joked about the cuts by saying he’d “put USAID into the woodchipper.”
“What he put into the woodchipper,” Gibney said, “were children.”
Gibney, whose documentary Musk called a “hit piece,” is drawing from a 2025 study published in The Lancet, one of the most prestigious medical journals. It estimated the impact of Musk effectively neutering USAID by implementing a freeze on its foreign aid funding — which went to programs to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and to address food insecurities — and slashing nearly 10,000 employees.
In sum, the researchers found that the “steep funding cuts could result in more than 14 million additional all-age deaths, including 4.5 million in children younger than age five, by 2030.”
Even conservative estimates concurred that the number of deaths would be staggering. A tracker created by Brooke Nichols, a professor and infectious disease mathematical modeler at Boston University, projects the 1-year death toll caused by the USAID cuts at 518,000 children.
It’s a touchy subject for Musk, who continues to bristle at accusations that his actions could’ve caused harm. This summer, he challenged his critics to “cite a single name of someone who died” as a result of him gutting USAID. Nicholas Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, took him up on it and gave him a list of the specific children who had died directly from his policies, many of whom were in South Sudan and Liberia — places he had visited in person to talk to locals and healthcare workers.
Musk, rather than countering his arguments, called Kristof “evil.”
Elon Musk said Tuesday that he would like to see the consolidation of his business empire by formally merging his two largest companies, SpaceX and Tesla.
"Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes," Musk said of a potential merger. He was speaking during a question-and-answer period as part of SpaceX's third-quarter earnings call. Musk said, ultimately, it not his decision. "But at the end of the day the shareholders have to be supportive of this."
Musk's talk of a merger comes after a busy year in which SpaceX already acquired Musk's artificial intelligence firm, xAI, in February. In June, SpaceX went public with the largest initial public offering on record.
Elon Musk said Tuesday that he would like to see the consolidation of his business empire by formally merging his two largest companies, SpaceX and Tesla.
"Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes," Musk said of a potential merger. He was speaking during a question-and-answer period as part of SpaceX's third-quarter earnings call. Musk said, ultimately, it not his decision. "But at the end of the day the shareholders have to be supportive of this."
Musk's talk of a merger comes after a busy year in which SpaceX already acquired Musk's artificial intelligence firm, xAI, in February. In June, SpaceX went public with the largest initial public offering on record.
Tesla reports its third-quarter 2026 financial results tomorrow, October 21, after the market closes. The earnings call follows at 5:30 p.m. ET.
Wall Street expects revenue to come in flat and earnings per share to drop 10% from a year ago, even though Tesla just beat its own delivery consensus by more than 24,000 vehicles.
As SpaceX impacts Ukraine and AI-generated music divides artists and fans, critics are asking what happens when technology has too much control over our lives
This was originally published in TechScape, a newsletter about how technology shapes our lives. Sign up to receive it here
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian, writing to you while sitting in front of Roy Lichtenstein’s monumental Drowning Girl, on view in New York City. Today in tech, we’re discussing the perils of Elon Musk’s one-man global infrastructure, AI-generated music and a Guardian AI conference in Paris.
Quatro das maiores operadoras europeias querem unir forças para desenvolver uma alternativa à Starlink nas comunicações diretas entre satélites e telemóveis. A iniciativa surge num momento de crescente disputa pelo espectro destinado a serviços de satélite e de novas tensões entre a Europa e os Estados Unidos.
Tesla a enfin présenté son nouveau Roadster, et il ne manque pas d’air. La voiture de sport électrique promet des performances spectaculaires, avec des accélérations fulgurantes et même la capacité de voler. Mais entre les démonstrations impressionnantes d’Elon Musk et la réalité, il faudra...
Tesla’s proxy for its 2026 annual meeting, filed today, confirms that one of its supposedly independent directors now sits on SpaceX’s board. Ira Ehrenpreis, who chairs both Tesla’s compensation committee and its governance committee, joined SpaceX’s board in February.
That’s one of several details in the filing that line up with a Tesla-SpaceX merger. There’s a three-item ballot, an auto-voting program that kicks in for the next vote, and Musk pay terms that pay out on a deal price alone.
The $48bn giveaway comes amid concerns about the tech and as the company prepares for a stock market listing
Anthropic has said it will commit 5% of its shares to a fund for the “public good”, as the AI developer behind the Claude chatbot seeks to bolster its appeal before its stock market listing.
The company announced it would commit the shares, worth around $48bn (£36bn) at its latest valuation in May, subject to shareholder approval. It will add a further 2% of its stock to the fund for every 50% increase in its value above an undisclosed baseline.
In early 2022, not long after Russia’s invasion began, SpaceX made good on CEO Elon Musk’s promise by shipping thousands of Starlink broadband internet terminals to the front lines of Ukraine.
The terminals quickly turned into a vital lifeline as many parts of the embattled region were plunged into the dark and cut off from the rest of the world.
But Musk has been accused of playing both sides, with biographer Walter Isaacson claiming the billionaire had secretly ordered SpaceX engineers not to turn on the Starlink satellite network near the Crimean coast in 2022 to disrupt what Musk called a “mini-Pearl Harbor.”
And as the war rages on some four years later, SpaceX’s terminals are once again making headlines. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky accused the space company of restricting access to its Starshield service, a military version of the service specifically developed for the Pentagon.
“Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government,” he tweeted on Wednesday. “Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.”
“Starlink is a commercial service owned and controlled by SpaceX,” he added. “Usage of Starlink is limited to civilian or defensive activities and cannot be used for offensive military action, as doing so would be inappropriate for a commercial company.”
It’s a bizarre missive, especially considering what Ukraine’s actions could easily be characterized as “defensive activities,” as many users of Musk’s social media network pointed out. Besides, there’s no question Musk has an enormous amount of sway in Washington, DC, meaning he easily could’ve had a say in the matter.
The timing was also suspicious, to say the least. As The Hill reports, Zelensky made his announcement just days after Trump announced a deal with Russian president Vladimir Putin to buy millions of tons of diesel to lower prices in the US ahead of the rapidly approaching midterm elections.
Lawmakers were appalled at the US seemingly dropping the ball on coming to Ukraine’s aid.
“Reports of Starlink failing in Ukraine are deeply alarming— potentially crippling air defense against Russia’s murderous missiles & drones,” tweeted senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) on Wednesday, hours before Musk chimed in on the subject. “Trump & Musk must be held accountable.”
Meanwhile, a subdued Zelensky mourned the loss of US support.
“Really, yes… but it’s a little bit more complicated than just my emotions or my feelings,” he said when asked if he feel betrayed by Trump on Wednesday. “It’s a pity that we are losing, we are losing a strong partner.”
By Thursday, the situation changed once more, with Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries resuming as Starlink and Starshield services had been restored to full capacity, as an unnamed Ukrainian official told Axios.
Can you believe it? Elon Musk — a man known for posting AI slop glorifying himself, who believes his “maximum truth-seeking AI” Grok will unlock the secrets of the universe, and believes multiple conspiracy theories divorced from reality — has apparently been struggling with AI psychosis.
The centibillionaire admitted as much, seemingly as a badge of honor, in a rant during the X Takeover event on Saturday that was spotted by Business Insider.
“I’ve got a little bit of cyber psychosis,” Musk said. “Maybe a lot actually.”
“At various points this year,” he continued, “I’ve had AI or SI psychosis probably like half a dozen times.” (The “SI” there was referring to “superintelligence,” the term that president Donald Trump just passed an executive order to rename artificial intelligence; taking this edict seriously as the tech remains so obviously flawed may itself be a sign of some sort of disordered thinking.)
AI psychosis is the term that some experts are using to describe how AI chatbots can drive and exacerbate a user’s delusions, sometimes causing them to break with reality. In extreme cases, these can cause extreme mental health spirals that upend someone’s personal and professional life, sometimes ending in self harm or suicide.
More generally, AI psychosis is also used to mock tech figures — CEOs especially — who are a little too obsessed with AI and fully buy into every ludicrous claim about its capabilities, such as those peddled by Musk. Sometimes, techies will embrace the accusations in ironic fashion, sending a proud middle finger to the luddites who’ve declined partaking in the industry hysteria.
Or maybe not so ironic. Musk’s baby mama Claire “Grimes” Boucher not too long ago bragged about the upsides of having your mind melted by an AI model, in a rant that unfortunately appeared to be completely sincere.
“The thing about AI psychosis is that it’s more fun than not having AI psychosis,” she wrote in a tweet in December, before adding: “I’ve had it (might still have it).”
Tesla says it will finally stream its next-generation Roadster event this Thursday, October 15, at 7:55 pm Central, two weeks after it was supposed to happen.
It’s the latest date in a long list of them. Tesla first showed the Roadster in November 2017 and promised production in 2020. Nearly nine years later, it hasn’t delivered a single one.
Let Elon Musk never be accused of not leading by example.
Last week, the world’s richest man sung the praises of his new Grok Bot AI agent, encouraging his followers to let it control their credit cards and shop for them.
“To buy stuff, you can just take a picture of your credit card, drop it in the chat and Grok @Bot will scour the Internet for the best deal on the item you want and order it,” he wrote.
The next day, he posted a screenshot of how he’d used Grok do exactly that, telling it “to research the most fun Lego Star Wars kits for young kids and order them.” If it wasn’t a testament to how much of a thoughtful dad he was, it at least showed that Grok could, in fact, use your credit card.
But almost as if provoking pranksters, Musk didn’t censor his screenshot at all. There, on proud display, was his order number, his email, and even the last four numbers of his credit card.
Immediately, a user named Enderman posted screenshots showing how he supposedly tricked a LEGO customer service bot into canceling Musk’s order. The post went mega viral, and an outraged Musk, taking the bait, fumed in the replies and insisted his order wasn’t canceled.
True or not — Musk certainly isn’t above a little lying — imitators followed. Another jokester showed how they used the LEGO support bot to un-cancel Musk’s order and place 400 more orders of the same product. To top things off, he also claimed to change the shipping address to Little St James, the infamous island owned by Jeffrey Epstein, which Musk discussed visiting in emails with the deceased sex trafficker.
LEGO passed up on providing a surreal statement for the ages, decliningWired’srequest for comment.
Anyway, it’s probably not a good idea to let an AI agent, Grok included, control your financial information. Scammers have been targeting AI chatbots to manipulate them into recommending — or buying — scam products, such as by propping up entire fake storefronts to phish for your information or imitate defunct businesses. And the more permissions you give an AI, the more chances it has to make a terrible mistake.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky claimed on Monday that the country’s three strikes on Russian tech giant Yandex’s data centers last week had been a resounding success.
Zelensky told reporters that social media platforms had seen a notable drop in Russian bot activity. Following the strikes, “it suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social media platforms,” he said.
“A lot of people noticed it, and there was less hate, less division and fewer provocations because there were fewer bots,” he added. “And it’s pretty clear where those bots were coming from.”
The news once again highlights how data centers have become a major target during ongoing geopolitical conflict. Inexpensive drone attacks are hitting a nerve, setting back major AI data center expansion efforts across the Middle East as Iran targets the facilities amid hostilities with the United States.
The phenomenon may even be hitting close to home for certain billionaires. On Elon Musk’s Twitter-turned-X, users quickly noticed that the number of interactions the site’s owner was getting on his posts seemed to plummet in the wake of the strikes.
“Woah, Elon Musk out here getting less than 5k likes on his tweets after the bot farm got exploded,” YouTuber Zack “Jerry Rig Everything” Nelson tweeted. A screenshot appended to the post shows Musk receiving 4,900 likes after responding “Wow” to a racist conspiracy theory that claims Brussels, Belgium, is “only 10.5 percent white.”
On its face, the theory sounds pretty far-fetched. Could the destruction of a few Russian data centers really be tanking Musk’s engagement on his own platform?
But looking at the average number of likes his posts have been receiving does raise eyebrows. Throughout October, his posts garnered an average of between 17,000 and 81,000 likes per day — until the past two days, the averages slid to a dismal 11,000 and 8,000, respectively.
We certainly can’t determine a causal relationship, but the numbers are striking. And experts are paying attention.
An analysis by Cloudflare showed that traffic from Yandex had dropped by 99 percent last week following the strikes. Not all of the traffic was “necessarily bot behaviour on social media platforms,” the company clarified, pointing out that its figures included all automated internet requests, such as search engine crawlers or monitoring tools.
Other rumors that online activity surrounding Germany’s far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) had plummeted also circulated, but as Euronews points out, there hasn’t been any independent verification of these claims.
Amid it all, Zelensky’s office walked back the Ukrainian president’s announcement, telling the BBC that he was “talking about the atmosphere on social media” instead of a concrete fall in bot activity.
It’s an extremely volatile moment in history as the United States is headed to the polls less than a month from now for the midterm elections. The subject of Russian interference, particularly during the 2016 presidential elections, has fueled plenty of heated discussion over the years. And Musk, one of president Donald Trump’s biggest supporters, has turned into an influential figure in these debates, most recently accusing Zelensky of having gone “too far” by striking Russian oil refineries.
Others celebrated the latest strikes.
“As someone harassed daily by armies of Russian bots, my deepest thanks!” former US ambassador to Russia and political science professor Michael McFaul tweeted.
Elon Musk says the main thing holding back Tesla Robotaxi’s night hours is that the cars have a hard time seeing pets in the dark. His example was “grey kittens on grey tarmac.”
That’s a low-light, low-contrast detection problem, which is the textbook weakness of cameras and the exact thing lidar and radar handle. Musk has spent years calling those sensors a “crutch” and a “fool’s errand.”
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