Italian PM Meloni Hosts 'Atreju 2023' Conservative Political Festival In Rome

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IS FCF 🇸 🇪 🇽 🇾?

Tesla’s big beat comes with a bigger bill ahead

The company’s positive free cash flow is largely due to the fact that it hasn’t ramped capex spending yet.

Investor excitement over Tesla’s surprisingly good earnings report Wednesday quickly faded as it became clear that the financial pain they’d been bracing for is still ahead—and likely worse than expected.

Tesla reported an unexpected $1.4 billion in positive free cash flow, versus the roughly $1.5 billion cash burn analysts had forecast. However, that upside appears to say less about improving fundamentals than about timing: Tesla’s spending hasn’t really ramped yet.

Capital expenditures came in at $2.5 billion last quarter, well below the $4.4 billion analysts expected, according to FactSet. At the same time, Tesla raised its projected 2026 capex to $25 billion from $20 billion.

That implies roughly $7.5 billion in spending in each of the next three quarters — more than double the company’s previous peak.

Last year, the company reported capex of just ~$9 billion, so this latest bump is a pretty substantial one.

“We are in a very big capital investment phase, which is going to start now and would last a couple of years,” CFO Vaibhav Taneja said during the earnings call, pointing to the six factories Tesla is funding, along with AI infrastructure, and its Terafab chip-making project.

Musk hoped to allay spending fears by saying that the “very significant increase in capital expenditures” would be “well justified for a substantially increased future revenue stream.”

The bet is that today’s spending surge will translate into higher-margin AI and software revenue — but Tesla offered little detail on timing, saying only that “over time, we expect our hardware-related profits to be accompanied by an acceleration of AI, software and fleet-based profits.”

The stock, which was up more than 4% after the report came out is now down more than 3% in premarket trading. Some of that weakness can at least be excused by wider market weakness, with futures on the tech-heavy NASDAQ 100 off 0.6% this morning.

🤖 75%

Jon Keegan17h

On Wednesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog post that AI is now writing 75% of new code at the company. This is up from 50% last fall. Pichai said all code is “approved by engineers.”

Google announced new TPU 8 chips today at its annual Cloud Next event. Pichai wrote:

“We’re now shifting to truly agentic workflows. Our engineers are orchestrating fully autonomous digital task forces, firing off agents and accomplishing incredible things.”

Rani Molla17h

Tesla just opened the door to 50,000 government buyers

Tesla signed a deal that lets more than 50,000 public agencies — including police departments and school districts — buy its vehicles without the usual slow bidding process, making it much easier to compete in a market long dominated by Ford and General Motors. The public sector currently represents less than 1% of Tesla’s sales.

The move doesn’t guarantee orders, but it removes a major barrier at a time when Tesla is looking for new demand to bolster its main source of revenues. Tesla’s Q1 deliveries fell short of analyst expectations and annual sales have declined for two years in a row. The public sector also represents a large pool of buyers who are beyond Elon Musk’s other companies.

Tesla reports earnings after the bell today.

Tesla is coming for Detroit's government fleet business

Tesla reports earnings after the bell today.

Google shares jump on new TPU 8 chips, enterprise agent platform, and partnership with Nvidia

The raft of announcements from Google’s Cloud Next ’26 event sent shares up in early trading.

Jon Keegan22h

Rani Molla22h

How Elon Musk has shifted SpaceX’s goals ahead of its IPO

The New York Times took a close look at how Elon Musk is reshaping SpaceX’s priorities ahead of its highly anticipated, potentially record-breaking IPO — and what that could mean for the company and its investors.

As the NYT’s Ryan Mac noted in the article, “Shifting aims before an I.P.O. would be unthinkable for most corporate leaders, who tend to focus on their core businesses and try to project steadiness to potential investors.”

But Musk, who is also the ever-unpredictable CEO of Tesla, doesn’t follow typical playbooks. Here’s a quick look at how SpaceX’s goals have changed:

Musk’s SpaceX Goals Shift Ahead of Its I.P.O.

But Musk, who is also the ever-unpredictable CEO of Tesla, doesn’t follow typical playbooks. Here’s a quick look at how SpaceX’s goals have changed:

Rani Molla4/21/26

SpaceX seals right to buy coding startup Cursor for $60 billion

SpaceX said today that it’s “working closely together” with fast-growing coding startup Cursor “to create the world’s best coding and knowledge work AI.” The post also said SpaceX would have the right to acquire Cursor later this year or make the startup “pay $10 billion for our work together.” The New York Times, citing people familiar with the matter, previously reported that the companies had agreed to an acquisition.

The news comes as SpaceX prepares for a blockbuster IPO and doubles down on AI, with a growing — if still fully aspirational — focus on space-based data infrastructure and computing.

Last month, when SpaceX hired two senior leaders from Cursor, CEO Elon Musk noted that xAI, which SpaceX acquired earlier this year, “was not built right first time around, so is being rebuilt from the foundations up.”