NEW YORK, Jan 8, 2026, 16:07 ET — After-hours
- Tesla shares rose about 1% in regular trading on Thursday
- A filing showed director James Murdoch sold 60,000 Tesla shares under a preset plan
- Investors are watching a Jan. 13 U.S. House hearing on self-driving rules and Tesla’s Jan. 28 results
Tesla shares rose about 1.1% to $435.95 in Thursday’s regular session, after trading as low as $424.66 and as high as $436.82.
The move came as Wall Street turned choppy for big tech and other AI-linked names, with investors asking more pointed questions about what all that spending buys. The Nasdaq fell 0.65% on the day, and “while AI is still hot, there are going to be winners and losers,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth. Reuters
At the CES trade show in Las Vegas, chip supplier Arm has created a “Physical AI” unit aimed at robotics and automotive — a catch-all for AI that runs machines in the real world. Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter told Reuters there was “a bit of a hype cycle around humanoids,” a theme Tesla has leaned into with its Optimus robot project. Reuters
A filing showed Tesla director James Murdoch sold 60,000 shares on Jan. 2 under a Rule 10b5-1 plan he adopted in May, with weighted-average sale prices running roughly from $436 to $458 a share. A 10b5-1 plan is a preset trading program that can trigger sales automatically, regardless of news.
Tesla said on Jan. 2 it produced 434,358 vehicles and delivered 418,227 in the fourth quarter, and deployed a record 14.2 gigawatt-hours of energy storage. It will post fourth-quarter results after the close on Jan. 28, followed by a live Q&A webcast at 5:30 p.m. ET.
The stock has pulled back about 14% from a record high near $499 set on Dec. 22, Barron’s wrote, and the publication said analysts are looking for roughly $0.42 a share in quarterly profit. The report and the outlook matter because the valuation still leans heavily on expectations for software, autonomy and robotics.
In Washington, a U.S. House committee is set to hold a Jan. 13 hearing on draft bills meant to speed deployment of self-driving vehicles without human controls, including a proposal to lift the annual cap on federal exemptions. Tesla launched a small robotaxi service in Austin with safety monitors, while Alphabet’s Waymo has been expanding — and the industry remains under a glare after high-profile crashes and investigations.
Traders now turn to Friday’s U.S. payrolls report for the next jolt to rate bets, then to Tesla’s Jan. 28 call for guidance on 2026 demand, margins and the pace of its robotaxi and Optimus push.
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