NEW YORK, Jan 8, 2026, 06:35 EST — Premarket
- Tesla shares down about 0.4% in premarket trading as CES headlines keep focus on autonomy and robots
- Arm and Mobileye moves underscore how fast rivals are pushing “physical AI” and humanoids
- Next catalysts include Friday’s U.S. jobs report and Tesla’s Jan. 28 earnings
Tesla (TSLA.O) shares slipped 0.4% to $431.41 in premarket trading on Thursday, with investors weighing a new round of CES headlines around robots and self-driving that keep attention on the company’s robotaxi and humanoid-robot ambitions. U.S. stock index futures were also lower, with S&P 500 e-minis down 0.22% and Nasdaq 100 e-minis off 0.31% ahead of Friday’s U.S. jobs report. 1
Arm this week carved out a new “Physical AI” unit that folds its automotive business together with robotics work, as chip and software firms try to sell tools for machines that sense and act in the real world. Automakers including Tesla are building robots to automate warehouse and factory tasks, and CEO Elon Musk has pitched the company’s Optimus humanoid as central to its future. Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter called the current push “a bit of a hype cycle around (robotic) humanoids at this point in time.” 2
Mobileye said it would buy humanoid robotics startup Mentee for about $900 million, betting that the sensing and decision-making tech used in autonomous driving can be repurposed for “embodied AI” — AI that controls machines operating in the physical world. It expects early proof-of-concept deployments with customers in 2026, with commercialization targeted for 2028. 3
Ford, a Tesla rival in the U.S. EV market, said it will bring a Level 3 driver-assistance system to market in 2028 that lets drivers take their hands and eyes off the road on certain highways, while still needing to take over when prompted. “We’re focused right now on making it super affordable,” Ford executive Doug Field said. Tesla’s “full self-driving” feature on consumer vehicles is classed as Level 2 — meaning it can steer and brake in certain situations, but the driver must stay alert at all times; Ford said it plans to use lidar, a laser-based sensor, to support its Level 3 system. 4
Nvidia on Monday unveiled its Alpamayo family of open AI models, simulation tools and datasets aimed at speeding development of reasoning-based Level 4 autonomy — where vehicles can run without a human driver in defined conditions. Nvidia said the tools are designed to help handle “long-tail” events, or rare edge cases that can trip up automated systems, and it flagged interest from Lucid, JLR and Uber. 5
For Tesla, the CES buzz lands ahead of its next big checkpoint: fourth-quarter results. In a Jan. 2 update, the company said it delivered 418,227 vehicles in the fourth quarter and 1,636,129 in 2025, while energy storage deployments hit 14.2 GWh in the quarter. Tesla said it will post earnings after the market close on Jan. 28 and hold a Q&A webcast that day. 6
Macro risk is also in play for high-growth stocks that tend to swing with interest-rate expectations. U.S. job openings fell to 7.146 million at the end of November, and economists polled by Reuters expect December payrolls rose 60,000 — figures that could move Treasury yields after Friday’s release. 7
Policy could prove another swing factor for Tesla’s autonomy story. A U.S. House committee will hold a Jan. 13 hearing on legislation that aims to make it easier to deploy self-driving vehicles without human controls, with draft proposals including lifting the current exemption cap and limiting states’ ability to set rules on autonomous systems. Tesla launched a small robotaxi service with safety monitors in Austin, Texas, last year, while Alphabet’s Waymo continues to expand into new markets. 8
But the stock’s premium also leaves little room for stumbles. Reuters Breakingviews noted Tesla delivered about 1.6 million cars last year while China’s BYD sold more than 2 million battery-electric vehicles, and said Tesla shares were trading at about 376 times estimated 2025 earnings — a setup that can punish any slip in demand, margins or autonomy timelines. 9
Traders will take the first read on the macro backdrop with Friday’s Employment Situation report for December at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, then shift to consumer price data on Jan. 13. Tesla’s next company-specific catalyst is its earnings report on Jan. 28. 10
