New York, January 28, 2026, 5:42 PM EST — After-hours
- Tesla shares were last up about 0.1% after hours, after an earlier jump following results
- Company disclosed a $2 billion investment in CEO Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI
- Investors are weighing robotaxi timelines against softer auto fundamentals
Tesla shares were last up about 0.1% at $431.46 in after-hours trading on Wednesday after the company disclosed a $2 billion investment in CEO Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI and beat Wall Street revenue and adjusted profit estimates. The stock swung between $425.29 and $450.13 in the regular session and had been up about 3% earlier in extended trade.
The disclosure lands at a touchy moment for Tesla stock: bulls want proof that autonomy and software can become a real business line, not just a story. The carmaker’s core vehicle operation is still doing most of the heavy lifting, but demand and pricing have turned into a grind.
“Investors are largely looking past the near-term fundamentals,” said Matt Britzman, a senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, pointing to Tesla’s robotaxi push as the driver of sentiment. Ken Mahoney, CEO of Mahoney Asset Management, said 2026 is about whether “AI becomes revenue + profit, not just spend,” after years of investment. Reuters
In its quarterly update, Tesla said revenue fell 3% from a year earlier to $24.9 billion, while net income dropped 61% to $840 million. Automotive gross margin excluding regulatory credits — sales of emissions credits to other automakers — was 17.9%, and energy storage deployments rose 29% to a record 14.2 gigawatt-hours; vehicle deliveries fell 16% to 418,227. Tesla also laid out a wider robotaxi map, listing Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Miami, Orlando, Tampa and Las Vegas as planned markets in the first half of 2026, alongside ongoing work in Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area.
The xAI investment was disclosed in a shareholder letter and is expected to close in the first quarter, TechCrunch reported. Tesla also described a framework agreement tied to the deal to evaluate AI collaborations between the companies, and noted existing links such as the Grok chatbot in some vehicles.
For Tesla, the pitch is familiar: more cars on the road, more software and services on top. Moving its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) feature to subscriptions-only — Tesla says it is starting to sunset the upfront purchase option — is part of that push, though the company still tells drivers the system requires active supervision.
What traders are listening for now is simple: timelines. That includes how fast Tesla can expand its ride-hailing footprint, what “unsupervised” means in practice, and whether regulatory approvals in big overseas markets move on Tesla’s schedule.
There is plenty that can go wrong. Robotaxi rollouts are capital-heavy and legally messy, while any safety incident can trigger tighter scrutiny and slower growth. On the numbers, lower prices can support volume, but they can also pressure margins if costs do not fall as quickly as Tesla expects.
The next catalysts are stacked up in weeks, not years: more detail from management on the earnings call, the expected first-quarter close for the xAI investment, and updates on the first-half 2026 robotaxi expansion plan that Tesla has now put in writing.
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