Tesla shares suffered their worst intraday drop since June 2025 on Thursday, falling as much as 14% after the electric-vehicle maker reported second-quarter adjusted earnings of 33 cents per share — far below the 51 cents anticipated by Wall Street. The selloff erased roughly $18.6 billion from Elon Musk’s net worth, even as revenue rose 26% to $28.2 billion and vehicle deliveries jumped 25% to a record 480,126 units. The divergence between top-line growth and profitability crystallised investor unease over the company’s accelerating pivot from its core automotive business toward artificial intelligence, humanoid robots, and autonomous ride-hailing.

The earnings miss was driven by a 47% surge in operating expenses to $4.35 billion, as capital expenditure on AI infrastructure, the Optimus robot, and the Cybercab programme soared 142% year-on-year to $5.8 billion. Free cash flow turned negative for the first time in two years, at minus $1.09 billion. Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja reiterated plans to spend more than $25 billion this year, with executives forecasting even larger outlays ahead. Musk described Optimus as “the biggest product ever” but acknowledged the immense technical hurdles in building a general-purpose autonomous humanoid, noting that no existing supply chain exists for its components.

Reaction from financial centres was swift and sceptical. Analysts at Morgan Stanley and Canaccord Genuity in New York called for “tangible” milestones on robotaxi deployments within the next six months, warning that stretched margins and negative cash flow leave little room for execution missteps. BNP Paribas maintained a sell-equivalent rating, arguing that the stock’s valuation — trading at 151 times forward earnings — already prices in ambitious AI success. Short sellers, who hold roughly 3% of Tesla’s float, booked mark-to-market profits of about $4.12 billion on the day, according to S3 Partners data. Retail investors, by contrast, were net buyers, with Vanda Research recording $42 million in net purchases. In Moscow, financial media highlighted the 142% capex jump and the negative free cash flow as the primary triggers for the rout, while Indonesian coverage noted the end of US electric-vehicle tax incentives and rising competition from cheaper Chinese manufacturers as compounding pressures on the legacy auto business.

The selloff also rippled across the AI investment theme. Alphabet shares fell 7.4% after the Google parent raised its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to as much as $205 billion, underscoring a broader market reassessment of the returns on massive AI spending. For Tesla, the immediate test is whether it can translate its capital-intensive bets into visible commercial milestones. The next factual marker will be the pace of robotaxi deployments and any concrete production timelines for Optimus, which the company has signalled will begin soon but without a firm date. Meanwhile, Musk’s SpaceX launched its 13th Starship test flight on Thursday, a separate venture whose shares were largely flat and did little to offset the day’s wealth destruction.