Elon Musk now spends 50% of Tesla earnings calls on AI and robots

A new analysis from TechCrunch and Hudson Labs maps how Elon Musk has repositioned Tesla as an AI and robotics company on quarterly earnings calls. Using Hudson Labs' Co-Analyst tool on S&P Market Intelligence transcripts spanning 2019-2025, the researchers tagged every spoken sentence by topic. The results show Musk now devotes nearly 50% of his talk time to AI, robotaxi, and Full Self-Driving software—a sharp jump from the 15-20% range in 2022. Robotics specifically has surged: after Tesla unveiled the Optimus humanoid in 2021, Musk rarely mentioned it (2% or less), but over the past year Optimus has consumed at least 10% of his remarks, including about a third of the Q3 2025 call.

This shift coincides with stagnating automotive revenue. Tesla still shipped nearly half a million cars last quarter and generated 70% of revenue from car sales, but Musk now spends under a third of call time discussing cars and manufacturing, dropping below 20% on the most recent Q3 call. Other executives, like CFO Vaibhav Taneja and VP Lars Moravy, lag behind—they still spend roughly 30% of their time on automotive topics, though their focus is also drifting. Taneja's rhetoric matches the boss: "Our progress will be nonlinear. The future is going to be great." The analysis suggests Tesla's leadership is increasingly betting on autonomy and robotics as the core growth story, even as those bets don't yet generate real returns.