Elon Musk is using Tesla’s earnings calls to push a different identity for the company. The financial picture still points strongly to automobiles, but the conversation from the top has moved toward artificial intelligence, autonomous driving and robotics.
An analysis by TechCrunch and Hudson Labs found that Musk now spends nearly 50% of his remarks on artificial intelligence, robotaxis and Full Self-Driving software. That is a major change from 2022, when those topics typically accounted for 15%-20% of his time.
The company still runs on cars
Tesla is still shaped like a car company in the most direct business sense. The company shipped nearly half a million cars last quarter and made 70% of its money from car sales.
That matters because the company’s public narrative is increasingly pointed somewhere else. Musk has spent the last few years arguing that Tesla should be understood as an AI and robotics company, even when some of that AI is built into vehicles.
The distinction is not just branding. If Tesla is judged mainly as an automaker, the focus naturally falls on manufacturing, deliveries, competition and the health of the car business. If it is judged as an AI and robotics company, the center of gravity shifts toward autonomy, robotaxis, Full Self-Driving software and Optimus.
What the earnings calls show
To track the change, TechCrunch worked with Hudson Labs, a New York-based financial research firm. Hudson Labs sourced transcripts of Tesla quarterly earnings calls from S&P Market Intelligence dating back to 2019.
The firm then used Co-Analyst, an AI tool built for high-precision financial research, to assign a topic to each sentence and count how often those topics appeared. The result is a picture of how executive attention has shifted over seven years of calls.
For Musk, the shift is clear. AI, robotaxis and Full Self-Driving now take up nearly 50% of the time he speaks on these calls. In prior years, including 2022, the same cluster of topics typically took 15%-20% of his time.
That change lines up with Musk’s argument that autonomy is central to how Tesla should be valued. On the Q1 call in 2024, he made that view explicit:
“If you value Tesla as just an auto company – fundamentally, it’s the wrong framework,” Musk said. “If somebody doesn’t believe Tesla is going to solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company.”
Optimus moved from side topic to major theme
Robotics has also become much more prominent. Tesla revealed in 2021 that it was working on a humanoid robot known as Optimus. In the year after that reveal, Musk spent around two percent or less of his time discussing the project.
Over the past year, Optimus has become a much larger part of his earnings call presence. Musk has spent at least 10% of his remarks talking about the robot, and on the third-quarter call in 2025 it accounted for nearly a third of his focus.
That rise is notable because it happened while the core automotive business stopped growing. As Musk gave more attention to future-facing projects, his discussion of cars and manufacturing fell. He now spends less than a third of his time on those subjects during earnings calls.
On that same third-quarter call last year, Musk spent less than 20% of his time talking about the automotive business. The contrast is sharp: cars still generate most of Tesla’s money, while the chief executive’s spoken emphasis increasingly points to software-driven autonomy and robotics.
Other executives are shifting more slowly
Musk is not the only Tesla executive on these calls, but he is moving faster than the rest of the leadership group. Other executives, including chief financial officer Vaibhav Taneja and vice president of engineering Lars Moravy, still spend more time on the automotive business than Musk does.
Even on some of the most recent calls, those executives have spent around 30% of their time discussing the automotive business. Their next-most common subjects are AI, robotaxi and Full Self-Driving.
That still represents a change from earlier years. These executives used to spend nearly 50% of their time, or more, talking about making and selling cars. According to the analysis, that changed in 2024 as the car business started to suffer from increased competition from legacy automakers and new Chinese entrants.
The difference is that Musk’s emphasis has moved more aggressively toward Tesla’s future projects. The other executives have followed the shift, but more gradually, likely because those efforts are not yet generating any real returns.
The message Tesla wants heard
The calls now tell two stories at once. One story is about a company whose current business remains heavily tied to vehicles. The other is about a chief executive working to make AI, robotaxis, Full Self-Driving and Optimus the center of Tesla’s identity.
When other executives do talk about that future, their language can match Musk’s ambition. On the Q2 call this year, Taneja said:
“The path to amazing abundance is ever challenging and requires making bold bets,” Taneja said. “Our progress will be non-linear. The future is going to be great.”
The tension is the point. Tesla’s present is still defined by car sales, manufacturing and competition in the auto market. Its earnings call narrative, led by Musk, is increasingly defined by the claim that autonomy and robotics are the real framework for understanding where the company is going.