TSLA just bet $25 billion on itself

In April 2018, Elon Musk was sleeping on the Tesla factory floor.

Not metaphorically — he was personally on the Model 3 assembly line at 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning, diagnosing robot calibration issues.

Model 3 production was a disaster.

The company was burning over $1B per quarter in cash, and Wall Street was openly debating whether Tesla would survive the year.

CNBC panels ran segments on the bankruptcy timeline. Short sellers were so confident they made TSLA the most shorted stock on the Nasdaq.

We bought the stock.

Not because the numbers looked good — they looked terrible.

We bought because LikeFolio's consumer data was screaming something the spreadsheets couldn't see yet: demand for Tesla was real, it was growing, and the people betting against this company were about to learn an expensive lesson.

That position is now up over 1,800%.

We're telling you this because last night’s Q1 earnings call gave us the exact same feeling in our gut.

TSLA — Infinite Hold

The numbers were fine — good, even.

• Tesla beat on EPS ($0.41 vs. $0.37), revenue came in at $22.4B (up 16% YoY), and gross margins hit 21.7%.

• Auto margins ex-credits improved to 19.2%.

• The company generated $1.4B in positive free cash flow and is sitting on nearly $45B in cash.

But then Tesla told Wall Street it's tripling its spending.

Capex guidance jumped from $20B to $25B for 2026 — three times what the company spent last year.

The CFO confirmed they'll run negative free cash flow for the rest of the year. The stock popped 4% on the earnings beat, gave it all back on the spending news, and is down about 3% today.

Cue the same chorus from 2018. Reckless. Unsustainable. Where's the profitability?

We've heard this song before.

Here's where the money is actually going:

Cybercab and Semi production lines.

Megapack 3.

Optimus robot manufacturing at the old Fremont plant.

AI compute infrastructure.

A chip fabrication venture with SpaceX and xAI.

Tesla expanded unsupervised Robotaxi to Dallas and Houston this quarter. FSD subscribers crossed 1.28 million. Every next-gen production line is on schedule.

This is a company choosing to build the next $500B in revenue rather than protect this quarter's EPS. That's exactly the decision it made in 2018 — sleeping-on-the-factory-floor, everybody-thinks-we're-crazy, bet-the-company-on-itself energy. The short sellers hated it then too.

We remember how that turned out.

TSLA remains an Infinite Hold.