Analysis shows Musk focuses on AI and robots in Tesla earnings calls

In short: A new analysis says Elon Musk now spends about half of his speaking time on Tesla earnings calls talking about AI, robotaxis, and robots, instead of cars.

What's going on

TechCrunch worked with financial research firm Hudson Labs to study seven years of Tesla earnings call transcripts. Earnings calls are the quarterly phone calls where a company explains results to investors and answers questions.

The researchers used transcripts from S&P Market Intelligence dating back to 2019. They used Hudson Labs’ Co-Analyst, an AI tool that sorts text by topic (like a very organized highlighter), then counted how often each topic came up.

The results suggest Musk’s attention has shifted. In 2026, the analysis says Musk talks about AI, robotaxis, and Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software for nearly 50% of his remarks. That is up from around 15% to 20% in 2022.

Talk about Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot, also increased. Musk spent around 2% or less of his time on Optimus in the year after Tesla revealed it in 2021. Over the past year, he has spent at least 10% of his remarks on Optimus, and in one 2025 call it took up nearly a third of his focus.

Meanwhile, the analysis says Musk now spends less than a third of his time talking about cars and manufacturing. This comes even though Tesla still shipped nearly half a million cars last quarter, and TechCrunch reports about 70% of Tesla’s money came from car sales.

What to watch

Other Tesla executives have shifted more slowly and still spend more time on the car business, according to the analysis. A key question is whether Tesla’s AI and robotics projects start bringing in meaningful revenue, or whether the company’s public message keeps drifting away from what currently pays the bills.

Source: TechCrunch AI