TechCrunch Mobility: Tesla’s brilliant rebranding

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk He spent months — years? – He tries to position his company as more than just an electric car manufacturer. When Tesla acquired SolarCity in 2016, he (and his communications team) promoted it as a sustainable energy company. Over the past year, he has promoted the idea of ​​Tesla as an artificial intelligence and robotics company.

Musk’s ambitious brand has collided with financial reality: the bulk of its revenue comes from selling electric cars. Its recent earnings support this.

The company generated revenue of $94.8 billion in 2025. Of that, $69.5 billion came from the sale and leasing of electric vehicles as well as related regulatory credits. The remaining roughly $25 billion is split down the middle between its power generation (solar) and storage businesses and “services and other,” which includes revenue from superchargers, parts sales, and full self-driving subscriptions. This reliance on deliveries means that as EV sales decline, Tesla’s entire balance sheet declines as well. Its profits in 2025 were 46% lower year-on-year.

Tesla has tried to grow its non-EV business to make up for the decline in sales, and its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings reports (and accompanying calls) signaled a shift beyond constant talk of AI robots toward action. Currently, this action involves spending money, not earning it. Musk has repeatedly stressed that 2026 will be a huge year for capital expenditures, with spending doubling to $20 billion, which will put them in negative cash flow territory.

For example, Musk announced that Tesla will end production of the Model S and Model These two models represent about 2% of Tesla’s sales volume, a point that Barclays analyst Dan Levy also made in his recent note. However, it is a notable end moment for an era for Tesla and the broader auto industry, which changed forever when the Model S went on sale in 2012.

The more material step is what Tesla plans to do now.

Tesla plans to fill the production void left by the Model S and X with Optimus humanoid robots, which will be manufactured at its factory in Fremont, California. Musk also intends to expand Tesla’s robotaxi operations to more cities in 2026, and has also floated the need for Tesla to build a TerraFab factory to support chip supplies.

But the item that really caught my attention — a true circular economy deal for Elon Inc — was Tesla’s plan to invest $2 billion in another Musk company, xAI, and signaled plans to align those two companies more closely. Meanwhile, other media outlets report that talks are underway to potentially merge three of Musk’s companies: SpaceX, Tesla, and xAI.

But let’s get back to Earth for a moment and review Tesla’s current business. Its sales declined year over year, while its smaller energy storage business posted positive gains.

birdie

We’re not quite ready to share the full details, but we’ve heard from one of the little birds that there’s been some activity on the fundraising front for Waymo. You probably saw reports last month about Waymo raising up to $15 billion led by its parent company Alphabet. Based on my conversations, it’s still in the “range” of $15 billion with a large portion of that coming from Alphabet, and there’s a lot of interest from outside investors in joining. One of the little birds told me that one of the other investors might be an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer).

Stay tuned for more on this topic.

Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosek at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com Or my Signal at kkorosec.07, or email Sean O’Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com.

Offers!

My father It earned a “Deal of the Week” badge — and not just because of the dollar numbers attached. The autonomous vehicle startup has raised $750 million in a co-led Series C round Khosla Enterprises and G2 Project PartnersIn addition to another $250 million in senior capital from Uber To support the deployment of 25,000 or more robotaxis powered exclusively by Waabi Driver on its platform.

Uber is already a backer of Waabi, participating in one of its first raises in 2021. But this is about more than just money. When Waabi first launched, it focused on applying autonomous vehicle technology to self-driving trucks. The deal with Uber is an announcement that it intends to scale its technology across multiple self-driving verticals using a single technology stack.

Can daddy do that? Others have tried and backed out. Waymo It shut down its self-driving truck program to focus on robotaxis; Auroraalso an investor in Waabi, had been working on both trucks and cabs as well, before deciding to focus solely on big rigs.

Other deals that caught my attention…

Jatic IA startup developing self-driving trucks focused on the “middle mile” has signed a deal with an (unnamed) major consumer goods company. Here’s why it’s important: The contract will generate $600 million in revenue over five years. These are intended for driverless transportation, which means there is no safe driver behind the wheel. These Gatek trucks, which operate 24 hours a day to transport ambient, refrigerated and frozen goods between distribution centers and stores, have been operating driverless since mid-2025. According to the company, they have completed 60,000 fully driverless orders without any incident.

Luminar The lidar business was sold for $33 million to the Redmond, Washington-based company Microvision. The company, which is developing its own sensors, beat out a quantum computing company in an asset auction. TC’s Sean O’Kane interviewed MicroVision CEO Glen DeVos about his plans for Luminar. The sale saw a bit of last-minute intrigue when a mystery bidder, with a much higher bid, snapped up Luminar’s lidar business.

Rad Power Bikeswhich began the bankruptcy process about a month ago, has reached a deal to sell itself to Life Electric Vehicles Holdings (or Life EV) for about $13.2 million. When Rad Power’s liabilities are accounted for, the total value of the bid is $14.9 million. History lesson: Rad Power has raised $329.2 million since its founding and was once valued at $1.65 billion.

Red wood materials It raised $425 million in a Series E round that included Google as a new investor. The round was led by venture capital firm Eclipse and includes a strategic investment by NVitures, Nvidia’s venture capital arm, as well as existing investors Capricorn and Goldman Sachs. Read the full story to find out what Redwood plans to do with the capital.

Notable Readings and Other Stories

Obia company that aggregates real-time fares and pickup times across multiple ride-hailing services, shared new data about ride-hailing and robo-taxis in the San Francisco Bay Area. There are some takeaways — so please read the full story — including that the price gap between Waymo and rides offered by Uber and Lyft is narrowing.

Uber It launched a new division called Uber AV Labs, that is no – As senior reporter Sean O’Kane points out – it’s a ploy to start developing her robot again. This is a play on data exchange; Uber cars equipped with sensors will collect data and then share it with partners like Lucid, Waymo and Waabi. Important note: No contracts have been signed yet.

Waymo Robotic taxi service is now permitted to operate to and from San Francisco International Airport (SFO). The company will begin offering access to SFO to a select number of passengers before offering it to all customers in the coming months. But this win comes with a bit of a distortion. Waymo has been under investigation before National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and National Transportation Safety Board After the company reported that one of its robotic cars hit a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica on January 23.

the San Francisco Police DepartmentInvestigates an incident involving… Zoox A self-driving vehicle collided with the driver’s side door of a parked car.

Another thing…

It’s been a few weeks since we ran a poll, and here’s a fun one: What is the name or symbol of Musk’s corporate giant?

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