Musk now spends half his time on Tesla calls discussing AI and robots

TechCrunch and Hudson Labs, a New York financial research firm, analyzed seven years of Tesla earnings call transcripts dating back to 2019 to track how Musk and other Tesla executives have allocated their speaking time. Using Hudson Labs' Co-Analyst AI tool, the researchers assigned a topic to each sentence and counted frequency to establish the breakdown of discussion subjects.

The data reveals a striking reorientation of Musk's public messaging. In 2022, Musk spent only 15–20% of his time on artificial intelligence, robotaxis, and Full Self-Driving software. Today, those three topics together account for nearly 50% of his remarks on earnings calls. Musk has justified this focus by arguing that autonomy is the key to Tesla's valuation. In a Q1 2024 call, he stated: "If you value Tesla as just an auto company – fundamentally, it's the wrong framework. If somebody doesn't believe Tesla is going to solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company."

Robotics discussion has accelerated even more dramatically. Tesla revealed the Optimus humanoid robot project in 2021. For the following year, Musk discussed Optimus only 2% or less of the time. However, over the past year, he has devoted at least 10% of his remarks to Optimus, and on the third-quarter 2025 call, the robot consumed nearly a third of his focus.

Musk's shift away from automotive discussions has been equally pronounced. He now spends less than a third of his earnings call time on cars and manufacturing—on the third-quarter 2025 call, this dropped to less than 20%. This reallocation began as Tesla's core automotive business stopped growing, a period marked by intensified competition from both traditional carmakers and new Chinese competitors.

Other Tesla executives, including CFO Vaibhav Taneja and VP of Engineering Lars Moravy, have moved more cautiously. On recent calls, they still allocate around 30% of their time to the automotive business, with AI, robotaxi, and Full Self-Driving as their next most common topics. Before 2024, these executives spent nearly 50% or more of their earnings call time on cars and manufacturing. When they do echo Musk's narrative about the future, they employ similarly ambitious language. On the Q2 2025 call, Taneja said: "The path to amazing abundance is ever challenging and requires making bold bets. Our progress will be non-linear. The future is going to be great." The executives' slower pivot suggests that projects like Optimus and autonomous driving, while central to Musk's vision, are not yet generating the financial returns that would make them the company's primary operational focus.