The Infinite Innovation Newsletter | Muskonomy Monthly September 26, 2026 | From the desk of Coach Kyle
The Muskonomy Moves From Promise to Proof
The G.L.A investment thesis is simple:the biggest opportunities emerge when a company builds something the market still struggles to understand. The right question is not whether the story sounds ambitious. It is whether the evidence is beginning to catch up.
OCT 1 Launch Date For The New Roadster
This edition brings several pieces of that evidence into focus:Cybercab registrations are growing, Tesla’s paid FSD adoption is expanding, and Barclays has lifted its delivery forecast. SpaceX is preparing Starship’s next orbital step, while xAI has released a new model aimed at coding and knowledge work.
G.L.A’s view remains bullish on the long-term opportunity. But conviction should get stronger through verification,That'swhy we continue to research every day.
Tesla: The Sales Recovery Is Real.
Tesla delivered 480,126 vehicles in Q2, compared with 358,023 in Q1, a calculated 34.1% sequential increase. That provides the foundation for the current demand discussion.
The latest regional reports show where the momentum is strongest:
- Australia:Tesla delivered 7,685 vehicles in August, up 163% year over year; Model Y accounted for 6,414 deliveries, up 176%. (Electric Vehicle Council)
- France and Denmark:August Tesla registrations increased 279% and 104%, respectively, from a year earlier.(Reuters)
- Shanghai production serving global demand:August China-made vehicle sales reached 86,166, up 3.6% year over year, marking a tenth consecutive month of annual growth; this measure includes exports and is not the same as sales to Chinese consumers. (Reuters)
IMHO, as consumers start to understand how insanely awesome Tesla FSD is the sales will follow suit.
Model Y: Select U.S. Orders Are Sold Out for 2026
The Model Y order book adds another encouraging demand signal:new U.S. Model Y L Premium AWD Launch Series orders were effectively sold out for 2026, with estimated deliveries pushed to January–February 2027, according to September 22 reporting on Tesla’s ordering pages.
G.L.A interpretation:delivery windows extending into the next year are an encouraging order-book signal. IMHO this is the beginning of a new trend in demand, all driven by FULL SELF DRIVING.
Wall Street: Higher Estimates, Could be thebeginning of the perfect storm
Barclays’ Dan Levy lifted his Q3 delivery forecast to approximately 475,000 vehicles, from approximately 450,000 in its July post-earnings forecast, according to a published summary of the September 18 research note. That put Barclays above the approximately 466,000 Bloomberg consensus cited in the reporting.
But the Street is still divided:Goldman Sachs cut its Q3 forecast to 435,000 from 490,000, citing weaker-than-expected trends in key markets. Barclays also maintained its Equal Weight stock rating, which means the stock has not yet priced in a change in demand.
G.L.A interpretation:upward estimate revisions are useful evidence, not an investment thesis by themselves. A delivery forecast, an earnings estimate, a stock-price target, and a rating upgrade are four different things, and readers deserve that distinction. IMHO all of the analysts will start to upgrade as their sales continue to increase as consumers start to realize what FSD can do.
FSD: Take Rate Tops 50% on New North American Deliveries
The headline:FSD take rate on new North American deliveries exceeded 50%, with Tesla’s Q2 shareholder update reporting that more than 55% included FSD subscriptions. (Tesla Q2 update) Its reported “Active FSD Subscriptions” metric increased from 1.28 million in Q1 to 1.48 million in Q2, an increase of 200,000, or approximately 15.6% sequentially; Tesla reported 56% year-over-year growth. (Tesla Q2 update) -Remember – The FSD subscriptions are 90% margins.
G.L.A interpretation:Tesla is moving from a one-time ~15% margin on vehicle sales to a dual-margin model: the same automotive margin on the car, plus a ~90% recurring software margin on FSD.
Cybercab: A Growing Fleet, just the beginning!!
Tesla began deploying Cybercab for public rides in Austin in early September, moving the purpose-built two-seater into its operating robotaxi network. The vehicle has no conventional steering wheel or pedals, and deployment remains geographically limited.
The latest dated registry report verified for this edition shows:
- Cybercab growth: 67 Texas registrations by September 22, compared with 45 at the September 3 launch, an increase of approximately 49%. (EV registry report)
- Broader Tesla fleet: 476 registered autonomous vehicles in Texas, comprising 409 Model Ys and 67 Cybercabs. (EV registry report)
- Latest additions: The most recent batch in that report added 19 Model Ys and nine Cybercabs. (EV registry report)
The next near-term checkpoint is regulatory:NHTSA has required Tesla to answer questions by September 30 about Cybercab’s self-certification and compliance with federal safety standards. Commercial deployment does not eliminate that review. (Reuters)
G.L.A interpretation:IMHO TESLA has checkmate on the FSD industry, competitors will not be able to compete with price or technology.
Tesla’s Other Engines: Energy, Optimus, and Semi
- Energy:Tesla deployed 13.5 GWh of storage in Q2, up 53% sequentially, while management discussed demand from data centers and broader electrification; energy margins nevertheless declined, showing why deployment growth and profit growth must be assessed separately. (Tesla Q2 earnings call)
- Optimus:Tesla’s Q2 update described installation of first-generation production lines at Fremont, with initial builds intended for training and functionality development. This is manufacturing preparation, not evidence of a mature external robot-sales business. (Tesla Q2 update)
- Semi:Tesla listed the Nevada Semi factory as commissioning and retained a 2026 production-start outlook in its Q2 materials. Investors should distinguish that ramp from a fully scaled autonomous trucking network. (Tesla Q2 update)
G.L.A interpretation:energy helps broaden the business beyond vehicle deliveries, while Optimus and Semi add longer-term possibilities.
SpaceX and Starlink: The Infrastructure Layer
Starlink is at 12.0 million subscribers as of June 30, 2026, double the 6.0 million it had a year earlier. SpaceX added a record 1.7 million net subscribers in Q2 alone, after 10.3 million at the end of Q1. That official count is service lines on standardStarlink.comaccounts, so it excludes negotiated enterprise and government contracts. Q3 has not been reported yet.Ron Baron’s path is much larger.He has said Starlink was on pace for about 15 million customers this year and could reach 300 million in 10 years, plus enterprise and government demand on top of that. In his model, consumer subscribers are only about a third of the revenue; the rest comes from government, enterprise, and mobile. At that scale he has talked about ~$1 trillion in annual Starlink revenue, $700–800 billion of EBITDA, and a standalone Starlink value around $14 trillion.
The freshest engineering milestone is ahead:SpaceX’s September 15 update says Starship will begin orbital missions starting with Flight 14, enabling future Starlink V3 deployments, other payload missions, and orbital propellant-transfer testing.
G.L.A interpretation:the investment attraction is the connection between launch capability and communications capacity.Lower-cost, reliable launch could support a larger network and more services, but orbital insertion, reuse, deployment cadence, and network performance still have to be demonstrated.
Orbital AI infrastructure belongs in the long-term scenario discussion.
SpaceX: Bank of America Raises 2027 and 2028 Estimates
The SpaceX story is also showing up in higher analyst forecasts: Bank of America raised its 2027 and 2028 revenue and earnings estimates following Q2 results, according to an August 6 report covering analyst Ronald Epstein and his team.
- 2027 outlook:Bank of America raised its revenue forecast to approximately $100.7 billion, an increase of roughly 29%, and its earnings-per-share forecast to $3.19, up more than 50% from its prior estimate.
- 2028 outlook:The bank raised its revenue forecast to approximately $184.8 billion, up roughly 29%, and its earnings-per-share forecast to $7.29, an increase of approximately 93% from its prior estimate.
G.L.A interpretation:upward revisions strengthen the case that SpaceX’s expanding businesses could translate into a much larger earnings base.But higher modeled earnings are not realized earnings, and the investment case still depends on execution, capital spending, competitive durability, and the valuation paid today.
xAI: From Conversation to Useful Work
_On September 21, xAI introduced Grok 4.7, making it available through Cursor, Grok Build, its API, and other developer platforms._The company describes improvements in coding, sustained task execution, self-checking, and safeguards; these are vendor-reported capabilities, not a blanket independent finding of superiority.
G.L.A interpretation: the more consequential competition is not simply which chatbot gives the most impressive answer. It is which systems complete useful work reliably enough that customers keep paying for them.
The opportunity is substantial, but the scorecard should stay practical. Watch customer retention, successful task completion, inference efficiency, and the cost of supplying the necessary compute.
X, Neuralink, and The Boring Company
- X and X Money:On September 2, X moved U.S. creator payouts for Original Content Rewards and Subscriptions to X Money, while creators outside the U.S. remained on Stripe. G.L.A sees creator payouts as a concrete payments use case, though not proof of broad payments-market leadership.
- Neuralink:A September VOICE trial update showed participant Terry training a thought-to-speech system, with Grok Voice supplying the reconstructed voice pipeline. The program remains investigational, and the demonstration does not establish broad clinical efficacy or commercial approval.
- The Boring Company:Its project directory lists Vegas Loop as open and expanding, Music City Loop in Nashville as under construction, and Dubai Loop as under contract. The company also said Vegas Loop’s station count would double by year-end, a target that should remain separate from completed openings.
G.L.A interpretation:these developments make the broader ecosystem more tangible. Payments distribution, assistive technology, AI software, and transportation infrastructure can reinforce one another, but shared leadership does not make their revenues, liabilities, or shareholder rights interchangeable.
The G.L.A View: Stay Bullish. Demand Proof.
Tesla remains G.L.A’s highest-conviction long-term public-market idea. That is an investment opinion, not a guarantee of returns or a claim that valuation no longer matters.
The bullish case is not that every initiative must succeed immediately. It is that multiple businesses could develop into meaningful earnings contributors over time, with software, manufacturing, energy, and infrastructure strengthening one another.
The next evidence to watch:
- Tesla demand:Q3 reported deliveries and the incentives required to produce them.
- FSD: Paid adoption, subscription retention, and recurring revenue, with upfront purchases separated.
- Cybercab:Active commercial vehicles, paid trips, safety outcomes, and the regulatory response.
- SpaceX: Starship’s orbital milestones and subsequent deployment reliability.
- xAI:Repeat customer usage and commercially useful work, not benchmark headlines alone.
- Capital discipline:Whether investment spending ultimately produces durable cash generation.
G.L.A’s forward view is that software adoption and service utilization could become increasingly important alongside hardware shipments.That is a thesis to test, not an excuse to ignore vehicle margins, competition, regulation, capital requirements, or valuation.
ELON’s mission is ambitious. The research standard should be just as demanding:follow the engineering, verify the milestones, and own the opportunity only with a clear understanding of the risks.
Coach Kyle’s Note: Special Thank You To All of My Readers, If you want a deep dive report on any public or private company let me know, thanks!
G.L.A INVE$T RE$EARCH provides research and education, not personalized investment advice. Forecasts, analyst estimates, management targets, and G.L.A opinions may not materialize; readers should evaluate valuation, concentration, liquidity, and potential loss before investing.