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Tesla is likely to post its biggest drop in quarterly revenue in more than a decade on Wednesday, as the EV maker grapples with issues including increased competition, a lack of new models and consumer backlash against CEO Elon Musk. Here are the top five issues investors, analysts and Tesla fans are watching closely. WILL MUSK BE DISTRACTED BY POLITICS? Musk formed a new U.S. political party, the America Party, earlier this month, after a public feud with President Donald Trump over a tax-cut and spending bill. Three months ago, when he was still allied with Trump, Musk said he was pulling back from working in the president’s administration. Founding the party has rekindled worries that Musk will be distracted from business as it faces mounting competition, especially in its key China market, and as he tries to turn Tesla into a robotics and AI company. Musk said on Sunday that he was back to working seven days a week and sleeping in the office when his small children were away. HOW FAST CAN ROBOTAXI SERVICES EXPAND? Last month, Tesla launched a small trial of its self-driving taxi service in Austin, Texas, with roughly a dozen of its Model Y SUVs and several restrictions, including safety supervisors in front passenger seats. Tesla enthusiasts lauded the efforts, although videos showed some driving mistakes. Musk has said the service would reach the San Francisco Bay Area “in a month or two,” depending on regulatory approvals, but Tesla has not applied for necessary permits to test or deploy driverless vehicles, regulators in California told Reuters this month. Investors will want to know how the expansion can go forward. WHERE IS THE CHEAPER TESLA? When Musk shifted his focus to robotaxis, he cancelled plans to build a new, cheaper EV platform. Tesla had promised to start producing the first of more affordable EV models by the end of June, but the company has not yet confirmed if it has met that target. Investors are keen for an update on those plans. Sources had told Reuters in April that a stripped-down version of the Model Y was likely to be delayed by months. Analysts have already cut their 2025 delivery estimate for the cheaper car to below 50,000 vehicles, from 63,500 at the start of the year, according to eight of them polled by Visible Alpha. CAN THE MODEL Y REFRESH BOOST SALES? Tesla rolled out a refreshed version of the Model Y this year, a move investors hoped would recharge flagging sales. Deliveries of the SUV and its Model 3 compact sedan Tesla’s volume drivers plunged in the second quarter. While Tesla blamed a January production pause to retool plants, some analysts have said the re-styling including new front and rear light bars and a touchscreen for back-seat passengers was not enough to boost demand. Investors will want to know Musk’s view of the rollout to date and going forward. With total deliveries falling 13.5% to 384,122 units in the second quarter, the second straight quarterly decline, revenue is expected to fall 11.2% year-on-year, despite aggressive discounting and low-cost financing. HOW SOON WILL REGULATORY CREDITS DWINDLE? Sales of regulatory credits a silent profit engine for Tesla are set to dry up after recent legislation. Tesla earned $2.8 billion in 2024 from such credits sold to legacy automakers to help them comply with emissions rules. Without them, the company would have reported a loss in the first quarter of this year. Analysts expect pressure on Tesla and they are already resetting their revenue estimates for the year. Akash Sriram and Abhirup Roy, Reuters
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Jon Stewart, who hosted The Daily Show on Comedy Central from 1999 to 2015 and has returned for once-a-week hosting stints since 2024, lashed out at his show’s parent company for choosing to unceremoniously end The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and discontinue the franchise. In a segment on Monday, Stewart noted his well-documented allegiance to Colbert, even showing a photo of the duo when they were both on The Daily Show from 1999 to 2005. While statements about the events surrounding the cancellation of The Late Show have been made by many celebrities on social mediaand even by hosts of other late-night programsStewart added to the conversation by boldly calling out CBS for appearing to overlook the value that compelling late-night programs bring to the media giants that own them. I understand the fear that you and your advertisers have with $8 billion at stake, but understand this: Truly, the shows that you now seek to cancel, censor, and controla not insignificant portion of that $8 billion value came from those fucking showsthats what made you that money, Stewart said directly into the camera. The $8 billion that Stewart is referring to is the proposed merger between Paramount Global, which owns CBS, and Skydance, a production company founded and helmed by David Ellison, son of tech billionaire and Trump supporter Larry Ellison. The deal has faced regulatory hurdles, first under the Biden administration and then under the Trump administration. All of this also comes as CBS News announced in July that it will settle a lawsuit filed against 60 Minutes by Trump, who claims that the show unfairly edited an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris to make her look more favorable. The fact that CBS didnt try to save their No. 1-rated network late-night franchise thats been on the air for over three decades is part of whats making everyone wonder, was this purely financial or maybe the path of least-resistance for your $8 billion merger? Stewart asked on his show. Fast Company reached out to CBS, Paramount Global, and Skydance Media. None immediately responded to a request for comment. CBS has referred to the decision to cancel The Late Show as a financial one and unrelated to the show’s content, citing a “challenging backdrop” for late-night television. Although The Late Show has reportedly been losing roughly $40 million a year, according to a source cited by the Wall Street Journal, Stewarts larger point is buoyed by the fact that Paramount earns more than half of its revenue from its television businesses. Indeed, Paramount has played up its TV assets, including The Late Show and much of its news content, in its pitch to investors about the proposed merger. Colbert’s image appears multiple times on the New Paramount PowerPoint presentation, with the company touting CBS as a leader in late-night TV. Ratings from Nielsen likewise show The Late Show as the top-rated show in its block, with about 2.417 million viewers across 41 new episodes. If you believe, as corporations or as networks, you can make yourself so innocuous, that you can serve a gruel so flavorless that you will never again be on the boy kings radar? A) why would anyone watch you? And B) you are fucking wrong, Stewart said.
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E-Commerce
Over the past few years, artificial intelligence has dominated business conversations. What once felt like a futuristic concept is now a tangible, widely accessible tool, one that is now seen as table stakes for businesses. AIs greatest promise is efficiency. For small-business owners who wear multiple hats, this promise sounds like a dream, and for some larger companies, that dream has become reality. Yet for many small and midsize businesses (SMBs) that have invested precious time and money into AI-enabled solutions, that promise remains unfulfilled. As a CEO of a company that provides fintech solutions for SMBs, and as a small-business owner myself, I understand the desire to do more with less. I understand how AI can seem like a magical solution. But the reality is, AI tools are not currently made with small businesses in mind. Whether you have already invested in AI tools, are in the consideration phase, or still testing tools, I urge you to pause everything, take a step back, and reevaluate AIs role in your business. AIs Promise Is Not for the Masses AI is pitched as a game changer for businesses, promising improved productivity, faster workflows, cost savings, and business growth. Major companies like Duolingo and Shopify have even suggested AI can replace human-led roles. And this may be true, for enterprises. This level of efficiency is possible only through custom, complex, and expensive AI models that are programed by dedicated AI teams and trained on an immense amount of dataresources, and results, that are unattainable by SMBs. The reality is, many SMBs are still digitizing their practices, their data sets are small, budgets are tight, and IT resources are minimal. This is why, instead of trying to mirror the AI adoption strategies of large enterprises, SMBs should take a different approach, one that is slow, simple, and focused on business fundamentals. By focusing on core operations like admin, customer service, and reporting, small businesses can lay the groundwork to ensure AI enhances, rather an complicates, their workflows. A False Start: SMBs and AI Adoption Its no surprise that SMB adoption of AI dropped to 28% this year, a 33% year-over-year decline. Some have learned from experience that trying to mimic enterprise adoption of AI has had the opposite effect: draining time, money, and productivity. Many SMBs still have a poor understanding of AI and its learning curves. Without proper in-house resources to implement and train on the technology, SMBs are paying for expensive tools that are not optimized to their business needs. For SMB owners who feel theyve overcommitted, I encourage you to pause and reassess. Ask yourself: Is this tool achieving what I need it to? Back to Basics Broad adoption of AI is a costly mistake for SMBs. Business leaders must slow down and thoughtfully assess where AI can truly make an impact. Start small: Choose one area, such as marketing or administrative tasks, and measure results before expanding further. Rather than investing in new tools, explore the AI features already built into your existing tech stack. Tools like Microsoft Office, Google Workspace, and Box now offer AI integrations allowing small businesses to easily explore AI applications without significant investment or complexity. By starting with the tools you already use, you not only lower the barrier to entry, you also concentrate your learning and adoption in a familiar environment. AI Applications That Work AI can be highly effective with repetitive tasks such as answering common customer questions and managing inventory. One small business, Something Sweet Cookie Dough, used AI to scale recipes and reduce ingredient waste, while also automating responses to frequently asked customer questions. AI can be a great resource for creative ideation and research as well. However, its important for a human to review all materials produced by AI as the technology is prone to misinformation and to misinterpretation of the task at hand. I suggest treating AI like a new employee: regularly checking its work, conducting performance reviews, and slowly introducing new tasks. Do not overrely on AI or assume it can operate unsupervised. AI Is Not Automatically Secure Another major oversight is the assumption that AI is inherently secure. Most AI toolsincluding popular free versions like ChatGPTlearn from the data you share with them. That means sensitive business information could become part of a models training data. If youre in a regulated industry or working with proprietary or confidential information, this is a major risk to your business and customers. Before you input sensitive data into any AI tool, understand how that data will be stored and used. Once youve done some trial and error with free versions, consider upgrading to enterprise-grade AI tools that offer security, data privacy, and compliance features tailored to you industry. AI Will Have a Place in SMBs AI can support small businesses, but only if the tools are chosen, applied, and monitored with care. Until AI companies build solutions tailored to the unique needs of SMBs, emphasizing simplicity, affordability, and support, its up to business owners to be diligent in the tools evaluation. With a measured approach, SMBs can capture the benefits of AI without overinvestment, complicating workflows, or overwhelming you and your team.
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