This is a media observation about how one CEO allocates speaking time on earnings calls, it doesn't change any pricing, vendor, or strategic decision for any reader.
- A new analysis of seven years of Tesla earnings calls found Elon Musk now spends nearly 50% of his speaking time on AI, robotaxis, and Full Self-Driving, up from 15% to 20% in 2022.
- The analysis, done by financial research firm Hudson Labs using an AI tool that tags topics sentence by sentence, covered call transcripts back to 2019.
- Musk now spends less than a third of his earnings call time on Tesla’s core automotive business, even though the company still gets 70% of its revenue from car sales.
- Talk of Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot, has grown from under 2% of Musk’s remarks after its 2021 reveal to nearly a third of his focus on the third-quarter 2025 call.
- Other Tesla executives, including CFO Vaibhav Taneja, have shifted their own focus away from cars more slowly, still spending around 30% of their time on automotive topics.
What Happened
A new analysis of seven years of Tesla earnings calls found Elon Musk now spends nearly half his speaking time on AI, robotaxis, and Full Self-Driving, up sharply from 15% to 20% in 2022.
TechCrunch partnered with financial research firm Hudson Labs, which used an AI tool called Co-Analyst to tag the topic of every sentence spoken on Tesla’s earnings calls dating back to 2019. The analysis found Musk now spends less than a third of his time on the automotive business, even though Tesla shipped nearly half a million cars last quarter and drew 70% of its revenue from car sales.
Talk of Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot, has grown sharply since its 2021 reveal. Musk spent under 2% of his remarks on the project in the year after it was announced, but that figure climbed to nearly a third of his focus on the third-quarter 2025 call.
Other Tesla executives have shifted more slowly. Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja and Vice President of Engineering Lars Moravy still spent around 30% of their time on automotive topics even on recent calls, down from close to 50% before 2024, when the car business began facing tougher competition from legacy automakers and Chinese entrants.
Why It Matters
The gap between where Musk’s attention goes and where Tesla’s revenue actually comes from is now stark and measurable, not just a vibe. For founders and investors evaluating how executives allocate public attention versus where a company’s fundamentals sit, this kind of sentence-level analysis offers a rare, quantified way to check rhetoric against reality.
This measures attention, not outcomes, Musk talking about Optimus and robotaxis more doesn’t mean either business is actually generating revenue yet, and other executives’ slower shift suggests the rest of Tesla’s leadership sees the car business as still central. The analysis also can’t capture tone or context, a passing mention and a sustained pitch both count as one topic tag.
If you value Tesla as just an auto company, fundamentally, it’s the wrong framework. Elon Musk, CEO, Tesla
Bottom Line
Watch whether Optimus and robotaxi talk keeps climbing on future calls, and whether that shift ever gets matched by actual revenue disclosures for those businesses rather than just louder rhetoric. Also watch whether other Tesla executives eventually catch up to Musk’s framing, or continue treating cars as the real business.
For founders and investors watching how leaders talk about AI initiatives versus core business fundamentals, per Relve, an AI trends intelligence platform, this kind of quantified attention analysis is a useful check on any executive’s public framing, not just Musk’s.
