Poe's Law notwithstanding, I find it hard to believe that anyone would think I was making a good faith business acumen observation. If Optimus walks you to the kitchen to get a coke, what's Tesla's business model? Charge by the nanosecond for compute time?

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neilv 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Purchase/lease access to the hardware, subscription for the necessary online connectivity, and microtransactions for each actual use of it (ostensibly because of cloud compute, and that also means surveillance data is captured and monetized).

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staticman2 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The robot suggested a coke zero because it was paid to by the Coca-Cola Company. Now you'll need to buy more coke zero to replace what you drank.

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a4isms 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The business model for Tesla and xAI is actually very simple and superior to OpenAI and Google's. No, this is not satire:

The business model is that his companies are meme stocks, and controlling social media means controlling meme stocks. The business model is also that his companies require corporate socialism, and controlling social media means influencing government policy.

He can talk about AI driving cars, but that's yesterday's news. Today, his business model for AI is to put his finger on the scale and influence society to help him become richer. AI is threatening to replace search, but in a way it's also threatening part of what social media provides, namely the ability to guide discourse at scale.

What's easier: Getting his personal board to give him a trillion dollars, and shoring up public support for that with bias in his AI products and on X? Or building a trillion-dollar business?

Elon Musk's business model for AI is actually quite easy to understand.

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dreamcompiler 5 hours ago | parent [-]

And just like all meme stocks and so-called stablecoins, it'll work until it doesn't. The fall will be dramatic.

	▲	bdangubic 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		it won’t be. the same sane argument was that “robotaxi” fall will be dramatic but it wasn’t, Musk, like Trump, is a master at manipulating masses and when thing du jour inevitably fails he’ll just pivot on an earnings call (and on “X” along the way) how “thing du jour is yesterday’s news” and he’s onto “next big thing” - data center on Jupiter that will replace all earth’s data centers or something like that :)

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beefnugs 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So lets see a $60k robot, lets say the whole economy crashes and money means nothing so they just call it $30k for kicks and giggles. Super cheap power since elon owns all the land now, he can have a tiny nuclear reactor every few house lengths. So $1 a day for power : 30365 / 365 days a year is about $80 a day in the first year, or maybe $40 a day assuming the reactors dont melt down for 2 years. So that is about 2 forced cokes down your throat per hour, 4 if you are a "known criminal" who is being robo-babysat. And that is still zero profit for elon because he has to shuffle all his assets around to the next farce of a fucking company

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DonHopkins 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

But the damned robot keeps drinking all my Coke Zero!

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senordevnyc 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Tesla doesn’t need a business model, they’re a meme stock.

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LanceJones 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Perhaps. I suppose the biggest in history then? $1.4T valuation and 60% of shares held by non-meme institutions (like pension funds, S&P tracking ETFs, etc) when you factor out insiders.

	▲	bdangubic 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		“The market can remain irrational longer than …” - John Maynard Keynes.

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dr_kretyn 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm still unsure whether you're Musk's fanboy or making a joke.