Elon Musk says Tesla should be spending on AI 'as fast as we can'

• Tesla is spending billions and burning cash as Elon Musk pivots the automaker to AI.
• Musk said he asked executives to accelerate AI spending, even if it wasn't "high-efficiency" capex.
• Tesla is the latest tech giant to sacrifice near-term profits to spend big on an AI future.

Elon Musk says Tesla should spend even more on AI — even if some money ends up being wasted.

The EV giant's capital expenditure soared 142% year-over-year to $5.8 billion in the second quarter as Musk's AI spending spree ramped up.

Speaking on an analyst call after Tesla's earnings on Thursday, Musk said that he had asked executives to keep accelerating the company's spending.

"We should be spending on capex as fast as we can spend — as fast as we can without it being too wasteful. So we're not trying to aim for some extremely high-efficiency capital spend because that would slow things down," Musk said.

Tesla is investing aggressively in new production lines and factories for its Cybercab robotaxi and Optimus humanoid robot.

The automaker recorded a negative free cash flow of $1.1 billion in the second quarter, its first shortfall since 2024, and Tesla's shares fell in premarket trading as the company's profits missed earnings expectations.

Executives told investors that AI spending will continue to grow, with Tesla's total capex spending expected to surpass $25 billion this year.

CFO Vaibhav Taneja said on the earnings call that Tesla was aiming to secure debt facilities to give it the capacity to borrow up to $30 billion.

He predicted spending would ramp up in the next 2-3 years as the company builds a new solar panel factory, installs more AI compute, and breaks ground on a massive 'Terafab' semiconductor fab that Tesla is building with SpaceX.

It comes as other tech giants burn through cash to keep up in the escalating AI race. Google recorded a negative free cash flow of nearly $6 billion in its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday and raised its capex predictions for the full year to as much as $205 billion.

Musk's comments on Tesla's spending efficiency come a year after he launched an assault on wasteful government spending with DOGE, and the world's richest man has continued to criticize government spending as prone to abuse and waste.

Musk told investors on Wednesday that Tesla's capex efficiency was "off-scale good" because the EV giant was investing in lots of productive assets like factories and infrastructure at the same time.

"I think probably this is the fastest industrial scale-up since World War II in America," Musk said.