Musk ​Goes Head-to-Head With Altman. But This AI Stock Is the Winner.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk (ALLISON ROBBERT/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Record deliveries from Tesla yet the stock slumps. The electric-vehicle company can’t shrug off worries about future EV sales, but the bigger question is whether CEO Elon Musk’s vision of the future will pay off. Right now he’s struggling to match fellow entrepreneur Sam Altman in the all-important race to monetize artificial intelligence.

Tesla’s third-quarter deliveries growth was a sharp turnaround from previous declines, but the market isn’t giving much credit to the idea of a lasting rebound. The bounce looks to be largely due to the ending of the federal EV tax credit.

Either way, the one-day move doesn’t matter that much. Tesla stock has risen this year on excitement about its autonomous vehicles and robots, not the EV business. That focus is only likely to sharpen if a proposed $1 trillion pay package for Musk gets shareholder approval—among the milestones for the full payout are the sale of a million robots and putting one million robo-taxis on the road.

Musk’s vision of the future is all about bringing AI into the physical world—a Jetsons-style Space Age. But right now Altman’s OpenAI and its software-focused AI are making the biggest advances. With a new $500 billion valuation, OpenAI has just overtaken SpaceX as the world’s most valuable start-up. It should unlock more firepower for Altman’s own plans for AI agents to eat the world of software.

Which future vision should investors back? Software is easier to scale and normally gets higher margins, but is also more prone to disruption than hardware, with lower barriers to entry by competitors. Both types of AI are likely to require huge amounts of capital expenditure.

Perhaps the best solution is to concentrate on the company providing the backbone to Musk and Altman’s ventures—chip maker Nvidia. The future might be a Tesla Optimus robot doing the yard work or an OpenAI agent contracting a gardener for you. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will be sitting pretty in any case.

— Adam Clark

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Tesla Sales Jump But CEO Elon Musk Has Other Battles

Tesla was expected to see a boost to sales with the end of tax credits for electric-vehicle purchases, and it met those expectations. Its third-quarter deliveries smashed estimates and returned Elon Musk’s EV maker to growth after two consecutive quarters of decline. The question is what happens next.

• Tesla delivered a record 497,099 cars in the quarter, a rise of 29% from the second quarter and 7.4% from a year ago. Total 2025 deliveries of 1,217,902 through September are down 5.9% from the same period in 2024. Investors are looking to its robo-taxis and robots as its next growth stage.
• CEO Musk has some other things on his plate, too. A federal judge rejected his attempt to move a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit to Texas, from Washington, D.C. The case is about Musk’s disclosures of Twitter stock purchases before buying the social-media platform in 2022 and later changing its name to X.
• And a group of pension funds and a teacher’s union, among others, is urging fellow Tesla shareholders to oppose the reelection of Tesla board members and a proposed $1 trillion pay package for Musk. The group says Tesla’s board has failed to get Musk to focus his attention on the EV maker.
• Tesla EV rival Rivian also beat expectations for sales in the third quarter, with a 32% jump from a year ago. But it narrowed its 2025 sales guidance to a range of between 41,500 to 43,500 EVs, from 40,000 to 46,000 previously. Rivian reports earnings Nov. 4.

What’s Next: The Tesla shareholder group says opposing the slate of directors up for reelection would be a “critical step” in overhauling the board. The annual shareholder meeting is on Nov. 6.

— Mackenzie Tatananni, Anita Hamilton, and Janet H. Cho

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OpenAI’s Market Value Is $500 Billion. Is It a Bubble Yet?

When a private company that is approaching its 10-year anniversary but has yet to turn a profit sits at the epicenter of the world’s biggest investment boom, and the market pegs its value at half a trillion dollars, it is worth looking for additional warning signs. OpenAI has reached that valuation milestone.

• The ChatGPT creator’s employees have sold $6.6 billion of stock to private buyers, according to reports. The valuation is a $200 billion increase from its most recent funding round earlier this year, which was led by Japan’s SoftBank. But it is another reason for concern about a tech bubble.
• Dot-com era poster child Pets.com sought bankruptcy in November 2000 after reaching a peak market value of around $400 million. Tech investing has been booming in this latest era, featuring artificial intelligence. U.S. stocks have added $21 trillion in value since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022.
• It is what AI has the potential to do to the broader economy that investors hope will ultimately justify both the eye-watering valuations of the market’s biggest stocks these days and the companies’ trillions of dollars in infrastructure spending.
• Words like “bubble,” coming from the man who co-founded OpenAI, don’t provide a great deal of confidence, though. “When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently told reporters.

What’s Next: Altman continued: “Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes,” he said. “Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes.”

— Martin Baccardax

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Trump’s Tariffs Hit Farmers Hard. A Bailout May Be Next.

American farmers are feeling acute pain from the trade wars, so much so that President Donald Trump said soybeans would be high on the agenda when he meets Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the end of the month in South Korea. Trump is also contemplating using tariff proceeds to aid farmers.

• News on that front is expected early next week. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a CNBC interview that “substantial support” for farmers, particularly soybean farmers, is coming on Tuesday. He has discussed the issue with the president and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.
• U.S. farmers have been losing share to Brazil and Argentina as a result of the tariffs. That hurts, especially because the U.S. has said it would allow Argentina to tap a $20 billion swap line and floated the possibility the U.S. would even buy the government’s debt out of support for Trump ally President Javier Milei.
• Trump’s promise to tap tariff revenue to help farmers, a reiteration of a statement he made last week, echoes a $32 billion bailout of the farm sector during his first administration. He is considering a $10 billion bailout for farms this time around, The Wall Street Journal reported.
• Trump’s crackdown on immigration has made farm labor harder to find, while tariffs on other countries’ goods are hindering U.S. farm exports, and prices for some farm equipment are rising. A large bailout could indicate concern that farmers have permanently lost market share, analysts said.

What’s Next: Farmers were hopeful the U.S. could get China to buy American agricultural products, but expectations are fading now because Trump has said he won’t visit Xi in Beijing until next year. The two are expected to meet on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit this month.

— Reshma Kapadia and Liz Moyer

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Fair Isaac Is Shaking Up the Credit Scoring Industry

Credit-scoring company Fair Isaac is shaking up the industry in a way that will give mortgage lenders direct access to consumer credit reports without having to go through the three big credit reporting providers, potentially cutting costs for mortgage borrowers. The shift could reflect regulatory scrutiny under the Trump administration.

• Fair Isaac is offering two different pricing models for access to its credit information, one based on a $4.95 fee plus $33 when a FICO-scored loan closes and the other a flat $10 fee. That lets those seeking access to the data bypass Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion, which charge markups.
• Fair Isaac CEO Will Lansing said direct licensing of FICOs “brings transparency, competition, and cost-efficiency to the mortgage lending process.” It also gives Fair Isaac a claim on more of the economics of the credit-scoring business. Its stock jumped 18% while shares of the credit-reporting companies fell.
• Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, who has criticized Fair Isaac’s past price strategy, welcomed the announcement as a “first step” in a social media post Thursday. Earlier this year, FHFA allowed lenders to use FICO rival VantageScore for government-backed loans.
• Seaport Research Partners analyst John Mazzoni said the move could lighten regulatory scrutiny around both Fair Isaac and the credit bureaus charging price markups in the mortgage-lending process.

What’s Next: Mazzoni said the move “decreases credit decisioning costs.” Mortgage Bankers Association CEO Bob Broeksmit called the change a “step in the right direction,” while TD Cowen analysts called it “politically positive.”

— Nate Wolf and Janet H. Cho

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—Newsletter edited by Liz Moyer, Rupert Steiner, Callum Keown