The investment, announced alongside Tesla’s latest results, comes with assurances that production plans for the long-promised Cybercab robotaxi remain on course. 

After years of missed timelines, Tesla is asking the market not to judge it on car sales but also on whether its self-driving vision finally turns into a working business.

This will not come cheap as Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja said capital expenditure would climb beyond $20 billion this year, more than twice the $8.5 billion spent in 2025, as Tesla expands factories and builds the computing backbone needed for autonomy, robotics and new vehicles. 

Shares initially jumped in after-hours trading before easing back as the scale of the spending became clear.

Tesla wants investors to back future revenue from software, robotaxis and humanoid robots at a time when its core electric vehicle business is under pressure. 

Competition has increased, prices have fallen, and a key US tax incentive for EV buyers has ended. Revenue slipped about 3% last year to roughly $94.8 billion, the first annual decline in Tesla’s history.

On a conference call, Musk acknowledged the transition and again pressed the case for autonomy as Tesla’s defining metric. Analysts agree that the focus has shifted. “(That) makes rollout metrics – not deliveries – the most important leading indicator from here,” said Thomas Monteiro, senior analyst at Investing.com.

Tesla says it is already running a limited driverless robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, using Model Y vehicles equipped with its Full Self-Driving software. The Cybercab, designed without a steering wheel or pedals, is meant to scale that effort. 

Musk said he expects fully autonomous vehicles to operate across a large part of the United States by the end of the year, though he has previously set and missed similar targets.

On regulations, vehicles without traditional management do not fit current federal safety standards, and Tesla has not provided firm dates for approval or widespread unsupervised deployment. Even so, the company insists Cybercabs will be added to its robotaxi network and sold to consumers once production begins.

The spending surge will also fund projects that have sat on Tesla’s roadmap for years, including the Optimus humanoid robot, the Semi truck and the Roadster sports car. 

Musk warned that early production of both Cybercab and Optimus would be slow, saying last week it would be “agonisingly slow” before accelerating. On Wednesday, he said Tesla does not expect meaningful Optimus volumes until late 2026.

There are supply risks as well. Musk cautioned that a global shortage of memory chips could limit Tesla’s ambitions as demand from large technology firms soaks up capacity for data centres. 

He floated the idea of building a chip plant to protect the company. “If we don’t do that, we’re just going to be fundamentally limited by supply chain,” he said. “In a worst-case geopolitical situation, it would be quite a severe situation.”

While the car business faces challenges, one division is performing strongly. Tesla’s energy generation and storage unit posted record revenue of $3.84 billion in the fourth quarter, up 25.5% from a year earlier, driven by demand for grid-scale batteries that support renewable power and stabilise electricity networks. That growth has become a bright spot as vehicle margins are squeezed.

Financially, adjusted earnings per share beat expectations in the fourth quarter, but net income fell 61% to $840 million. Automotive gross margins, excluding regulatory credits, improved to 17.9%, well above forecasts. 

To protect volumes, Tesla has leaned heavily on discounts and cheaper versions of its best-selling models, and Wall Street expects deliveries to rise modestly to about 1.77 million vehicles this year.

Some investors are enthusiastic about the pivot. “With Tesla’s legacy EV business slowing, Tesla investors can take part in the scorching hot AI boom,” said Andrew Rocco, a stock strategist at Zacks Investment Research.

This puts serious weight behind its goal to become the core operating platform for decentralised power systems.

The Berlin-based company confirmed it has raised $22 million in Series A equity alongside a $1.2 billion debt facility, taking total committed capital to $1.222 billion. 

The equity round was led by MMC Ventures and QED Investors, with backing from Lowercarbon Capital, BNVT Capital, Bosch Ventures, Centrotec and Earthshot Ventures. 

A major European bank is providing the debt to support customer and installer financing, reinforced by a €300 million guarantee from the European Investment Fund.

Cloover is responding to the high demand for home energy systems, which lack adequate machinery needed to deploy them at scale, as they are badly out of date. Installers still rely on patchy software, slow approvals and limited access to capital. 

Banks, on the other hand, are not built to finance thousands of small residential projects quickly. The result is delay, higher costs and missed opportunities.

Cloover’s model cuts through that bottleneck by placing financing inside the installer’s daily workflow. Instead of treating funding as a separate step, the platform links sales, procurement, financing and long-term energy management in one system designed specifically for distributed energy assets.

The company uses data-led credit assessments that focus on long-term energy savings, rather than relying only on standard credit scores. It also advances public subsidies upfront, so households do not have to wait months to benefit from state support. 

For investors, the platform offers exposure to a new infrastructure asset class, backed by live performance data and clear impact tracking.

“With this $1.2 billion commitment, we’re enabling households to become energy independent, without the friction of upfront costs or complex loan applications. Our AI operating system connects stakeholders across the value chain and revolutionises how energy independence becomes the new norm,” said Jodok Betschart, co-founder and chief executive of Cloover.

On the ground, installers using the platform can offer financing at the point of sale, shorten payment cycles and reduce paperwork. Cloover says its partners generate, on average, 30% additional revenue by reaching customers they previously could not serve. 

Homeowners, meanwhile, gain access to solar, batteries, heat pumps and EV charging with no heavy upfront spend, and typically cut energy bills by 20 to 30% through better system performance and financing terms.

The company’s growth numbers reveal why investors are paying attention. Cloover reports that revenue grew more than eightfold in 2025 while being profitable, nearing $100 million in sales. It is targeting $500 million in 2026 and $1 billion the year after.

That growth is being driven by the dynamism in the energy market. Electricity demand is getting higher, grids are under stress, and electric vehicles are adding new pressure points. 

With households currently seeking better management over costs and reliability, governments establish policies that favour decentralised generation.

“Cloover is not just about financing – we’re building the backbone for energy independence. We are creating the Shopify of Energy: a platform that equips manufacturers, installers, households, and investors with the tools to grow, collaborate, and deliver distributed energy at scale,” said Valentin Gönczy, co-founder and chief product officer.

Founded after extensive research with installers across Europe, Cloover was built around a simple insight: demand was not the issue, infrastructure was. 

Financing emerged as the biggest limitation, and the company set out to fix it without competing with installers themselves.

With fresh capital in place, Cloover plans to enter more European markets, including France, Italy, the UK and Austria, while expanding its product suite with solid automation and new financing tools. 

The longer-term goal is to run the digital backbone of decentralised energy, connecting households, installers, manufacturers and investors through a single platform built for scale.