On Thursday, July 23, 2026, Tesla closed at $319.69, down 14.52%: its worst session in more than a year and its lowest level since August 2025. In a single day the company lost nearly $195 billion in market capitalization, a sum larger than the entire market value of any other automaker. From its all-time high of $498.83, reached in December 2025, the stock has now surrendered more than 30% of its value, marking the worst 2026 performance among the Magnificent Seven — the group of megacap tech giants that includes Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Tesla.
The drop is surprising because second-quarter revenue came in above expectations. Tesla posted sales of $28.24 billion, up 26% year over year and ahead of Wall Street estimates, while deliveries rose to 480,126 vehicles, 25% more than in the same period of 2025.
What disappointed investors instead were margins and profitability. Earnings per share came in at $0.33, well below forecasts of $0.50 to $0.55. Gross margin fell to 16.9% and operating margin collapsed to 1.4%, while operating expenses jumped 47% to $4.35 billion. For the first time since early 2024, free cash flow turned negative, with a shortfall of $1.09 billion.
The real reason for the panic: how much the future will cost
According to analysts, however, it was not so much the quarterly results that spooked investors as the outlook for the coming years. Elon Musk described 2026 as a «year of massive capital expenditure», while chief financial officer Vaibhav Taneja confirmed investments of more than $25 billion, a figure set to rise further.
Those resources will fund the expansion of the Robotaxi fleet, development of the Optimus humanoid robot, new semiconductor plants, dedicated artificial intelligence infrastructure and additional manufacturing capacity in the energy business. Musk also said Tesla is arranging credit lines capable of providing up to $30 billion in additional borrowing capacity.
The market read those statements as a sign of sharply rising costs and economic returns still far off. During the conference call, Musk admitted that Tesla would be «less capital efficient» in order to accelerate the development of new technologies — a phrase investors did not welcome.
On the self-driving front, Tesla announced that its Robotaxi service is now available in seven U.S. cities and that the fleet has covered more than 380,000 miles without a driver. Still, according to Mizuho analyst Vijay Rakesh, the number of Cybercabs actually in service is only around 25 to 50, compared with the roughly 2,000 to 3,000 vehicles already operated by Waymo, the Alphabet-owned robotaxi company.
Optimus, too, remains a project far from commercialization. Tesla confirmed that its first production lines are up and running, but the robots will initially be used only to gather training data. Musk called Optimus the most complex product the company has ever developed and gave no date for large-scale production.
After the results, several investment banks cut their price targets on the stock. Morgan Stanley lowered its target from $417 to $400, while Mizuho went from $480 to $450, citing the impact of tariffs and the end of federal tax incentives for electric vehicles.
The only bright spot came from the FSD driver-assistance software: subscriptions rose 56% over the past year, reaching 1.48 million users. For the market, though, that growth is not enough to offset the uncertainty over the timing and cost of Tesla’s big bet on artificial intelligence and robotics.
Editor’s note
This article was originally published in Italian on money.it by Alessandro Nuzzo on July 25, 2026 as «Così Tesla ha perso 200 miliardi in un solo giorno». It has been translated and adapted for an international audience by the Money.it International desk.
