🚀 Elon Put Thrusters On A Car

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Tesla's new Roadster just did a barrel roll. In the air. On purpose.

Then it jumped over a Tesla Semi for an encore.

Here's what went down at Thursday night's launch.

Tesla $TSLA ( ▼ 2.13% ) held the event at a SpaceX testing facility in McGregor, Texas, which tells you everything about the vibe.

The car drove up a steep ramp until it was fully upside down, held there by 2G suction tech.

Then thrusters fired, spun it through a mid-air barrel roll, and it landed clean. Your car can't even parallel park itself without drama.

Musk says the trick runs on an ultra-high-pressure air tank plus thrusters, built with rocket hardware from SpaceX $SPCX ( ▼ 1.74% ).

So that's $50K down in under two weeks for a car you'll get in two years. Patience sold separately.

For context, the original 2006 Roadster did 0-60 in about 4.6 seconds. The new one is over 5x quicker.

And Musk even teased a follow-up demo, joking it could jump the Snake River like Evel Knievel.

This Roadster was first unveiled in 2017 with a 2020 delivery target. It's now pencilled in for 2028.

That's eight years late. Some wines age faster.

Musk also said it'll eventually be Tesla's only manually driven car. Fun twist: it drove itself through the entire demo.

Analyst Dan Ives reckons that's the point. Autonomy is now the default on every Tesla, even the one built for humans to drive.

Short answer: it won't sell enough to matter. Ives says production will likely be limited and won't move volume or revenue.

So why the hype?

Ives values Tesla as a "physical AI platform" with a car business underneath. Roughly two-thirds of his $500 price target comes from autonomy, robotaxi, and Optimus.

The spicy bit? He gives an 80% chance Tesla and SpaceX merge by the end of 2027.

JPMorgan's Rajat Gupta, who rates the stock neutral, called it a "rocket upgrade" showing a deep SpaceX collaboration.

Shares rose as much as 4.5% premarket Friday off the buzz.

Zoom out though. The stock sits at $378.40, down about 19% this year. Ives' $500 target implies roughly 32% upside from here.

The Roadster is a marketing flex. The real story is whether investors buy the AI and robotaxi pitch when earnings land next week.

Flying cars make headlines. Earnings make prices.

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Taiwan wants to build Nvidia a whole neighbourhood in Texas.

The first one could cost up to $4 billion. And that's just the starter home.

Taiwan's Economy Minister Kung Ming-hsin told Bloomberg the government plans to raise billions of dollars for US industrial parks that would house a complete AI hardware supply chain.

Texas gets the first complex.

Why a whole park? Because TSMC $TSM ( ▼ 2.28% ) and Foxconn don't work alone.

TSMC makes Nvidia's chips. Foxconn assembles the AI servers. Behind them sits an army of smaller suppliers that keep the machine running.

Those smaller players can't easily set up in America by themselves. So Taiwan is building them a ready-made campus to move into.

When the big fish migrate, the pilot fish follow. 🐟

Taiwan's tech giants were already packing their bags for America:

And that $20B doesn't even count TSMC.

The chipmaker added another $100B for Arizona in July. Its total planned US spend is now $265 billion.

That's roughly the size of Greece's entire economy. From one company.

Taiwan is also tightening export controls on AI chips to match US restrictions, joining the Trump administration's clampdown on chip smuggling to China.

AI servers and cutting-edge semiconductors are being added to Taiwan's controlled list.

Once the rules kick in, shipping restricted AI hardware to China becomes a criminal offence under Taiwan's Foreign Trade Act.

Kung pointed to the "quite some commitments" Taiwan made in the trade deal it signed with the US this year.

So why should a retail investor care about an industrial park in Texas?

Because the AI supply chain is physically moving closer to its biggest buyers. Nvidia's major customers include Microsoft, Amazon and Meta.

Shorter supply lines on US soil could mean less geopolitical risk baked into the AI hardware story. That's been one of the market's biggest worries about chips made thousands of miles away.

The names building a US footprint (Foxconn, Quanta, Wistron, TSMC) are worth watching as this rolls out.

The flip side? Building in America isn't cheap, and tighter China controls mean one big market gets even harder to sell into. Both could weigh on margins over time.

Big plans, big cheques, and a very clear message about which side Taiwan is picking.

Big Tech just chipped in $330 million for a ballroom.

Yes, a ballroom. At the White House.

That's according to confidential documents obtained by the Washington Post, which name the companies and individuals funding the project.

Here's who paid for the dance floor.

Nvidia and Apple wrote the biggest cheques: $25M each.

Together that's $50M, or roughly 15% of the entire pot from just two companies.

Behind them, a who's who of your portfolio:

The money flowed through a nonprofit called the Trust for the National Mall, earmarked for the "Donald J. Trump Ballroom." Subtle.

Trump wants to raise $400M, so the donors are already 82% of the way there.

The project is a new East Wing with the ballroom, office space, and an underground military facility. Party upstairs, bunker downstairs.

One small wrinkle: the whole thing is estimated to cost about $600M. So even hitting the target leaves a $200M gap. Somebody's paying for the canapés.

Nvidia and ServiceNow both confirmed their donations.

Nvidia said its support for the US is independent of any business interests, and that it gave to a nonpartisan trust serving all Americans.

ServiceNow's reasoning was refreshingly honest: its partners and peers were all doing it, so it joined in. The corporate version of "everyone else was going."

Worth noting: ServiceNow has been a federal contractor for over a decade. The GSA says the donations had no bearing on its place in federal buying catalogs.

The White House says critics alleging "fake" conflicts of interest would complain just as loudly if taxpayers footed the bill instead.

For companies this size, $25M is couch-cushion money. Your Nvidia or Apple shares won't feel it.

The real story is how much Big Tech wants a good seat in Washington. These firms live and die by government decisions on trade, regulation and federal contracts.

So whatever you make of the ballroom, this list is a map of who's investing in political goodwill. Whether that buys anything is the question critics and the White House will keep fighting over.

If you hold these names, watch the policy headlines as closely as the earnings.

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