Tesla’s quarterly sales increased for the first time this year, buoyed by a last-minute rush from U.S. consumers eager to claim a $7,500 federal EV tax credit before it expired on September 30.

The strong quarter has also helped drive Elon Musk’s personal fortune to a historic $500 billion, cementing his position as the richest man alive. But analysts caution that the real challenge lies in sustaining this momentum, given Tesla’s struggles in China and Europe, where the company faces mounting competitive and political headwinds.

Between July and September, Tesla produced 447,450 vehicles — 435,826 Model 3 and Model Y units and 11,624 “other vehicles” such as the Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck. That represented a 5 percent decline compared to the 469,796 vehicles produced in the third quarter of 2024. Deliveries, however, climbed 7.4 percent year-on-year to 497,099 vehicles, including 481,166 Model 3 and Model Y units and 15,933 other models, up from 462,890 last year.

For a direct-to-consumer automaker like Tesla, deliveries are the clearest measure of sales, and the spike was largely fueled by the deadline for the U.S. EV incentive. The company delivered nearly 50,000 more vehicles than it produced, cutting into excess inventory that had been building throughout the first half of the year.

However, beyond the U.S., Tesla’s position is less secure. In Europe, sales are down 37 percent year to date compared with 2024, a slump worsened by the company’s strained relationship with regulators and consumers amid Musk’s polarizing political views. Analysts say Tesla has yet to fully repair its brand image in the region, where buyers increasingly see alternatives from Volkswagen, BMW, Stellantis, and now, Chinese models, as safer choices.

In China, Tesla is also losing ground to domestic rivals BYD and Geely, whose aggressive pricing and rapid innovation cycles have allowed them to capture a growing share of the world’s largest EV market. Musk has acknowledged that the competition is “fierce,” with Tesla forced to cut prices several times this year to keep pace — a strategy that has pressured margins.

With the U.S. tax credit now expired, some analysts believe that sales could drop sharply in the coming quarters. Musk himself has admitted that Tesla faces “a few rough quarters” as it adjusts to life without incentives. Still, he insists the company’s future lies not in its current EV lineup but in its AI-driven ambitions, including robotaxis and humanoid robots. By the end of 2025, Musk has pledged that half of the U.S. population will have access to Tesla’s robotaxi network, though so far it operates only in Austin and San Francisco.

The latest sales figures arrive amid Tesla’s high-stakes governance drama. Its board has proposed an audacious $1 trillion pay package for Musk, tied to ambitious milestones including producing over a million robots, launching a million robotaxis, and creating $7.5 trillion in shareholder value. If approved at a November 6 shareholder meeting, the package could double Musk’s net worth and potentially make him the world’s first trillionaire.

Musk recently bought $1 billion in Tesla stock — his first open-market purchase in over five years — in what he described as a vote of confidence. Tesla also unveiled its latest “Master Plan,” pivoting from its day-to-day EV operations toward a long-term future centered on AI and robotics.

Still, that future is far from guaranteed. Analysts note that Tesla’s latest growth was tied almost entirely to the federal credit, rather than an organic rebound in global demand. Without significant progress in China and a repaired relationship with Europe, sustaining growth will be difficult. Meanwhile, Tesla’s current lineup is aging, and the company has yet to provide a firm timeline for a cheaper Model Y variant originally slated for volume production in the second half of 2025.

However, Tesla’s results have given Musk another historic milestone — a $500 billion personal net worth. But as the glow of the U.S. tax credit fades, the EV maker faces the bigger test to rebuild trust abroad and secure lasting demand for its next generation of products.

In a surprise turnaround from the first half of the year, Tesla’s global deliveries grew 7.4% in the third quarter compared to the same period last year. The Elon Musk-owned carmaker delivered a record 497,099 Teslas during the three-month period, exceeding analyst expectations of 456,000. Tesla is one of several EV companies that benefited from a rush to purchase electric vehicles before a $7,500 federal tax credit expired Sept. 30. Rivian said Thursday that its deliveries jumped by a whopping 32% in the third quarter.

Amazon’s cloud arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS), has signed a multi-year partnership with the National Basketball Association (NBA) to roll out artificial intelligence-powered features and game data insights, the two organizations announced on Wednesday.

The deal, which did not have a disclosed financial value, will debut “NBA Inside the Game,” a platform that converts live game data into interactive statistics and experiences for fans. It will appear across live broadcasts, the NBA App, the league’s website, and social channels. Teams themselves will gain access to the AI-driven data for performance reviews.

“Whenever we build a statistic, there is always input from our teams, because we want to make sure that these services we build not only are great for our fans, but also help our teams improve their strategy on court,” said Ken DeGennaro, the NBA’s head of media operations and technology.

Among the platform’s functions, the system will use player-tracking data to generate AI statistics, including defensive positioning, shot success probabilities, and real-time strategic insights.

The tie-up marks another high-profile sports partnership for AWS, which has already aligned with Formula 1 and the NFL. The NBA deal underscores its push to expand into basketball, a sport with a global following of billions and a rapidly growing digital fan base.

The announcement also highlights a deepening cloud rivalry. Earlier this year, Microsoft signed a five-year agreement with the English Premier League to embed its Copilot AI into the league’s digital platforms. For both AWS and Microsoft, sports leagues offer powerful visibility and a chance to showcase consumer-facing use cases for their enterprise-grade AI systems.

Cloud providers are seen as using marquee sports leagues to showcase their AI strengths. Basketball offers AWS global reach, especially in emerging digital markets like Asia, where the NBA has a massive following. Microsoft’s Premier League partnership, meanwhile, taps into Europe’s most popular sport, giving the company a foothold in one of the most lucrative sports media markets in the world.

For investors, while the NBA deal may not materially shift Amazon’s top line — AWS generated $25 billion in revenue in the most recent quarter — the visibility and branding associated with the NBA tie-up could bolster the perception of AWS’s AI moat at a time when Wall Street is scrutinizing how cloud providers plan to monetize AI at scale. Amazon shares often trade on expectations of AWS’s growth trajectory, given the division’s status as the company’s primary profit engine.

Analysts note that these partnerships can function less as direct revenue drivers and more as strategic proof points, signaling long-term demand for AI services that reinforce AWS’s premium valuation. Arm’s-length agreements with globally recognized leagues like the NBA may also set precedents for similar deals in other sports, extending AWS’s reach into adjacent markets.

Sports firms, for their part, are racing to adopt AI to keep fans engaged and provide coaching staff with competitive insights. That demand positions cloud providers as critical partners, further validating investor theses that AI will drive a new cycle of cloud spending.

In that context, the AWS–NBA agreement is being watched as much on Wall Street as on the court: not for its immediate financial impact, but for the valuation narrative it feeds into Amazon’s broader AI and cloud growth story.

Analysts say both partnerships are strategic proof points, representing more than just sports branding. Each deal signals to Wall Street that generative AI is moving beyond niche enterprise use cases into global consumer-facing platforms, strengthening the argument that AI could unlock a fresh cycle of cloud spending.

Qualcomm has shifted its flagship chips to the latest generation of Arm Holdings’ computing architecture, with new features aimed at better AI performance, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters — a decision that could not only help Qualcomm compete more effectively with MediaTek and Apple but also give a revenue lift to Arm.

The move addresses lingering questions about whether and how Qualcomm will continue working with Arm following last year’s acrimonious legal dispute, during which Arm had at one point threatened to revoke a critical license. Qualcomm is signaling that it sees value in continuing the partnership by adopting the ninth version of Arm’s computing architecture — known in the industry as “v9” — even as legal tensions remain unresolved.

Shares of Arm jumped 5% during the regular session after news of Qualcomm’s adoption was published. Investors viewed the development as a sign that Arm, now publicly traded, can still rely on major chipmakers to integrate its designs despite growing competition from alternatives like RISC-V.

San Diego-based Qualcomm last week unveiled a new generation of PC and phone chips, and unlike previous iterations, its new processors will be built on the v9 instruction set. The update is designed to help chips handle more complex workloads such as generative AI, image generation, and chatbots — areas seen as central to the next wave of semiconductor demand.

Qualcomm rivals have already staked their positions. Taiwan’s MediaTek, which has at times surpassed Qualcomm’s market share in mobile processors, has publicly confirmed its use of v9. Analysts widely believe Apple is already deploying the architecture in its own chip designs. Qualcomm’s decision, therefore, aligns it with competitors already leveraging v9, avoiding the risk of being perceived as lagging behind in next-gen AI performance.

Asked about its choice of technology, Qualcomm declined to confirm specifics, saying instead in a statement: “We chose the instructions that make sense for our customers. That’s the beauty of having our own CPU design team — we can pick and choose the instructions that add value.”

For investors, the shift highlights an important divergence in strategies across the semiconductor industry. While RISC-V has gained attention as a free, open-source chip standard, it lacks the maturity and developer ecosystem of Arm’s architecture. Qualcomm could have chosen to extend use of its prior Arm generation, as it did with its chips announced last year, or leaned more aggressively toward open standards. Qualcomm appears to be balancing the need for cutting-edge AI performance with the relative stability of Arm’s established ecosystem by opting for v9.

Jay Goldberg, senior analyst for semiconductors and electronics at Seaport Research Partners, said the financial impact for Arm is difficult to quantify since Qualcomm licenses Arm’s computing architecture but designs much of its chip in-house. Still, he said the decision is strategically significant given the recent disputes.

“That’s very positive for Arm,” Goldberg said. “These are companies that were fighting each other. Qualcomm could have gone a very different path here.”

The adoption is believed to underline Qualcomm’s determination to keep pace in the AI-driven semiconductor race, where Apple and MediaTek have already made headway. For Arm, the win strengthens its case to shareholders that even amid legal frictions and emerging rivals, its core technology remains indispensable to industry leaders.