Tesla now plans to spend $5 billion less this year than it said before. On its Q3 2026 earnings call on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026, Tesla updated its full-year capital expenditure guidance to $20 billion, down from $25 billion, Yahoo Finance reported. CFO Vaibhav Taneja said the company is "managing our capital deployment efficiently" and plans to fund capex "primarily from our cash flows from operations."
The quarter's cash numbers (Tesla Q3 2026 update)
- Capital expenditures: $4.732 billion (Q2 2026: $5.789 billion; Q3 2025: $2.248 billion)
- Operating cash flow: $6.263 billion
- Free cash flow: $1.531 billion, after negative $1.092 billion in Q2 2026
- Cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments: $45.447 billion, up $1.9 billion in the quarter
Yahoo Finance said analysts had estimated Q3 capex of $7.96 billion and free cash flow of negative $4.92 billion. CNBC noted free cash flow was still down 62% from a year earlier.
What Musk said about future spending
"I think capex is actually ending up being a little lower than we anticipated, but we'll start to become more meaningful next year. And then noticeable in the tens of billions in '28," Musk said on the call, according to Yahoo Finance. Yahoo said the money is going to Optimus production lines, AI compute, the Cybercab ramp and the Terafab chip plant Tesla is building with SpaceX.
Related: Tesla's full Q3 2026 results and Optimus production and AI compute.
