Tesla, Meta, IBM: 3 earnings calls that left us thinking

Earnings season is in full swing, and Big Tech’s calls aren’t limited to the massive use of “superintelligence,” which some interpret as an attempt to please the White House after it reportedly hated the term “artificial intelligence.”

Here are three moments from Tesla (TSLA), Meta (META) and IBM (IBM) earnings calls Wednesday evening that stood out to us.

Tesla

Today, the focus is on Tesla reducing its capital spending plans for this year to $20 billion, down from the $25 billion it planned three months ago. A key factor appears to be that its Optimus robots require more training before being released into the real world.

Elon Musk said investors should view Optimus as a baby:

“A big difference between Optimus and cars is that we don’t have this huge fleet of cars that we can collect training data from. With Optimus, we have to start it by making the robots and having them play themselves, which is really how a human learns to navigate the world. You can see it when you have a toddler, and they get older, and at first they’re kind of wobbly and they don’t know how to do things. Eventually they learn to wipe their ass, which is a big milestone as anyone who has kids knows. Then they learn to read and do all sorts of things and they learn that through play.

Meta

Are early adopters of Meta’s Muse AI Agent (META) spending too much? Mark Zuckerberg’s comments about credit limits during the earnings call suggest that might be the case.

This raises a larger question: could AI agent purchases end badly for retailers and banks, in the form of unpaid debts and write-offs?

“The most common use case for Muse is shopping, with more than a quarter of people who use Muse engaging in it with an average purchase amount over $200,” Zuckerberg said on the call. “Plaid told us that they had never seen activity like they are seeing with their connector on any other service before. During the first week, we had to work with Stripe to increase credit limits because volumes were higher than any of us expected.”

IBM

IBM (IBM) CEO Arvind Krishna appeared to be in a better position on this earnings call compared to three months ago, which followed a shock earnings warning that shook the stock.

It was interesting to hear Krishna express some executive concerns about current spending on AI tools:

“I think what we’re seeing is that at least large companies are becoming much more aware of the true ROI of all their AI spending. They’re also concerned if some of the spending on AI is spiraling out of control and with no real return. But as I’ve always characterized it, there’s no question for us, and that’s the advice I give to everyone in management that I meet, that what we’re trying to give people in AI, the productivity, the benefits of AI, as they are. will change jobs, it’s very real. Let me not create confusion on this subject.

Brian Sozzi is the editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance, host of the Sozzi unleashed the morning show and Power Actors with Brian Sozzi podcast and member of the Yahoo Finance editorial leadership team.