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Some stocks will face very different environments depending on how Americans vote in November.

“We currently live in a relatively low-cost, lower-tax Northwest state.”

For years, Elon Musk’s most ambitious promises across Tesla and SpaceX lived mostly in keynote slides and roadmap timelines. That is starting to change, and Musk himself agreed with the shift.

Someone on X laid it all out. Robotaxi fleet growing. Cybercab event confirmed. Semi rolling off the line. Optimus production starting. A $100 billion spaceport breaking ground.

“The promises are turning into actual factories, vehicles and launch dates,” the user wrote. “Now comes the hard part: scaling them.”

Musk replied with one word. “True.”

The trillion dollar chip plant behind the Optimus

At the center of the renewed attention is Terafab, the semiconductor manufacturing project jointly backed by Tesla and SpaceX. The entity behind it, Terafab AI, recently locked in a tax value limitation agreement for its site in Grimes County, Texas.

SpaceX confirmed the location on August 6, with construction set to begin.

The initial commitment is real money. Tesla and SpaceX plan to invest $16.8 billion at the outset and employ at least 3,000 people. A May filing had outlined a potential $55 billion first-stage buildout that could grow to as much as $119 billion across additional phases.

The $16.8 billion is now the officially confirmed first-phase figure, TechCrunch reported.

One important detail the announcement did not lead with: the chips at Terafab will be manufactured by Intel, with Tesla, SpaceX and xAI as anchor customers. The facility is designed to bring logic, memory, packaging and testing under one roof, producing chips for Tesla’s Optimus robots and Cybercabs, as well as for space-based data centers SpaceX is developing.

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What turned heads was ARK Invest’s longer-term framing of the project. ARK estimated Terafab could eventually require $1 trillion in total investment.

A figure that would surpass the inflation-adjusted $704 billion cost of building the entire U.S. Interstate Highway System. That comparison underscores just how large a bet Musk’s companies are making on controlling their own chip supply, according to Stocktwits.

Tesla and SpaceX have described the ambition in blunt terms. Musk has said Tesla will work with SpaceX on a one-terawatt compute hardware factory, with Terafab designed to help meet expected demand.

The two companies already have real commercial ties, with Tesla disclosing $143.3 million in 2025 revenue from SpaceX, primarily from vehicle sales including Cybertruck purchases, according to Quartz.

What this means for Tesla and SpaceX stock

The market has not been reading the two companies the same way. SpaceX recovered sharply from its July lows over the past month. Tesla did not get the same treatment. Same ecosystem, same billionaire, very different stock charts right now.

Part of that divergence traces back to SpaceX’s own headline-grabbing announcement this month. The company revealed plans to invest $100 billion in Starbase, Louisiana, a spaceport in Vermilion Parish expected to become its largest launch facility, with construction starting in 2027 and first launch targeted as early as 2029, according to CNBC.

At full buildout, the site is expected to include five launch complexes with two pads each, plus propellant production and employee housing. Shares of SPCX rose about 2% on the news.

Musk also used the weekend exchange to clear up confusion about a separate deal, the $1 billion acquisition of mobile power provider APR Energy. “Since I’m the controlling shareholder of SpaceX, it weirdly gets reported as me buying it, which is not true,” Musk said, clarifying that SpaceX, not Musk personally, made the purchase. APR Energy operates more than one gigawatt of mobile gas and diesel generation capacity, giving Musk’s companies access to deployable electricity as power becomes a growing constraint on AI expansion.

That growing overlap between Tesla and SpaceX is itself becoming a source of investor uncertainty.

One Jefferies analyst has warned that as SpaceX speculation intertwines further with Tesla’s stock, traditional valuation methods based on vehicle sales and margins may become less useful for explaining Tesla’s price moves, TheStreet reported.

The most immediate catalyst is Tesla’s Sept. 3 Cybercab launch event in Austin.hapabapa / Getty Images

Scaling is where Musk’s track record gets complicated

The X user’s comment about scaling being “the hard part” is not idle. Tesla’s own history offers a cautionary example in the Cybertruck.

It will be unveiled in 2019 with a promised $39,900 base price and annual production ambitions of 250,000 units. The current entry model starts at $74,990, and estimated U.S. sales fell from nearly 39,000 in 2024 to about 20,000 in 2025, TechCrunch reported.

The Semi faces a similar test now that production has actually started. Tesla’s first high-volume Semi rolled off the line at its Sparks, Nevada facility, targeting an annual capacity of 50,000 trucks, though analysts expect only 5,000 to 15,000 deliveries in 2026 as the ramp builds gradually, TheStreet reported.

Robotaxi scaling tells a similar story. Despite operating in multiple cities including Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa, Tesla’s unsupervised fleet remains small relative to what Musk has long promised. The Sept. 3 event was marketed as folding a new two-seat vehicle into that existing service rather than a dramatic fleet expansion.

Retail sentiment reflects that mixed picture. On Stocktwits, sentiment toward SPCX registered as bearish alongside extremely low message volume. Meanwhile, TSLA traders remained neutral amid normal chatter. A sign that even engaged retail traders are not fully convinced the scaling phase is a sure thing.

What investors should watch next

The most immediate catalyst is Tesla’s Sept. 3 Cybercab launch event in Austin, which will be expected to show whether the two-seat, steering wheel-free vehicle can actually integrate into Tesla’s existing Robotaxi service rather than simply generating headlines.

Beyond that, the pace of Terafab’s construction in Texas and Starbase Louisiana’s 2027 groundbreaking will offer concrete markers for whether Tesla and SpaceX can convert massive capital commitments into physical infrastructure on schedule.

Louisiana officials project the spaceport will create 3,000 direct jobs over 10 years with an average annual salary of $92,600, according to TechCrunch.

Given how far apart SPCX and TSLA have moved over the past month, investors in either stock will likely need to watch both companies together rather than in isolation, since Musk’s ecosystem increasingly ties their fortunes to the same underlying bets on AI compute, autonomy and space infrastructure.

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Some technology companies develop products in laboratories and then search for customers.

The new venture backed by Palantir CEO Alex Karp is starting from almost the opposite direction: actual battlefield knowledge, gleaned through the years.

Ukraine’s former military minister Mykhailo Fedorov is starting a defense-technology business, with Karp as its first significant investor, according to a statement Sept. 1. The firm plans to use expertise learned during Russia’s invasion to produce technology that supports Ukraine and can eventually serve partners overseas, Fedorov added.

There’s plenty investors still don’t know. The identity of the firm, its value, the amount Karp invested, and the specific goods involved have not been released publicly.

There is one other key difference: Palantir Technologies (PLTR) itself has not been named as the investor. Karp. Investors should not assume this transaction is a corporate investment unless Palantir later announces it as such.

But it doesn’t make the action inconsequential to Palantir stockholders.

Karp and Fedorov have worked together for more than five years, Reuters said, and Palantir has been helping Ukraine with software throughout the conflict. Their latest effort brings Karp closer to a defense-technology ecosystem that has been evolving at an extraordinarily rapid pace under wartime strain.

And it may be the most significant tale.

Alex Karp is betting on something Silicon Valley cannot manufacture

Fedorov is not your average startup entrepreneur.

He was formerly minister for digital transformation and became one of the government’s greatest supporters for drones, artificial intelligence, and swiftly created military technology before becoming Ukraine’s defense minister in January.

Ukraine has had to condense technological development cycles that elsewhere can span years.

A drone may be successful until an enemy figures out how to jam it. As electronic-warfare methods advance, so too must communications systems. Targeting software must quickly process battlefield data to be useful. Instead of a controlled demonstration, new systems can be tested against an opponent.

That produces something hard to buy: operational experience gained via repeated application in conflict.

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Fedorov said his team had gained unique experience in working with defense technologies during the full-scale war, and had witnessed how technology was transforming warfare.

Karp seems to find an economic value in that experience.

That means his investment is not just throwing money to another drone maker.

The potential asset isn’t just hardware. It’s understanding what breaks, how fast an adversary adapts, what troops really utilize, where the information bottlenecks are and how software and hardware have to evolve under combat circumstances.

Fedorov is building a much broader defense-tech network

The new enterprise is simply one of the things Fedorov has been doing since leaving Ukraine’s administration.

The former military boss was looking for U.S. funding for a defense-technology fund and wanted Western finance to assist in building and operating weapons-making enterprises, Reuters said Aug. 30.

Reuters. Fedorov also said Aug. 21 that he planned to go to the U.S. to seek investments for defense-tech businesses and Ukrainian entrepreneurs. He has ties to big U.S. tech businesses such as Palantir and SpaceX and has kept in touch with Elon Musk about Starlink, the article said.

Then another revealing move.

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Fedorov took an innovation-adviser position at Italy’s Defense Ministry on Aug. 28. Fedorov’s expertise in military innovation helped Ukraine stand up to Russia, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said.

Combined, such actions indicate Fedorov is aiming to parlay Ukraine’s wartime technical knowledge into something exportable: funds, enterprises, intellectual property and advising skills for Western governments.

Karp is now financially involved in that project.

Palantir’s government business is already exploding

Karp’s financial involvement is important since his investment is coming at an inflection point for Palantir’s own military and government business.

Palantir reported $1.935 billion in second-quarter revenue, an increase of 93% from a year earlier. U.S. revenue climbed 115% to $1.573 billion, Palantir announced. More importantly for this story, U.S. government revenue rose 90% to $809 million.

The statistics are even more staggering farther down the revenue statement.

Palantir closed 220 deals worth at least $1 million during the quarter, including 98 worth at least $5 million and 73 worth at least $10 million.

Total contract value was $3.373 billion, up 49% from a year ago.

Operating income on a GAAP basis was $912 million, or an operating margin of 47%, and net income attributable to common shareholders on a GAAP basis was about $1.062 billion.

Palantir exited the quarter with around $9.2 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term U.S. Treasury securities.

The business also lifted its full-year sales guidance to $8.150 billion to $8.158 billion, and expected U.S. commercial revenue of more than $3.424 billion.

These aren’t the figures of a speculative military software firm.

Palantir is already making billions as government demand for AI-enabled technologies rises.

Karp is now placing his own personal wager on folks who have spent years researching how some of those technologies operate when the repercussions are real.

Palantir’s CEO is betting on a new kind of defense-tech investment.John Lamparski / Getty Images

Ukraine is becoming a laboratory for the next defense-tech boom

Ukraine’s impact on military tech stretches far beyond Palantir.

The CIA-backed investment firm In-Q-Tel helped German drone maker Quantum Systems enter the U.S. market, Reuters reported Aug. 31. Quantum Systems is now valued at almost $8 billion.

That’s another indication defense investment is shifting.

For decades, military procurement was driven by a very limited number of large prime contractors that developed costly weapons systems via long government-development projects.

The Ukraine conflict has thrown up a novel model: smaller drones, software, AI, autonomous systems, and quickly iterated hardware, whose efficacy may alter in months.

The commercial opportunity follows the military one. Technology proved in Ukraine might attract venture finance, Western military ministries and ultimately bigger purchase contracts.

Karp’s latest investment puts him toward the front of the process.

The real Palantir angle is bigger than 1 startup

Investors still need to be cautious not to overestimate the financial link.

Palantir has not revealed any stock participation, has not declared any commercial deal with Fedorov’s firm, and has not disclosed any income prospect for Palantir.

Ultimately, the business might have minimal direct financial impact on Palantir.

But Karp’s choice is also a strategic statement.

Palantir has long argued that contemporary warfare is more dependent on software that can link vast volumes of information and help people make choices more quickly. Its recent financial results indicate that capacity is a costly business for governments.

Fedorov provides the other half of the equation: expertise from a nation that has been forced to learn which wartime technologies perform under unrelenting real-world duress.

Put the two together and you have a more compelling investing argument.

In California, developers produced an astounding technology. The next lucrative military firm may not come out.

Maybe Ukrainian engineers have already figured out what works when the adversary is actively trying to defeat it.

Karp placed his money on that distinction.

Palantir’s U.S. government revenue is up 90% already, so investors would want to keep an eye on where its CEO thinks the next generation of military innovation is being created.

Related: Palantir’s Pentagon AI surge comes with a question investors can’t ignore

Wall Street has rewarded investors in 2026, but they’ve questioned the durability of those gains.

Through Sept. 1, the S&P 500 shot up 11.5% year-to-date, the Nasdaq Composite 12.3%, the Dow 9.8%, and the Russell 2000 17.7%. Yet the Nasdaq entered a correction in March as the Iran war drove oil higher, markets rebounded to August records, and September opened with another sell-off.

That said, Morgan Stanley’s head of U.S. public-policy research, Ariana Salvatore, in a CNBC interview, just delivered a pointed message for worried AI stock investors.

The concerns around the AI buildout have shifted beyond chip demand and valuations. Communities are resisting data centers that underpin AI due to higher electricity bills, heavy water consumption, construction-related disruptions, and pressure on strained energy grids. 

That tremendous resistance has translated into audits, stricter permitting, and demands that tech companies finance their own infrastructure. 

Salvatore doesn’t dismiss the political threat. Instead, her conclusion draws an important distinction between what the backlash might disrupt and what investors may be prematurely writing off.

Morgan Stanley sees AI spending surviving the political squeeze

Salvatore began by breaking down the issue at hand for AI stock investors.

“So it’s remarkable how quickly the public opposition to data centers has become powerful and bipartisan, and politicians are listening.” 

She identified three major pressure points: higher utility bills, environmental concerns, including water consumption, and quality-of-life disruption from construction projects.

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That said, she believes the political risk is mostly local rather than ideological at this point. The pushback is emerging in Republican- and Democrat-led states, while governors such as Greg Abbott and Josh Shapiro have turned toward tougher oversight. 

Yet she isn’t interpreting that resistance as the end of the AI investment cycle. “We think it’s likely that the CapEx story is still intact. We’re still very constructive,” Salvatore said. “We have over a trillion dollars in CapEx from the hyperscalers next year.”

The big differentiator will be timing. “We just think it’s more likely to be conditional,” she said, underscoring “timing delays” and “geographical dispersion.”

In practice, hyperscalers could preserve their overall budgets by postponing projects in politically sensitive regions and redirecting capacity toward areas with greater energy, water, and public support.

A delayed project could push chip, networking, cooling, and electrical equipment sales into later quarters without gobbling up demand. Moreover, geographic dispersion could efficiently redistribute winners across utilities, developers, and infrastructure suppliers.

However, longer permitting schedules and higher community or energy costs could weaken project returns, particularly for more leveraged players.

Overall, though, Morgan Stanley’s message is constructive. “The overall story, we think, is pretty robust,” Salvatore said. 

 Morgan Stanley said AI infrastructure spending remains durable, despite growing political resistance.Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The trillion-dollar AI boom faces its biggest political test

The backlash surrounding the AI boom is growing, and it centers on who absorbs the cost of supplying it.

Morgan Stanley estimates that U.S. hyperscalers will spend a whopping $800 billion in 2026, Reuters noted, and nearly $1.1 trillion in 2027. Similarly, Goldman Sachs projects $7.6 trillion in AI infrastructure investment through 2031.

Energy supply isn’t expanding nearly as quickly. According to PJM, hyperscaler data centers can connect within two to three years, while a new power plant might require four to six years. 

Similarly, Pennsylvania argues that data centers generated $29.4 billion, or 46%, of capacity charges across PJM’s four most recent auctions, raising serious concerns that households could finance infrastructure built for Big Tech.

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Texas shows how political support can reverse. 

Governor Greg Abbott ordered an audit of data-center projects seeking ERCOT connections before any are greenlit, Utility Dive reported. ERCOT is looking at 474 gigawatts of proposed load, which is more than five times the state’s record peak demand, with data centers accounting for 90% of that total.

“Simply put, Texans must come first,” Abbott said.

Yahoo Finance reports that Texas is also expecting to forgo $3.2 billion in sales-tax revenue over the next couple of years, prompting state Sen. Joan Huffman to call the cost “extremely concerning” and “unsustainable.”

In addition, Pennsylvania recently removed AI data centers from fast-track permitting, requiring developers to obtain local approval, fund new energy infrastructure, and conserve water.

“These are some of the biggest companies in the world,” Governor Josh Shapiro said. “They can afford to be good neighbors, follow the rules, and do this right.”

Reuters reported that New York went even further, pausing permits for facilities that are using at least 50 megawatts amid nearly 12 gigawatts of queued demand. At the same time, 71% of Americans oppose the building of an AI data center near them. 

So the big risk for investors has less to do with demand and more to do with costly projects, delayed equipment orders, and a spending boom that’s contingent on community consent.

The AI trade survives, but stock selection matters more

Undoubtedly, AI has become a critical support for the current bull market.

Over the past three years, through early 2026, according to Yahoo Finance, the S&P 500 gained 76%, compared to 32% for an index excluding AI-linked stocks. That level of concentration means disruption to data-center investment could hit the broader market hard, not just chipmakers.

Morgan Stanley’s message is constructive but conditional.

Political resistance doesn’t erase demand for compute, but it raises the cost of converting spending into capacity. Permitting delays, grid constraints, and water rules could potentially postpone sales, compress returns, and redirect projects between states.

It’s also important for investors to separate demand risk from execution risk. Stronger exposures include profitable platforms and suppliers with contracted backlogs, pricing power, and diversified customer bases, along with fortress-like balance sheets to absorb delays.

Weaker exposures include leveraged developers, speculative utilities, and vendors whose forecasts assume that every planned campus will open on schedule.

So the move isn’t to abandon the AI thesis, but to reduce concentration and stop treating every beneficiary equally.

Companies that can efficiently monetize installed capacity today should remain at the top of investor radars, while investors should stage purchases when valuations reach nosebleed levels, while demanding clear evidence of strong returns. 

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