Tesla cut its annual capital spending plan to $20 billion while its finance chief said the company was using funds more efficiently, Yahoo Finance reported on Oct. 22.
The company previously expected to spend $25 billion this year. Meta moved in the opposite direction, raising the lower end of its annual spending forecast despite questions about how its Muse service will generate revenue.
The remarks featured on Yahoo Finance's The 8:30 followed the companies' earnings announcements. Tesla's finance chief said the company was also using cash generated by its operations to fund projects.
Elon Musk, Tesla's chief executive, said Optimus robots would ship to corporate customers at the end of 2027 while the company continued to resolve problems with the product. He described 2027 as a more normal year for spending and put additional spending in 2028 in the tens of billions of dollars.
Musk had previously said Tesla would show the third version of Optimus in July. That presentation had not happened by the time of the broadcast, leaving the timing of a public unveiling unresolved.
He promised a demonstration video in the coming weeks showing the robot performing tasks on its own, rather than following preprogrammed movements. Tesla said it had begun pilot production at Fremont.
Musk also maintained a target of producing Optimus at an annual rate of 1 million units. The remarks did not establish when Tesla would reach that rate or explain how the revised spending plan would support it.
On a separate SpaceX call, Musk said committees were examining a potential merger with Tesla and called the combination a good idea. On Tesla's call, he declined to take further questions about the proposal.
Meta put its annual capital spending forecast at $135 billion to $145 billion, lifting the lower end by $5 billion. The company said it had spent $86 billion so far this year.
Meta said more than 10 million people had used Muse in its first six weeks. The company also reported third-quarter revenue growth of 26%.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, said Muse would probably remain free and generate revenue by taking a share of transactions it arranged, such as flight bookings. He gave no firm figures for the revenue that model might produce.
Meta's finance chief said serving more Muse users would require further investment because the service uses computing resources. The company expects the cost of operating the service to rise, leaving open how transaction revenue would compare with those expenses.
