Tesla's stock pops on a robotaxi milestone. Here's what comes next.

By William Gavin

Tesla has started removing safety drivers from some robotaxi rides. CEO Elon Musk expects the company's robotaxi network to be 'very, very widespread' in the U.S by the end of 2026.

Tesla plans to begin volume production of the Cybercab, a designated robotaxi, later this year.

Tesla's stock jumped Thursday after Elon Musk announced that the company had begun offering limited ride-hailing services without a driver.

"Just started Tesla Robotaxi drives in Austin with no safety monitor in the car," Musk wrote on X, reposting a video uploaded by a user who appears to be alone in a Tesla (TSLA) vehicle.

Tesla began offering some ride-hailing services in Austin, Texas, and the San Francisco Bay Area last summer. Although the company says it operates a "robotaxi network," it has, until now, only offered trips in vehicles accompanied by Tesla employees capable of intervening in an emergency.

Musk had made several ambitious promises for where Tesla's robotaxi network would be by the end of 2025, which is when he had been targeting the removal of safety monitors in Austin. He also was aiming to provide service to half the U.S. population by then. Although Tesla failed to meet those goals, it now appears to be making some progress.

Ashok Elluswamy, who oversees Tesla's artificial-intelligence program, said "a few" unsupervised vehicles would be added to Tesla's wider fleet in Austin. The fleet has grown to 51 electric vehicles, up from 32 at the end of December, according to a crowdsourced robotaxi tracker.

Tesla shares rose more than 4% after Musk's post about the robotaxi network, as well as his comments earlier in the day regarding plans to begin selling the company's Optimus humanoid robot to consumers next year.

Shares of Uber Technologies (UBER) and Lyft (LYFT) were off by 1.6% and 2%, respectively, on the news. Both companies aim to compete with Tesla and Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL)-backed Waymo, another leader in the robotaxi field.

Read: Tesla's EV sales keep falling, but Wall Street stays focused on robotaxis

Beyond developing service in Austin, Tesla also intends to focus on expanding its operations across the U.S. Last year, Musk said Tesla planned to operate in at least eight metropolitan areas by the end of 2025.

"I think self-driving cars is essentially a solved problem at this point," Musk said Thursday during an interview at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. "Tesla's rolled out robotaxi service in a few cities and will be very, very widespread by the end of this year within the U.S."

In April, Tesla is expected to begin volume production of the Cybercab, a designated robotaxi vehicle. Musk said earlier this week that production would be "agonizingly slow" to start, before eventually becoming "insanely fast."

Read: Fighting with Elon Musk has been great for business, Ryanair CEO says

Tesla reports its fourth-quarter earnings next Wednesday. Investors will likely be expecting an update on Tesla's timeline for its artificial-intelligence and robotics plans.

Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Percoco said key elements of that report include any updates on the scaling of Optimus production, AI-chip development and robotaxi expansion. Stock movement might also depend on Tesla's comments around "unsupervised" Full Self-Driving, a more advanced version of Tesla's current software.

-William Gavin

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01-22-26 1636ET