Tesla stock rose on Wednesday.Robotsmight have done it.
Shares of the electric-vehicle maker traded as high as $343.33 and closed at $334.09, up 1.4%, while the S&P 500 rose 0.5% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.1%.
There isn’t much news to pin the gains on. Shares could have been bouncing back after a few weak days. Coming into Wednesday trading, Tesla stock had fallen for four consecutive trading sessions after closing at $351.67 on Aug. 26. Wednesday’s level was still almost $18, or 5%, below that price.
The Aug. 26 close was the highest close since late May, leading some technical stock market analysts to hope for a breakout, when shares move substantially above a prior trading range. That hasn’t happened yet.
As for Wednesday’s move, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff visited Tesla’s robot facility and posted about it on X at 12:53 a.m. Wednesday morning. “Amazing what [Tesla CEO Elon Musk] is doing to create the future,” wrote Benioff. “Just inspiring.”
Tesla plans to start selling significant quantities of AI-trained humanoid robots in 2026, according to Musk. (It hasn’t sold robots to external customers yet.) Nothing in Benioff’s tweet changes any of that, or provides new information, but sometimes evidence of Musk working on Tesla AI projects is all it takes to move Tesla shares.
Coming into Wednesday trading, Tesla stock was down about 18% so far this year, but up about 54% over the past 12 months.