HomeInvestingStocksYour Digital SelfYour Digital SelfUber is quietly writing $500 million checks to lock in robotaxis as Waymo threatens to leave it behindPublished: June 24, 2026 at 7:50 a.m. ET
If you own Tesla stock, much of what you are paying for above the value of a carmaker is a bet on autonomy and artificial intelligence that has barely reached the income statement: full self-driving software, the Optimus robot and a robotaxi network.
The robotaxi is the nearest-term and most testable piece of that bet, and this spring it amounted to about 20 driverless Tesla Model Y vehicles in Austin, Dallas and Houston. Value the car business the way investors price any other automaker, and it accounts for only a fraction of the stock; the rest is the market’s bid on that future, a premium no ordinary carmaker could carry. What is new is that the bet is finally testable against operating data rather than projections.
SAN FRANCISCO, June 24, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sunrun (Nasdaq: RUN), Renew Home, and Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA), today announced an agreement to deliver more than 16 gigawatts1 of flexible energy capacity to hyperscalers and utilities. The agreement establishes a framework for three of the largest players in home energy to aggregate millions of existing demand side and energy exporting devices in states across the country into local, turnkey solutions that require no additional hardware, software, interconnection, water, or land usage for offtaking parties.
Deployable in months, not years, this capacity-as-a-solution framework creates headroom on the existing grid by freeing up transmission capacity, easing congestion on distribution infrastructure, and extending the duration and depth of available capacity, all while helping American households lower energy bills, earn rewards, and power through outages.
Together, the companies would form the largest distributed power plant in the country — capable of injecting net new electrons onto the grid from home batteries paired with solar generation while simultaneously shifting household load during peak demand hours. The combined 16-gigawatt resource draws dispatchable capacity from hundreds of thousands of home battery systems operated by Sunrun and Tesla, alongside flexible peak capacity from more than 8 million smart thermostats and devices managed by Renew Home.
“The grid of the 1800s cannot power the innovation of 2026,” said Sunrun CEO Mary Powell. “Americans deserve innovation that does not create unnecessary energy costs. When data centers are asked to throttle down operations during the most expensive and stressful hours of the day, we can activate our distributed power plants to help provide them the power they need while also protecting American families from footing the bill for costly new infrastructure.”
An Untapped Opportunity Requires a Bold Solution
In Virginia — the heart of Data Center Alley — the companies already have more than 300 megawatts of capacity readily available for immediate deployment. By 2030, that figure is expected to grow to at least 500 megawatts, rivaling some of the largest generation facilities in the state, as installations of home batteries and smart thermostats ramp.
The companies are capable of building multiple gigawatts of additional capacity across the country. Given the unprecedented race for power, hyperscalers interested in securing these local energy resources are encouraged to engage immediately, as available capacity will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
Together, the companies have also committed to provide capacity to PJM’s proposed Reliability Backstop Process. If accepted, PJM would immediately unlock over a gigawatt of capacity today, with more deployable in the years ahead for peak shaving, locational grid relief, and fast-responding ancillary services.
“Renew Home convened this strategic coalition because we believe hyperscalers are motivated to drive down costs through this transition and that this group of residential-focused energy companies can help them accomplish that goal,” said Ben Brown, Chief Executive Officer at Renew Home.
Speed to Power Through Distributed Resources
As electricity demand increases and tech leaders align with the Presidential Ratepayer Protection Pledge, the need for a technology neutral energy strategy to support cost-effective economic growth is critical.
Hyperscalers are racing to bring AI compute online while interconnection queues lengthen and energy costs increase. The grid is sized for peak hours that occur only a fraction of the year, leaving expensive infrastructure underutilized most of the time, a cost ultimately borne by every ratepayer.
New analysis from The Brattle Group finds that better utilization of the existing power grid could reduce U.S. electricity bills by $110 billion to $170 billion over the next decade and accelerate data center interconnection by several years. Sunrun, Renew Home, and Tesla designed this framework to capture exactly that dual benefit: hyperscalers come online faster, and costs go down for everyone.
“The stakes are clear. America’s grid faces mounting pressure from data centers, electrification, and manufacturing growth that no single infrastructure solution can solve fast enough,” said Colby Hastings, Senior Director of Residential Energy at Tesla. “Sunrun, Renew Home, and Tesla believe that a huge piece of the answer is already in place — in the batteries, thermostats, and electric vehicles inside millions of American homes, waiting to be put to work.”
A Win-Win-Win For Customers, Communities, and Economic Development
Residential customers, data centers, and utilities can all benefit from the improved scale, speed, and cost effectiveness this framework activates. Key aspects include:
Better grid utilization, lower rates for everyone: When customers choose to shift how they use energy during peak periods, it allows grid operators to focus on more cost-effective infrastructure — and that means lower energy costs for all ratepayers, not just owners of distributed energy resources.Innovative customer offers and experiences: Sunrun, Renew Home, and Tesla are building new customer offerings and AI-driven tools to lower the cost of solar-plus-storage systems and expand access to reliable home energy and more ways to participate in grid programs.Savings and rewards for households that have enabled these devices: The companies will unlock new ways to help households manage their energy costs and earn rewards for participating in grid-supporting programs.Latent existing capacity: Gigawatts of capacity and customer savings sit on the sidelines today in the form of idle home batteries, HVAC systems, and EVs. The three companies, in partnership with data centers and utilities, can unlock this latent capacity immediately.Speed to new capacity: Distributed capacity through residential installations is the fastest way to meet immediate system needs without expensive new poles and wires or additional land usage. This agreement between three of the largest players in home energy can create a structure to stand behind commitments on development timelines.National coverage: Meeting the needs of hyperscalers requires scale across several key geographic areas. Sunrun, Renew Home, and Tesla have the largest combined residential energy footprint in the country, with deployable capacity and utility relationships in most major electricity markets.Joint market development: Data center and utility procurement teams are stretched thin. This new joint capacity delivery framework can give them a single, trusted source for gigawatts of flexible capacity by cutting through the complexity of managing multiple resource developers and accelerating the path from need to deployment.
For more information about working with Sunrun, Renew Home and Tesla for flexible capacity and household savings, visit www.vppcapacity.com.
About Sunrun
Sunrun Inc. (Nasdaq: RUN) is America’s largest provider of home battery storage, solar, and home-to-grid power plants. As the pioneer of home energy systems offered through a no-upfront-cost subscription model, Sunrun empowers customers nationwide with greater energy control, security, and independence. Sunrun supports the grid by providing on-demand dispatchable power that helps prevent blackouts and lowers energy costs. Learn more at www.sunrun.com.
About Renew Home
Renew Home brings households and energy providers together to help households save energy and earn rewards while offering energy providers cost-effective, reliable grid capacity at scale. With its home energy management platform, Renew Home empowers millions of households to save and shift their energy use to times when it's cleaner, less expensive or better for the grid. Renew Home VPP is building the country’s largest virtual power plant solution for energy providers, with more than 6 million connected households. Renew Home is a Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP) company. Learn more at www.renewhome.com.
About Tesla
Tesla Energy Operations, Inc. is the sustainable energy division of Tesla, Inc. that develops, manufactures, sells and installs photovoltaic solar energy generation systems, battery energy storage products and other related products and services to residential, commercial and industrial customers.
Media Contacts
Wyatt Semanek
Sr. Director, Corporate Communications [email protected]
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding Sunrun’s, Renew Home’s, and Tesla’s framework to pursue distributed energy resource opportunities; the potential availability, timing, scale, dispatchability, and benefits of aggregated capacity; potential participation in PJM’s proposed Reliability Backstop Process and other utility or market programs; potential opportunities with utilities, hyperscalers, data centers, and other large energy customers; anticipated customer participation, customer benefits, grid benefits, cost savings, and ratepayer impacts; potential deployment timelines; and potential new customer offerings, software capabilities, and AI-driven tools.
Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, estimates, assumptions, and beliefs, and may be identified by words such as “expect,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “plan,” “believe,” “target,” “estimate,” “may,” “will,” “could,” “potential,” “designed to,” “seek,” “pursue,” and similar expressions. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied, including customer enrollment and authorization; device availability, performance, interoperability, and dispatch accuracy; utility program design and participation; PJM and other market rules, acceptance, implementation, and settlement processes; regulatory approvals and changes in regulatory frameworks; interconnection, telemetry, data access, cybersecurity, and privacy requirements; the ability of the parties to integrate operational capabilities while maintaining appropriate information controls; supply chain availability and costs; macroeconomic conditions; changes in utility rate structures, net metering policies, incentive programs, and tax rules; partner performance; market demand from utilities, hyperscalers, data centers, and other customers; and other risks described in Sunrun’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release. Sunrun undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law.
1 Battery Storage MW calculation is based on the installed battery rated capacity. HVAC MW calculation is based on the 1-hour peak load shift potential from connected smart HVAC systems and thermostats across Renew Home’s HVAC partners.
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/c86e0633-6933-4ed6-b257-920ccc2a54ae
Sunrun, Renew Home, and Tesla Team Up to Deliver Gigawatts of Fast, Flexible Power Together, the companies offer 16.8 GW of flexible capacity across the nation's largest data center m...
Sunrun shares are powering higher. What’s behind RUN gains? The AgreementUnder the framework, Sunrun, Renew Home, and Tesla will aggregate millions of existing home energy devices—including home battery systems, smart thermostats, and electric vehicles—into local, turnkey power solutions for data centers and utilities.
The combined 16-gigawatt resource draws dispatchable capacity from hundreds of thousands of home battery systems operated by Sunrun and Tesla, alongside flexible peak capacity from more than 8 million smart thermostats and devices managed by Renew Home. The framework requires no additional hardware, software, interconnection, water, or land usage—and is deployable in months, not years.
In Virginia, the companies already have more than 300 megawatts of capacity available for immediate deployment, expected to grow to at least 500 megawatts by 2030. The companies have also committed to provide capacity to PJM’s proposed Reliability Backstop Process, which if accepted would unlock over a gigawatt of capacity immediately.
“The grid of the 1800s cannot power the innovation of 2026,” said Mary Powell, CEO of Sunrun. “When data centers are asked to throttle down operations during the most expensive and stressful hours of the day, we can activate our distributed power plants to help provide them the power they need while also protecting American families from footing the bill for costly new infrastructure.”
Sunrun Shares ClimbRUN Price Action: At the time of publication, Sunrun shares are trading 19.28% higher at $15.28, according to data from Benzinga Pro.
Image via Shutterstock
This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs
The family of a woman killed when a Tesla crashed into her home, allegedly while in self-driving mode, is suing Elon Musk's company and the driver.
Jennifer Barbour, the daughter of the 76-year-old victim, Martha Avila, filed the lawsuit alongside her husband.
It alleges a "design defect" in Teslas and negligence against both Tesla and the driver, Michael Butler.
According to the lawsuit, the victim was standing in the front room of her brick home at around 8pm on Friday when the car smashed into it, causing her to be "pinned in the wreckage".
She was airlifted to a local hospital where she was pronounced dead, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office.
Image: Pic: Harris County Constable Precinct 5 The driver said he was using the car's self-driving system when it crashed, according to the sheriff's office, which said he was cooperative and didn't show any signs of intoxication.
Although Tesla did not immediately reply to a request for comment from Sky's partner newsroom, NBC, Elon Musk did respond to a news story about the crash on Monday night.
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Referring to the vehicle's full self-driving mode, he wrote on X: "FSD drives slowly through neighborhood streets, and this was a high-speed crash!"
Ashok Elluswamy, vice president of AI software at Tesla, defended the vehicle's systems.
"In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area," he wrote on X on Monday.
"They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash."
Image: Pic: Harris County Constable Precinct 5 NBC has seen a copy of the lawsuit, which alleges that the Tesla was in "Autopilot" mode and that the system has "a history of known danger".
It cites a 2023 Washington Post analysis of government data that "identified at least 17 fatal incidents linked to Tesla's Autopilot".
"The actions and inactions of Defendant Butler were done with reckless disregard for a substantial risk of severe bodily injury," the lawsuit alleges.
Although no criminal charges have been filed, the crash is under investigation, according to the sheriff's office, with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also launching a special investigation.
The Barbour family thanked first responders in a statement released by their lawyers.
"Your quick response, professionalism, and kindness have been a significant reason that we have been able to deal with this unimaginable situation," they said.
"Thank you for all that you do to help families like ours during the hardest moments of our lives."
The lawsuit seeks more than $1m (£760,100) in damages.
Key Takeaways Tesla shares fell after a fatal Model 3 crash triggered a special investigation by U.S. safety regulators.TSLA inked a deal with NatPower to deploy 25 GWh of battery storage projects across Italy and the U.K.Overseas delivery trends are improving and FSD gains approvals in five European countries. Tesla (TSLA - Free Report) shares fell more than 5% yesterday after U.S. safety regulators opened a special investigation into a fatal crash involving a Model 3 in Texas. The driver claims Tesla’s partially automated driving system was engaged when the vehicle veered out of its lane and crashed into a home, killing a 76-year-old woman. CEO Elon Musk has disputed the implication that Full Self-Driving (FSD) was at fault, noting that the system is designed to operate cautiously on neighborhood streets and describing the incident as a high-speed crash.
The latest probe arrives at a sensitive time for Tesla. Musk has spent the past year repositioning TSLA’s investment story around autonomous driving, robotaxis and FSD. Tesla is now not being valued just as an automaker, but as a future leader in autonomous mobility. As a result, an accident linked to driver-assistance systems has the potential to raise fresh questions about the company's long-term vision.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The investigation is in its early stages, and regulators have not reached any conclusion. Yet the market's reaction suggests growing concerns about Tesla's autonomous-driving ambitions. The bigger question is whether investors are focusing too much on a single incident while overlooking improving delivery trends, continued strength in the energy business, and steady progress toward broader FSD adoption. While Tesla stock is definitely not an obvious buy today, isn’t selling the stock also a bit premature now?
The Overlooked Strength of Tesla's Energy BusinessWhile the latest safety investigation grabbed headlines, investors may have overlooked a significant positive development for Tesla's energy business. The company signed a multiyear agreement with NatPower to deploy 25 GWh of battery storage projects across Italy and the U.K. The first phase is expected to carry a construction value of $4 billion to $5 billion, with Tesla supplying its Megapack battery systems, engineering services and Autobidder software platform. NatPower ultimately aims to expand the partnership beyond 100 GWh of storage capacity, creating a potential revenue opportunity exceeding $15 billion over the next two decades.
Tesla's energy segment has emerged as one of the company's most resilient businesses. Tesla deployed a record 46.7 GWh of energy storage in 2025, up 50% year over year, and expects deployments to increase again in 2026. To support rising demand, the company is expanding production capacity through a new Megapack factory near Houston and plans to launch its next-generation Megapack 3 system later this year.
The business is also highly profitable. Tesla's energy division generated a gross margin of 39.5% in the last quarter, making it the company's highest-margin segment. While competition and policy risks remain, the energy business continues to provide Tesla with a valuable growth engine.
Overseas Strength Brightens TSLA’s Q2 Delivery OutlookThe company's delivery outlook is improving. Demand trends have strengthened across several key international markets. In China, Tesla's retail sales rose 22.5% year over year in May, ending a two-month decline. Europe was even more encouraging, with France reporting its best May on record and registrations soaring more than 655%. Strong gains were also seen in Norway, Spain, Denmark, Portugal and Sweden. Despite softer U.S. demand, robust international performance is helping offset the weakness.
Reflecting this trend, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for Tesla's second-quarter deliveries is pegged at roughly 397,500 vehicles, up both sequentially and year over year.
TSLA’s FSD Expansion ContinuesMusk expects unsupervised FSD to be “widespread” in the United States by 2026-end. Apart from the United States, Tesla's FSD (Supervised) ambitions are gaining momentum in Europe. The Netherlands became the first European country to grant provisional approval for FSD in April, followed by Lithuania and Estonia. More recently, Denmark and Belgium also cleared the technology, bringing the total number of approving EU countries to five.
Tesla is now pursuing broader EU-wide approval. While some hurdles remain—most notably concerns from Sweden regarding speed-limit compliance—regulatory momentum is clearly moving in Tesla's favor. Finland could also approve the system before an EU-wide decision is expected later this year, further expanding Tesla's footprint.
Tesla also launched FSD in China last month. It comes at a time when competition in autonomous driving technology is heating up rapidly with XPeng (XPEV - Free Report) , BYD Co Ltd (BYDDY - Free Report) and Geely Automobile (GELHY - Free Report) aggressively investing in next-generation smart-driving systems.
Why Long-Term TSLA Investors Should Stay PutTesla is clearly not a buy. The company faces real challenges, including shifting robotaxi timelines, uncertainty around Optimus commercialization and management's warning that free cash flow could turn negative as it ramps up spending on AI and autonomous-driving initiatives.
The stock has declined 15% year to date. And its valuation still leaves little room for error.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The bears are getting louder, but the market may be underestimating Tesla's strengths. The energy business continues to grow rapidly, delivery trends are showing signs of improvement, and FSD is gaining regulatory traction in key markets. Most importantly, Tesla still possesses a powerful brand, industry-leading technology capabilities, and multiple long-term growth platforms.
With Wall Street expecting revenue and earnings growth to resume in 2026 and 2027, existing investors should retain the stock. The stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
On the June 12 episode of The Ramsey Show, a debt-free single woman with a roughly $250,000 net worth called in asking whether to buy 10 to 100 shares of SpaceX at about $162 each because a friend told her the stock was “going to skyrocket.” Dave Ramsey’s answer doubled as a personal finance lesson for anyone tempted by a hot single-stock tip: “I am not investing in SpaceX. I’m not buying single stock in that company. As much as I’m rooting for it, I could just keep doing what I’m doing, invest in mutual funds and stay boring.”
One housekeeping note before the math: SpaceX is not listed on a U.S. exchange, so most retail investors cannot simply buy shares the way the caller described. The closest public-market proxy is Elon Musk’s other company, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA | TSLA Price Prediction), which recently made a $2 billion equity investment in SpaceX and is building a chip fab at Gigafactory Texas with SpaceX.
The verdict: Ramsey is right, and the math is the reason Ramsey’s position is correct for the caller, and the case rests on opportunity cost. He framed it plainly: the claim behind any single-stock bet is that it will so badly beat the broad market that locking up the money is worth the risk. He reminded the caller that the U.S. market has roughly doubled every seven years, meaning a $5,000 index purchase has historically tended to become about $10,000 over that span without anyone touching it.
Real numbers back up the “boring” path. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) is up 23% over the past year, 75% over five years, and 257% over ten years. It does that work for a 0.09% expense ratio, holding 500 companies across eleven sectors. The fund’s top ten names, including NVIDIA at 8% and Tesla at 2%, already capture the AI and electrification story most retail investors are chasing.
If you want more growth tilt, the Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ) returned 35% over the past year and 568% over ten years. Co-host George Kamel’s point lands here: a good growth-stock mutual fund will absorb SpaceX over time once it goes public, so patient investors get a piece anyway without taking single-stock risk today.
The variable that actually decides this: your play-money cushion What actually changes the answer is how big the bet is relative to everything else — not age or income, but cushion size. Ramsey ran his “kitchen table test”: imagine putting the $5,000 on the table and watching it burn. Would you still be okay? She said yes, and Ramsey allowed it “could be a fun ride for you.” Kamel drew the line at the cushion size: he wouldn’t stop someone with a $1 million-plus net worth and 20 years of mutual fund investing from playing with $5,000, but told this caller “I think you’re still building.”
Both hosts capped speculative single-stock positions at 5% to 10% of a total portfolio. On $250,000, that ceiling is roughly $12,500 to $25,000 total across every speculative bet combined, not per stock. A $5,000 SpaceX position would fit inside that band, but only if no other lottery tickets are already in the account. Ramsey also referenced the Dogecoin run-up around Elon Musk’s SNL appearance as the cautionary version of this story.
The Tesla example shows why concentration is dangerous even when the company succeeds. Tesla trades at 402 times earnings and 245 times free cash flow, with a 4% net margin and 5% return on equity. The stock is down 10% year to date even after a 27% one-year gain. Single names move like that. Index funds rarely do.
What to actually do this week Add up every speculative position you already own (crypto, single stocks, options) and divide by your total invested assets. If that number is above 10%, do not add SpaceX, Tesla, or any other single name until the ratio comes down. Run Ramsey’s kitchen table test on the exact dollar figure you are considering. If burning it would force you to change your retirement date, the bet is too big. Compare the expected hold period against a plain index alternative. $5,000 doubling to roughly $10,000 in seven years in an S&P 500 fund is the hurdle any single stock has to beat after taxes. If SpaceX eventually IPOs, check whether your existing growth fund already holds it before buying separately. As Kamel noted, the fund will likely do that work for you. The boring portfolio is boring because it works. A speculative single stock is allowed to be in the picture only after the boring part is doing the heavy lifting.
Goldman Sachs has maintained its $375 Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) stock price target and reiterated a ‘Neutral' rating on the electric vehicle maker despite raising its second-quarter 2026 vehicle delivery forecast.
I’m going to put the verdict at the top. Our Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA | TSLA Price Prediction) work points to a stock trading right at fair value heading into the back half of 2026. The 24/7 Wall St. price target for Tesla is $417.62, against a current price of $420.55.
That implies -0.7% downside over the next 12 months. Our recommendation is hold, with a 90% confidence level, meaning we view this as one of our higher-conviction neutral calls.
24/7 Wall St. Price Target Summary Metric Value Current Price $420.55 24/7 Wall St. Price Target $417.62 Upside/Downside -0.7% Recommendation HOLD Confidence Level 90% How Tesla Got Back to $420 Tesla is up 26.39% over the past year but down 8.58% year to date after a January peak near $475. Shares are now 16% off the 52-week high of $498.83 and well above the $288.77 52-week low.
The fundamental story improved sharply in Q1 2026. Tesla posted non-GAAP EPS of $0.41 against a $0.3592 estimate, with revenue of $22.387 billion growing 15.78% year over year. Automotive gross margin rebuilt to 21.1% from 16.2%, and FSD active subscriptions hit 1.28 million, up 51%. R
eddit chatter, however, has fixated on SpaceX IPO speculation rather than the core auto business, with sentiment swinging from 90 (very bullish) on June 9 to 57 (neutral) by June 16.
The Case for $480+ Bulls have a clean story. Q2 2026 deliveries are tracking the 425,000-475,000 band that Polymarket prices at 67.1% combined probability. Cybercab, Tesla Semi, and Megapack 3 all hit volume production this year, and Gen 3 Optimus was unveiled in Q1. Free cash flow of $1.444 billion in Q1, up 117.47% YoY, plus $44.743 billion in cash, funds the entire AI roadmap without dilution.
Prediction markets see $435 as the modal June touch (41.3%) and assign a 55% probability to closing above $450 by month-end. Our bull-case 12-month scenario lands at $481.77, a 14.56% return, if FSD wins China approval and Robotaxi expands cleanly into seven new cities.
Goldman Sachs has a neutral rating on Tesla shares with a $375 price target.
What Could Go Wrong The bear case starts with valuation. Tesla trades at a trailing P/E of 369 and a forward multiple of 196. Q4 2025 revenue fell 3.14% YoY, full-year operating income dropped 38.45%, and net income fell 46.79%. Operating expenses jumped 37% in Q1 on AI R&D and CEO award stock-based comp, and energy storage revenue slipped 12%. Insiders are net sellers across 46 recent transactions.
Bulls would counter that the 2025 weakness reflects a pre-launch lull before Cybercab, Semi, and Optimus arrive. Fair point. But our bear scenario still maps to $362.58, a -13.78% return, if FSD approvals slip and the auto multiple compresses.
Tesla Price Prediction 2026-2030 I’m sticking with hold. The 24/7 Wall St. price target of $417.62 at 90% confidence says Tesla is fairly priced for what we can underwrite today.
The setup turns more constructive if Q2 deliveries come in above 475,000 or if China grants FSD approval. The thesis weakens if operating margin stays stuck below 5% and inventory days keep drifting higher from the current 27.
Looking further ahead, here is where our model projects Tesla could trade, assuming current growth trajectories and base-case execution hold.
Year 24/7 Wall St. Price Target 2026 $421.53 2030 $472.51 These projections assume Tesla executes on Cybercab, Optimus, and Robotaxi scaling without margin disruption. Significant upside could come from a successful xAI integration or global FSD approvals, while a delayed Optimus ramp or sustained tariff pressure would skew us toward the bear scenario.
Two U.S. senators are asking the nation's traffic safety regulator to examine Tesla's self-published crash statistics for its “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) driver-assistance system, following a Reuters investigation last month that found the EV maker was exaggerating its safety claims.
Shares of Tesla (TSLA 1.55%) reached their all-time intraday peak of $498.83 on Dec. 22, 2025, giving it a market cap of around $1.67 trillion.
On June 12, Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +4.83%), more widely known as SpaceX, held its initial public offering and closed the session with a market cap of $2.11 trillion.
Here's why SpaceX is soaring, and which growth stock is the better buy now.
Image source: Getty Images.
Private investors hold the majority of SpaceX's value SpaceX raised $75 billion by selling 555.6 million shares at a price per share of $135. The float, which is the shares available for public trading, is less than 5% of the shares outstanding, meaning the vast majority of SpaceX is still owned by insiders who were awarded shares as compensation or institutions that bought in during pre-IPO funding rounds. The float should increase gradually as SpaceX is allowing those insiders to sell some shares well before the usual 180-day lockup period ends.
With so much demand for shares and a relatively small available supply, SpaceX's valuation could continue to run up, at least in the short term. But those market dynamics could also inflate it with a lot of hot air, which could compress once the float makes up the majority of outstanding shares. Even with Elon Musk still owning around 19% of Tesla as of April, Tesla's float is now about 75% of the shares outstanding.
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Tesla and SpaceX have sky-high valuations A few years ago, Tesla was raking in free cash flow at margins that led the auto industry. But the electric vehicle (EV) market has since taken a hit. Consumer adoption of the technology has been slower than expected, and President Donald Trump's "big beautiful bill" removed the tax incentives that made EVs more affordable, putting another headwind on demand. Tesla's first-quarter deliveries were up just 6.3% year over year, while its energy storage product deployments fell 15.4%.
Aggressive investments in its efforts to build a robotaxi network, enhance its self-driving software, and develop marketable humanoid robots (Optimus), among other endeavors, are driving surging capital expenditures that are taking a sledgehammer to Tesla's profitability. The current consensus estimates among analysts is that it will earn just $2.06 per share in 2026, and $2.50 per share in 2027 on sales of $118.45 billion. That gives it a staggering forward price-to-earnings ratio of 162.4. For context, Tesla's all-time high annual EPS was $4.30 in 2023.
SpaceX's valuation is even more lofty. In 2025, its revenue increased by 33.2% to $18.67 billion, and net income went from $791 million in 2024 to a $4.94 billion net loss in 2025. With its market cap topping $2.5 trillion as of the close of trading Monday, that gives it a price-to-sales ratio of about 134 relative to its 2025 revenue.
When Tesla's earnings were soaring, it would have been the obvious choice over SpaceX for investors interested in companies offering proven profitability. But now, Tesla and SpaceX are both carrying values that depend far more on their anticipated growth potential than on what they are delivering today. So the answer to the question of which is the better buy may come down to which end markets you're more excited about.
Undeniable potential Tesla's robotaxi network could end up being more valuable than its passenger vehicle business -- especially as legacy automakers and pure-play EV competitors continue to release more advanced models. Utility-scale energy storage is another massive growth market as the tech sector looks for ways to alleviate the artificial intelligence energy bottleneck. And while Tesla has talked extensively about using its Optimus robots in residential settings, the bigger opportunity may be in factory operations.
SpaceX's main revenue driver is its Starlink network of low-Earth-orbit satellites that provide broadband connectivity and wireless internet to commercial, governmental, and residential customers. SpaceX also works with government agencies and commercial customers to launch payloads into space using its reusable Falcon 9 booster.
It also owns xAI, the maker of the Grok large language models, and social media platform X. AI could be a key driver of SpaceX's near-term growth, including through the deployment of data centers in space as early as 2028.
SpaceX's Earth ambitions are bold, but they pale in comparison to the company's stated mission: "To build the systems and technologies necessary to make life multiplanetary, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars."
A merger could be on the way Investors may not need to choose between SpaceX and Tesla for long. I fully expect the companies to at least attempt to merge as soon as next year.
The current regulatory environment in the U.S. is extremely business-friendly, so if there were ever a time to propose such a megamerger, it would be now. What's more, both SpaceX and Tesla could benefit if CEO Musk were putting all of his efforts into one combined company rather than splitting his focus.
Tesla and xAI already collaborate on Tesla's Full Self-Driving technology, and xAI's Grok is integrated into Tesla vehicles and Optimus robots. Meanwhile, xAI buys energy storage systems from Tesla, and the companies are collaborating on a chip manufacturing initiative called Terafab.
To top it all off, Tesla was an early investor in xAI, which SpaceX merged with earlier this year. So the longer-term plan all along seems to have been to eventually unite all of Musk's companies under one umbrella.
The combined market cap of SpaceX and Tesla as of the close of trading Monday was about $4 trillion -- behind Nvidia, Alphabet, and Apple for the fourth-most-valuable company in the world.
SpaceX has a big advantage over Tesla in that it has few real competitors, whereas Tesla faces mounting competition from other EV makers, automakers incorporating self-driving features into their vehicles, and pure-play autonomous vehicle rivals like Alphabet-owned Waymo.
However, even with more competition, Tesla has a much clearer path to consistent profitability if the adoption of its autonomous vehicles and robots grows. SpaceX, by contrast, still needs to prove it can expand without relying on the capital markets to raise money.
Tesla stock TSLA moved lower on Tuesday even as analysts grew more optimistic about the company's near-term vehicle deliveries.
Shares of the electric vehicle maker fell about 2% in early trading to $402.39, while the broader market was rallying, with the S&P 500 higher by roughly 1.6%.
The decline came as SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket and artificial intelligence company, continued its post-IPO surge.
SpaceX shares rose about 8% to $208.39, giving the company a market value of approximately $2.8 trillion.
By comparison, Tesla's market capitalization stood near $1.3 trillion.
Despite the stock's decline, Goldman Sachs expressed increased confidence in Tesla's second-quarter vehicle deliveries.
The bank reiterated its Neutral rating and maintained a $375 price target while raising its second-quarter 2026 delivery forecast to 420,000 vehicles from 405,000 previously.
That forecast now sits above the Visible Alpha consensus estimate of 400,000 vehicles.
Goldman Sachs analyst Mark Delaney said monthly and weekly sales data across key regions, including the United States, Europe, and China, suggest Tesla's second-quarter deliveries are tracking ahead of market expectations.
"We believe that Tesla’s 2Q26 vehicle deliveries are likely tracking ahead of consensus," Delaney wrote.
According to Goldman Sachs, Europe has been one of Tesla's strongest-performing regions during the quarter.
The firm said European registration data through May showed year-over-year growth of roughly 85% to 90%, while countries reporting June daily data indicated a strong start to the month, with deliveries rising about 20%.
Goldman Sachs noted that part of the increase reflects favorable comparisons against weak results in the prior year period.
Tesla's European deliveries declined 29% year over year during the second quarter of 2025, creating a relatively low comparison base.
Elsewhere, the bank said Chinese sales data from the China Passenger Car Association points to high single-digit year-over-year growth through May.
Other Asia-Pacific markets have also reported encouraging results. South Korea and Australia have both delivered strong sales performance on both a year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis through May.
In the United States, however, deliveries remain weaker. According to Motor Intelligence data cited by Goldman Sachs, US deliveries through May were tracking down by the mid-teens percentage range compared with a year earlier.
Growth remains a key questionImproving delivery trends would be welcome news for Tesla after two consecutive years of declining electric vehicle sales.
Wall Street currently expects Tesla to deliver approximately 1.7 million vehicles in 2026, up from roughly 1.6 million in 2025.
However, analysts caution that growth is far from guaranteed.
Tesla faces difficult comparisons later in the year after delivering a record 497,000 vehicles during the third quarter of last year.
Those results were boosted by consumers rushing to purchase vehicles before the expiration of the federal $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit.
The removal of that incentive has weighed on broader industry demand, although Tesla's sales have generally held up better than many competitors.
Investors remain focused on AIWhile vehicle deliveries remain important, many investors are increasingly valuing Tesla based on its artificial intelligence ambitions rather than its automotive business alone.
Tesla launched its AI-trained robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, about a year ago and has since expanded operations into a few more cities.
Investors continue to watch closely for signs of broader robotaxi deployment, believing that a larger autonomous-driving network could unlock a significant new revenue stream for the company.
Another closely watched catalyst is Optimus, Tesla's humanoid robot program.
Investors are anticipating the unveiling of the third-generation Optimus robot, which could arrive later this summer.
The Netherlands' transportation minister on Tuesday denied the country's influential RDW authority had relied on statistics submitted by Tesla as the basis of its approval of the company's "Full Self Driving (supervised)" software for use on Dutch roads.
The public debut of SpaceX NASDAQ: SPCX is officially in the books, and the sheer velocity of the price action caught even seasoned institutional desks off guard.
Priced at $135 just days ago, SpaceX quickly re-rated, recently pushing past $225 on intraday volume exceeding 200 million shares. This aggressive accumulation briefly sent it beyond the $2.5 trillion market capitalization threshold, cementing SpaceX as one of the most valuable businesses on the planet.
SpaceX (SPCX) Price Chart for Wednesday, June, 17, 2026
The euphoria surrounding the commercialization of low-Earth orbit is palpable, and the broader space economy represents a generational growth frontier. But separating the structural business from the current trading action is an essential survival skill. Behind the headline-grabbing valuation, a potent mix of engineered float scarcity, speculative derivatives trading, and immediate dilution is manufacturing a localized market anomaly.
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When SpaceX trades at roughly 20x projected 2027 sales and posts an annual net loss of $4.94 billion, the valuation multiple demands flawless operational execution. Right now, the underlying data suggests the downside risk for SpaceX is increasingly asymmetric.
Ignition Sequence: Retail Fuel and Float ScarcitySpaceX Today
$201.80 +9.30 (+4.83%)
As of 06/16/2026 04:00 PM Eastern
52-Week Range$149.34▼
$225.64Price Target$161.25
To understand the current price action, you have to look beneath the underlying shares and examine the derivatives market.
The June 16 start of options trading acted as an accelerant to an already constrained float.
Over 600,000 contracts exchanged hands within the initial trading hours, and those trades were heavily skewed toward out-of-the-money weekly calls.
This type of retail-driven options frenzy triggers a mechanical market reaction known as a gamma squeeze. When retail traders buy massive blocks of call options, the market makers on the other side of those trades are forced to buy SpaceX stock to hedge their directional risk. Because early SpaceX employees and insiders are tightly restricted by post-IPO lock-up agreements, the available public float is acutely constrained.
When massive buying demand collides with a severe shortage of available shares, the price of SpaceX can completely disconnect from actual business fundamentals. This kind of rally is driven more by market mechanics than by near-term fundamentals. Because this momentum relies on a temporary supply shortage rather than true business growth, the current upward trend is incredibly fragile.
Paper Rockets: Acquiring Cursor With Inflated SharesAdding to the complexity is SpaceX's aggressive movement into major acquisitions. SpaceX recently disclosed a $60 billion all-stock acquisition of artificial intelligence (AI) coding startup Cursor's parent company, Anysphere.
When corporate boards execute massive acquisitions using purely stock rather than cash, they send a subtle but critical signal to the market. Leveraging a $2.5 trillion market capitalization to absorb a pre-revenue AI software architecture is a brilliant strategic maneuver from SpaceX executives, but it introduces immediate friction for retail shareholders.
The Cursor transaction could dilute the existing shareholder base by about 2-3% just days after the initial public offering. Expanding the outstanding share count while navigating a severe cash-burn cycle creates a structural headwind. Commercializing heavy-lift launch vehicles and expanding global Starlink satellite internet coverage requires immense capital. Diluting the SpaceX equity base to fund tangential AI ambitions introduces execution drag to an aerospace sector manufacturer already priced for perfection.
Gravitational Pull: The Tesla Consolidation RumorTesla Today
$404.66 -6.49 (-1.58%)
As of 06/16/2026 04:00 PM Eastern
52-Week Range$288.77▼
$498.83P/E Ratio371.25
Price Target$404.37
Retail excitement is receiving additional thrust from unconfirmed rumors of a corporate consolidation between SpaceX and Tesla NASDAQ: TSLA.
Speculation that Tesla will merge with SpaceX is actively inflating the premium that traders are willing to pay for SpaceX stock.
Some Wall Street analysts have even assigned an 80% probability to a Tesla-SpaceX combination within the next 12 months.
A theoretical conglomerate that consolidates artificial intelligence, robotics, terrestrial electric vehicles, and aerospace divisions into a single $3.5 trillion entity makes for excellent headlines. However, a megamerger of this scale introduces massive antitrust friction. Regulators will likely scrutinize the monopolistic implications of merging the dominant domestic EV infrastructure provider with the primary orbital launch company.
Treating Tesla consolidation rumors as an immediate bullish catalyst ignores the harsh realities of regulatory oversight. If the Tesla rumors fail to materialize into definitive corporate action, the speculative premium currently embedded in SpaceX will evaporate.
Escape Velocity: The Satellite ReboundThe gravitational pull of the historic SpaceX IPO had a predictable secondary effect on the broader market. It drained liquidity from the rest of the orbital sector. Portfolio managers and retail traders aggressively liquidated positions in smaller space infrastructure companies to reallocate capital toward the headline SpaceX event.
This capital rotation triggered sharp selloffs across the board. The Procure Space ETF NASDAQ: UFO dropped 7%, while highly specialized mid-cap operators faced sudden double-digit declines.
Some investors recognize that this sector dilution represents a mispricing of risk. The temporary liquidity drain is not a reflection of deteriorating fundamentals in the broader aerospace market, but rather a mechanical side effect of portfolio rebalancing. This temporary capital flight creates highly attractive entry points for pure-play satellite operators.
AST SpaceMobile NASDAQ: ASTS experienced a rapid 20% drawdown during the immediate SpaceX IPO frenzy but is already staging a rebound. AST SpaceMobile has a significant commercial catalyst with the deployment of three advanced BlueBird satellites, scheduled for a June 17 launch.
Similarly, established launch providers like Rocket Lab NASDAQ: RKLB offer operational consistency, growing backlogs, and proven payload delivery without carrying the astronomical forward multiple of SpaceX.
AST SpaceMobile and Rocket Lab stand to benefit from the exact same macro tailwinds, specifically the rapid reduction in orbital launch costs and the commercialization of space, but offer a vastly superior risk-to-reward profile for fresh capital.
Impact Warning: The Impending Q2 Lock-Up ExpirationThe speculative premium currently holding up the SpaceX valuation faces a definitive expiration date. The Q2 earnings report will trigger the first major insider lock-up expiration, releasing an initial 20% tranche of restricted SpaceX shares into the open market.
This event will begin to ease the float scarcity that is currently driving the gamma squeeze. Institutional short sellers are already aggressively positioning for this liquidity cliff, driving up borrowing rates on the limited SpaceX float.
When a sudden influx of fresh supply collides with a market lacking institutional buyers willing to step in at 20x forward sales, the resulting mean reversion is often violent. Investors heavily allocated to SpaceX may want to strictly evaluate risk parameters as the lock-up expiration approaches.
Those seeking to capitalize on the legitimate secular growth of the space economy might find more durable value by rotating into the heavily discounted satellite and launch infrastructure operators that were temporarily left behind in the SpaceX IPO frenzy.
Should You Invest $1,000 in SpaceX Right Now?Before you consider SpaceX, you'll want to hear this.
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Tesla (TSLA 1.55%) and Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +4.83%), or SpaceX, CEO Elon Musk recently addressed ASML (ASML 4.53%) employees during a fireside chat with ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet at the European company's technology conference. It's an important development, as it further validates Musk's intent with the Terafab initiative and ASML's role in facilitating it.
Terafab and ASML As a reminder, ASML is the only company in the world that makes extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines that chip manufacturers use to make artificial intelligence (AI) chips and others. It's an indispensable technology for AI chipmakers, and Terafab will be included in the future.
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The Terafab initiative brings together SpaceX and Tesla in a joint venture to build a massive semiconductor manufacturing complex aimed at resolving both companies' potential supply chain bottlenecks and providing chips for Optimus (Tesla) and, in the future, Tesla electric vehicles alongside AI chips for SpaceX's data centers, including orbital data centers.
The spending commitment for Terafab is huge, with a proposed initial investment of $55 billion that could ramp to $119 billion over time. That kind of investment offers significant potential for ASML, and Musk's address to its employees further underscores that.
What it means to investors For Tesla and SpaceX investors, it's clear that Terafab is a major part of Musk's vision for both companies. The bulls will note that it helps secure both companies' supply chains, although it's arguably much more important for SpaceX, as it's the cornerstone of its AI strategy.
Image source: ASML.
That said, Tesla investors are entitled to ask just how much their company will invest in Terafab. And if a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX takes place, will the earnings and cash flow from robotaxis and Optimus be used to support SpaceX's growth ambitions, even though they might be better returned to Tesla investors as a stand-alone company?
For ASML investors, it's further confirmation of long-term demand for its equipment, which needs to be factored into their valuation assumptions.
Lee Samaha has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends ASML and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
RIVN stock is moving. See the chart and price action here. Mind RoboticsMind Robotics was launched in late 2025 as a spin-out from the EV maker — growing from an internal initiative called “Project Synapse.”
In less than six months, the company had raised over $1 billion across three rounds: a $115 million seed led by Eclipse, a $500 million Series A co-led by Accel and Andreessen Horowitz and a $400 million follow-on led by Kleiner Perkins.
The latest round valued Mind Robotics at $3.4 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Mind’s first product is expected within a year, and Rivian will be the startup’s first customer, using its Normal, Illinois assembly plant as a live deployment environment for AI-powered humanoid robots.
The structure is a deliberate departure from Tesla Inc.‘s (NASDAQ:TSLA) approach.
Elon Musk is developing Optimus inside Tesla — mass production began in January 2026, with 50,000 units targeted by year-end.
Scaringe is keeping the two companies legally separate, with Rivian feeding production data to Mind for AI model training while retaining equity upside.
“We realized it was such a big opportunity that deserved to be its own company,” Scaringe said at Rivian’s R2 launch event in Park City last week, according to CNBC.
He sees a multitrillion-dollar total addressable market for industrial labor and believes the window is closing fast.
“The rate at which this is moving is far faster — like an order of magnitude faster — than the average person in society understands,” he said.
The CompetitorsThe humanoid robotics race is crowded.
Figure AI is already deploying robots commercially at BMW, while Tesla’s Gen 3 Optimus is in 24/7 factory use at Fremont.
Mind has yet to ship a product. But Scaringe’s pitch to investors rests on a thesis: most robotics startups are engineering for human biomechanics when the real manufacturing value lives in dexterous, reasoning-capable hands.
Scaringe isn’t predicting an overnight robot takeover. He says the simplest, most repetitive tasks go to machines first — with complex, judgment-heavy work staying human for years.
The labor shortage in automotive manufacturing, he argues, makes that transition less a threat than a necessity.
The first Mind robot is coming soon. Whether it can keep pace with Optimus is the $3.4 billion question.
This image was generated using artificial intelligence via ChatGPT.
This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs
Although its roots are in its electric vehicle (EV) business, Tesla (TSLA 1.55%) aspires to greater heights, and sees artificial intelligence (AI) as part of its path to reach them. The company's AI journey began in earnest back in 2015 when it introduced an early version of its self-driving software, then called Autopilot.
Fast-forward to 2026, and the company's AI endeavors have just reached another pivotal milestone. CEO Elon Musk recently announced that the company's latest in-house semiconductor chip, dubbed AI5, had achieved tape-out. This is the point at which a chip's design is complete and it's ready for manufacturing.
It also marks a major step toward fulfilling Tesla's AI ambitions. Here's why the AI5 chip could be a key development in Tesla's evolution into an AI titan.
Image source: Tesla.
Tesla's AI brain The AI5's tape-out positions the company to become a prominent provider of physical AI, in which artificial intelligence software can engage with the physical world by serving as the brain for machinery. Musk described completing the chip design as "arguably the No. 1 most critical thing to get done," which is why he personally oversaw the project.
The chip marks a dramatic step up from its AI4 predecessor. Musk stated that the new chip will deliver 40 times better performance over the prior model AI4. The substantial difference was made possible by a redesign that resolved challenges in hardware and software integration. Now, Tesla will be able to train more powerful AI models for its autonomous Cybercab ride-hailing service and Optimus robots.
The AI5 is powerful enough to enable on-board real-time inference, giving the local AI the ability to use data to make decisions in real-world situations. That capacity to perform inference without an internet connection is essential for self-driving cars, which have to navigate constantly changing road conditions, and for Tesla's planned Optimus robots, which will have to dynamically adapt to their environments.
The AI5 will also improve power management, and Musk called it "the best performance per dollar for AI." This could reduce Tesla's costs while delivering the computing capabilities required for physical artificial intelligence.
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AI5 and Musk's businesses Another factor in AI5's importance is its role in Tesla's collaboration with Musk's other company, Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX. The two businesses are co-developing a massive semiconductor factory called Terafab. With the chip serving as the hardware foundation for self-driving and robotics, and Terafab as the facility that produces it, the pair form a symbiotic loop.
This combination will reduce Tesla's reliance on outside manufacturers and make the company a vertically integrated AI operation. Currently, it is working with both Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor to manufacture the AI5.
With the new chip and Terafab, Tesla is putting the pieces in place to transition from a company that is primarily a carmaker into an AI powerhouse. Automotive competitors are taking a page from Tesla's playbook to evolve their offerings. Ford Motor Company and General Motors are working to deliver autonomous vehicle capabilities by 2028.
Even so, neither possesses the vertical integration that Tesla is achieving through its AI technology. By pivoting resolutely into artificial intelligence with the AI5, Tesla should strengthen its lead over its automotive rivals for years to come.
Robert Izquierdo has positions in Ford Motor Company, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends General Motors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Tesla (TSLA - Free Report) closed the most recent trading day at $404.66, moving -1.58% from the previous trading session. The stock trailed the S&P 500, which registered a daily loss of 0.57%. On the other hand, the Dow registered a gain of 0.64%, and the technology-centric Nasdaq decreased by 1.15%.
Shares of the electric car maker witnessed a gain of 0.28% over the previous month, beating the performance of the Auto-Tires-Trucks sector with its loss of 0.94%, and underperforming the S&P 500's gain of 2.14%.
Market participants will be closely following the financial results of Tesla in its upcoming release. On that day, Tesla is projected to report earnings of $0.45 per share, which would represent year-over-year growth of 12.5%. At the same time, our most recent consensus estimate is projecting a revenue of $24.32 billion, reflecting a 8.09% rise from the equivalent quarter last year.
For the entire fiscal year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $1.99 per share and a revenue of $100.93 billion, representing changes of +19.88% and +6.43%, respectively, from the prior year.
It is also important to note the recent changes to analyst estimates for Tesla. Such recent modifications usually signify the changing landscape of near-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the business outlook.
Empirical research indicates that these revisions in estimates have a direct correlation with impending stock price performance. To benefit from this, we have developed the Zacks Rank, a proprietary model which takes these estimate changes into account and provides an actionable rating system.
The Zacks Rank system, which varies between #1 (Strong Buy) and #5 (Strong Sell), carries an impressive track record of exceeding expectations, confirmed by external audits, with stocks at #1 delivering an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection has moved 1.27% lower. At present, Tesla boasts a Zacks Rank of #4 (Sell).
Investors should also note Tesla's current valuation metrics, including its Forward P/E ratio of 206.48. This indicates a premium in contrast to its industry's Forward P/E of 19.68.
It is also worth noting that TSLA currently has a PEG ratio of 9.81. The PEG ratio is akin to the commonly utilized P/E ratio, but this measure also incorporates the company's anticipated earnings growth rate. The Automotive - Domestic was holding an average PEG ratio of 0.95 at yesterday's closing price.
The Automotive - Domestic industry is part of the Auto-Tires-Trucks sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 170, which puts it in the bottom 31% of all 250+ industries.
The Zacks Industry Rank gauges the strength of our industry groups by measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.
Make sure to utilize Zacks.com to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and more, in the coming trading sessions.
China's juggernaut electric vehicle (EV) maker, BYD (BYDDY 2.92%), has taken the world by storm over the past few years. Considering the automaker only stopped producing internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles in 2022, switching its entire product lineup to EVs and plug-in hybrids, overtaking Tesla (TSLA 1.55%) in EV sales for the full-year 2025 was impressive. Now BYD is taking it a step further and outdoing Tesla in another aspect, one that was critically important to the latter's initial surge.
What's going on with BYD and Tesla? One of the most valuable developments for the broader U.S. EV industry was Tesla's expanding Supercharger network. It was crucial as it helped reduce range anxiety, which was one of the biggest barriers to mainstream EV adoption. Building a reliable, expanding, and, maybe most importantly, fast-charging system quickly enabled early adopters to jump on board. It turned long-range EV travel into reality.
Image source: Tesla.
BYD is trying to take it a step further for its own expansion, and in some ways, the Chinese EV maker's charging network is making its rivals' networks appear slow. BYD has deployed 5,700 Flash Charging stations in China in just a few months and has also opened its first overseas charging stations in Europe. BYD isn't resting on its laurels either and is targeting 20,000 stations in China by the end of this year.
These charging stations can deliver up to 1,500 kW of power, roughly 3 times the output of Tesla's latest V4 Superchargers. BYD's partnership with Sinopec, China's largest fuel retail network boasting over 30,000 stations, could accelerate the network rollout even further. Electrek ran the numbers, and it won't take long for BYD to surpass Tesla's network: "If both companies continue at their current growth rates -- Tesla at roughly 18% annual growth, BYD at the pace implied by its 2026 targets -- BYD's network (measured in stall-equivalents) could surpass Tesla's globally between 2029 and 2030 -- in just roughly 4 years."
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What it all means for BYD There are a couple of factors for investors to consider as BYD's charging infrastructure expands. First, while BYD's network could rapidly catch Tesla's reach and numbers, that's not the only advantage the latter currently has. That's because Tesla has gained over a decade of valuable route planning data, proven 99% uptime reliability, and boasts the NACS standard that has essentially converted other automakers' vehicles into Tesla Supercharger network customers.
Secondly, while it's fun to compare the development progress of the two important networks, it's fair to note that tariffs and trade policy currently prevent BYD from competing in the U.S. market, thus giving Tesla's network control of the region. That said, in China specifically, BYD is on pace to match or surpass Tesla's local charging network within the next year to year and a half. Tesla has roughly 3,000 stations across the Asia-Pacific region.
Tesla's Supercharger network was instrumental in the broader EV revolution in the markets it competes in, and remains an advantage for the EV maker. BYD is replicating this advantage overseas, and it should only boost the EV maker's growing sales momentum globally. BYD remains a top automotive stock, and it doesn't appear to be slowing down in just about any metric.
For more than two decades, putting a number on a Tesla-SpaceX merger was guesswork because only one of the two companies traded publicly. That changed on June 12, when SpaceX (SPCX +19.79%) completed the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history at a valuation near $1.8 trillion. With a public price finally attached to the rocket company, long-running speculation that Elon Musk will fold his two trillion-dollar businesses into one resurfaced.
The figures involved are enormous. Electric-car maker Tesla (TSLA +0.98%) carries a market capitalization of about $1.5 trillion as of this writing, while SpaceX rose above a $2 trillion market value in its first session. Put the two together, and you get a company worth more than $3 trillion -- enough to rank among the four most valuable in the world.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives recently put the odds of such a tie-up within a year at about 80%.
So what would a combination actually mean for the people who own Tesla today?
Here's a closer look.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
The case for a combination The argument for merging starts with the extent of overlap between the two companies. Musk increasingly pitches Tesla as an artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics company -- think self-driving software and the Optimus humanoid robot -- even though most of its revenue still comes from selling cars. SpaceX brings satellite internet through Starlink and launch capacity, and its February acquisition of Musk's AI start-up xAI added the Grok chatbot.
Ives frames a tie-up as Musk's clearest path to controlling more of the AI ecosystem under one roof.
A path to a merger seems plausible. Tesla invested $2 billion in xAI in January. When SpaceX absorbed xAI a month later, that stake converted into nearly 19 million SpaceX shares, worth about $2.6 billion at the IPO price. And the two are also jointly building a chip-making plant in Austin, known as Terafab, meant to supply processors for Tesla's robots and SpaceX's satellites alike.
Additionally, a merger between the two companies could help settle the case once and for all that Tesla is more than just a car company. Rather than Tesla shareholders owning a car company trying to become an AI company, they would hold a slice of an operation spanning electric vehicles, robotics, rockets, satellite internet, and AI.
The bull case is essentially that the market would stop valuing Tesla mainly on its car sales and start treating it as one pillar of a multitrillion-dollar Musk empire.
Why it may not play out the way bulls hope But SpaceX's own leadership sounds far more measured than the headline odds.
"Right now I'm focused on keeping the lights on here," said SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell in a CNBC interview on the day of the IPO. She allowed that the two businesses share long-term goals but stopped well short of calling a merger imminent.
The betting markets offer a more conservative view, too. As of this writing, prediction platforms put the near-term odds of a deal well below Ives's 80% -- in the range of 25% to 40% for a combination this year.
Additionally, there's the issue of who would set the terms for such a merger. Musk holds more than 80% of the voting power at SpaceX through a dual-class share structure, yet he owns only about a fifth of Tesla. That gap matters. A merger would be a related-party transaction with Musk on both sides of the table, and any deal would almost certainly be built largely around the company he controls outright.
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Then there's price. Tesla shares trade at about 370 times earnings as of this writing, a valuation that already assumes the company will succeed in autonomy and robotics on its own. And a merger likely wouldn't help. It would add SpaceX's own unproven, money-losing space and AI ambitions to an already expensive stock.
So where does this leave Tesla investors? I think the honest answer is that a merger is a real possibility, but not a sure thing -- and that the more important question isn't whether it happens but on whose terms. Because Musk controls SpaceX and only a minority of Tesla, any combination would likely look less like a merger of equals and more like SpaceX absorbing Tesla.
Whatever the case, investors should make their investment decisions today based on each company's underlying fundamentals relative to the price they are paying, not because of merger prospects. Because one thing is certain: It's unclear what a merger or acquisition could look like, and under what terms it would happen.
Tesla TSLA stock is in focus on Monday after famed investor Anthony Pompliano publicly urged billionaire Elon Musk to merge the EV maker with SpaceX.
And while the idea of a multi-trillion-dollar AI and aerospace empire sounds like the ultimate sci-fi bull case, such a merger carries massive structural, operational, and financial risks.
At the time of writing, Tesla shares are down more than 6% versus the start of this year (2026).
Tesla shareholders have spent years waiting for the company to mature into a “profitable” auto and energy business that consistently generates billions in free cash flow.
SpaceX – by contrast – operates on an entirely different scale of capital intensity; building rockets (Starship) and continuous deployment of low-Earth-orbit satellite constellation (Starlink) require a staggering sum of uninterrupted capital.
Merging the entities would mean TSLA’s stable automotive and energy storage margins will act as a piggy bank to fund SpaceX’s long-term, yet-to-be monetized deep-space ambitions.
For fundamental investors, using a successful commercial car and battery business to finance Mars colonization may not be a long-term story they’re eager to underwrite.
Tesla shareholders also face massive “dilution” if SpaceX uses its enormous market cap to absorb the EV maker.
Here’s the math: you hand over your TSLA shares and receive newly issued SPCS shares in return; while Tesla isn’t printing any new shares, you’re being diluted by a lower-quality corporate margin profile.
You are swapping a name that operates on established, commercial automotive and energy storage cash flows for a tech-heavy mega-conglomerate that posted a $4.28 billion net loss in Q1 primarily due to hardware R&D.
Plus, Wall Street might just slap the combined entity with a heavy conglomerate discount, eroding the ultimate value of your new shares.
Tesla is a regulated, publicly traded company where institutional investors can exert influence over the board, but SpaceX’s dual-class share structure represents a very different governance model.
Elon Musk holds an estimated 85% of the voting power in SpaceX.
If Tesla is merged or absorbed into a combined entity dominated by SpaceX’s super-voting Class A stock, Tesla investors would see their corporate governance and voting rights effectively neutralized.
Note that several large institutional asset managers (like Vanguard or Blackrock) have strict ESG and corporate governance mandates.
A sudden shift to a structure with zero checks and balances could spark a mass institutional sell-off of TSLA stock.
Tesla and SpaceX operate in completely different geopolitical spheres, and smashing them together creates a compliance nightmare that could paralyze both businesses.
Feature Tesla SpaceX Primary Global Partner China (Gigafactory Shanghai is vital to Tesla's global supply chain and margins). United States (Acts as a critical US government, NASA, and military defense contractor). Regulatory Oversight Standard international trade, automotive safety, and consumer regulations. Strict ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) and national security oversight. Crossover exposure would inevitably invite intense scrutiny from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and Washington defense officials.
If US regulators fear that sensitive aerospace or satellite tech could be compromised due to Tesla’s heavy corporate footprint in China, they could impose crippling operational firewall mandates.
For Tesla shares, this adds further to the broader argument against a SpaceX merger.
The long-awaited SpaceX (SPCX +19.79%) IPO has arrived to much fanfare, with shares of the rocket company jumping nearly 20% in its first day of trading on Friday and the rally continuing on Monday. But now with that in the books, investors may be turning their attention to another highly probable event: a potential merger involving SpaceX and Tesla (TSLA +0.98%). Both companies are run by Elon Musk, they work on overlapping projects, and there's a lot of room for potential synergies if they combine.
Rumors of a possible SpaceX-Tesla merger have been growing in recent weeks. And here's why, particularly for Tesla, there may be motivation to get it done sooner rather than later.
Image source: Getty Images.
Tesla's growth story may not be as appealing anymore Although Tesla generates the majority of its revenue from automobiles and is technically an electric vehicle (EV) stock, it trades at an oversized earnings multiple because investors are bullish on its vision beyond just EVs. Robots and opportunities in artificial intelligence (AI) have been captivating investors in recent years, with the growth story persuading them to look past where the business is today and instead focus on the long-term vision.
However, that vision may not be as alluring anymore now that SpaceX stock is available. Between space, AI, and communications, there may be more compelling opportunities for investors with SpaceX than with Tesla. Tesla's stock is down around 9% this year and may suddenly not be as exciting a growth stock to own. While robotics is an intriguing and attractive growth opportunity, it may not be enough to convince investors to buy Tesla's stock, especially with its core EV business coming under pressure from growing competition.
The risk is that, in the near future, the U.S. market may see more affordable EVs enter the market, which could further strain its margins and growth prospects. And if its financials worsen in the process, the stock may head for an even greater decline. That downside risk could provide an added motivation for the company to merge with SpaceX soon, so that they can pool their resources and not compete with one another for investors' dollars.
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A merger could happen soon There have been reports that a merger between SpaceX and Tesla could occur as early as next year. And between Tesla's competitive position potentially eroding and SpaceX needing plenty of cash to fund its growth ambitions, a merger between the two companies may indeed make a lot of sense, especially given that the two businesses are working on Terafab, a giant chip factory, and other initiatives together.
While a merger is not guaranteed, it seems highly likely to happen. The good news is that if you want exposure to both of these stocks, you may only need to own one of them, as it may only be a matter of time before a merger takes place.
The SpaceX IPO is now behind us, but we may not be done with big news from Elon Musk. Traders on prediction market Kalshi are pricing a 49% chance that Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +16.00%) will merge with electric vehicle maker Tesla (TSLA +0.90%) before May 1, 2027.
As both companies are headed by Musk and rely heavily on artificial intelligence, there’s long been speculation that the two companies could eventually merge. CNBC reported on May 27 that Tesla and SpaceX were already considering a merger, and Musk himself has reportedly raised the issue.
Speculation heated up even more as SpaceX had its record-breaking IPO on June 12, with Wedbush analyst Dan Ives estimating there was an 80% chance the companies would merge, and SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell acknowledging that a merger “might make Elon’s life a little easier, actually.”
“There’s no question that there’s synergies between Tesla and SpaceX in our futures, definitely,” Shotwell told CNBC. “There’s a convergence of a kind of what we’re all trying to accomplish in the future.”
There are natural elements that make SpaceX and Tesla a potential match. In addition to both being Musk's brainchildren, Tesla and SpaceX rely heavily on artificial intelligence. A merger enables them to more easily benefit from training models, share talent, and consolidate resources. Ross Gerber, a longtime Tesla investor, said a merger of Tesla and SpaceX would fulfill a Musk ambition to create an AI-driven conglomerate.
So, it seems plausible that such a merger will happen one day. But would it happen within a year, as Kalshi traders are betting? Here are three issues that would factor into such a deal.
Tesla and SpaceX have vastly different markets -- and one mission in commonTesla is an EV company -- and the electric vehicle industry is highly competitive. That means investors are watching Tesla’s production and delivery numbers every month and pushing for Tesla to maintain a profit margin that keeps the stock appealing. Last year, those margins took a significant hit as Tesla discounted its vehicles amid rising competition and the expiration of a federal tax credit. Tesla stock struggled throughout most of 2025 and underperformed the S&P 500.
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SpaceX, meanwhile, is a government contractor with its rocket-launching business, which to date has carried out more than 660 missions, including trips to the International Space Station. Then there’s Starlink, which is SpaceX’s most profitable business to date. Starlink provides internet and mobile connectivity to hard-to-reach and rural areas via a network of satellites. Neither faces the competitive pressure that Tesla faces in its EV business.
But SpaceX is getting most of its attention for xAI -- a standalone company also owned by Musk that was folded into SpaceX earlier this year. xAI operates Grok, the large language model, and X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Musk uses xAI to integrate AI throughout his companies, including Tesla.
It’s the latter business that works most smoothly in a Tesla merger.
Valuation could be difficultAt this writing, SpaceX is actually the more valuable company, with a market cap of around $2.2 trillion. Tesla’s market cap is $1.5 trillion -- ranking them both in the top echelon of publicly traded companies.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
But Tesla turns a profit and SpaceX does not. In 2025, Tesla reported revenues of $94.82 billion and net income of $5.8 billion. And those profits continued into the first quarter, when Tesla recorded $22.38 billion in revenue and $1.45 billion in net income.
SpaceX had $18.7 billion in revenue in 2025, which was up from $14 billion in 2024. But it also recorded a net loss of $4.9 billion for the year. Its Starlink segment was successful, bringing in $11.4 billion in revenue and $4.4 billion in operating income. But the rocket-launching business lost $657 million for the year, and xAI lost $6.4 billion.
On top of that, SpaceX will continue to spend a massive amount of money to build out its AI ambitions. Goldman Sachs projects that SpaceX will have a negative free cash flow of $105 billion in 2029.
So, how would you value SpaceX stock in a merger? Shares are currently trading at a trailing price-to-sales ratio of more than 110, compared to Tesla’s 14.6.
Musk’s compensation would need to be addressedAt Tesla, Musk famously received a huge compensation package at the last shareholder meeting. It could be worth as much as $1 trillion should Musk reach valuation and operational targets, such as 20 million vehicle deliveries, 10 million active full self-driving subscriptions, 1 million Optimus robots, and 1 million commercially deployed robotaxis.
Musk has an even greater say in SpaceX, where he owns 42% of the equity and about 82% of the voting power. And the successful SpaceX IPO made Musk the world’s first trillionaire.
A merger may impact Musk’s compensation at Tesla, as well as the rights of Tesla shareholders. Like the other issues, this isn’t an insurmountable obstacle, but it would likely need to be addressed before a merger happens. And it explains why Kalshi traders are likely seeing the merger before May 1, 2027, as more of a coin flip than an inevitability.
To say that considerable hoopla surrounded the SpaceX IPO last Friday is a major understatement. The newly public rockets and satellites company reportedly minted hundreds of millionaires among its staffers while vaulting CEO Elon Musk into the $1 trillion personal wealth club where he resides alone.
Interesting factoids to be sure, but they don’t imply that investors should ignore Musk’s other company. Of course, that’s Tesla, Inc. (TSLA). While SpaceX is garnering all the hype, some experts believe there are ample catalysts for Tesla and that could bode well for traders looking to make use of the Direxion Daily TSLA Bull 2X Shares (TSLL).
See more: Put the Tesla Pedal to the Metal With These ETFs
The leveraged ETF attempts to deliver 200% of the daily performance of Tesla shares. Like other geared ETFs, TSLL is prone to event-driven movements and Tesla is a prime example of a company that can deliver the headlines that make leveraged ETFs useful. Those can include the company’s robotaxi efforts.
“In the robotaxi business, Tesla can offer a driverless ride-hailing service. This can allow Tesla to offer a price that is just 50% to 75% per trip of the price of a traditional human-driven ride-hailing service,” noted Morningstar’s Seth Goldstein. “We expect the absence of a human driver to make Tesla and its autonomous peers, such as Waymo, able to run their ride-hailing businesses at a lower cost versus peers.”
More Reasons TSLL Can Tempt Traders that actively follow Tesla have myriad other reasons to give TSLL a look, including any potential updates from the electric vehicle manufacturer on its full self-driving (FSD) progress. Related headlines have previously moved the stock.
“We view autonomous driving, including FSD and robotaxi, as a key pillar for Tesla going forward. We forecast autonomous driving will grow from well below 5% of Tesla’s revenue to 25% of companywide sales over the next decade,” added Goldstein.
In considering short-term use of TSLL, active traders should study up on the possible benefits that Tesla can accrue by way of FSD leadership. Put simply, mastering that technology likely enables Tesla to get more drivers into its vehicles while charging them the premium prices that they’re willing to pay.
“Tesla will face increasing competition in the coming years. Automakers will electrify their fleets and plan to offer more autonomous driving software,” concluded Goldstein. “However, as new models are introduced, Tesla’s technological advantage and the strength of its brand will remain intact, which will allow the company to continue to charge a premium price for its EVs.”
For more news, information, and strategy, visit the Leveraged & Inverse Content Hub.
Tesla (TSLA - Free Report) has been one of the most searched-for stocks on Zacks.com lately. So, you might want to look at some of the facts that could shape the stock's performance in the near term.
Shares of this electric car maker have returned -3.7% over the past month versus the Zacks S&P 500 composite's +0.5% change. The Zacks Automotive - Domestic industry, to which Tesla belongs, has lost 4.4% over this period. Now the key question is: Where could the stock be headed in the near term?
Although media reports or rumors about a significant change in a company's business prospects usually cause its stock to trend and lead to an immediate price change, there are always certain fundamental factors that ultimately drive the buy-and-hold decision.
Earnings Estimate RevisionsHere at Zacks, we prioritize appraising the change in the projection of a company's future earnings over anything else. That's because we believe the present value of its future stream of earnings is what determines the fair value for its stock.
Our analysis is essentially based on how sell-side analysts covering the stock are revising their earnings estimates to take the latest business trends into account. When earnings estimates for a company go up, the fair value for its stock goes up as well. And when a stock's fair value is higher than its current market price, investors tend to buy the stock, resulting in its price moving upward. Because of this, empirical studies indicate a strong correlation between trends in earnings estimate revisions and short-term stock price movements.
For the current quarter, Tesla is expected to post earnings of $0.45 per share, indicating a change of +12.5% from the year-ago quarter. The Zacks Consensus Estimate has changed -2.6% over the last 30 days.
For the current fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $1.99 points to a change of +19.9% from the prior year. Over the last 30 days, this estimate has changed -1.3%.
For the next fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $2.56 indicates a change of +28.7% from what Tesla is expected to report a year ago. Over the past month, the estimate has changed -0.3%.
With an impressive externally audited track record, our proprietary stock rating tool -- the Zacks Rank -- is a more conclusive indicator of a stock's near-term price performance, as it effectively harnesses the power of earnings estimate revisions. The size of the recent change in the consensus estimate, along with three other factors related to earnings estimates, has resulted in a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) for Tesla.
The chart below shows the evolution of the company's forward 12-month consensus EPS estimate:
12 Month EPS
Revenue Growth ForecastWhile earnings growth is arguably the most superior indicator of a company's financial health, nothing happens as such if a business isn't able to grow its revenues. After all, it's nearly impossible for a company to increase its earnings for an extended period without increasing its revenues. So, it's important to know a company's potential revenue growth.
In the case of Tesla, the consensus sales estimate of $24.32 billion for the current quarter points to a year-over-year change of +8.1%. The $100.93 billion and $113.02 billion estimates for the current and next fiscal years indicate changes of +6.4% and +12%, respectively.
Last Reported Results and Surprise HistoryTesla reported revenues of $22.39 billion in the last reported quarter, representing a year-over-year change of +15.8%. EPS of $0.41 for the same period compares with $0.27 a year ago.
Compared to the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $21.92 billion, the reported revenues represent a surprise of +2.12%. The EPS surprise was +13.89%.
Over the last four quarters, Tesla surpassed consensus EPS estimates three times. The company topped consensus revenue estimates three times over this period.
ValuationNo investment decision can be efficient without considering a stock's valuation. Whether a stock's current price rightly reflects the intrinsic value of the underlying business and the company's growth prospects is an essential determinant of its future price performance.
Comparing the current value of a company's valuation multiples, such as its price-to-earnings (P/E), price-to-sales (P/S), and price-to-cash flow (P/CF), to its own historical values helps ascertain whether its stock is fairly valued, overvalued, or undervalued, whereas comparing the company relative to its peers on these parameters gives a good sense of how reasonable its stock price is.
The Zacks Value Style Score (part of the Zacks Style Scores system), which pays close attention to both traditional and unconventional valuation metrics to grade stocks from A to F (an A is better than a B; a B is better than a C; and so on), is pretty helpful in identifying whether a stock is overvalued, rightly valued, or temporarily undervalued.
Tesla is graded F on this front, indicating that it is trading at a premium to its peers. Click here to see the values of some of the valuation metrics that have driven this grade.
ConclusionThe facts discussed here and much other information on Zacks.com might help determine whether or not it's worthwhile paying attention to the market buzz about Tesla. However, its Zacks Rank #4 does suggest that it may underperform the broader market in the near term.
Tesla recently stopped producing its Model Y SUV so it could focus on mass-producing AI-trained humanoid robots. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Tesla stock rose early Monday, along with the market, after President Trump announced a memorandum of understanding to effectively end the war started three months ago.
Ross Gerber, president and CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management, said that he feels a that a merger to combine SpaceX and Tesla is a 'forgone conclusion' and that he believes its been propping up Tesla's stock as people wait for an opportunity to own SpaceX. Gerber says that despite some concerns about Musk's complete control over both companies, he feels that investors know what they are getting into putting their money in his hands and that investors who have a problem with it shouldn't buy the stock.
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
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His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
Item 1 of 2 A Tesla robotaxi drives on the street along South Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas, U.S., June 22, 2025. REUTERS/Joel Angel Juarez/File Photo To Match Special Report TESLA-FSD/SAFETY
[1/2]A Tesla robotaxi drives on the street along South Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas, U.S., June 22, 2025. REUTERS/Joel Angel Juarez/File Photo To Match Special Report TESLA-FSD/SAFETY Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
SummaryCompaniesTesla used dubious safety stats to make case for FSD approval in EuropeAutomaker's crash data has been called into question by researchersSweden says regulators 'look beyond headline figures' to assess safetyJune 15 (Reuters) - In its efforts to secure European approval of its “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) system, Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab has presented self-published safety statistics to regulators in Sweden and the Netherlands that independent traffic-safety researchers have said amount to misleading marketing.
A Reuters examinationpublished last month found that Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other leaders over the past year have increasingly cited statistics they say prove its FSD driver-assistance feature is up to 10 times safer than human drivers. But the news agency’s review found several invalid data comparisons underlying Tesla’s statistics, opens new tab that exaggerated its safety claims.
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Tesla has presented the inflated safety data to some European regulators, according to correspondence obtained by Reuters through public records requests, as the EV maker seeks wider approval of FSD in a region where it is trying to regain market share. Tesla approached RDW, the Dutch road regulator, in late 2024 to begin the FSD approval process.
In a November 2024 letter to RDW, Tesla provided a link to its safety report and claimed “increased usage” of FSD “leads to safer roads.” Tesla charges a monthly subscription for FSD, which can drive itself under certain circumstances but requires the human driver to pay attention.
After more than a year of testing and discussions with Tesla, RDW in April approved FSD for use in the Netherlands. The Dutch regulator is now seeking EU-wide approval on behalf of Tesla.
RDW declined to comment on the issues Reuters identified with Tesla's safety statistics, but the agency said in a statement that it "does not rely on marketing claims or external statistics" to make decisions and performs its own "tests, analyses and verifications" of the system on public roads and test tracks. The agency did not say whether it assessed Tesla's U.S. safety statistics.
RDW said Tesla “collected a lot of data” during testing and the agency “validated, tested and audited all of this data.” RDW did not say what kind of data Tesla collected or what it measured.
Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.
SAVING 32,000 LIVES?Soon after the Dutch announced the decision on April 10, a Tesla policy manager, Ivan Komusanac, wrote an email to Swedish regulators asking for similar FSD approval. He attached a slide presentation displaying the exaggerated claim that Teslas using FSD can travel more than seven times farther between crashes than the average U.S. human driver.
The presentation also claimed FSD could have potentially saved 32,000 lives and prevented 1.9 million injuries.
Researchers interviewed by Reuters said those figures are highly misleading because they are based on the unrealistic assumption that every U.S. vehicle, including freight trucks and crash-prone motorcycles, would be replaced by an FSD-enabled Tesla car – and that every Tesla car is, in fact, at least seven times safer than the one it replaces.
The Reuters examination also found Tesla exaggerates the technology’s safety by comparing a rate of crashes in FSD-piloted Teslas that triggered airbag deployments to a U.S. crash rate for all vehicles that includes far less-severe accidents. The company also compares its cars to the average U.S. vehicle – which is much older than the average Tesla. That distorts the results because automakers have gradually introduced new safety features that reduce crashes.
Anders Eriksson, an investigator at the Swedish Transport Agency, declined to comment on the data Tesla provided, but added that Swedish regulators “look beyond headline figures” and that any assessment of such a system would not be based “solely on aggregated safety claims, but on the overall evidence presented.”
The regulator did not answer Reuters’ questions about what other evidence Tesla provided.
Dudley Curtis, a spokesperson for the watchdog group European Transport Safety Council, said his organization is “certainly concerned” that Tesla presented “unreliable safety data” from the United States to regulators in Sweden, after Reuters told the group about the correspondence.
He added that if Tesla wants to make safety claims, they should “give the data to a university, have it independently verified by a qualified researcher, and then let’s talk.”
TESLA LOOKS TO FSD FOR EUROPEAN REBOUNDTesla has said FSD approval in Europe is key to vehicle sales growth in the region. The EV maker is still trying to regain market share after sales plummeted last year amid protests over Musk’s political activities, including his embrace of far-right European political parties.
Failing to secure approval could make it harder for Tesla to compete in a region where Chinese EV makers are steadily making inroads.
In the coming months, representatives of 55% of member states that make up 65% of the bloc's population must vote “yes” for FSD to become legal throughout the EU.
In the meantime, individual member states can approve the technology on their own. A regulator in Greece, which said last month the country aims to approve FSD, cited data “from the other side of the Atlantic” that showed “this system ultimately leads to a very significant drop in accidents.”
The Greek transport ministry declined to answer questions about whether the data it cited was from Tesla’s safety report.
Regulators in other European countries have been inundated by drivers citing Tesla’s safety statistics and urging swift approval of FSD, emails showed.
Several Tesla drivers wrote to Norwegian road regulators citing Tesla’s vehicle safety report last autumn. One argued the technology is “significantly safer than average manual driving,” with the potential to “reduce traffic accidents by up to 90% and thus save lives on Norwegian roads.”
Stein-Helge Mundal of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration responded to several Tesla enthusiasts, saying Tesla’s figures “are self-produced,” which makes it “difficult to find correlation with the authorities’ accident statistics.”
Reporting by Chris Kirkham in Los Angeles and Marie Mannes in Stockholm; Additional reporting by Toby Sterling in Amsterdam; Editing by Mike Colias and Anna Driver
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Chris Kirkham is a business reporter in Los Angeles who writes about Tesla, electric vehicles and the wider automotive industry. He previously worked at The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, and has covered topics including tobacco, worker safety, gambling, and the economy over a two-decade career. Contact him at [email protected] or on Signal at chris_kirkham.51
Stockholm-based company news correspondent who mainly covers anything to do with retail and industrial companies in Sweden as well as other sectors with Swedish companies. She previously covered the general Nordic stock market from Gdansk, reporting on a range of subjects, from companies exiting Russia to M&As and supply chain concerns. Marie has degrees in journalism and international relations and is keen on finding stories that drive the market and that have unreported elements to it.
ChatGPT parent company OpenAI is looking beyond the virtual world and eying the real one.
That's the takeaway from OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman's recent post on X, anyway. As part of his call for artificial intelligence (AI) engineers, Altman said the company is looking for "engineers to help us program and manufacture robots that are useful for society." No interpretation needed.
The question is: What does this mean for Tesla (TSLA +1.65%), which in January suggested it could be selling autonomous humanoid robot assistants -- called Optimus -- by the end of next year?
Image source: Getty Images.
Shaking up the still-new AI robotics business Without knowing more about Altman's vision, it's too soon to say whether OpenAI will be a direct competitor to Tesla, which appears intent on building humanoid robots to handle warehouse and household tasks. OpenAI may end up making robotics meant for industrial assembly lines, dangerous drilling work, or agricultural duties.
There's little doubt, however, that these two companies will eventually compete with one another on the autonomous robot front.
And that's more of a problem for Tesla and its shareholders than it is for OpenAI and its future investors, if it ever goes public, for one simple reason. That is, Tesla stock is already priced at a steep premium. For perspective, Tesla shares are currently trading at nearly 13 times next year's projected revenue of $118 billion and 160 times 2027's expected earnings per share of around $2.60. Both are wildly high, suggesting the stock isn't just priced for perfection, but dominance ... of multiple markets.
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Next year's results still won't fully reflect any robot revenue that begins flowing for Tesla in 2027, if any at all. For that matter, it's unlikely OpenAI will have any actual physical robots to start selling next year either.
Much can happen between now and then, though. If nothing else, it gives current and would-be shareholders time and reason to consider the possibility that a well-established rival could compete with Tesla on the robotics front, perhaps eventually even in the humanoid assistant market. And it doesn't hurt that ChatGPT still dominates the AI chatbot landscape, with a near-80% market share, according to numbers from Statcounter. If there's any integration or robot management to be done, it should be handled with relative ease using OpenAI's popular app.
Altman's new focus does something else, too. That is, in that OpenAI already backs robotics start-up 1X Technologies and has previously collaborated with Figure AI, it not only illustrates how other tech companies could enter the robotics market, but also highlights the fact that many such robotics companies like Agility Robotics, Symbotic, and NEURA Robotics -- just to name a few -- already exist.
Yes, it's a (slight) concern Don't misread the message. Tesla will probably beat everyone else to the personal AI-powered robot market. It's unlikely to dominate this business, though, the way the company dominated the electric vehicle market as it became mainstream. It's the sheer unknown of the matter that works against the stock.
From this perspective, OpenAI's interest in robotics should give Tesla shareholders pause, even if only a modest one.
Tesla (TSLA +1.65%) and SpaceX (SPCX +19.22%) CEO Elon Musk just crossed a line no one ever has. With the public-market debut of SpaceX on Friday, the value of his stake in the rocket and satellite company pushed his net worth past $1 trillion, making him the world's first trillionaire. In fact, as of this writing, he's worth more than the next four people on the global wealth rankings combined.
But for the millions of people who own Tesla stock, the milestone is less a story about Tesla than about where Musk's fortune now sits. After Friday's debut, his SpaceX stake was worth more than $760 billion -- well over twice the value of the Tesla shares he holds. The company that made Musk famous is no longer where most of his wealth lives.
Tesla, still about a $1.3 trillion company, is now just one of two enormous public companies Musk leads. Here's a closer look at what that means for its shareholders.
Image source: Getty Images.
How SpaceX minted a trillionaire SpaceX priced its initial public offering (IPO) at $135 a share, opened around $150 on Friday, and pushed higher from there, ending its first trading day valued at more than $2 trillion. That makes the rocket maker one of the largest companies in the United States, built on an offering that raised about $75 billion.
This isn't only a space company, though. Earlier this year, SpaceX merged with Musk's artificial intelligence (AI) start-up, xAI, putting a fast-growing AI business inside the company that just went public. And Tesla is tied to the result: it owns a small stake in SpaceX, which in turn is a Tesla customer for Megapack batteries and Cybertrucks. Further, through a dual-class structure, Musk controls about 82% of SpaceX's voting power while owning about 42% of its equity -- a degree of control he doesn't have at the carmaker.
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None of this means Musk is stepping back from Tesla. Last year, Tesla shareholders approved a pay package that could be worth about $1 trillion if he hits a long list of valuation and operational targets, an arrangement built to keep him focused on the company for years. But he now sits atop two public businesses of staggering size, and his attention, like his fortune, is split across both.
What it means for Tesla investors In the meantime, Tesla isn't the growth story it used to be.
The electric-car maker's revenue fell about 3% in 2025 -- the first annual revenue decline in the company's history. And even after a stronger first quarter to start off 2026 (revenue rose 16% to $22.4 billion, with about 358,000 vehicles delivered), the company earned just $477 million in net income. Against earnings that thin, the stock trades at about 370 times earnings as of this writing.
That price only makes sense if you believe Tesla becomes something far larger than a carmaker. And that belief rests almost entirely on Musk's vision for autonomy and robots -- the same kind of long-term bet that drives SpaceX.
"I think Optimus will be our biggest product, not just Tesla's biggest product ever, but probably the biggest product ever," Musk said during Tesla's first-quarter earnings call, referring to its humanoid robot.
So, Tesla investors are really betting on Musk himself -- his vision and his willingness to keep funding it.
Additionally, management has guided capital expenditures of more than $25 billion this year (a huge step up from last year) -- largely for factories and AI infrastructure. Significant capital expenditures like this add significant risk for the stock.
A public SpaceX shifts the picture in a subtler way, too. A large block of Musk's SpaceX shares does not vest unless, among other conditions, the company someday builds a colony on Mars. But he can borrow against them, which means his potential access to cash is increasingly tied to SpaceX, not Tesla.
And for years, buying Tesla was one of the only ways for public investors to bet on Musk's biggest ambitions. That's no longer true. Anyone who wants exposure to his space and AI dreams can now simply buy SpaceX, without taking on a struggling car business to get it. Some investors are even watching whether the two companies could eventually merge.
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So, what does all of this mean for Tesla stock?
Less than the trillionaire headlines suggest. Musk's net worth doesn't change how many cars Tesla sells or whether its robotaxi bet ever pays off. What the moment does is sharpen the real question for shareholders: Tesla is now one of two giant companies competing for Musk's time and capital, and investors finally have a more direct way to own his boldest bet. I think that puts the focus where it belongs -- on Tesla's autonomy and AI story, not Musk's place on the rich list.
SpaceX SPCX has hit the market, but the buzz around it continues to remain with another question that is increasingly capturing Wall Street's attention: could Elon Musk eventually merge his rocket company with Tesla?
The idea, once considered far-fetched, has gained traction among analysts, investors and even employees close to Musk's businesses.
In the run-up to the IPO, speculation had intensified that Musk may seek to bring two of his flagship companies under a single corporate structure.
According to a CNBC report, Musk has discussed the possibility of combining Tesla and SpaceX with colleagues, according to people familiar with the matter.
One current Tesla employee told CNBC that many workers have long expected such a transaction to occur eventually, while another person close to the company said shared challenges around computing power and energy infrastructure have increased collaboration between the businesses.
The rationale behind merger speculation stems largely from the growing overlap between Musk's businesses.
The companies already maintain extensive commercial relationships.
SpaceX disclosed in its IPO filing that it purchased $697 million worth of Tesla Megapack battery storage systems during 2024 and 2025 to support xAI-operated data centres in Memphis.
The company also spent approximately $131 million on Tesla Cybertrucks in 2025.
Earlier collaborations included Tesla supplying solar equipment and automotive components to SpaceX, while SpaceX helped develop specialised materials used in Tesla's Cybertruck.
AI could also become the strongest force pulling the companies together.
Tesla's autonomous driving systems, robotaxi platform, and Optimus humanoid robot initiative are all heavily dependent on AI.
SpaceX, meanwhile, is pursuing AI-driven projects ranging from Starlink connectivity services to proposed orbital data centres.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives believes these overlapping ambitions could eventually culminate in a merger.
“Step by step the holy grail could be combining SpaceX and Tesla in some way to give the connected tissue between both disruptive tech stalwarts looking to lead the AI Revolution,” Ives wrote.
Analysts point to multiple areas of potential integration.
Tesla's robotaxis could eventually rely on Starlink connectivity, while AI systems developed through xAI could serve as conversational interfaces for Tesla's vehicles and Optimus robots.
The two companies are also expected to collaborate on Terafab, a proposed semiconductor manufacturing facility in Texas involving Tesla, SpaceX, and Intel.
Both companies require vast amounts of computing power to support autonomous driving, robotics, and AI infrastructure projects.
Beyond operational synergies, financing requirements could also encourage a combination.
SpaceX's IPO filing revealed that the company spent more than $10 billion on capital expenditures during the first quarter of 2026 alone, resulting in approximately $9 billion of negative free cash flow.
The company is investing aggressively in Starship development, AI infrastructure, data centres, and other large-scale projects.
Tesla is facing its own spending surge.
The electric vehicle maker recently indicated that capital expenditures could exceed $25 billion this year as it ramps up investments in artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous transportation.
Some analysts believe combining balance sheets could help support those ambitions.
Tesla currently holds roughly $45 billion in cash, potentially providing additional financial flexibility for SpaceX's long-term projects.
Reuters columnist Robert Cyran argued that a merger could also simplify questions about Musk's allocation of time and resources.
“Pooling the companies would also superficially eliminate the awkward question of which corporate child Musk favors,” he wrote.
"Investors pay a huge premium for the billionaire’s science-fiction imagination. Tesla trades at 200 times estimated earnings, according to LSEG, while SpaceX's proposed valuation is even more eye-popping. Yet Musk only has 24 hours in a day – or less, when accounting for his prolific tweeting – and questions over where he’s spending have raised investor hackles," he said.
Morningstar analysts see similar strategic logic in a combination.
“The most important additional reason a merger makes sense is that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wants to consolidate his companies into one conglomerate,” they wrote.
“This would allow him to run all their operations under one roof without tripping on as many governance issues."
Despite growing speculation, several analysts remain skeptical that a merger is imminent.
Oppenheimer, which recently initiated coverage of SpaceX with an Outperform rating and a $190 price target, acknowledged that a future merger is possible but stopped short of endorsing the idea.
An eventual merger with Tesla is “plausible”, analyst Timothy Horan wrote, but he believes both companies are likely to remain separate public entities.
Oppenheimer argued that maintaining two publicly traded companies provides Musk with greater access to capital markets.
The brokerage said Musk's “longer-term vision of AI is best served by diversified, flexible access to capital” and that “having two public currencies supports that strategy most effectively.”
A merger between SpaceX and Tesla would be unprecedented in scale, potentially becoming the largest corporate merger in history.
With SpaceX closing at $161 on its first session, putting it at a valuation of roughly $2.1 trillion and Tesla currently valued at around $1.65 trillion, the two companies are almost of similar size.
According to Fortune columnist Shawn Tully, the most likely structure would involve SpaceX acting as the acquirer.
To complete such a transaction, SpaceX would need to issue new shares equivalent to roughly 94% of its existing share count, reflecting the relative valuations of the two companies.
Based on SpaceX's IPO filing, its share count could rise from about 4.1 billion shares to nearly 8 billion shares.
If the deal were completed near SpaceX's anticipated IPO valuation, the combined company would command a market capitalization of approximately $3.7 trillion.
Despite its strategic appeal, a merger would face significant financial and governance hurdles.
While a combined valuation of $3.7 trillion would be extraordinary, the merged company would not necessarily be highly profitable.
Based on recent financial results, the combined profits generated by the two companies would remain negative.
Both Tesla and SpaceX are pursuing capital-intensive growth strategies that require enormous investments.
SpaceX's IPO filing indicates it may need to raise additional capital through stock issuance and debt financing to fund projects such as Starship development, AI infrastructure, and orbital data centers.
Tesla is simultaneously ramping up spending on AI, robotics, and autonomous driving initiatives.
Critics argue that merging the two balance sheets would compound rather than solve these funding challenges.
According to David Trainer, CEO of research group New Constructs, SpaceX would need to achieve exceptionally ambitious financial targets to justify its current valuation, including approximately $248 billion in net income and $1.1 trillion in annual revenue by 2035.
A merger could also dilute existing SpaceX shareholders.
Under the scenario outlined by Tully, SpaceX investors would see their ownership stake fall from 100% to roughly 52%.
In exchange, they would acquire Tesla, which currently generates less than $4 billion in annual profit while requiring substantial capital expenditures of its own.
SpaceX shareholders would also inherit Tesla's substantial capital spending commitments, adding to the already enormous investments required to build out SpaceX's AI infrastructure.
Governance concerns could also emerge.
Legal experts say antitrust issues are unlikely because the companies operate in largely different industries.
However, questions around valuation, share-exchange ratios, parent-company structure, and shareholder approval could prove contentious.
Determining a fair price for both companies, deciding which entity would control the merged business, and addressing potential conflicts of interest involving Musk would likely become major points of debate among investors and regulators alike.
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
Tesla, Inc. is transforming into an AI company, with its AI6 chip aiming to deliver record intelligence per silicon wafer at lower costs. TSLA's custom chips, optimized for internal use, could significantly reduce compute costs and improve margins across robotaxi, Optimus, and FSD businesses. Tesla is building excess chip capacity to supply data centers, with SpaceX and xAI as immediate captive markets, potentially unlocking new revenue streams.
Elon Musk rings the opening bell for the SpaceX IPO on Friday morning. Imagine missing the Tesla IPO. I understand the pull to invest in SpaceX (SPCX). But SpaceX at a $1.75 trillion valuation is a different ball game. Tesla went public at a valuation a thousand times smaller. And the Musk premium that powered Tesla’s run wasn’t baked into the IPO price. Investors got it for free. Neither is true at SpaceX. Those two differences aren’t even the most important argument to consider. If you’re still on the fence about buying SPCX: read on.
Two camps emerged from Thursday night’s pricing. The first sees the largest IPO in history, $75 billion raised, and reads it as a vote of confidence in American ambition. The second sees a $1.75 trillion valuation on a company that lost $4.94 billion last year on $18.67 billion in revenue and asks where the math comes from.
Both camps are answering the wrong question. The right one isn’t whether SpaceX is a great company. It is. The question is whether SpaceX is valued fairly.
The Tesla effect. Tesla’s run from a $1.7 billion IPO to a trillion-dollar valuation trained a generation of retail investors to interpret Musk-led volatility as a buying opportunity. Drawdowns of 30, 40, 60 percent in TSLA were correct ex-post to hold through. The lesson has been internalized as a rule: when a Musk company drops, you buy. That rule worked spectacularly. It is now being applied, unconsciously, to a company starting at roughly 1,000 times the Tesla IPO market cap.
The discipline that worked when Tesla was a $1.7 billion company will not work when SpaceX is a $1.75 trillion one. The math is different. The opportunity set is different. The base rate is different. Position sizing built on a small-cap conviction rule, applied to a mega-cap, is not conviction. It is a category error.
The behavioral term is the lottery effect: chasing the small probability of an outsized payoff while ignoring the much larger probability of a mediocre or negative one. University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter’s data on four decades of US IPOs shows that listings of unprofitable companies underperform the market by roughly 30 percent over the following three years. SpaceX lost $4.94 billion last year. The lottery framing is not a metaphor. It is what the historical data say happens to companies that go public losing this much money.
The most expensive mistake a Tesla winner can make is to assume the rule that minted them generalizes. It doesn’t. Tesla minted you because of where Tesla started, not because of who runs it. The starting valuation is the variable. At $1.75 trillion, that variable is set against you.
A few structural facts about the IPO itself reinforce the point.
The early price is engineered, not discovered. SpaceX is floating roughly 4% of itself — some $75 billion of stock against trillions of dollars of global demand. The lockup is the tell. Instead of the standard 180-day cliff, the prospectus lays out a tiered release that lets insiders begin selling tranches after the first earnings report and continues in steps through day 180. Musk is exempt from the early provisions.
Add a microscopic float, MSCI fast-track inclusion 10 trading days after listing that triggers mechanical buying from passive funds tracking nearly $6 trillion in assets, a retail allocation originally targeted near 30 percent and cut to the low 20s as institutional demand overwhelmed the book, and a staggered insider exit that distributes into whatever pop the scarcity produces.
That isn’t price discovery. That is choreography.
We have seen this picture before. Saudi Aramco listed in December 2019 on a 1.5 percent float at a $1.7 trillion valuation, popped 10 percent on day one, briefly touched $2 trillion on day two, and now trades near 27 riyals against a 32 riyal IPO price, below where it came public more than six years later. Snowflake priced at $120 in September 2020, opened at $245, closed at $254, and today trades around $240. Opening-day buyers are still flat-to-negative on a five-and-a-half year hold. The opening weeks of SPCX will tell you nothing about what SpaceX is worth. They will tell you what scarcity, a Musk premium, and index flows produce when they collide.
S&P Dow Jones, notably, declined to fast-track SpaceX into the S&P 500. The profitability rule held. That should tell you something about what one major index committee thinks of the valuation.
The economics ask you to underwrite a company larger than any that has ever existed. At the $135 IPO price, SPCX trades at roughly 94 times trailing revenue. To justify the valuation on a conventional discounted cash flow, SpaceX has to grow into something north of $1 trillion in revenue and a few hundred billion in annual profit. For reference, Amazon does about $740 billion in revenue today and Alphabet does about $130 billion in annual profit. SPCX has to outgrow both.
The bulls have an answer. Morgan Stanley and Goldman project $160 billion in 2028 revenue, roughly nine times last year. New Street models 60 percent compound growth through 2030 and lands at a $165 target. Those numbers require Starlink to become a SaaS giant, Starship to reach commercial cadence, and xAI (folded into SpaceX in February) to compete with OpenAI and Google for orbital compute.
Each is arguably plausible on its own (though as an AI guy, I’m particularly skeptical of xAI). At this IPO price, you are paying upfront for all three bets to land. In contrast, Morningstar puts fair value at $780 billion — $63 a share against the $135 offer.
Who actually runs SpaceX. One more piece the coverage has glossed past. SpaceX is going public with Musk retaining 85 percent of voting power through Class B shares. Public shareholders will own an economic interest and almost no governance interest. There is no proxy fight available, no activist path, no board seat to recruit. If you disagree with how Musk is allocating capital between Starlink, Starship, and xAI, your only option is to sell.
Concentrated voting structures exist at other large tech companies. None of them are at $1.75 trillion with a CEO running multiple other major operations. The governance discount that should apply here is not modest. It is the difference between owning a piece of the seventh-largest company in the world and owning a piece of whatever the famously mercurial Musk decides it should be on a given Tuesday.
Where I could be wrong. If Starship hits weekly commercial cadence in 2027, if Starlink’s direct-to-cell business scales the way Morgan Stanley assumes, and if orbital compute proves out before terrestrial AI infrastructure saturates, $1.75 trillion could look cheap. I would not bet against any one of those individually. I am betting against all three at once, today, at this valuation.
For most of us the decision isn’t binary anyway. The moment SPCX enters the major indices, anyone with an S&P 500 fund or a total-market ETF owns it. The active question is whether to take additional concentrated exposure on top of the passive slug coming your way. My answer is no, not yet. Wait for the first earnings report. Wait for the lockup cascade. Wait for Starship cadence data the bulls can’t hand-wave away. What you want and when to buy it are two separate decisions.
The stock may go up. That doesn’t change the math. At $1.75 trillion you aren’t investing in SpaceX. You are subsidizing it.
Disclosure: I’m not an investment advisor; follow my advice at your own risk. I have no position in SPCX and no plans to take one.
Tesla (TSLA) shares fell on Friday as SpaceX made its stock market debut at $150 per share, fueling speculation among some investors that capital may be rotating from Tesla into SpaceX. Tesla stock was down by about 2.36% in late morning trading, after spending much of the morning swinging between mild gains and losses.
SpaceX's COO Gwynne Shotwell didn't dismiss the possibility of a tie-up with Tesla, Elon Musk's other trillion-dollar public company. A tie-up "might make Elon's life a little easier," Shotwell told CNBC, as SpaceX was preparing to hit the Nasdaq following the largest IPO on record.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA | TSLA Price Prediction) and BYD (OTC: BYDDF) sit on opposite sides of the global EV map. Tesla’s Q1 2026 report delivered a margin rebound and another lift in AI subscriptions.
BYD, the Shenzhen volume leader, is being repositioned by Beijing’s anti-involution campaign aimed at consolidating EV winners. Both names have slid this year, making the matchup worth a fresh look in June.
Tesla’s Margin Snapback Meets BYD’s Policy Tailwind Tesla reported Q1 2026 revenue of $22.387 billion, up 15.78% year over year, with non-GAAP EPS of $0.41 beating consensus by 14.14%. Automotive gross margin expanded to 21.1% from 16.2% a year ago, helped by lower material costs, higher average selling prices, and a one-time warranty and tariff benefit.
Free cash flow jumped 117.47% to $1.444 billion, and cash sits at $44.743 billion. FSD active subscriptions hit 1.28 million, up 51%, turning software into a real recurring line.
The quarter had blemishes. Energy storage revenue fell 12% YoY, operating expenses jumped 37% on AI spending and the CEO equity award, and global inventory crept to 27 days from 22. Deliveries grew just 6%, so unit demand remains middling.
Business Driver Tesla BYD Q1 Auto Gross Margin 21.1% Not disclosed in available data Core Growth Engine FSD, premium models, AI hardware Mass-market EVs, PHEVs, batteries Management Focus Optimus, Cybercab, robotaxi rollout Scale, exports, policy alignment BYD enters the second half of 2026 positioned differently. Morningstar’s 2026 outlook names BYD as a likely beneficiary of China’s anti-involution policies, which shift capacity toward the largest and most profitable EV players. BYD shares are down 36.13% over the last 12 months, signaling investors are not yet convinced policy support translates into earnings.
Vertical Stack Versus Vertical Scale Tesla is funding a full vertical AI stack: FSD v14.3 cut inference latency by 20%, the AI5 chip taped out in April, and a SpaceX-partnered semiconductor fab is going up at Gigafactory Texas.
Cybercab, Tesla Semi, and Megapack 3 are all penciled for volume production this year. R&D climbed to $1.95 billion, a hefty bill for an automaker, modest for an AI platform. BYD owns the cell, pack, powertrain, and assembly line at the lowest cost in the industry.
Tesla chases margin through software. BYD chases share through affordability and a widening export footprint into Europe, LATAM, and Southeast Asia. Beijing’s intervention may let BYD convert that scale into pricing power.
What I Want to See Next For Tesla, Q2 deliveries are the next swing factor. Polymarket traders assign the highest probability, 35.8%, to a 450,000 to 475,000 vehicle range, with a California robotaxi launch priced at just 4% by June 30. I will watch whether FSD subscriptions keep compounding and whether the energy storage dip was a single-quarter blip.
For BYD, the read is whether policy reform lifts realized prices and whether export volumes keep climbing. Without fresh H1 results, I treat the BYD thesis as a working hypothesis rather than a confirmed setup.
Why I Lean Tesla on Quality, BYD on Value Tesla offers the cleaner, freshly confirmed quarter. Margin recovery, surging FSD attach, and an AI optionality stack hard to replicate argue for the Austin name. A trailing P/E near 371 on a $1.49 trillion market cap leaves little margin for error, especially with shares down 15.15% YTD and down 9.94% in the past week.
If you believe Chinese policy reform rewards the dominant EV maker, BYD at $11.05 after that drawdown offers more interesting risk-reward. I lean Tesla for execution clarity, though a pullback closer to its 52-week low of $288.77 would offer a more favorable entry profile. In June, neither looks like a layup.
Shares of SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) are up 26% in midday trading Friday after the company completed the largest IPO in history. SPCX stock traded near $170, well above the $150 open and the $135 IPO price set Thursday night. This ranks among the most closely watched NASDAQ debuts in years.
The SpaceX session has been volatile by any measure. The day’s range stretched from $150 to more than $175, capturing the IPO-day churn analysts had warned about heading in. About 555.6 million shares were priced at $135 each, raising a record $75 billion at an IPO valuation near $1.77 trillion that dwarfs every prior listing.
The NASDAQ debut also reshapes the global wealth leaderboard. With SPCX stock surging, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA | TSLA Price Prediction) CEO Elon Musk is officially the world’s first trillionaire.
How Musk’s Wealth Crossed $1 Trillion Musk holds 42% of SpaceX equity and 82% of voting control through Class B shares, a structure laid out in the company’s S-1 filing. With SPCX trading near $158 around midday, his SpaceX stake alone is valued at about $869.4 billion.
His roughly 717 million Tesla shares are worth about $278.2 billion at around $388 per share. Combined, the SpaceX and Tesla stakes total approximately $1.147 trillion, before counting Neuralink, the Boring Company, and other private holdings.
The Bear Case Surrounding SPCX Stock SpaceX revenue is driven largely by Starlink, the satellite broadband network reaching paying customers across 164 countries. Q1 2026 revenue came in at $4,694 million with adjusted EBITDA of $1,127 million. However, SpaceX still posted a loss from operations of $1.943 billion as capital spending on Starship, the xAI merger, and orbital AI data centers ramps.
Governance is another concern for new SpaceX shareholders. Class B shares carry ten votes each versus one for Class A, leaving Musk with effective control of board composition and most shareholder votes. SpaceX qualifies as a “controlled company” under NASDAQ rules and intends to rely on the corresponding governance exemptions.
Analysts have also cautioned about the typical IPO selloff pattern, where early backers and pre-IPO holders look to monetize gains once trading windows open. The gap between Thursday’s $135 pricing and Friday’s $150 open already shows how quickly SPCX sentiment can shift on a day like this. Volume and intraday swings could intensify into the close.
Tesla’s Indirect Exposure to the SpaceX Print Tesla stock closed Thursday at $399.15, leaving TSLA shares down 11% year to date (YTD) but up 22% over the past year; the share price is practically unchanged as of Friday afternoon. The TSLA stock slide this year stands in contrast to today’s SpaceX excitement, even though both companies share Musk and overlapping strategic projects.
Tesla disclosed a $2 billion equity stake in SpaceX in its Q1 2026 filing, alongside a joint semiconductor fab at the Gigafactory Texas campus. The vertically integrated chip program gives Tesla holders indirect exposure to today’s SpaceX valuation, even before factoring in Musk’s personal cross-ownership.
What Investors Should Watch From Here Reddit sentiment on SPCX stock skewed bearish into the open, with r/investing scoring 24 and a viral r/stocks post titled “People are treating SpaceX like a guaranteed lottery ticket” drawing 1,337 upvotes and 991 comments. The r/WallStreetBets crowd registered a more enthusiastic 50 sentiment reading, capturing the familiar split between fundamental caution and short-term speculation around SpaceX.
Investors can keep an eye on SPCX stock into the close to see whether the 26% pop holds or fades as pre-IPO holders consider trimming. Lockup expirations and the first wave of sell-side initiations could shape the next leg for SpaceX stock.
Tesla shareholders may want to watch for any pull-through from the SpaceX valuation in the coming sessions. The Musk premium has historically traveled between his companies, and a record IPO debut is an unusually loud reference point for the entire ecosystem.
SpaceX just rewrote the IPO record book. The company sold more than 555 million shares at $135 each, raising $75 billion and landing a valuation of nearly $1.8 trillion.
The companies led by Elon Musk have become increasingly intertwined in the past couple of years. These firms have shared employees and purchased batteries, software, and vehicles from each other.
'The Big Money Show' panel discusses SpaceX's historic IPO, Elon Musk's soaring valuation and whether investors should buy into the aerospace giant's blockbuster market debut.
CNBC Wealth Editor correspondent Robert Frank delivered a milestone moment on air this morning, saying: “By the end of today, Elon Musk will likely become the world’s first trillionaire.” This comes as the result of the long-awaited SpaceX IPO, which is poised to revalue Musk’s privately held stake at public-market multiples and push his net worth past a threshold no individual has ever crossed.
The Tesla and SpaceX Stack On the Tesla side, Frank pegged Musk’s stake at “around $260 billion“ as of yesterday’s close, a figure that “includes those options worth about $120 billion that were tied up in court for a while. He got those back.” Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA | TSLA Price Prediction) carries a market cap of $1.49 trillion and trades at $396.82, down 11.24% year to date but still up 22.28% over the past year. Tesla’s Q1 FY26 revenue of $22.39 billion (+15.8% YoY) and its disclosed $2 billion equity investment in SpaceX tightened the financial link between the two companies before today’s listing.
The SpaceX line is where the math gets historic. Frank cited the S-1 directly: “On SpaceX, the S-1 filing lists him with 6.4 billion shares. At an IPO price of $130 to $135 a share, his SpaceX stake would be worth $690 billion.” He noted that Musk excludes 1.3 billion SpaceX shares from the calculation because they do not vest until milestones tied to Mars colonization or massive compute targets are met.
The $140 Threshold for SpaceX Adding it up, Frank said: “That brings SpaceX and Tesla together to $950 billion. Adding Neuralink, Boring, other assets probably worth $10-20 [billion], that brings him right now to a total of about $970 billion.”
However, Musk can easily reach his fourth comma in his net worth if SpaceX stock moves higher: “SpaceX shares need to stay above $140 a share for Musk to be the first person in the world to receive the fourth comma in his net worth.” As of 2:43 PM ET on June 12, SpaceX stock currently trades at nearly $170, meaning Musk would reach trillionaire status today if the price holds.
Thousands of New Millionaires Beyond the headline number, Frank highlighted the wealth-creation cascade rippling through SpaceX’s payroll. “And the thousands and thousands of millionaires that are being created by this IPO… people joined this company in the early 2000s. Nobody knew what it was. They thought they were crazy to join. They took below-market salaries in exchange for stock that, who knew?” It is a textbook case of long-duration equity compensation paying off at scale, and a reminder of how concentrated the upside of speculative tech bets can become.
The Public-Market Proxy For investors without access to SpaceX, Rocket Lab (NASDAQ:RKLB) remains the closest listed comparison in launch services. Shares trade at $104.64 with a market cap of nearly $69.7 billion, up 319.52% over the past year. Q1 FY26 brought record revenue of $200.35 million (+63.5% YoY) and a $2.2 billion backlog, with CEO Peter Beck calling it “another exceptional quarter”.
What To Watch Next The first thing to watch is whether SpaceX can hold above Frank’s $140 reference price once trading begins. Strong demand suggests a positive opening, but heavily oversubscribed IPOs can also be volatile as early investors take profits.
Beyond the debut, investors should pay attention to the growing ties between SpaceX and Tesla. Tesla has invested $2 billion in SpaceX and is partnering on a semiconductor fabrication facility at Gigafactory Texas. As the relationship between the two companies deepens, developments at SpaceX could become increasingly relevant for Tesla shareholders as well.
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA | TSLA Price Prediction) CEO Elon Musk made history earlier today by reportedly becoming the world’s first trillionaire, fueled largely by SpaceX‘s (NASDAQ:SPCX) blockbuster NASDAQ debut. Yet, Tesla stock is barely budging on the news, trading near $403 and up 1% in midday action on Friday.
The disconnect is hard to ignore. Musk’s combined SpaceX and Tesla stakes are now worth around $1.147 trillion, but Tesla stock is down 11% in 2026 while the broader market has rallied. That gap is the central question driving today’s debate over whether TSLA shares have quietly turned into dead weight in growth portfolios.
For context, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY), which tracks the S&P 500, is up 9% year to date, leaving Tesla stock roughly 20 percentage points behind the index. Investors who held through 2025 aren’t panicking yet, though. Over the trailing 12 months, Tesla stock is still up 26%, so this is specifically a 2026 underperformance story.
Musk’s Trillionaire Day Highlights the Tesla Disconnect The irony is hard to miss. SpaceX priced its IPO at $135, opened at $150, and soared as much as 30% on Friday, instantly minting Musk’s trillionaire status. Meanwhile, Tesla stock has spent 2026 grinding sideways to lower.
Part of the issue is sentiment. Reddit discussion in fundamental investing communities like r/stocks and r/stockmarket has skewed bearish, with a viral post titled “Elon Musk wants to merge SpaceX and Tesla into a $3.4 trillion giant. The problem: it would lose money from day one” drawing heavy engagement.
The prediction markets echo that skepticism about Tesla’s standalone value. Polymarket traders assign a 93% probability that SpaceX will be worth more than Tesla by June 30, a striking reversal in how investors rank Musk’s two flagship ventures.
The Bear Case: Why TSLA Stock Could Be Dead Weight The bear thesis on Tesla stock starts with its valuation. TSLA shares trade at a trailing P/E ratio of 370x and a forward P/E ratio of 192x, multiples that demand flawless execution.
Tesla’s recent results show why some investors are uneasy. The company’s energy generation and storage revenue declined 12% year over year in Q1 2026, while Tesla’s global vehicle inventory rose to 27 days of supply from 22 days. Furthermore, Tesla booked $222 million in digital asset losses during the quarter.
The prediction markets also throw cold water on the near-term catalyst narrative for Tesla stock. Polymarket gives only a 5% probability that Tesla launches robotaxis in California by June 30, and just 17% odds that Optimus is released by year-end 2026.
The Bull Case: Tesla Is Still Executing The other side of the Tesla story is genuinely strong. Q1 2026 revenue grew 16% year over year to $22.39 billion, and automotive gross margin expanded to 21% from 16%.
Tesla’s software momentum is real, too. Active Full Self-Driving subscriptions hit 1.28 million, up 51% year over year, and Services and Other revenue jumped 42% to $3.75 billion. Tesla also grew free cash flow 117% year over year to $1.44 billion.
Analyst sentiment remains constructive on balance. The consensus analyst TSLA stock price target sits at $420, with 18 Buy and 5 Strong Buy ratings against 4 Sell and 3 Strong Sell calls.
What to Watch Next So, is Tesla stock dead weight? The honest answer is that it depends on one’s time frame and patience level. The 2026 underperformance is real, the valuation is stretched, and Musk’s attention may genuinely be split between SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla.
However, Tesla’s core business is still growing, FSD adoption is accelerating, and the company sits on $44.74 billion in cash. Investors weighing their exposure may want to size their positions modestly here rather than chase or capitulate.
The next anticipated checkpoint is Tesla’s Q2 2026 deliveries, where prediction markets center on a 450,000 to 475,000 vehicle range at 35% probability. That print could decide whether TSLA shares finally rejoin the broader market rally or keep dragging behind it.
All eyes might be on the SpaceX IPO — the world's largest in history — and its CEO Elon Musk. But lest you forget there is another publicly traded company in the Musk universe that many believe will someday merge with SpaceX.
