No One Cares About Tesla Anymore

When SpaceX goes public with a valuation of $1.75 trillion, it will be worth slightly more than Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA | TSLA Price Prediction), which has a market cap of $1.5 billion. Of course, if SpaceX’s stock soars, the difference could become bigger. Despite Tesla’s position in the global EV business and $95 billion in revenue last year, it has become an afterthought among the assets Elon Musk controls. SpaceX had revenue of $19 billion last year.

Tesla is probably ignored because much of its value to investors is based on the future. SpaceX has something like 90% of the global enterprise rocket business. And, it has begun to take control of the remotely powered internet business. Starlink already has almost 14,000 satellites orbiting Earth and approval to increase that number to over 40,000. (Those satellites are launched by SpaceX rockets. The troubled business SpaceX has is xAI, which operates Grok. xAI is well behind market leaders OpenAI, Anthropic, and Gemini. xAI’s losses will weigh on SpaceX’s bottom line, perhaps for many quarters.

While Tesla is the first commercially successful EV company, its sales have been muscled by China’s BYD. And BYD has already begun to have success outside its home market, although it is blocked from the US by tariffs.

The future of Tesla’s Robotaxi and Opimus robots is still up in the air. Musk says each will be a massive business. But unlike the early EV industry, he does not have a lead of several years. Tesla’s models are old, particularly compared to those made by the Chinese. His long-term, extremely high market share in the US has eroded, and sales in the EU are struggling.

Business school professors and Warren Buffett like to talk about “moats,” which means businesses that are hard to compete with. The SpaceX rockets fall into that category, and so does Starlink. The EV industry is not like that anymore.

Finally, the market has dimmed some about Musk’s projections for Tesla’s future. The stock is down 11% this year, while the S&P is 8% higher. Tesla is not “hot” anymore and may not be again unless Musk’s Robotaxi and Optimus forecasts come true.