投资人工智能：难以置信的特斯拉机会

投资人工智能：难以置信的特斯拉机会（第一部分）

多年来，我曾经是100%的比特币最大化主义者。我基本上利用了我所有与投资相关的时间来更好地了解比特币和加密生态系统。我比大多数人都更喜欢了解市场动态，多年来在这个领域结交了很多好朋友。但回想起来，我闭上了眼睛，想知道投资界正在发生什么。它走得如此之远，以至于我甚至不想花太多时间看股票市场（除了一些与比特币相关的股票），因为我认为从长远来看，没有什么能跑赢比特币。

但情况发生了一些变化，在过去的几个月里，我的主要关注点已经慢慢从加密货币转向人工智能。当然，我仍然每天关注加密领域发生的一切，但由于我现在可用的时间更少，我也专注于其他事情，所以我不再听所有的播客，我倾向于远离 Twitter 上经常有毒的加密讨论。

部分原因是加密领域已经发生了很大变化，现在人们更加关注快钱，我到处都看到骗局。那不是我的世界。我也有点无聊，我已经把所有东西都看过很多遍了。比特币的戏剧（尤其是在Twitter上）已经不再让我那么兴奋了。我知道比特币将长期上涨，我们可能会在今年晚些时候看到一个巨大的牛市，所以我对所有在推特上谈论恐慌性抛售的人不感兴趣，因为他们不了解市场上正在发生的事情。

与此同时，我意识到，在未来几年内，可能还有其他投资可能会比比特币做得更好。自从我进入比特币以来，我已经看到了 500 倍的价格上涨，但除非美元被膨胀，否则这种情况可能不会再次发生。从长远来看，比特币可能会再上涨 50 倍，但还有其他投资（加密货币或加密货币之外）更容易理解，并且可能产生类似的回报。

人工智能

多年来，我一直在研究人工智能，甚至在大约 7 年前就已经做过一些在线 AI 课程。但这些都是相当技术性的（“神经网络是如何工作的？”等等），它们并没有真正让我看到我现在看到的可能性。直到大约 1.5 年前 ChatGPT 在我的世界里成为主流后，我才意识到潜在的机会是什么。因此，几个月前，我决定是时候更深入地研究人工智能了。我阅读了技术论文和书籍，但大多数时候都是开始使用许多现有的大型语言模型来理解它们能做什么（和不能）做什么，以及它们有何不同。我参加了 AI 会议，并开始关注 AI 博客、播客和 YouTube 专家。正因为如此，我根本没有时间像以前那样专注于比特币了。

根据我获得的关于人工智能的知识，我制定了一个新的投资论点，我决定抽出暑假，主要专注于这个论点，并开始进行投资。在过去的几周里，我每天花 4-6 个小时阅读、写作和思考 AI 的投资策略。我相信，当你真正深入研究并将其与其他行业的深入了解相结合时，你会看到别人（还）看不到的东西。它过去对我有用，我相信这次也会得到回报。

初步发现

到目前为止，我的发现非常简单。在指数级变化的时期，如果你及早投资并且在市场低迷期间不出售，你可以赚到巨额的钱（比特币人称之为HODLing）。互联网公司就是这种情况，后来是比特币，我相信现在是人工智能股票。任何做过研究并早期投资于优质互联网股票或比特币的人，都可以轻松地将 1 美元变成至少 100 美元。现在的人工智能也是如此，可能不再是100倍了，因为许多股票在过去一年中已经取得了巨大的波动，但仍然足以产生真正的财富。我选择了大约10家公司的投资组合，我重点关注这些公司作为投资目标，其中大多数是大型上市公司。

投资人工智能初创企业？

与许多其他行业不同，我认为投资人工智能初创公司并不是致富的途径，仅仅是因为为了取得成功，他们需要a）大量的钱，b）大量的芯片和c）大量的权力。也许初创公司可以筹集到很多资金，但获得芯片会困难得多。英伟达只是将其最大的客户（谷歌、Meta、OpenAI、Microsoft、亚马逊和特斯拉）放在首位，因为对GPU芯片的需求远高于他们的芯片产量。为什么要向一家小型初创公司销售产品，而对最好的客户说不？

获得电力是初创企业开始发展后将面临的另一个问题。所有大型科技公司都有自己的数据中心和电力供应协议是有原因的：这是他们确保未来能源需求的唯一途径。初创企业根本没有资源来做到这一点，因此他们最终将达到天花板。

另一个原因是人工智能的能力呈指数级增长。这意味着，一家专门的人工智能公司在一年的时间里建立的东西，可能会突然成为新的LLM更新的一部分，从而使该公司突然变得过时。每次 OpenAI 宣布 ChatGPT 的新版本时，都会有一些 AI 公司立即倒闭，因为 ChatGPT 可以突然做他们一直在构建的事情。我并不是说没有人工智能初创公司会成功，但我相信，投资选定的上市公司可能是未来几年获得超额回报的最简单、最具流动性的方式。

超大市值公司

我的一个结论是，人工智能将很快导致我称之为超值公司的东西。我对超值公司的定义是市值为 10 万亿美元或以上的企业。目前，世界上最大的公司是Microsoft，市值为3.4万亿美元，这意味着它必须增长300%才能成为超级市值公司。超级大市值将变得如此之大，因为我称之为非人性化：夺走人类的工作，这些工作的货币价值最终成为这些未来超级大市值的收入。

新兴的超级大盘股将因其在新兴行业中的主导地位而脱颖而出。你已经看到了英伟达、亚马逊、苹果和特斯拉等公司的统治地位。我预计，非人性化将在很大程度上通过用类人机器人取代人类劳动来实现。这些类人生物将改变我们制造事物和执行任务的方式，并将创造一个巨大的新行业。我现在确信，正在初具规模的机器人产业，将成为世界上最大的产业。

我最喜欢的潜在超级大盘股：特斯拉

我最喜欢的人工智能公司是特斯拉，部分原因是我认为他们最终可能会主导人形机器人行业，使$TSLA成为世界上最大的公司（他们目前比Microsoft小约5倍）。特斯拉也可能在未来几年内跑赢比特币。也许比特币在接下来的 12-18 个月内会比特斯拉做得更好，但在那之后特斯拉会大放异彩。大约 2 周前，我开始投资特斯拉（我将其发布在 Twitter 上），从那时起，该股已经上涨了 25% 以上。我不得不承认，这个时机是幸运的，但我确实预计这只股票很快就会上涨更多。

这篇文章的第二部分将更详细地解释为什么我认为特斯拉是一个潜在的超级大市值，以及为什么我认为大多数分析师还没有看到它。我计划在本周晚些时候写第二部分。

马克·范德奇斯

Marc van der Chijs

发表

2024年7月 7日

投资人工智能：令人难以置信的特斯拉机会（第二部分）

当你问人们特斯拉是什么样的公司时，几乎每个人都会说它是一家电动汽车公司。华尔街也是如此，大多数投资者将特斯拉视为电动汽车业务并将其视为一项。不过，我认为他们错了。目前，特斯拉的大部分收入仍然来自电动汽车的销售，但这种情况正在快速变化，在几年内销售电动汽车可能只是副业。实际上，特斯拉是一家伪装成电动汽车公司的人工智能公司。

该公司正处于全面转型的早期阶段。正如Elon几周前所说，他们不仅为特斯拉写了新篇章，还写了一本全新的书。正因为如此，我相信该公司被严重低估了，这将是你现在能做的最好的长期投资之一。一旦我意识到这是一个多么大的机会，我就开始投资特斯拉，我计划继续增加这笔投资。

当我试图重视特斯拉时，我基于其即将推出的Robotaxis、Optimus人形机器人及其能源业务。在我看来，电动汽车的销售与长期无关，所以在这篇博客文章中计算公司的潜在未来价值时，我甚至不会考虑到这一点。

特斯拉能源

能源业务对特斯拉来说很重要，在未来3年内，特斯拉的估值可能会增加一倍或两倍。特斯拉生产Powerwalls（家庭电池，足以为小家庭供电一天）和Megapacks（工业解决方案的大型电池组）。由于生成性人工智能，能源需求增长速度极快，特斯拉在这一领域表现非常好。在第二季度，他们生产的电池存储量是第一季度的两倍，他们将在拉斯罗普工厂继续增加，并在年底前在上海开设一家新工厂。我预计能源业务的利润率可能比分析师预期的要高得多，因此我相信特斯拉能源公司第二季度的业绩（将于7月23日到期）将比预期好得多，这可能会导致股价再次飙升。由于华尔街只关注未来12-18个月，还没有真正看到特斯拉长期计划的机会，在未来2年里，特斯拉能源公司对特斯拉股价非常重要，甚至可能比目前的电动汽车生产和销售更重要。但从长远来看，大部分市值将来自Robotaxi和Optimus。因此，在这篇文章的其余部分，我将只关注这2种产品。我将解释他们是什么，他们的潜力是什么，以及特斯拉的股价可能会发生什么。

Robotaxi

我相信，在这个十年结束之前，汽车世界将完全改变。我认为我们将看到从拥有自己汽车的人到使用Robotaxis四处走动的人发生重大转变。这将从大城市开始，那里很难四处走动，停车费用昂贵，但也会很快发生在小城市和更多的农村地区。

Robotaxi是一种完全自主的电动汽车，像优步一样工作，但没有司机。您将使用一个应用程序来获取一个，并且在旅行之前或旅行期间不会与任何人互动。优步或出租车的主要区别在于，它可能会便宜80%-90%。没有人知道每英里的价格是多少，这可能取决于地点和未来的竞争。例如，中国的有地理围栏的机器人目前每公里收费不到0.10美元。我预计美国的价格不会那么低，但随着时间的推移，它可能会发生。

许多人不相信Robotaxis很快就会成为可能，可能是因为他们没有关注过去几年完全自动驾驶（FSD）的发展速度。特斯拉自动驾驶系统已经从自动驾驶仪（人必须始终在方向盘上）变成了基于人工智能的FSD，汽车可以为您做任何事情，不再需要人为干预。没有其他汽车公司能接近特斯拉所制造的。普通司机的事故率约为每20万英里一次，而特斯拉的旧FSD每320万英里才发生一次事故。这进步了16倍，甚至还不是最新的FSD。特斯拉通过收集多年来的所有驾驶数据来到这里，但它也从一个基于规则的系统（“如果A发生，那么你就做B”）变成了像人类司机一样“思考”的神经网络。这意味着你可以在任何地方开车，即使在特斯拉从未去过的地方。我会把它与像ChatGPT这样的大型语言模型如何改变我们工作和创建内容的方式进行比较，这就是特斯拉在这一领域取得的飞跃。你必须看到它才能相信它。如果您不服气，甚至更好，请观看一些YouTube视频，尝试在带有FSD 12.4的特斯拉上试驾。

然而，拥有最好的FSD不足以创办一家Robotaxi公司。你需要一个巨大的汽车网络才能开始，这和优步推出时面临的问题一样。我的假设是，Elon将使用他现有的安装了FSD的特斯拉汽车车队。这基本上意味着任何拥有特斯拉的人都可以将其用作机器人，并从中赚取额外的钱（根据您使用特斯拉所有者的假设，在特斯拉大幅削减后，每年可能会赚取5万美元的利润）。这将改变游戏规则，因为使用时间可能5%的汽车可能会突然使用50%或更多。突然间，特斯拉汽车的价格将上涨，而不是随着时间的推移而贬值。优步可能会立即关闭，因为没有实体司机的公司都无法与特斯拉的价格竞争。

下一步可能是特斯拉将建造的专用Robotaxi。还没有人知道它会是什么样子，但它可能会在今年晚些时候揭晓。Robotaxi演示文稿原计划于8月8日举行，但现在似乎要到10月才能进行。我的假设是，这将是一个没有方向盘的4人座车，但可能还有其他版本（一辆更大的面包车，甚至可能是未来的睡眠版本）。我相信特斯拉可能不会向公众出售这些车辆，而是将它们保留给自己的车队。通过这种方式，他们可以获得这些车辆100%的收入。

据估计，到2030年，Robotaxis的全球市场将处于8-10万亿美元的范围内。在这一点上，特斯拉没有真正的竞争。没有人有像特斯拉那样先进的FSD，甚至像Waymo（谷歌拥有）或Cruise（由通用汽车拥有）这样的现有玩家仍然有定期进行远程人工干预，即使汽车上没有司机。Waymo和Cruise不是特斯拉的竞争对手，因为它们是地理围栏的，这意味着它们只能在预定义区域内运行良好。除此之外，没有其他竞争对手能够像特斯拉那样快速扩展。正因为如此，特斯拉有很好的机会主宰这个行业。

但让我们保持保守，并假设中国的汽车公司也可以扩大规模，并能够获得类似的基于视觉的神经网络类型的FSD。在这种情况下，特斯拉仍将拥有至少10-20%的全球市场份额，这意味着仅机器人的年收入就为1-2万亿美元。鉴于特斯拉目前的市盈率，这意味着机器人业务的市值为10-20万亿美元。目前的市值只有8000亿美元左右，所以这里将有一个巨大的机会。

擎天柱

Robotaxi的业务将是巨大的，但特斯拉最大的机会将是其人形机器人Optimus。我相信，我们正在看到一个新的行业形成，它将成为世界上最大的行业——人形机器人将改变我们制造事物的方式，并创造一个庞大的新行业。

本周，埃隆·马斯克在X上宣布，特斯拉将于今年完成其Optimus机器人的设计，因此Optimus可能会尽快发生。擎天柱的特别之处在于，它基本上可以学会做人类能做的任何事情。因此，它不是一个只能做一件事的专业机器人，但你可以教它任何东西。你想要一个机器人来打扫你的房子还是洗碗？擎天柱会在那里等你。不喜欢把衣服挂起来吗？擎天柱随时准备提供帮助。你的孩子需要家庭教师来做家庭作业吗？擎天柱也可以做到这一点。几乎我们人类所能做的任何事情，擎天柱都能做到，而且可能比我们能做到的更快、更好、更长。

但不仅仅是家务，它也可以做人类所做的任何体力劳动。成本比人类低得多，而且时间长得多。工厂工人可能每天工作8小时，Optimus在需要充电之前每天可以工作22小时。如果Optimus需要一遍又一遍地做同样的工作，它不会感到无聊。如果工作很危险，Optimus做起来没有问题。保安很快就会被机器人取代，我预计战争很快就会不再由人类士兵打。消防员不需要冒生命危险，Optimus会为他们做他们的工作。

Optimus将彻底改变我们的生活方式。Optimus最终几乎可以以人类成本的一小部分完成任何工作，这将导致巨大的通货紧缩。这意味着随着时间的推移，几乎所有东西都会变得几乎自由。到达那里需要一些时间，我预计在此期间会有很多混乱，但我们最终会到达另一边，更光明的一面。我不想在这篇博客文章中讨论这个问题，但在讨论机器人时，我们必须牢记大规模失业和混乱的黑暗面。

已经有一些人形机器人生产商，一些人形机器人已经出售给公司并从事实际工作。然而，尽管特斯拉不是第一个进入市场的公司，但我预计该公司将主导该行业，就像他们对电动汽车所做的那样。他们为成功做好了一切准备：他们有电池（特斯拉能源公司可以生产电池），他们知道如何扩大生产规模（许多机器人制造商都会为此而挣扎）。他们有这些机器人可用的人工智能模型，他们有模型预训练和推理所需的数据中心。

只有擎天柱本身可以将特斯拉提升为世界上最有价值的公司，并使埃隆成为世界上第一个数万亿富翁。如果我们拥有10亿个机器人，这些机器人每年将赚取1万美元的利润，我们将假设特斯拉将拥有这个市场的10%，这意味着特斯拉每年每年的利润为1万亿美元。仅因为Optimus，特斯拉的市盈率为25万亿美元的市盈率为25万亿美元。不过，可能会有超过10亿个机器人，我实际上预计几年后我们的机器人会比人类多。特斯拉可能会拥有超过10%的市场份额。现在都是猜测，但重点是，如果他们成功了，特斯拉的股价将在未来几年内呈指数级上升。根据目前的估值，股价将至少上涨30倍，在我看来，这仍然非常保守。

特斯拉的下一步是什么？

如果你像我一样密切关注机器人和人工智能，你可能会开始明白，特斯拉可能会成为世界上最有价值和最重要的公司。Elon拥有完成这一切的所有要素，但世界还没有看到它。这就是我投资特斯拉的真正原因。对我来说，这感觉类似于我第一次使用比特币的尤里卡时刻（11年前，当时它仍然低于100美元）。是的，有很多障碍和风险，但Elon一次又一次地表明，他可以完成其他人无法完成的事情。如果他管理好这件事，这将使他变得非常富有，但也会让许多相信他和拥有特斯拉股票的人。华尔街还没有看到，甚至Cathie Woods（ARK Invest）也还没有对Optimus进行估值。但一旦华尔街能明白天空中发生的事情，这就是特斯拉的极限。

这是这篇博客文章的第2部分，第1部分在这里。如果您有兴趣更密切地关注特斯拉，您可以关注我整理的这个推特列表。这份清单对我来说非常有价值，这就是我获得大部分特斯拉新闻的方式。我还听了许多播客和YouTube频道，我最喜欢的一个是Herbert Ong。如果您想深入了解Robotaxi，请查看ARK Invest的Cathie Wood的这份报告。推特上最好的人形机器人专家是Cern Basher。他的计算是一个隐藏的宝石，这条推文有他之前所有机器人研究的链接。

像往常一样，我的帖子反映了我的个人观点，与我参与的任何公司无关，也不作为财务建议。在投资之前做你自己的研究。

马克·范德奇斯

Marc van der Chijs

发表

2024年7月11日

编者西湖泛舟推荐Marc van der Chijs在X.com上发表的帖子，作者长期投资比特币，并看好比特币在今年底和明年的投资机会。但眼下，作者认为特斯拉即将进入一个更大的上涨周期。2024年10月10日，特斯拉发布Robotaxi车型，展示了Optimus的最新进展，特斯拉正在引领人工智能应用行业的发展，推动特斯拉从一家汽车公司变成一家人工智能公司，并且已经取得了里程碑式的巨大进步。特斯拉是横跨能源和信息两个超级赛道，历史上看，能源和信息都是最大的超级赛道，出现了世界最大市值的公司。企业家资源是最有价值和创造无限可能的生产力，环顾全球，马斯克是全球创新能力最强，最有价值的企业家，马斯克坚持通过第一性原理解决工程化的问题，降本生产增效，提高生产效率。同时，在自动驾驶和人工智能机器人方面，遵循Scaling Law，more computing power, better performance. 推动特斯拉在人工智能领域加速迭代和升级。从投资的角度看，西湖泛舟相信，特斯拉会成为世界上最有价值和最重要的公司，对长期科技投资者而言，这是科技信仰，也是一个历史性的投资机会。这两篇帖子是Marc van der Chijs

个人的观点，不作为任何财务和投资建议。在投资之前做你自己的研究。本文图片由ChatGPT生成，文章内容以英文版为准，原文版权归Marc van der Chijs所有。

Investing in AI: the Incredible Tesla Opportunity (part 1)

For years I used to be a 100% Bitcoin maximalist. I basically used all of my investment-related time to better understand Bitcoin and the crypto ecosystem. I loved understanding the market dynamics better than most and made many good friends in the space over the years. But looking back I closed my eyes a bit for what else was happening in the investment world. It went so far that I didn’t even want to spend much time looking at the stock market (except for some Bitcoin-related stocks), because I thought nothing would outperform Bitcoin in the long run.

But things have changed a bit, and over the past couple of months my main focus has slowly shifted from crypto to AI. Of course I still follow everything that happens in the crypto space on a daily basis, but because I have less time available now that I also focus on other things, I don’t listen to all the podcasts anymore and I tend to stay away from the often toxic crypto discussions on Twitter.

Part of the reason is that the crypto space has changed a lot, there is a lot more of a focus on quick money now and I see scams everywhere. That is not my world. I also got a bit bored, I have seen everything so many times already. The Bitcoin drama (especially on Twitter) simply doesn’t excite me that much anymore. I know Bitcoin will keep going up long term and that we will likely see a huge bull market later this year, so I am not interested in all the people that tweet about panic selling because they don’t understand what’s happening in the market.

At the same time I realised that there may be other investments that could potentially do better than Bitcoin over the next couple of years. Since I got into Bitcoin I have seen a 500X price increase, but unless the USD gets inflated away that likely won’t happen again. Long term Bitcoin might do another 50X, but there are other investments (in crypto or outside crypto) that are easier to understand and that could generate similar returns.

Artificial Intelligence

I have been looking at AI for years and even did some online AI courses about 7 years ago already. But those were quite technical (‘How do neural networks work?’ etc.) and they didn’t really open my eyes to the possibilities that I am seeing right now. Only since ChatGPT became mainstream in my world about 1.5 years ago, I realised what the potential opportunities were. So a couple of months ago I decided it was time to go much deeper into AI. I read technical papers and books, but mostly started using a lot of the existing Large Language Models to understand what they can (and can’t) do, and how they are different. I went to AI conferences and started to follow AI blogs, podcasts and YouTube experts. Because of this I simply didn’t have the time anymore to focus on Bitcoin as much as I did before.

Based on the knowledge I gained about AI I developed a new investment thesis, and I decided to take the summer off to mostly focus on that thesis and to start making investments. Over the past couple of weeks I have been spending 4-6 hours every day reading, writing and thinking about investment strategies for AI. I believe that when you go really deep and you combine it with in-depth knowledge of other industries, you will see things that others don’t see (yet). It worked for me in the past and I believe it will pay off this time as well.

Initial findings

My findings so far have been remarkably simple. In times of exponential change you can make enormous amounts of money if you invest early and don’t sell during market downturns (HODLing as Bitcoiners call it). This was the case with Internet companies, later with Bitcoin and I believe now with AI stocks. Anybody who had done his/her research and invested early in quality Internet stocks or in Bitcoin, could have easily turned $1 into at least $100. That is also the case with AI right now, maybe not 100X anymore because many stocks already made huge moves over the past year, but still sufficient to generate real wealth. I have selected a portfolio of about 10 companies that I am focusing on as investment targets and most of these are large public companies.

Investing in AI start-ups?

Unlike in many other sectors, I believe that investing in AI start-ups is not the way to get rich, simply because in order to become successful they need a) lots of money, b) lots of chips and c) lots of power. Maybe start-ups can raise a lot of money, but getting access to chips will be a lot harder. Nvidia simply puts its largest customers (Google, Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon and Tesla) first because the demand for GPU chips is much higher than their chip production. Why sell to a small start-up while saying no to your best customers?

The access to power is another problem that start-ups will face once they start growing. There is a reason why all the large tech companies have their own data centers and power supply agreements: it’s the only way they can secure their future energy needs. Start-ups simply don’t have the resources to do that and so they will eventually hit a ceiling.

Another reason is that AI’s capabilities have been growing exponentially. That means that what a specialised AI company has built over a period of say a year, can all of a sudden be part of a new LLM update and so that company suddenly becomes obsolete. Each time OpenAI announces a new version of ChatGPT a number or AI companies are immediately put out of business, because ChatGPT can suddenly do what they have been building. I am not saying that no AI start-ups will be successful, but I believe that investing in selected public companies may be the easiest and most liquid way to make outsized returns over the coming years.

Ultra-cap companies

One of my conclusions is that AI will fairly soon lead to something that I call ultra-cap companies. My definition of an ultra-cap company is a business with a market cap of $10 trillion or more. Currently the largest company in the world is Microsoft with a market cap of $3.4 trillion, meaning it would have to grow by 300% to become an ultra-cap. Ultra-caps will become so big because of what I would call dehumanisation: taking away human jobs, with the monetary value of these jobs ending up as revenue for these future ultra-caps.

Emerging ultra-caps will set themselves apart by their ability to dominate new sectors. You already see that domination with companies like Nvidia, Amazon, Apple and Tesla. I expect that dehumanisation will for a large part happen by replacing human labour with humanoid robots. These humanoids will transform how we make things and perform tasks, and will create a massive new industry. I am now convinced that the robot industry that is starting to take shape will become the largest industry in the world.

My favourite potential ultra-cap: Tesla

My favourite AI company is Tesla, partly because I think they could end up dominating the humanoid robot industry, making $TSLA potentially the biggest company in the world (they are currently about 5 times smaller than Microsoft). Tesla could also outperform Bitcoin over the next couple of years. Maybe Bitcoin will do better than Tesla during the next 12-18 months, but after that Tesla will shine. I started investing in Tesla about 2 weeks ago (I posted it on Twitter) and the stock has already gone up over 25% since then. I have to admit that that timing was lucky, but I do expect the stock to go up a lot more soon.

The second part of this post will go into much more detail about why I think Tesla is a potential ultra-cap and why I believe most analysts don’t see it yet. I plan to write part 2 later this week.

Marc van der Chijs

Published

July 7, 2024

Marc van der Chijs in Uncategorized | July 11, 2024

Investing in AI: the Incredible Tesla Opportunity (part 2)

When you ask people what kind of company Tesla is, almost everyone will say it’s an Electric Vehicle company. The same is the case for Wall Street, most investors see and value Tesla as an EV business. I think they are wrong though. Right now most of Tesla’s revenues still come from the sale of EVs, but that is changing fast and within a few years selling EVs may just be a side business. In reality Tesla is an AI company disguised as an EV company.

The company is in the early stages of a complete transformation. As Elon put it a few weeks ago, they are not just writing a new chapter for Tesla but a completely new book. Because of that I believe the company is extremely undervalued and will be one of the best long term investments you can make right now. Once I realised how big of an opportunity there was I started investing in Tesla and I plan to keep adding to that investment.

When I try to put a value on Tesla, I do that based on its upcoming Robotaxis, on the Optimus humanoid robot, and on its energy business. The sale of EVs is not relevant long term in my opinion, so I won’t even take that into account when calculating the potential future value of the company in this blog post.

Tesla Energy

The energy business will be important for Tesla and it could double or triple Tesla’s valuation over the next 3 years. Tesla produces Powerwalls (batteries for homes, sufficient to power a small home for one day) and Megapacks (large battery packs for industrial solutions). Because the demand for energy is growing extremely fast due to Generative AI, Tesla is doing very well in this sector. In Q2 they produced double the amount of battery storage from Q1 and they will keep on ramping this up in their Lathrop factory, with a new factory in Shanghai opening before the end of the year. I expect margins for the energy business to be potentially a lot higher than analysts expect, therefore I believe that the Q2 results (due on July 23) for Tesla Energy will turn out to be much better than expected, which might lead to another surge in the stock price. Because Wall Street only looks at the next 12-18 months and doesn’t really see the opportunity in Tesla’s long term plans yet, over the next 2 years Tesla Energy will be very important for the Tesla stock price, possibly even more important than the current EV production and sales. But in the long run most of the market cap will come from Robotaxi and Optimus. Therefore I will only focus on these 2 products in the rest of this post. I will explain what they are and what their potential is and what will likely happen to Tesla’s stock price.

Robotaxi

I am convinced that the automotive world will change completely before the end of this decade. I think we will see a major shift from people owning their own cars to people using Robotaxis to get around. This will start in big cities where it’s hard to get around and where parking is expensive, but will quickly happen in smaller cities and more rural areas as well.

A Robotaxi is a fully autonomous electric vehicle that works likes an Uber, but without a driver. You will use an app to get one and there will be no interaction with any human beings etiher before or during the trip. The major difference with Uber or a taxi is that it will likely be 80%-90% cheaper. Nobody knows what the price per mile will be, it will likely depend on the location and on future competition. As an example, geo-fenced robotaxis in China currently charge less than $0.10 per kilometer. I don’t expect prices to be that low in the US, but over time it may happen.

Many people don’t believe Robotaxis will be possible anytime soon, likely because they have not been following how quickly Fully Self Driving (FSD) has developed over the past years. Tesla self-driving systems have gone from an autopilot where a human being had to be at the steering wheel at all times, to an AI-based FSD where the car does everything for you and human intervention is not needed anymore. No other car companies come even close to what Tesla has built. Where regular drivers have an accident rate of about once every 200,000 miles, Tesla’s old FSD only gets into an accident once every 3.2 million miles. That’s an improvement of 16 times and it’s not even the latest FSD yet. Tesla got here by collecting all driving data for many years, but it also went from a rule-based system (“if A happens then you do B”) to a neural network that ’thinks’ like a human driver would think. That means you can drive anywhere, even in places where a Tesla has never been before. I would compare it to how Large Language Models like ChatGPT have changed the way we work and create content, that is the leap that Tesla has made in this field. You have to see it to believe it. Watch some YouTube videos if you are not convinced or even better, try it out by doing a test drive in a Tesla with FSD 12.4.

Having the best FSD is not sufficient to start a Robotaxi company though. You will need a huge network of cars to get started, the same problem that Uber faced when it launched. My assumption is that Elon will use his existing fleet of Tesla cars that have FSD installed for this. It basically means that anybody who owns a Tesla can use it as a Robotaxi and make additional money with it (depending on which assumptions you use a Tesla owner could potentially make $50,000 of profit per year, after Tesla gets a big cut). This will be a game changer, because cars that are used maybe 5% of the time could suddenly be used 50% or more. Suddenly Tesla vehicles will go up in price instead of depreciating over time. Uber could shut down right away, because no company with physical driver can compete against Tesla’s prices.

The next step will likely be a dedicated Robotaxi that Tesla will build. Nobody knows yet what it will look like, but it will probably be revealed later this year. Originally a Robotaxi presentation was planned for August 8, but it now seems that may not happen until October. My assumption is that it will be a 4 seater without a steering wheel, but that there may be other versions as well (a larger van or maybe even a future sleeping version). I believe that Tesla may not sell these vehicles to the public, but keeps them for its own fleet. In that way they can get 100% of the revenues that these vehicles make.

The estimation is that by 2030 the global market for Robotaxis will be in the $8-10 trillion range. At this point Tesla has no real competion. Nobody else has FSD as advanced as Tesla’s and even existing players like Waymo (owned by Google) or Cruise (owned by GM) still have regular remote human intervention, even though the cars have no drivers on board. Waymo and Cruise are no competition for Tesla because they are geo-fenced, meaning they only operate well within a predefined area. Next to that no other competitor will likely be able to scale as fast as Tesla can. Because of that Tesla has a good chance to dominate this industry.

But let’s be conservative and assume that China’s car companies can scale as well and will be able to get to a similar vision-based neural network type of FSD. In that case Tesla will still have at least 10-20% global market share, meaning revenues of $1-2 trillion per year just for robotaxi. Given Tesla’s current P/S ratio this would mean a market cap of $10-20 trillion for the robotaxi businesss. The current market cap is only about $800 billion, so there will be a HUGE opportunity here.

Optimus

The Robotaxi business will be huge, but the biggest opportunity for Tesla will be its humanoid robot Optimus. I believe that we are seeing a new industry forming that will become the largest in the world – humanoid robots will transform how we make things and create a massive new industry.

This week Elon Musk announced on X that Tesla will finish the design of its Optimus robot this year, so Optimus is something that will probably happen sooner rather than later. What is special about the Optimus is that it can basically learn to do anything that a human can do. So it’s not a specialised robot that can do just one thing, but you can teach it anything. You want a robot to clean your house or do the dishes? Optimus will be there for you. Don’t like to hang up the laundry? Optimus is ready to help. Do your kids need a tutor for their homework? Optimus can do that as well. Almost anything that we as humans can do Optimus will be able to to, and likely faster, better and longer than we can do it.

But not just household tasks, it can do any physical labour job that humans do as well. At a much lower cost than humans and for much longer periods of time. Factory workers might work 8 hours a day, Optimus can work 22 hours a day before it needs to recharge itself. Optimus won’t get bored if it needs to do the same job over and over again. And if a job is dangerous Optimus has no problem doing it. Security guards will soon be replaced by robots and I expect that wars will soon not be fought by human soldiers anymore. Firefighters don’t need to risk their lives, Optimus will do their work for them.

Optimus will completely change the way we live our lives. Almost any job can eventually be done by Optimus for a fraction of the cost of human beings, which will lead to huge deflation. That means that over time almost everything could become almost free. It will take some time to get there and I expect there to be a lot of chaos during that time, but we will eventually get to the other, much brighter, side. I don’t want to go into that in this blog post, but the dark side of mass unemployment and chaos is something we have to keep in mind when discussing robots.

There are already a number of humanoid robot producers, with some humanoids already being sold to companies and doing real work. However, even though Tesla is not the first to market, I expect the company to dominate the sector, like they have done with electric vehicles. They have everything lined up for success: they have the batteries (Tesla Energy can produce them) and they know how to scale up production (something that many robot makers will struggle with). They have the AI models available for these robots and they have the data centers that are needed for the model pre-training and for the inference.

Just Optimus itself could catapult Tesla to the most valuable company in the world and make Elon the world’s first multi-trillionaire. If we would have 1 billion robots and these robots would earn a profit of $10,000 per year, and we would assume that Tesla would have 10% of this market, that would mean $1 trillion profit per year for Tesla annually. At a P/E ration of 25 the market cap of Tesla just because of Optimus would be $25 trillion. Likely there will be a lot more than 1 billion robots though, I actually expect that we will have more robots than human beings in a few years time. And possibly Tesla will have a market share of more than 10% of the market. It’s all speculation right now, but the point is that if they pull this off the stock price of Tesla will go up exponentially over the next couple of years. Based on the current valuation the stock price would go up at least 30 times, and that seems still very conservative to me.

What’s next for Tesla?

If you follow robotics and AI closely like I have been doing, you might start to understand that Tesla could become the most valuable and most important company in the world. Elon has all the ingredients to pull this off, but the world doesn’t see it yet. That’s the real reason I am investing in Tesla. To me it feels similar to when I first had my Eureka moment with Bitcoin (11 years ago, when it was still below $100). Yes, there are many hurdles and many risks, but Elon has shown time and time again that he can pull things off that nobody else has been able to pull off. If he manages this it will make him incredibly rich, but also the many people that believe in him and that own Tesla shares. Wall Street doesn’t see it yet, even Cathie Woods (ARK Invest) has not put a valuation on Optimus yet. But once Wall Street will understand what’s going on the sky is the limit for Tesla.

This is part 2 of this blog post, part 1 is here. If you are interested to follow Tesla more closely you could follow this Twitter list I put together. The list has been super valuable for me and it’s how I get most of my Tesla news. I also listen to a number of podcasts and YouTube channels, one of my favourites is Herbert Ong. If you want to go deeper into the Robotaxi check out this report by ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood. The best humanoid robot expert on Twitter is Cern Basher. His calculations are a hidden gem, this tweet has links to all his previous bot research.

As always, my posts reflect my personal opinions, are not related to any of the companies I am involved with, and are not meant as financial advice. Do your own research before you invest.

Marc van der Chijs

Published

July 11, 2024