Dear Reader,
This is Dylan Jovine with Behind the Markets.
Happy Tuesday. Today is Tuesday, March 24th.
Who knew — but Nvidia may be Tesla's biggest threat.
And that is actually surprising to say out loud.
Jensen Huang has projected a trillion dollars in AI infrastructure demand by 2027, which are just astonishing numbers. And one of the places Nvidia is now pointing that firepower is directly at one of Tesla's most valuable assets — full self-driving technology.
Tesla has been building toward a future where their FSD platform gets licensed to other companies.
Sell it to Uber, sell it to the automakers, let everybody run on Tesla's technology. That was a big part of the bull case for the stock, and Wall Street has priced it in accordingly — the FSD business alone is valued somewhere around $1.2 trillion, or about $270 a share fully diluted.
But now Nvidia is releasing their own Drive platform — the Drive AGX Thor — and they're essentially selling the same vision to anyone who wants it. Uber is already on board, planning to launch a fleet of Drive-enabled robo taxis across 28 global markets by 2028. And Uber isn't even close to the only one. BYD, Hyundai, Nissan — they've all announced plans to use Nvidia's technology for their autonomous driving programs.
Think about what that means for Tesla. The most valuable thing you own is now being sold by a company with deeper pockets than you, at a fraction of the price. That's a nightmare for any business.
It makes sense when you think about how this played out historically. The car companies all tried to build their own FSD technology, and most of them couldn't figure it out. Tesla cracked it. Google cracked it with Waymo. Now Nvidia is stepping in and saying, we'll build the platform, we'll make it available to everybody, we'll commoditize the whole thing.
And look — car companies don't even make their own maps. I drive a Jeep Cherokee, and the built-in map doesn't hold a candle to Google Maps. The tech guys just do this better.
So Nvidia is moving to commoditize one of Tesla's crown jewels, which is actually why, if you've been watching closely, Tesla has been pivoting hard. Moving away from just selling cars with FSD baked in, moving toward robo taxis at scale, and most importantly, moving toward Optimus robots and embodied intelligence.
That's where Elon is placing his biggest bet, and it's why Tesla's board handed him a compensation package that could be worth a trillion dollars — a large chunk of it tied to his ability to scale humanoid robots.
And here's the competitive picture as it stands today. Tesla is getting attacked from two sides. From China, BYD and the others are closing the gap on basic EV manufacturing and cost. From Nvidia, the full self-driving advantage that Wall Street valued so highly is starting to look a lot less exclusive. Elon is doing what he's always done — jumping to the next frontier before his competitors can catch up. He had a five to ten year lead in EVs before everybody caught up. He'll need to do the same thing in robotics.
If he actually solves for truly capable humanoid robots — not the kind you see in Chinese marketing videos doing choreographed dances, but robots that actually work — he probably has a five to ten year lead there all by himself. That is the bet Elon is making, and that is why Tesla's next chapter looks very different from the last one.
I wouldn't bet against Elon. Doesn't mean I'd bet for Tesla at today's valuation. But I wouldn't bet against Elon.
You can read all about "Elon's Final Move" here.
Anyway, that's all I have. Have a great day. I'll see you tomorrow.
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