At the Fortune’s Most Powerful Next Gen conference last week, ARK Invest’s CEO Cathie Wood shared her insight into the future of Tesla and autonomous vehicles.
Wood said she sees the transformative potential of Tesla in the realm of autonomous vehicles, stating, “We think that Tesla is the biggest AI play out there, the biggest beneficiary.”
She explained that the company is focusing on the convergence of three key areas: robotics, energy storage and artificial intelligence. “So autonomous taxi platforms are what we’re talking about here. Autonomous vehicles are robots. They will be electric, and they will be powered by artificial intelligence,” she said.
She envisioned the growth trajectory as not just linear but exponentially compounded, stating, “Each one of these is growing exponentially, and then you have them feeding each other. So S-curves feeding S-curves … this could be explosive growth.”
Wood was optimistic about the global revenue of the autonomous taxi platform business, predicting, “We believe that globally, the autonomous taxi platform business will grow from nothing today to eight to $10 trillion in revenue in 2030 or thereabouts.”
In comparison, the U.S. economy’s size is $22 trillion, underlining the robotaxi’s potential as one of the biggest growth engines and growth trajectories in history, Wood said.
When asked if Tesla could succeed without Elon Musk, Wood expressed her confidence in the groundwork laid by the billionaire entrepreneur. “I think he has set it in motion, certainly the EV side in motion,” she said.
Wood’s insights have a significant bearing on the future of transportation and the role of companies like Tesla. The exponential growth she predicts could lead to major economic shifts, and her faith in Tesla’s position might influence investor attitudes towards the company.
She also emphasized Tesla’s competitive advantage, stating, “Tesla is in the pole position. Why? Well, first, the biggest reason is it has more data than all the other auto companies and tech companies touching transportation combined, orders of magnitude.”
Tesla has dominated the EV market as other traditional automotive companies like General Motors and Ford have entered the competition. Stellantis will be entering the EV market within 2 years that includes the Ram 1500 REV and the Dodge Charger Daytona, the first ever EV muscle car.
During Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting held last week, Musk said Tesla would play an important role in AI and AGI. In a subsequent interview with CNBC’s David Faber, Musk said his new AI company X.AI would host a launch event, suggesting it could be a rival to OpenAI.
Musk also suggested that Tesla would have a “ChatGPT moment” when full self-driving breaks through to enable autonomy.
Future Fund’s Gary Black sees Optimus, the humanoid robot Tesla is developing, as a trillion-dollar opportunity, predicting sales of 8 billion units at $5,000 to $10,000 each.
The Tesla CEO has said that he would create an AI platform that is the opposite of ChatGPT called “TruthGPT”.
“I think this might be the best path to safety in the sense that an AI that cares about understanding the universe is unlikely to annihilate humans because we are an interesting part of the universe,” Musk said during the Fox & Friends show.
Musk has called for the regulation of AI in order to keep systems in check.
Produced in association with Benzinga
