Tesla's (TSLA) competitive edge of deep vertical integration across hardware and software, coupled with its speed of technology development, leaves the company uniquely positioned to scale emerging artificial intelligence-driven markets, J.P. Morgan Securities said in a Friday note.
The brokerage said deploying Optimus humanoid robots in Tesla's own factories should help lower automotive manufacturing costs while validating the technology at an industrial scale. It estimates the humanoid robot market could reach about 5 million units in the US and 30 million globally by 2040.
J.P. Morgan also highlighted Tesla's robotaxi opportunity and noted that the company has recorded about 10 billion miles of driving data and has roughly 9 million vehicles on the road today.
The investment firm said expanding autonomous vehicle operations should create network effects that support both robotaxi and Full Self-Driving adoption. It projects about 35 million personally owned Tesla vehicles and 40 million Tesla robotaxis by 2040.
Tesla's energy storage business is positioned to benefit from data center construction and grid stability demand. J.P. Morgan said the company's infrastructure could also generate value through Full Self-Driving and Optimus software licensing, distributed inference, Cortex compute and supercharger usage.
J.P. Morgan upgraded the company's stock rating to neutral from underweight and adjusted the price target to $475 from $145.
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