Tesla Worth $30 Trillion? Elon Musk Says Yes But Investors Say No

Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) currently trades with a valuation of just over $1 trillion. CEO Elon Musk is beyond optimistic, doubling down on past comments that the stock will reach a $25 trillion market capitalization, now revising the range to $20 trillion to $30 trillion.

What Happened: Musk believes that the future of Tesla's growth will come mainly from autonomous vehicles and the Optimus humanoid robot.

Those two items together could take Tesla stock "to crazy levels," Musk said while speaking virtually at the X Takeover event hosted by Tesla Owners Silicon Valley recently.

Musk said that some people believe Tesla can reach a $25 trillion market capitalization in the future.

"I think that's probably correct if we execute well on autonomous transport and Optimus," Musk said.

Musk highlighted the large opportunity for robotaxis and robots, saying that these could help Tesla reach a huge market capitalization.

"It does actually get to a $20 trillion to $30 trillion valuation."

This is not the first time Musk has placed a market cap goal of more than $20 trillion on the electric vehicle company. In June 2024, he said Optimus could help Tesla hit a $25 trillion market capitalization in the future.

Perhaps helping Tesla in the future will be robotaxi fleets across the country.

"Some of the fleet will be Tesla-owned and some will be customer-owned," Musk told the audience when asked about Cybercabs.

Musk said the robotaxi fleets will be like a combination of Uber and Airbnb with some people owning the cars to add to the fleet and some owned by Tesla directly.

The Tesla CEO said Optimus could be life-changing for a lot of people.

"Optimus could be like a 24-hour day nurse or helper to someone who's paraplegic or needs physical help."

Musk said Optimus could also be used in situations where the work is dangerous or there are a lot of repetitive tasks.

Are you buying when the CEOs of the Magnificent 7 are selling?

• Stay in the know with our Insider Trades page — see when leaders like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jensen Huang are offloading their own shares.

Why It's Important: While Tesla has attracted a large fan base and numerous investors, hearing a market capitalization of more than $20 trillion likely sounds crazy today.

For context, the 10 most valuable companies in the world today are worth a combined $23.2 trillion.

The highest Tesla has ever hit was around $1.25 trillion.

In an era where markets assign massive valuations to companies based on future potential rather than fundamentals like earnings, revenue, or free cash flow, even Tesla hasn't inspired investors to place a bet that big—yet.

To be fair, Musk has not said when he believes Tesla will hit $20 trillion to $30 trillion, just that it will.

NVIDIA is the most valuable company and the first to hit a $4 trillion market cap. It could take months or years for a company to reach $5 trillion. A recent poll of Benzinga social media followers said Nvidia was most likely to hit $5 trillion first, ahead of Microsoft, Apple or another company like Tesla.

What's perhaps most interesting about Tesla having such a high market capitalization in the future is that it's only one of several companies run by Musk and could be his least desired for future growth.

Benzinga recently polled readers to see which Musk company they would invest in, given the opportunity, among all of the ventures.

“If all of the Musk-related companies were currently public at recent valuation, which would you most want to invest in?” Benzinga asked.

The results were:

• Starlink: 27%
• SpaceX (with minority ownership of Starlink): 27%
• X and xAI: 19%
• Tesla: 16%
• Neuralink: 8%
• The Boring Company: 4%

The poll results indicate a strong interest from investors in gaining access to SpaceX and Starlink. The combination of X and xAI ranked third with 19%. Musk suggested that the company could go public again in the future at the time of his $44 billion buyout of X, which was then known as Twitter, back in 2022.

While Neuralink and The Boring Company ranked fifth and sixth, the overall results show that Tesla is far from the most popular investment option. Only 16% picked Tesla as their top Musk investment, meaning 84% of those polled picked another company.

If someone told you today that a company would grow from a $1 trillion to a $30 trillion valuation, it might sound like a once-in-a-generation buying opportunity. But so far, investors aren't fully buying into Musk's promises.

While Musk has proven investors wrong before, $30 trillion is a lofty goal, and currently, investors would rather invest in other companies, including some of the ones run by Musk.

Read Next:

• Elon Musk Biopic: Who Should Play Tesla CEO? Grok Picks These 6 Actors

Image created using artificial intelligence via Midjourney.