Cathie Wood Touts Tesla As The 'Biggest AI Play Out There,' Sees Robotaxi As $10 Trillion Revenue Opportunity By 2030

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. 

What Happened: 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 billonaire entrepreneur. “I think he has set it in motion, certainly the EV side in motion,” she said.

See Also: Everything You Need To Know About Tesla Stock

Why It Matters: 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 of all, the biggest reason is it has more data than all of the other auto companies and tech companies touching transportation combined, orders of magnitude.”

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.

Tesla closed Friday's session at $180.14, up 1.84%, according to Benzinga Pro data.

– With contribution from Michael Cohen

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