Investor's Corner
What happened to Jim Cramer’s love affair with Tesla and Elon Musk?
Jim Cramer’s love affair with Tesla and Elon Musk appears to be over, based on recent comments the long-time Mad Money host has made in the past few months. Cramer flipped from bear to bull on Tesla stock several years ago following a drive in his daughter’s Tesla, essentially becoming one of the company’s most outspoken supporters. However, Cramer has moved on from his bullish Tesla outlook.
Recently, Cramer’s overwhelming support for Tesla started to crumble after he stated that the Cybertruck would be Musk’s “first disaster.” Instead, Cramer told car buyers to look at the all-electric F-150 Lightning from Ford, the automaker’s battery-powered version of the United States’ best-selling pickup truck. The F-150 Lightning is set to begin deliveries next Spring.
While purchasing a vehicle based on aesthetics is purely up to the consumer, there is no evidence to suggest that the Cybertruck will be a disaster at all, especially in terms of interest. In fact, the Cybertruck has already accumulated over 1.2 million pre-orders. Even if 50% of those orders are unfulfilled based on pure speculation, that would still make the Cybertruck one of the most popular vehicles in the country. The most popular vehicle in the United States is the Ford F-Series, which sold 787,372 units in 2020, according to GoodCarBadCar.
Earlier today, Cramer made another bold statement regarding who he would rather put his trust in between Musk and Ford CEO Jim Farley. His choice would certainly not appease Tesla fans by any measure, as Cramer stated he would much rather have Farley than Musk.
Jim Farley is undoubtedly a credible CEO, with a proven record of success thus far. He has supported Ford’s transition to electrification, and the company’s stock price has soared since he assumed the role of CEO in October 2020. While Farley has been a supporter and crutch for Ford’s transition away from combustion engines, he is not as innovative or revolutionary as Musk, and there isn’t much of a comparison based on what the two men have done in their careers as CEOs.
In a matter of months, Cramer has gone from perhaps the biggest Elon fan and supporter to relatively no trust or enthusiasm regarding Tesla or its products. One can only ask: What’s the reason for this?
The flip on Cramer’s view was drastic and uncharacteristic of someone who has supported Tesla and been a very vocal bull for several years. Here are some of the things that Cramer has said about Tesla as recently as May 2021:
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May 2021: Elon Musk states Tesla will halt Bitcoin transactions due to environmental concerns
“I don’t know why the hell he said it. I don’t know whether there was another objection besides the environmental, because the environmental [reason] doesn’t hold water. It’s been this way the whole time. But he chose to do this, and I don’t get it. But, he does a lot of things that I can’t fathom that turn out to be brilliant.”
Tesla’s Bitcoin reversal confuses Jim Cramer, but he’s not giving up on Elon Musk
January 2021: Musk’s contribution to Tesla’s valuation
“If you don’t have any, you can still buy some. Don’t buy a lot, but you can certainly still buy some. The roadmap is clear, Elon, every time he talks, it’s going to be good, and I just think we all have to accept the fact that President Biden will do anything to make the EV to be the central form of transport.”
“Every time Elon opens a new market, like he is about to do with his factory in Berlin, the stock will go up again. It’s really a question of whether you believe in iterations.”
Tesla still a ‘Buy’ to Jim Cramer: ‘Everytime [Elon] talks, it’s going to be good’
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September 2020: Battery Day critics just didn’t get it
“They’re [critics] just bummed that the things they hyped didn’t happen.”
“Tesla rolls out a plan to create an electric car for the masses and greeted with a yawn because Musk didn’t roll out a magic battery…That’s what happens when you let expectations get out of control.”
Tesla (TSLA) shares snatched up by ARK after Battery Day: “It’s going to be hard to catch up”
While many critics of Cramer’s simply claim he has changed his $TSLA position, or that he is supporting ICE-based automakers, there is no evidence of this yet. However, Cramer’s sudden flip on Tesla is interesting, and only he knows why he has chosen to openly ditch the efforts of the electric car company that is undoubtedly leading the charge.
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In a new note to investors on Tuesday, Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Percoco said that Tesla has one big financial question to answer for investors regarding its Robotaxi rollout, Full Self-Driving software, and Optimus.
Percoco said in the note that, for the most part, investors are still very positive about the direction the company is headed. However, there are some things the firm would like to see, and they have to do with financials.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla bulls are more than convinced that the company’s Full Self-Driving software is proof it can develop physical AI. Financially, however, there are still some questions, especially on elevated spending, which CEO Elon Musk said would occur as the company works to roll out Robotaxi faster and continue developing its Optimus robot.
The latter two are where Tesla will have to prove progress to investors, as Percoco writes that both projects “will require clearer evidence that Robotaxi is scaling and more tangible Optimus proof points to support the ROI on elevated capex.”
Percoco said the second quarter earnings call did not change his long-term thesis of where Tesla is positioned in the AI race, which is out in front. However, there are concerns that weaker gross margins and higher R&D spend will stress financials, and that has “sharpened our (and investors’) focus on measurable progress across Robotaxi and Optimus.”
Additionally, Robotaxi still needs to be proven with more operation in existing cities while maintaining safety but improving how many rides it gives in any given time, he said. For Optimus, Percoco wrote that he is “still looking for evidence beyond commentary around SOP.”
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Morgan Stanley put Percoco in charge of covering Tesla after long-time analyst Adam Jonas transitioned to the automotive side.
Currently, Morgan Stanley has a $415 price target on Tesla and a ‘Hold’ rating on the stock. It is trading at around $330 at the time of publication, which was 2:30 P.M. on the East Coast.
SpaceX’s massive investment in AI will make it a big winner, Argus Research said after the company’s successful earnings call last week.
The firm also upgraded shares to a Buy from Hold and set a $160 price target.
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) is currently recovering from its heavy AI infrastructure investments, as it spent nearly $16 billion in Q2 alone. The company did this primarily by monetizing high-demand GPU compute capacity at a much faster pace than traditional data center economics would suggest.
Company CFO Bret Johnsen said that SpaceX would be able to pay back anything on new deployments within a year.
There are plenty of ways the company can do this:
Leasing excess compute capacity through contracts
SpaceX has already built Colossus and Colossus II, largely for its own model training. However, much of that capacity is already rented out to third parties. It already has major deals with Anthropic, Google, and Reflection AI. These partnerships are adding billions per month to SpaceX’s spreadsheet.
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High utilization driven by industry-wide scarcity
The demand for advanced AI training and inference capacity continues to exceed what is available for use. SpaceX can fill new racks quickly after they come online, so the capital deployed converts into revenue with minimal idle time.
Additionally, management and outside observers have described the new compute capital as behaving more like a cost-of-goods-sold than traditional multi-year capex, especially because of this rapid monetization pattern.
Capacity has already scaled from ~0.4 GW a year to 1.4 GW annually by the end of Q2. There are targets of more than 2 GW by year-end.
High incremental margins on the rental business once capacity is online
GPU cloud providers often operate at strong gross margins. SpaceX can monetize capacity that was already partially built or can be added efficiently. This means that incremental EBITDA margins on the rental revenue are usually high. This accelerates cash recovery relative to the gross capital outlay.
Parallel monetization of its own AI software and applications
Beyond pure infrastructure rental, SpaceX also generates revenue from Grok through subscriptions and usage, from X through ads, data, and other related services, enterprise APIs, and the planned integration of the Cursor coding tools acquisition.
These application layers ride on the same compute infrastructure and provide additional high-margin streams that could offset build-out costs. AI-segment revenue overall rose sharply to about $2.6 billion in Q2, according to Motley Fool. This was driven primarily by the infrastructure contracts, but the software side is also partially responsible.
Efficient, large-scale deployment and vertical integration advantages
SpaceX has emphasized the rapid construction of power and cooling infrastructure and favorable cost-per-megawatt economics relative to industry benchmarks in some disclosures.
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Combined with its ability to scale capacity aggressively and the fact that many contracts start generating revenue within months of capacity coming online, the effective payback compresses dramatically compared with more conventional multi-year data-center projects.
SpaceX’s dominant near-term recovery path will turn the AI clusters into a hyperscale-style compute rental business for other leading AI companies while still using a portion for internal models.
Elon Musk
Another Tesla SpaceX merger prediction by ARK Invest has Elon Musk talking
Elon Musk again denies a Tesla China split as new SpaceX merger speculation resurfaces quickly.
Elon Musk restated that Tesla has no plans to separate its China business from the rest of the company, responding to a new round of merger speculation from ARK Invest.
On the firm’s “Brainstorm” podcast, Cathie Wood’s team, including chief futurist Brett Winton and research director Nick Grous, argued a Tesla and SpaceX combination remains likely, with an announcement possible before the end of the year even if the deal itself would not close that quickly. Winton called Tesla’s Shanghai operations a “small ish wrinkle” for a merger rather than a real obstacle, since SpaceX’s national security work with the U.S. government sits uneasily next to Tesla’s manufacturing base in China.
Musk pushed back on the framing directly. “China is awesome. I strongly encourage people to visit,” he wrote on X. He also repeated language he first used in late July, when the Wall Street Journal reported that Tesla executives had been told to prepare for a possible spinoff, sale, or closure of the China business ahead of a SpaceX tie up. Musk called that report “absurdly fake news” at the time, adding that a separation had “never even come up in a discussion ever,” a line he echoed again this week.
The repeated denial has not settled the underlying question, because Shanghai’s role in Tesla’s business is exactly what makes a merger complicated. Gigafactory Shanghai still ships more than half of Tesla’s global deliveries and functions as the company’s main export hub for Europe and Asia. Teslarati previously reported on Musk’s initial denial, and the merger conversation itself has been building since SpaceX’s IPO gave it public shares to use as acquisition currency.
Wedbush’s Dan Ives has pegged the odds of a Tesla SpaceX merger at 80 to 90 percent by early 2027, and ARK’s prediction of a year end announcement adds another data point to that timeline, even as Musk keeps rejecting the specific mechanics reporters have described. Neither position rules out the other. Musk can deny a China spinoff was ever discussed while analysts still expect some form of combination to move forward, since ARK and Ives are both describing convergence at the corporate level, not necessarily the internal restructuring the Journal described in July.
For now, Tesla’s China business remains intact, and Musk’s comments this week make clear he has no interest in publicly walking that position back, no matter how often the merger question resurfaces.
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Tesla has one big financial question to answer for investors: Morgan Stanley
SpaceX AI investment gamble will make it a big winner, firm says
