Investor's Corner
Tesla bear gets shot down after insisting that ‘competition’ is coming for TSLA
A Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) bear’s arguments about the impending arrival of competitors in the electric car market was boldly shut down in a recent segment on CNBC’s Squawk Box. During the exchange, veteran journalist Phil LeBeau aired what could only be described as a longtime sentiment from Tesla investors: After all those predictions, where are Tesla’s supposed competitors?
The Squawk Box segment featured Tasha Keeney of Ark Invest and Craig Irwin of Roth Capital Partners, each one representing the bull and bear side for TSLA stock. While Keeney reiterated ARK’s optimistic stance on Tesla and its potential in the full self-driving market, Irwin instead focused on what he alleged was the electric car maker’s disadvantage in battery technology. The Tesla bear insisted that Tesla is currently paying $240/kWh for its cells from Japan while Porsche and Volkswagen are paying $250/kWh. This was a point that Phil LeBeau directly addressed, citing the findings of Sam Jaffe from Cairn Energy Research, who estimated that Tesla has reached costs of around $116 per kWh for its battery cells.
The Roth Capital Partners analyst added that he is taking a bearish stance against Tesla now due to the incoming wave of competitors that are coming to the market. Irwin specifically pointed to the Porsche Taycan as one of these vehicles.
“It’s starting this year. That’s why I chose to initiate with a bearish perspective. Porsche is going to come on with the Taycan, you’ve got Kia, you’ve got the I-PACE… You got to look at the history, so the Cayenne, the first thing they said 10, then they said 20, then it became 40. So it ramped very very quickly. They set expectations low, make a lot of money on the front end, and ramp. Porsche, their business is making money. They’re not about, you know, fluffing numbers. So if they think they can sell 30,000 cars into the market over the next 18 months and make a great profit on it, they’ll do it. But they’re not gonna flood the market to a point you know, it compresses margins,” Irwin claimed.
Irwin’s thesis was immediately met by a rebuttal from LeBeau, who noted that the argument for Tesla competitors has been going on for a long time. The CNBC journalist argued that it is better for other carmakers to start showing (not just telling) how they can actually compete with Tesla by releasing a real, compelling electric vehicle.
“I think it poses a problem for Tesla from the standpoint of ‘Let’s finally see this vehicle.’ I honestly believe based on Tesla owners that I’ve talked with as well as those who track the company, we’re tired of hearing ‘the competitors are coming, the competitors are coming.’ Bring it out. Bring it out, and if Porsche’s Taycan is as impressive as the initial indications are, then it will be a threat to Tesla, but until then, this is a little bit like The Boy (Who) Cried Wolf. We hear it all the time. ‘There’s a wave of vehicles coming.’ Well, that wave of vehicles isn’t here yet. It was supposed to be here by 2019. It’s not here yet. When does it get here? If I’m a Tesla investor, I’m not too worried about this argument until we start to see these vehicles,” LeBeau retorted.
Phil LeBeau was actually being quite generous when he noted that the Porsche Taycan will be a threat to Tesla. Porsche is a niche carmaker, and it is a company that prioritizes the exclusivity of its vehicles. At most, the Taycan will eat into the Model S’ sales since they compete in the same segment. The German-made all-electric car from Porsche will not compete in the same mass-market segment as the Model 3, or the Model Y for that matter.
One thing that Tesla skeptics always seem to forget is that electric vehicles from other carmakers will not kill or overwhelm Tesla. Instead, they are vehicles that contribute to the mission of the electric car maker, which is to encourage the world to shift away from the internal combustion engine. Thus, every Taycan and I-PACE that is sold is not a lost sale for Tesla; it is a lost sale for gas and diesel-powered vehicles.
Watch the recent TSLA bull vs. bear debate in CNBC’s Squawk Box in the video below.
Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.
Tesla has its answer to grow its automotive sales over the next few years, TD Cowen analyst Itay Michaeli says, but it just has to bring it to the U.S.
On Thursday, Michaeli reiterated his $490 price target and the ‘Buy’ rating he already held on Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA). However, its automotive division has struggled to show sequential growth over the past few years, mostly due to its focus on AI and Full Self-Driving. Tesla already axed two of its lower-volume vehicles with the Model S and Model X earlier this year.
However, Tesla does not need to engineer an entire new vehicle to trigger an upward tick in sales; it just has to bring it from China to the U.S., Michaeli said.
He is talking about the Model Y L, a slightly larger version of the all-electric crossover that is already available in China. U.S. customers have been pleading with CEO Elon Musk to bring it to the country since its launch in Asia last year, but he’s not convinced of it because of the advent of self-driving and its importance in this particular market.
The problem is that Tesla owners have been requesting something larger that could fit a typical American family. The Model Y L is slightly larger than the standard Model Y, but some are concerned that it could still be too small to fit what most people might need.
Instead, they have asked for a full-size SUV from Tesla.
Tesla gives big hint that it will build Cyber SUV, smaller Cybertruck
Nevertheless, the Model Y L still presents a great opportunity for Tesla in the U.S., and Michaeli says that there is an additional sales opportunity of about 100,000 units, with demand potential falling somewhere between 60,000 and 135,000 units.
TD Cowen’s note to investors also analyzed that Tesla’s growth could come from a stock perspective as well, positively impacting the stock price, as it has been widely reliant on vehicle sales, even though Tesla has truly phased itself away from that being an important metric.
Tesla stands to gain greatly from the introduction of the Model Y L in the U.S., but only if Elon Musk sees it as a viable fit for the market. Families may need to see Tesla bring something larger to the U.S., or they might be forced to buy from another automaker that offers something that fits is needs for more interior space to haul around the kids.
Elon Musk
SpaceXAI just launched into your kitchen with their new app
SpaceXAI just powered its first consumer app and it predicts what you want to buy.
SpaceXAI just made its first move into consumer AI, and it involves your grocery cart. On June 3, 2026, Gopuff and SpaceXAI announced the launch of Go, a Grok-powered shopping assistant built directly into the Gopuff app that predicts what you need before you even start searching for it.
Gopuff is an instant delivery platform that operates more than 400 micro-fulfillment centers across the U.S., delivering everyday essentials, snacks, drinks, and household items in as little as 15 minutes. It is not a restaurant delivery app or a marketplace. It owns its inventory, controls its warehouses, and handles its own logistics, which means it has built one of the most detailed consumer behavior datasets in retail over its 13-year history.
Go combines SpaceXAI’s advanced reasoning, voice, and image generation models with Gopuff’s dataset of hundreds of millions of orders and real-time cultural signals from X to prepare a suggested cart the moment a customer opens the app. It learns each shopper’s habits and automatically builds a personalized cart based on time of day, location, order history, and real-time indicators. Returning customers can check out with a single tap.
Rather than searching for specific items, users can describe a situation like a game-day party or the desire for a healthy breakfast and Go will assemble a cart automatically. It can also predict when shoppers are running low on items like coffee or paper towels and have them packed and delivered in under 15 minutes. Grok voice integration lets users talk to the app in plain conversational language and check out completely hands-free.
Gopuff co-founder and co-CEO Yakir Gola said: “Today, we believe the greatest friction left in commerce is not delivery or instantaneous access to the essentials customers need. It’s the moment before: the thinking, the deciding, the remembering. We’re combining Gopuff’s demand intelligence with xAI’s frontier reasoning to create an everyday shopping experience that feels like a true extension of you.”
Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO
The timing carries context beyond the product launch. SpaceXAI was formed after SpaceX completed an all-stock merger with Elon Musk’s xAI earlier this year, folding one of the most advanced AI labs in the world into the same corporate structure as the company preparing what could be the largest IPO in history. SpaceXAI is dipping into consumer-focused AI just as it prepares for its public debut, and while Musk has openly discussed building an everything app, this launch uses Grok to power another company’s product rather than launching a standalone consumer platform. Every consumer-facing deployment of Grok ahead of the IPO roadshow adds tangible evidence that SpaceXAI is not just an infrastructure play but a direct competitor in the AI application layer where OpenAI and Google are already fighting for dominance.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s amended S-1 is sparking a major Tesla merger conversation
A single line in SpaceX’s amended S-1 just sent Tesla stock down 5% in one day.
A single line buried in SpaceX’s amended S-1 filing is doing more to move Tesla’s stock price than anything Tesla itself has announced in months. The clause, disclosed as SpaceX prepares for what could be the largest IPO in Wall Street history, states that the company “may issue a significant amount of equity in connection with future transactions.” While this may be seen as boilerplate language in S-1 filings, the historical ties between SpaceX and Tesla, and with Elon Musk reportedly discussing a possible merger with close colleagues, investors are interpreting it as something closer to a signal.
The concern among institutional investors like Gary Black, managing director of The Future Fund, pointed directly to the amended filing on X, saying it “strongly suggests more SPCX equity will be issued,” which could potentially be used to acquire Tesla. He estimated such a deal could be 28% dilutive to Tesla shareholders since SpaceX would likely command a significantly higher valuation multiple. Black added that institutional investors he knows hate the idea of a combination because they prefer pure plays over conglomerates, which he said “nearly always gravitate to the lowest common multiple.”
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
The bull case runs the math differently. Tesla influencer and retail shareholder advocate AleXandra Merz pushed back on what she called a widespread misunderstanding of how merger-of-equals deals actually work. Rather than simply splitting the difference between two market caps, a merger exchange ratio is negotiated based on relative fair market values, meaning the lower valued company typically sees its stock reprice upward toward the deal value.
Under her model, SpaceX enters at a $2.5 trillion valuation and Tesla at $1.6 trillion, producing a combined entity worth $4.1 trillion split evenly between both shareholder groups. That implies Tesla’s side of the deal would be valued at $2.05 trillion, a gain of roughly $450 billion from its current market cap. She cited Dow-DuPont and CBS-Viacom as historical examples of how markets reprice both companies toward the announced exchange ratio after a deal is unveiled.
What does a Merger of Equals mean to Elon’s compensation packages?
Well, it changes everything.
Enjoy https://t.co/uekCldyITw pic.twitter.com/kolq1C9qTu
— AleXandra Merz 🇺🇲 (@TeslaBoomerMama) June 1, 2026
The SpaceX S-1 amendments also revealed just how much financial infrastructure already binds the two companies together. As Teslarati has reported, SpaceX purchased $697 million in Tesla Megapacks, $131 million in Cybertrucks, and the two companies have shared supply chain resources, and semiconductor fabrication plans since well before any merger conversation became public. A retail poll by Tesla influencer Sawyer Merritt is finding that 36% of respondents do not plan to buy SpaceX shares at IPO and 15.3% saying their decision depends on the valuation.
Do you plan on buying @SpaceX stock at its IPO?
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) June 1, 2026
Whether the merger happens or not, the amended filing is seemingly moving markets and sharpened a debate that is no longer theoretical. SpaceX is weeks away from trading publicly, and Tesla shareholders are now watching every word of every filing for clues about what Musk plans to do next.
Tesla Roadster unveiling gets pushed again, but new event details emerge
Tesla Model 3 has a tasty Supercharging incentive, but it’s ending soon
