Ark Invest, led by Cathie Wood, bought more than 160,000 shares of Tesla (TSLA) worth roughly $50.1 million after the electric vehicle maker’s latest earnings release triggered a sell-off. The purchase reflects an unshaken conviction in Tesla’s autonomous driving future, even as the timeline for a large-scale robotaxi rollout has repeatedly slipped.
Ark has long maintained a bullish stance on Tesla, assigning a 2029 price target of $2,600 per share and modeling that 88% of enterprise value will eventually come from the robotaxi business. The post-earnings decline was simply a buying opportunity.
The market’s frustration is rooted in a string of missed deadlines. CEO Elon Musk predicted in April 2025 that “millions of Teslas” would be operating autonomously in the second half of 2026. In July 2025, he told investors that autonomous ride-hailing would probably cover half the U.S. population by the end of that year. By October 2025, the promise was robotaxis in eight to ten metro areas by year-end, and in January 2026, he suggested the fleet could double every month. None of those targets materialized.
Such misses matter. Investors build valuation models around management guidance, and Tesla’s internal capital spending plans presumably rest on similar assumptions. Each delay in the arrival of ride-share cash flow shrinks its present value.
Beginning in April 2026, management’s tone grew notably more cautious. Musk said architectural safety improvements were required before a large-scale rollout, pointing to the validation and release of the next major version of Full Self-Driving software, v15. He does not expect that to happen until late this year or early 2027, meaning a meaningful robotaxi expansion will not begin before 2027 at the earliest. On the recent earnings call, CFO Vaibhav Taneja added that challenges exist on both the software and operational fronts, while Musk stressed that achieving an ultra-high level of reliability is the only thing holding back robotaxi growth.
Yet signals from Tesla’s head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, may have reinforced Ark’s confidence. Early versions of v15 are already running in the robotaxi fleet, 40% of the seven major planned improvement tracks are working together, and unsupervised driving miles are growing at a double-digit rate, even as fleet size and city coverage remain static. These positive developments were overlooked by a market eager to price in the delayed rollout. Ark saw a wide margin of safety between the current share price around $313 and the 2029 target of $2,600.
Tesla’s most recent quarterly results were a mixed picture. Second-quarter deliveries jumped 25% year over year to over 480,000 vehicles, the fastest growth in nearly two years, and revenue rose 26% to $28.2 billion. But heavy investment in projects including humanoid robots and robotaxis compressed profits, with earnings per share slipping 3% to $0.32. Tesla has evolved beyond a pure electric vehicle play, and whether the company can make enough headway across multiple new markets over the next five years will largely determine how its business is revalued.
Risks remain substantial. The robotaxi rollout faces technical hurdles, regulatory approvals, and competition from players like Waymo. Optimus humanoid robots have yet to prove they can deliver the versatility required for commercial success. Meanwhile, Tesla’s core EV business faces intensifying global competition. The stock is a high-volatility name that could generate outsized returns or erode capital.
Ark’s latest purchase is rooted in deep conviction about Tesla’s long-term trajectory, but a broader market consensus will likely remain elusive until v15 ships and the fleet begins that critical phase of exponential growth.
