Tesla Stock May Outpace SpaceX as Musk Bets on Robots Over Rockets

Both Tesla and SpaceX represent extreme valuation cases that defy conventional financial analysis. Tesla trades at roughly 300.0 times trailing price-to-earnings, a multiple that assumes massive future earnings from robotics and AI—businesses that do not yet generate meaningful revenue. SpaceX, valued at $1.5 trillion, faces an even greater challenge: investors must somehow factor in speculative ventures like asteroid mining and lunar manufacturing into its financial picture. The analyst's argument rests on a reframing of Tesla's identity: rather than viewing the company as burning cash on unprofitable cars and robotaxi experiments, he positions it as building foundational infrastructure (compute, hardware, intelligence) needed to launch a robotics business in the coming years. This shift in perspective helps explain why Musk would justify such aggressive spending despite near-term losses. For SpaceX, the thesis is similar but more distant—projects like Starlink offer nearer-term cash generation, but the truly transformative bets (asteroid mining, lunar manufacturing) require robotics breakthroughs, which Tesla must achieve first. The analyst's conclusion that Tesla may "catch that bid higher ahead of SpaceX" reflects a timing argument: Tesla's Optimus milestone, if reached, unlocks value sooner and also de-risks SpaceX's more ambitious plans by proving robotics work at scale.