Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[Cosmacelf]

Thanks for setting me straight on Nvidia. Great answer.

On Optimus, I will still be watching out for that viral video. The market is forward looking - only needs clear proof of humanoid robot concept and it gets priced in. Actual profits can come later.

Ah, yes, it could cause a stock price pop. Maybe.

 

[wipster]

Except Ford Model e is their electric vehicle division.
https://www.ford.com/ford-blue-ford-model-e/

Maybe Ford gets the lower case and Tesla gets the upper case?

 

[Skryll]

They make more than chips. They make the driver software that runs on those chips, which it tightly tied into their low level AI programming language, CUDA, which they also own. [...]

CUDA is what now? Last time I checked, years ago, it was a GPU vector math lib. CUDA Toolkit - Free Tools and Training looks like it still is. Supports c/c++/Fortran/Python

 

[GhostSkater]

Does a GA line use much (electric) energy? I’d have thought not. Wondering if the timing is to coincide with commissioning of the new switch yard, the megapacks, the solar rooftop build out.
But then, more output means more castings. If the furnaces are electric… it all ties in.

Yep, I think the permanent substation being done is a significant milestone

Anyone happens to know if the furnaces are electric or gas? In Berlin I know is natural gas, and I remember Joe Tegtmeyer talking many times about gas lines at Texas, but there is way more stuff that could also use it

 

[heltok]

Tesla’s Dojo is the only system I’ve seen which comes close. But Tesla hasn’t written all the software stack pieces needed to sell Dojo as a standalone system. It would take Tesla a year to do that if they wanted to, and then many years to muscle NVidia in the marketplace. Not sure Tesla even wants to do that. I suspect Tesla will just use Dojo and other AI systems in house for FSD and Teslabot, and then years down the road, make it available to others if they have a technological lead, which isn’t assured since NVidia isn’t standing still.

Two ex Tesla leads are the competition to Dojo and nVidia.

We have Jim Killer doing the hardware:

And Chris Lattner doing the Software:

Give it a few more years and the space should be very interesting. Google are not standing still and are investing pretty heavily in TPU and GCP. Amazon have been doing their own chips for AWS also and Pytorch was developed by Meta(who probably didn't enjoy WWDC very much). And China are not super happy about US doing chip warfare on them, history will tell if that was a good decision or not. Kai Fu Lee had an interesting book on the topic:

 

[larmor]

Elon can say he is willing to license FSD, but in practice (IMHO) it will never happen. While the value of the car will go to zero and all the value will be in FSD, you still need the tight hardware/sensor integration. So, what will we have, Tesla making parts and molecules and shipping them to Ford and others to assemble and rebrand? That would only make them more expensive than Teslas for the same (at best) self-driving experience. The only case where this might work is specialty/niche vehicles that Tesla has no interest in building. But, they would be expensive and still need to be integrated by the Tesla team for FSD to work.

Everyone, carmakers as well, are watching silicon valley software companies making huge bank from their software products. The other car manufacturers also want to get the big score, and will try and do it themselves, by acquiring some part time or small potatoes startup doing FSD like stuff, and try and direct and grow it in such a way that they can score big too. They will rationalize this by saying if elon can do it anyone can, and will put the twitter example as proof (remember the analogy does not have to be accurate but enough). They will make a powerpoint presentation, and get huge VC funding, because VC looking for the next big score, and wa-la, the other manufacturers get the big score without doing anything meaningful. No one cares about safety and a safer car is going to mean less money for car manufacturers and automobile insurance companies.

 

[CaliBear1]

GM continues to lead the way in avoiding a full commitment to EVs.
CNBC - this morning.
GM to invest more than $1 billion to produce new heavy-duty pickups

Mary, you led!

 

[CaliBear1]

Loan is approved and I sold a little bit of TSLA for the home purchase today. I'M GETTING A NEW HOUSE!!!

Congratulations! You will not never regret this decision. I did the same back in 2021 after the stock skyrocketed. I was stunned by my sudden wealth. It just didn't seem real...until I purchased a villa courtesy of Elon and Team Tesla! I was going to call it "Villa Elon," but that just seemed just a wee bit over the top. So I named it "Villa Élan" and commissioned an entrance sign to celebrate it. But you all damn well know how we pronounce it. Mes excuses à mes amis français.

 

[2daMoon]

I must be missing something. I keep reading that Nvidia make chips, but google tells me that Nvidia chips are made by TSMC. So their lead is in chip design? I also read that chip design is, these days, performed by AI.

So where is Nvidia’s moat? I can’t see it. Either Tesla or Apple or any other player capable of circuit board assembly and big enough to place a fat order with TSMC can leap frog Nvidia, no? Dojo, comes to mind.

To lead in AI and stay there requires a data flywheel that nobody else has, like FSD and soon, Optimus. I feel like I must be wrong on this, otherwise the whole market is barking up the wrong tree.

Did you watch the video before replying to the post?


nVidia is a HARDWARE manufacturer. Cathy Wood makes the point that HARDWARE manufacturers of renown were each eventually dwarfed by the purveyors of the SOFTWARE that utilized their hardware.

Those who developed the applications for the bleeding edge hardware were many times more successful than the ones who originated the hardware itself.

The video wasn't about moats at all. It exemplified how companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, and it looks like Tesla will too, achieved markedly higher growth rates and profits by creating useful applications for those various processors over the years.

In Tesla's case they have also developed their own hardware when their applications exceeded the scope of what the market offered.

And yes, Tesla has designed their own chip and had a chip shop build it to their spec. Because they also have the other pieces of the AI puzzle (robotic auto fleet, Optimus, Dojo, huge database, etc.) ARK indicates they are best positioned to lead AI development and deployment in a variety of use cases with staggeringly enormous potential for investors.

 

[Buckminster]

Threads of the day:
Project Highland (Investor impact etc.) Texas line?
The Bank of Tesla? Jonas note
Project Dojo - the SaaS Product?
Who will be the new TWTR CEO? Linda has started. Overhang getting chipped away.
Tesla VR / AR Apple Vision Pro - morning after the night before. Will it blend robotaxi?

 

[Singuy]

They make more than chips. They make the driver software that runs on those chips, which it tightly tied into their low level AI programming language, CUDA, which they also own. And then their boards use a proprietary high speed network called NVLink along with proprietary switches for same. A huge amount of the AI software ecosystem is essentially tied to NVidia this way.

Nvidia is also now starting to roll out entire rack systems for AI.

They have a formidable moat. Not insurmountable, but it’ll take years for anyone to even compete with them at a serious level.

Tesla’s Dojo is the only system I’ve seen which comes close. But Tesla hasn’t written all the software stack pieces needed to sell Dojo as a standalone system. It would take Tesla a year to do that if they wanted to, and then many years to muscle NVidia in the marketplace. Not sure Tesla even wants to do that. I suspect Tesla will just use Dojo and other AI systems in house for FSD and Teslabot, and then years down the road, make it available to others if they have a technological lead, which isn’t assured since NVidia isn’t standing still.

I would say the company that comes close to what Nvidia is doing is actually AMD as their MI300 platform is a one stop shop all in one x86 training computer on one chip. It uses Rocm which is supported natively in Pytorch, however most developers would rather just use CUDA as it's the most consistent to their expectations. Dojo is very specific to one type of training with a Tesla compiler most developers wouldn't touch with a 10ft pole(they wouldn't touch AMD's great hardware with a 5 ft pole is how much of a monopoly Nvidia has on ML). So when Tesla said they are going to become AWS, my take is that they can provide you a service in which you tell Tesla what you want trained and provide the data then Tesla engineers will do the training for them.

 

[CaliBear1]

Congratulations! You will not never regret this decision. I did the same back in 2021 after the stock skyrocketed. I was stunned by my sudden wealth. It just didn't seem real...until I purchased a villa courtesy of Elon and Team Tesla! I was going to call it "Villa Elon," but that just seemed just a wee bit over the top. So I named it "Villa Élan" and commissioned an entrance sign to celebrate it. But you all damn well know how we pronounce it. Mes excuses à mes amis français.

Argghhh! Too late to edit! I accidentally unleashed the dreaded double negative! I meant "you will never regret this decision" or "not ever." Anything but "not never!"

 

[Artful Dodger]

Everyone, carmakers as well, are watching silicon valley software companies making huge bank from their software products. The other car manufacturers also want to get the big score, and will try and do it themselves, by acquiring some part time or small potatoes startup doing FSD like stuff, and try and direct and grow it in such a way that they can score big too. They will rationalize this by saying if elon can do it anyone can, and will put the twitter example as proof (remember the analogy does not have to be accurate but enough). They will make a powerpoint presentation, and get huge VC funding, because VC looking for the next big score, and wa-la, the other manufacturers get the big score without doing anything meaningful. No one cares about safety and a safer car is going to mean less money for car manufacturers and automobile insurance companies.

Headlines from last year in the Alternate Universe:

Ford takes $2.7 billion hit as it drops efforts to develop full self-driving cars | CNN Business (Oct 26, 2022)
GM’s Cruise Robotaxi business has lost $5 billion since 2018 (Jul 27, 2022)
Mobileye Stock Tanks After Earnings. Blame Tesla. (Apr 27, 2022)

 

[Artful Dodger]

Argghhh! Too late to edit! I accidentally unleashed the dreaded double negative! I meant "you will never regret this decision" or "not ever." Anything but "not never!"

I don't ever not never.

 

[aubreymcfato]

A designer of thermal systems at Tesla for the Model 3 and Semi now has an HVAC startup.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1665821779372412928

 

[Bobfitz1]

I‘m not writing off Optimus for impact this year. I start with the assumption that Tesla bot is more capable/dexterous than Atlas. To become awesome it lacks only great software.

Dev’t of this software will happen at a cracking pace, given the best team and the lack of extreme caution that FSD demands.

All it takes is one viral video of Optimus showing off skills, both learning and output, reasons why it’s worth $5k/mth to rent, and we’re off to the races.

I think you have a good intuition on possible Optimus impact (on SP) late this year or early next. I have to believe Tesla has a crack team working on innovating much smoother walking bots. Video of that better mobility on a Tesla production line (early experimental) would IMO really make the point (perhaps even to dullard WS analysts) that Optimus is real, not 5 years off and Tesla's expertise in AI, the significance of which is now understood, greatly increases likelihood of it's success and first mover status for years afterwards.

 

[KMCC]

Congratulations! You will not never regret this decision. I did the same back in 2021 after the stock skyrocketed. I was stunned by my sudden wealth. It just didn't seem real...until I purchased a villa courtesy of Elon and Team Tesla! I was going to call it "Villa Elon," but that just seemed just a wee bit over the top. So I named it "Villa Élan" and commissioned an entrance sign to celebrate it. But you all damn well know how we pronounce it. Mes excuses à mes amis français.

When Tesla went above 400 my wife was trying to get me to buy this giant estate in lake placid right on the river and I talked her out of it. Now she's looking at it again and saying as soon as the stock goes back up let's go look at this place..

Her idea was that it would be a nice legacy to give to our children and grandchildren, but I'm still sticking with the plan they inherit the stock.

 

[lascavarian]

A designer of thermal systems at Tesla for the Model 3 and Semi now has an HVAC startup.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1665821779372412928

Put down my $100. Seems to hint there might be a hot water involvement possible which I would love even if only a preheater.

Also note max pain at 210!

 

[lascavarian]

Intel seems to be selling some of its stake in mobile eye.

 

[JoRoMo]

When Tesla went above 400 my wife was trying to get me to buy this giant estate in lake placid right on the river and I talked her out of it. Now she's looking at it again and saying as soon as the stock goes back up let's go look at this place..

Her idea was that it would be a nice legacy to give to our children and grandchildren, but I'm still sticking with the plan they inherit the stock.

Unless you are approaching 100, do it at 4.000. Won’t be that long to wait, I am sure…