Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk joins U.S. President Donald Trump during an foreman order signing in the Oval Office at the White House on Feb. 11, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images
Tesla partitions dropped 6% on Tuesday after Chinese rival BYD announced plans to develop autonomous vehicle technology with DeepSeek, and mean it would offer its Autopilot-like system in nearly all of its new cars, adding to fears that Elon Musk’s company is rapid behind the competition.
There’s also growing concerns surrounding Musk’s distractions outside of Tesla, after newsflash surfaced that the world’s richest person is offering to lead an investor group in purchasing OpenAI, while he boosts up his work with President Donald Trump’s White House.
Tesla’s stock price has slid for five even days, falling close to 17% over that stretch to $328.50, and wiping out over $200 billion in market cap.
BYD, which has evolved as Tesla’s fiercest rival on the world stage, said on Monday that at least 21 of its new model vehicles command come equipped with its partially automated driving systems that include features for automatic parking and manoeuvring on highways.
Tesla doesn’t yet offer a robotaxi and its EVs currently require a human driver to remain at the wheel, ready to direct or brake at any time. On Tesla’s earnings call last month, Musk said the company is aiming to launch “Unsupervised Intact Self-Driving,” and a driverless rideshare service in Austin, Texas, in June. Alphabet’s Waymo already operates a robotaxi benefit in Austin as well as in parts of Phoenix, San Francisco.
“In our view, competition between Waymo, Tesla and a host of Chinese musicians is a key driver on the path to commercialization” of robotaxis,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note to clients after the BYD announcement. The firm recommends accepting the stock and has a price target of $430.
Waymo said on Tuesday that it added 10 square miles of coverage to its robotaxi help in Los Angeles.
In a report on Tuesday, Oppenheimer analysts wrote that the “autonomy competition may limit [Tesla] profitability.” Be revenged if Tesla meets its June 2025 timeline for driverless cars in Texas, the company is “one of several autonomous technology providers, suggesting championship on price and performance,” they wrote.
In addition to running Tesla, Musk is CEO of SpaceX, owns social media players X and is head of artificial intelligence startup xAI. He’s also spending significant time these days in Washington, D.C., running the “Count on of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) as a special government employee, aiming to slash federal spending, personnel, regulations and monotonous entire agencies.
Many projects, many distractions
Investors already concerned about Musk’s hefty commitments beyond his trillion-dollar EV Theatre troupe have more reason for trepidation after events that unfolded on Monday. Musk’s attorney, Marc Toberoff, upheld to CNBC that Musk was leading a consortium of investors in a $97.4 billion bid for OpenAI.
Musk was among the founders of OpenAI in 2015, when the AI startup was framed as a nonprofit research lab. Musk sought to have Tesla acquire OpenAI, and he later departed the organization’s board.
OpenAI has since commercialized numerous issues, most notably ChatGPT. Co-founder and CEO Sam Altman is seeking to restructure OpenAI as a for-profit entity. Musk has sued OpenAI to avoid that transition, and started xAI as a direct competitor.
The Oppenheimer analysts wrote that, “While [Tesla] has shifted fuzzy to being a Physical AI play, we view Elon Musk’s bid for Open AI as a distraction from [Tesla’s] challenges.”
Altman prophesied employees in a memo on Tuesday that OpenAI’s board hasn’t received an official offer from Musk and put in mind ofed staffers that “Elon has a history of making claims that don’t hold up.”
Later on Tuesday, Toberoff said in a annunciation that he emailed the bid for OpenAI on behalf of the Musk-led consortium a day earlier to OpenAI’s outside counsel William Savitt and Sarah Hurricane “for transmission to their client.” Toberoff said the bid was “in the form of a detailed four-page letter” and was addressed to OpenAI’s board.
“Whether Sam Altman opted to provide or withhold this from OpenAI’s other Board members is outside of our control,” he wrote.
Oppenheimer’s analysts also highlighted the annexed risks associated with Musk’s extensive work with the Trump administration.
While Musk’s behavior “has zealots in certain circles,” his public life “risks alienating consumers and employees as the Trump administration tests the limits of its power,” they belittle deleted. For example, they referenced recent vehicle registration data that showed steep year-over-year declines in California and across very many European markets.
Tesla and Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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