New York, June 5, 2026, 13:09 (EDT)
- Tesla shares dropped roughly 5% by midday Friday, despite J.P. Morgan raising its rating and more than tripling the price target.
- U.S. tech stocks slid after stronger jobs numbers lifted bond yields, prompting the move.
- Investors are still sizing up Tesla’s robotaxi push as they watch for safety, scale, and regulatory risks.
Tesla shares were off 5% at $397.42 by midday Friday, tracking losses in the tech sector. This comes after J.P. Morgan dropped its bearish view on the EV maker and upped its target on the stock to $475. Earlier in the day, Tesla reached $424.18.
Mixed reaction to Tesla says a lot about where the trade is now. Wall Street isn’t just looking at car sales and margin anymore. Investors are trying to figure out how to price future bets on robotaxis, robotics and AI, while rate worries still weigh on long-duration growth stocks.
J.P. Morgan raised Tesla to “neutral” from “underweight,” pointing to Tesla’s valuation getting pushed more by autonomous driving and robotics and less by short-term profits. Analysts led by Rajat Gupta said Tesla’s in-house integration of hardware and software was “still somewhat under-appreciated and misunderstood.” The team bumped the price target up to $475 from $145. Reuters
A target price is what analysts think a stock might trade at over a certain time, not a guarantee. J.P. Morgan said Tesla’s earnings per share could jump to about $7.50 by 2030, up from around $1.95 in 2026. Revenue could more than double to roughly $203 billion.
Stocks fell. U.S. indexes slipped after nonfarm payrolls came in at 172,000 for May, topping the Reuters poll forecast for 85,000. “People are pricing in 100% probability of a Fed hike later this year,” said Charlie Ripley, senior investment strategist at Allianz Investment Management. He said the rate move was a reason for investors to “take chips off the table.” Reuters
Tesla has its own driver. On Wednesday the company said it’s deploying unsupervised robotaxis around the Austin Metro. Tesla’s been running a service there for close to a year. Reuters said Austin officials count about 50 Tesla vehicles in the city fleet, while Alphabet’s Waymo has more than 250 running in the area.
Peer gap is at the heart of the argument. Waymo is sticking with mapped zones and careful rollouts for driverless service. Tesla, on the other hand, wants to push its Full Self-Driving software further, aiming for a network that covers more ground. The target isn’t a new car. Both are chasing a ride-hailing platform with labor cut out if the tech holds up.
Competition is building. Uber is putting almost $500 million into self-driving firm Nuro, Reuters said this week, as rivals like Tesla, Waymo, Zoox from Amazon, and others ramp up robotaxi work. Tesla isn’t alone in this market.
Tesla isn’t out of the old car business. In April, the company reported over 358,000 vehicle deliveries for the first quarter and 8.8 gigawatt hours of energy storage deployed. Tesla still leans on those numbers to bankroll its AI and robotics ambitions.
The risk remains for Tesla. In its latest quarterly filing, the company said regulators like the U.S. auto safety agency, the SEC, and the Justice Department keep asking for details about things such as vehicle features, incidents, Autopilot, Full Self-Driving Capability and Robotaxi. Tesla warned that any enforcement action could have a material adverse impact on the company.
Tesla’s Friday session handed out wins to both camps. Bulls saw a big broker call that puts Tesla closer to the AI and robotics camp. Sellers got a drop in the shares, a strong macro print, and another sign that talk about driverless isn’t the same as making it work.
