10 AI Stocks Investors Are Monitoring After Tariff Shock

7. Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA)

Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 99

Brad Gerstner, Altimeter Capital founder & CEO, was recently asked during a program on CNBC about his Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) position and what he thinks about the company amid rising stock declines. The fund manager said he still believes Tesla is in a position to benefit from the autonomous driving trend. However, he believes the company will have to execute and compete on pricing and convenience.

“We do know that Tesla is going to launch a really great solution, but to your point, Josh, if they don’t have speed of pickup in Austin when they launch in June, and if they don’t have the lowest price, then there is no market for them, right? It’s about price and it’s about convenience, but we’ve seen Waymo gain tremendous market share in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The net promoter scores are even higher than a ride with a human in them, right? We see parents all over San Francisco that are getting their kids to after-school activities in Whos with no drivers. They actually prefer it to an Uber with a driver. So I believe that autonomy is here. I believe that, you know, the technological challenge of full self-driving has been cracked. I think Tesla is in a great position on that, but they have to execute.”

JDP Capital Management stated the following regarding Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:

“Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) is new core position that I wrote about in 2024 Half Year Letter. The stock was up 115% in 2024. We benefited from the June 2024 timing of our purchase, buying after the stock had declined about 30% in the first part of the year.

We repurchased TSLA at a time when the market had [again] become overly bearish based on slowing vehicle orders despite the company having just achieved a breakthrough in Full Self Driving (FSD v12). If you haven’t had a chance to experience the most recent Full Self Driving software (FSD 13.3) I suggest you try it for yourself. If you’ve had a Tesla for a while, you know that the trajectory of FSD improvement has been nothing less than astounding.

It has become clearer to me that Tesla’s leadership position in the infrastructure layer underpinning mega-trends in robotics, smart vehicles and battery storage will unlock earnings growth that we can ride for years. Similar to AWS or the iPhone, Full-Self-Driving and Optimus will enable new business models to be built across a wide range of industries over time…” (Click here to read the full text)