Jensen Huang is the CEO of Nvidia (NVDA 4.45%), a company whose chips power the vast majority of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. At a technology conference last year, Huang made a bold declaration: “The next wave of AI is here. Robotics, powered by physical AI, will revolutionize industries.”
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla (TSLA 8.22%), made a related prediction last year: “I think by 2040, probably there are more humanoid robots than there are people.”
With that in mind, Citigroup analysts estimate humanoid robot sales will hit $14 billion by 2030, $1.1 trillion by 2040, and $7 trillion by 2050. And certain Wall Street experts see huge returns on the horizon for Nvidia and Tesla shareholders:
- Equity analyst Beth Kindig believes Nvidia could be a $10 trillion company by 2030. That implies about 185% upside from its current market value of $3.5 trillion. If that happens, Nvidia stock will return 19% annually over the next six years.
- Billionaire fund manager Ron Baron says Tesla could be a $5 trillion company within a decade. That implies about 315% upside from its current market value of $1.2 trillion. If that comes to fruition, Tesla stock will return 15% annually over the next 10 years.
Here’s what investors should know about Nvidia and Tesla.
1. Nvidia
Nvidia is best known for its graphics processing units (GPUs), chips that accelerate complex data center workloads, like running artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Nvidia accounts for 98% of data center GPU sales, and its dominance is largely due to its ecosystem of software development tools called CUDA.
Nvidia Isaac is a robot development platform built on CUDA. It includes code libraries and pretrained models that help engineers create robotics applications across three distinct use cases: industrial manipulation arms, autonomous mobile robots, and humanoid robots. Isaac also includes a simulation engine that lets developers generate synthetic training data and test robotics models.
Beyond the data center, Nvidia Jetson systems are embedded chips that bring together GPUs, central processing units (CPUs), memory, and storage to form the third and final layer of the robotics computing stack. To elaborate, GPU-accelerated servers provide the supercomputing infrastructure needed to train AI models, Isaac provides the tools needed to build robotics applications, and Jetson systems provide the computing power autonomous robots need to function.
Nvidia GPUs power most generative AI systems, so investors have reason to believe those chips will also be the foundation of most physical AI systems. Whereas generative AI can create new content, physical AI can understand and interact with the physical world. Put differently, physical AI is the technology that will power autonomous robots.
Wall Street expects Nvidia’s adjusted earnings to increase by 52% annually through fiscal 2026, which ends in January 2026. That makes the current valuation of 55 times adjusted earnings look very reasonable. Patient investors should feel comfortable buying a small position in this stock today.
2. Tesla
Tesla is best known as the market leader in electric cars, but CEO Elon Musk told analysts earlier this year, “We should be thought of as an AI or robotics company.” Tesla designed the supercomputing hardware that powers its Full Self-Driving software and has applied that hardware to a humanoid robot called Optimus.
Musk recently said Optimus is “the most advanced humanoid robot by a long shot.” Importantly, while he sees tremendous upside in autonomous driving technology, Musk believes Optimus will ultimately be more valuable than every other Tesla product combined. He has even speculated that Optimus could drive Tesla’s market value to $25 trillion.
Musk expects “several thousand Optimus robots” to work in Tesla factories this year and says the company will begin selling Optimus to customers as production ramps in 2026. Musk has made big promises on unrealistic timelines in the past, so investors should not consider those projections set in stone. However, he tends to deliver on his promises eventually.
Wall Street expects Tesla’s adjusted earnings to grow at 27% annually through 2025. That consensus makes the current valuation of 170 times adjusted earnings look absurd. But patient investors who believe Tesla can monetize autonomous driving technology and humanoid robots should absolutely have a position. Start with a few shares today and add more when the stock price dips.
Citigroup is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Trevor Jennewine has positions in Nvidia and Tesla. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
