Tesla shares have fallen 18.16% since Jan. 1, but ARK Invest is looking well past the current slide. The firm's updated model projects Tesla at roughly $4,400 a share in 2031 — nearly 12 times its Oct. 19 close of $368.06 — with about 80% of that enterprise value coming from robotaxis, not car sales.
The forecast lands two days before Tesla reports third-quarter results on Oct. 21. Analysts tracked by Nasdaq expect earnings of $0.21 per share, down from $0.37 a year earlier.
A robotaxi business doing the heavy lifting
ARK's base case has Tesla selling 10.2 million cars in 2031, up from 1.6 million this year. That's the traditional business. The bigger number sits beside it: about 8.1 million robotaxis generating $753 billion in net ride-hail revenue in 2031.
Total revenue in ARK's model reaches $1.45 trillion. Optimus, Tesla's humanoid robot, adds $212 billion from roughly 1 million units sold to outside buyers. ARK expects cumulative AI infrastructure spending to hit $225 billion by 2031, up from about $7 billion at the end of 2025.
Analysts Tasha Keeney and Daniel Maguire wrote that Robotaxi will account for roughly 80% of Tesla's enterprise value in 2031, down from about 90% in 2029 in the previous model. The reason for the shift: Optimus Robot-as-a-Service is likely to inflect as robotaxis proliferate.
Why the goalposts moved to 2031
ARK's 2024 model put Tesla at $2,600 a share in 2029 and picked 2025 as the likely robotaxi launch year. Tesla did launch in Austin, Texas, in June 2025 and has since expanded to seven cities across three states. The fleet has logged more than 1 million unsupervised driverless miles in about seven months.
ARK still calls that progress slower than expected. The firm partly used that pace to set about 2031 as when Optimus could reach human-level skill. A slower-than-expected robotaxi ramp is the main risk to the forecast, with regulatory delays, a sudden departure by Elon Musk, a natural disaster, or a pandemic listed as possible causes.
The firm's own disclosure says its forecasts carry a bias toward positive results and that some or all outcomes may land substantially lower. That's a standard caveat, but it matters here: the 2031 number leans on a business that is still measured in months of operating history.
The bull case from outside ARK
Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives & Co. expects robotaxis to reach more cities in early to mid-2027, with Optimus following later that year. That timeline sits between ARK's launch assumptions and its 2031 valuation date — closer to the current expansion pace than to the model's full build-out.
Tesla reports earnings on Oct. 21. The quarter's results will show whether the car business is holding up while the robotaxi and Optimus stories mature, and whether the stock's year-to-date decline has any bottom near the $368 level ARK used as its starting point.
