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Ives raises Tesla price target to Wall Street high of $600

The Wedbush analyst said investors are “underestimating the transformation underway at the company” regarding AI.

Rani Molla

Wedbush Securities analyst and Tesla bull Dan Ives raised his price target for the company to a Wall Street high of $600 from $500 “to reflect our view that an accelerated AI path for the company is now on the horizon and investors are underestimating the transformation underway at the company.” He added, “We believe Tesla is taking major steps in advancing its AI Revolution path with autonomous and robotics front and center heading into 2026 that will be a game changer and define Tesla’s future.”

Tesla is up 1.5% premarket to $429.55 a share, so shares would have to rise roughly 40% to reach that price target.

Just a week ago, Baird analyst Ben Kallo raised his price target for Tesla to $548 (from $320), which was the previous Wall Street high.

Ives said he expects Tesla’s robotaxis to quickly roll out to more than 30 US cities within the next year. On Tesla’s last earnings call, CEO Elon Musk said he expected autonomous ride-hailing to be available to half the US population by the end of this year. Currently, Tesla is operating about 30 autonomous taxis with human safety monitors in the passenger seat in Austin. The company has expanded a more general ride-hailing service, where a Tesla driver sits in the driver’s seat and engages supervised Full Self-Driving, in the Bay Area. It’s currently testing autonomous vehicles in California and Nevada.

Ives is also forecasting that Tesla, which currently has a market cap of $1.3 trillion, will reach a $2 trillion market cap early next year and join the $3 trillion club by the end of 2026 “as full scale volume production begins of the autonomous and robotics roadmap.”

Of course, for Musk to receive his full $1 trillion pay package, he’ll have to push the company’s market cap to a whopping $8.5 trillion in 10 years, making $2 trillion or $3 trillion feel more realistic.

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Cybertruck battery material supplier writes down Tesla deal by 99%

South Korea’s L&F Co., a supplier of battery material for Tesla’s “apocalypse-proof” Cybertruck, has written down the value of its Tesla contract by more than 99%, Bloomberg reports — another sign that Cybertruck sales are faltering.

The company cited changes in supply quantities, slashing a contract valued at nearly $3 billion in 2023 to about $7,000 now.

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Estimates for Tesla’s Q4 deliveries are declining

Analysts across the board are expecting Tesla’s fourth-quarter deliveries to decline from last year, as record deliveries fueled by the end of the EV tax credit come to grips with the actual end of the EV tax credit. And as the end of the quarter nears, estimates have sunk further.

Currently the FactSet consensus estimate expects Tesla to deliver 449,000 vehicles in Q4, down 9.5% from last year’s 496,000 and down from 450,000 earlier this month. Bloomberg now pegs the number at 445,000, down from a 448,000 consensus estimate at the start of December.

Prediction markets are even less bullish. The market-implied odds derived through event contracts show that less than a quarter of traders believe Tesla will surpass 430,000 deliveries in the quarter ending December. The actual delivery numbers are expected to be released in early January.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Currently the FactSet consensus estimate expects Tesla to deliver 449,000 vehicles in Q4, down 9.5% from last year’s 496,000 and down from 450,000 earlier this month. Bloomberg now pegs the number at 445,000, down from a 448,000 consensus estimate at the start of December.

Prediction markets are even less bullish. The market-implied odds derived through event contracts show that less than a quarter of traders believe Tesla will surpass 430,000 deliveries in the quarter ending December. The actual delivery numbers are expected to be released in early January.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

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Jon Keegan

Chinese AI chatbots reportedly must answer 2,000 questions, prove censorship compliance

For American companies building AI today, its basically a free-for-all, a self-regulation zone with zero federal restrictions.

But for Chinese AI companies, the Chinese Communist Party exerts strict control over what models get released and what questions they cannot answer.

A report in The Wall Street Journal details the rigorous tests that AI models are subjected to before being released on the global stage to compete with Western AI models.

AI models must answer 2,000 questions that are frequently updated and achieve a 95% refusal rate for queries related to forbidden topics, like the Tiananmen Square massacre or human rights violations, according to the report.

The strict regulatory framework does have some safety advantages, such as preventing chatbots from sharing violent or pornographic material as well as protections from self-harm, an issue that American AI companies are currently wrestling with.

A report in The Wall Street Journal details the rigorous tests that AI models are subjected to before being released on the global stage to compete with Western AI models.

AI models must answer 2,000 questions that are frequently updated and achieve a 95% refusal rate for queries related to forbidden topics, like the Tiananmen Square massacre or human rights violations, according to the report.

The strict regulatory framework does have some safety advantages, such as preventing chatbots from sharing violent or pornographic material as well as protections from self-harm, an issue that American AI companies are currently wrestling with.

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Report: OpenAI has started mocking up what ads in ChatGPT could look like

2025 saw OpenAI ink a flurry of massive deals. To pay for it all, the company has realized that it can’t get there on $20-per-month subscriptions alone; it also needs to monetize its hundreds of millions of free users.

To this end, despite repeatedly denying that ads are coming to ChatGPT, a new report says OpenAI is actually working through all those details.

Citing people familiar with the discussions, The Information reports employees have discussed different ways to prioritize sponsored information in ChatGPT in response to relevant queries.

Since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late 2022, its offerings have been ad-free, relying instead on a freemium subscription model. But with Google recently telling advertisers it plans to bring ads to Gemini next year, and with OpenAI burning through truckloads of cash, the pressure to follow suit is growing.

OpenAI is looking at its AI model-developing competitors Meta and Google, which are pulling in hundreds of billions of dollars per year in advertising revenue, to arrive at this conclusion. It’s also seemingly inspired by Amazon’s (and Google’s) idea of sponsored product placement.

Per the report, in addition to trying to build new kinds of ad units, OpenAI is considering a few options:

  • Leaning into chats that are clearly about buying a product and giving priority placement to sponsored results — though this works out to only about 2.1% of queries, according to OpenAI.

  • Showing ads based on the treasure trove of information it has on users, by mining their chat histories.

  • A “sponsored” sidebar showing ads related to the conversation.

But the company realizes it has to be careful to not turn off users, who might not trust a chatbot that peppers sensitive conversations with ads.

Citing people familiar with the discussions, The Information reports employees have discussed different ways to prioritize sponsored information in ChatGPT in response to relevant queries.

Since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late 2022, its offerings have been ad-free, relying instead on a freemium subscription model. But with Google recently telling advertisers it plans to bring ads to Gemini next year, and with OpenAI burning through truckloads of cash, the pressure to follow suit is growing.

OpenAI is looking at its AI model-developing competitors Meta and Google, which are pulling in hundreds of billions of dollars per year in advertising revenue, to arrive at this conclusion. It’s also seemingly inspired by Amazon’s (and Google’s) idea of sponsored product placement.

Per the report, in addition to trying to build new kinds of ad units, OpenAI is considering a few options:

  • Leaning into chats that are clearly about buying a product and giving priority placement to sponsored results — though this works out to only about 2.1% of queries, according to OpenAI.

  • Showing ads based on the treasure trove of information it has on users, by mining their chat histories.

  • A “sponsored” sidebar showing ads related to the conversation.

But the company realizes it has to be careful to not turn off users, who might not trust a chatbot that peppers sensitive conversations with ads.

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