Why Tesla bull Cathie Wood thinks the stock is headed to $5,000

Longtime Tesla ( TSLA ) bull Cathie Wood of Ark Invest is leaving no doubt about where she stands on the Elon Musk-led company heading into 2027.

Bullish as always, perhaps even more so.

In a new note that's starting to make the rounds, Ark Invest set a $4,400 base-case price target on Tesla looking out to 2031. The bull case is $5,000, and the bear is at $3,300.

For perspective, Tesla stock is trading at $366 today.

Ark's latest bullish call on Tesla stock reflects upbeat assumptions on robotaxis, humanoid robots and Terrafab.

"ARK estimates that Robotaxi will account for ~80% of Tesla's enterprise value in 2031, down from ~90% in 2029 as presented in our previous model published in 2024. The primary reason is that we believe Optimus Robot-as-a-Service (RaaS) is likely to inflect as robotaxis continue to proliferate," the Ark team wrote.

This comes after Tesla unveiled its redesigned Roadster last week at SpaceX's rocket test site in McGregor, Texas, nine years after Musk first showed his idea for the car in 2017.

Using cold-gas thrusters borrowed from SpaceX and a suction system, the car drove upside down on a curved ramp, vaulted off it, and flipped in midair before landing. The car also jumped over a series of Tesla vehicles — not unlike the classic move of K.I.T.T. from the "Knight Rider" TV series.

Musk said the Roadster can reach 60 mph in under a second and top 230 mph, though it is unclear whether any of the stunt features would be legal on public roads.

Tesla said production will start in 2028. There is a $50,000 deposit on the Performance version and $250,000 on the Thrust version.

Ark is leaving the door open to a Tesla/SpaceX merger:

"While our model assesses Tesla as a standalone business, a SpaceX-Tesla merger could take place within the next five years. Tesla's highly cash-generative robotaxi network could help fund SpaceX's ambitious plans for orbital data centers, and at the same time SpaceX's compute-intensive frontier AI models could serve as the planning layer for Optimus deployments. Working together on the Terafab project, both companies could alleviate chip constraints. Combined, we estimate that SpaceX and Tesla could generate $3.8 trillion in revenue and $2.7 trillion in EBIT by 2031, with SpaceX contributing roughly 62% and 69%, respectively," Ark said in its note.

Wood will be a featured speaker at Yahoo Finance's annual Invest event on Nov. 12. Check out the early list of confirmed speakers !

Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor, host of the Sozzi Unleashed morning show and the Power Players with Brian Sozzi podcast, and a member of Yahoo Finance's editorial leadership team. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi , Instagram , and LinkedIn . Tips on stories? Email brian.sozzi@yahoofinance.com.