Tesla shareholders celebrated a lot in the year 2025. The stock price went up, which set a new record despite the company’s electric vehicle sales suffering the biggest fall ever.
Such a difference between the events would usually cause distrust, but it raised the bar instead. Wall Street looked upon the EV slowdown as a minor issue, and shifted its attention towards Tesla’s bright future, specifically to the hyped Cybercab robottaxi.
For the optimists, the argument is to not count the car sales of today, as tomorrow’s autonomous kingdom will finance everything.
The Cybercab Vision Faces a Reality Check
However, this time the exuberance simply crossed paths with a very big and much financially strong bump on the road, which is Nvidia. At the CES 2026, Nvidia introduced a new group of AI models that significantly broaden its DRIVE autonomous vehicle platform.
The announcement did not name Tesla, but it didn’t even have to. As Nvidia made it very clear that self-driving technology is not a Tesla exclusive anymore, and through this Nvidia just gave access to almost all other carmakers around the globe.
Nvidia’s DRIVE Platform
Nvidia may be most recognized for providing the data center GPUs that literally keeps the AI boom persistent, but its automotive aspirations are not a distraction at all. The DRIVE platform already ensures a comprehensive autonomous vehicle solution for automakers, which includes hardware, software, and AI models into one unified ecosystem.
The new version, DRIVE Hyperion, is aimed for the highest level 4 autonomy, which means that cars can completely take over driving without a human in the car in certain areas. This is the same plan that Tesla wants to achieve with its Cybercab as well.
Nvidia’s Alpamayo
Nvidia’s Alpamayo family of open-source AI models was the biggest surprise at CES. Alpamayo, which is built on a huge dataset of real-world driving footage collected from thousands of cities, eliminates the need for automakers to spend years getting their own data.
With the help of simulation tools that portray complex driving scenarios, one of the biggest obstacles that self-driving technology has to deal with has been removed by Nvidia. In simple terms, what took Tesla a decade to construct has now been packaged and made available by Nvidia.
Tesla’s Long wait for Robotaxi Revenue
Tesla’s emphasis has been clearly redirected now from selling more cars to the future of autonomy monetization. Elon Musk is very confident that Cybercab is going to be a game changer in the field of transportation, and even the likes of Ark Invest anticipates the total market value in hundreds of billions of dollars.
However, the mass production of Cybercab is not expected to start until late 2026 at the earliest, which means that the revenue will probably not be very significant before 2027. This is a long wait in a fast-moving industry, specifically when the driving force behind the delay, which is regulatory approval, is still not granted for full self-driving cars to operate without human supervision.
Waymo Is Already Making Money
While Tesla is preparing for the launch, Alphabet’s Waymo is already on the road. The company is providing hundreds of thousands of autonomous rides every week in various U.S cities that are all paid rides.
In contrast to the robotaxi vision of Tesla, the service of Waymo is present today, it is functioning at a big scale, and is bringing in actual revenue. The Cybercab will not be so much disrupting the market when it starts its service and catching up with the ones who are already miles ahead.
Valuation Doesn’t Allow for Mistakes
All these events would probably not be a problem if the valuation of Tesla were made with a conservative approach. However, this is not the case. Tesla shares, which are trading at a price-to-earnings ratio of 297, point towards a company that is going to perform close to perfectly in a future that is still not here.
Stock prices could fall sharply in case of any production delay in Cybercab, regulatory obstacles, or competitive pressure. When the expectations are that high, even small disappointments are perceived as big crashes.
Nvidia May Be the Safer Autonomous Bet
Surprisingly, the investors pursuing the self-driving revolution might come across a more secured chance in Nvidia.
The firm manufactures tools, not the dreams, and it profits regardless of any carmaker who wins the robotaxi race. With a much lower valuation multiple and a record of dominating new tech cycles, Nvidia appears less like a speculative bet and more like a green signal on the path to autonomy.
Bottom Line
Tesla’s robotaxi project is bold, as it pushes the boundaries of technology, and is certainly captivating. However, Nvidia’s latest action has made it clear that Tesla is no longer the sole competitor.
As technology becomes available to the competitors, with Tesla’s high valuations, the margin for error is very small. It is very obvious for investors that before placing a bet on a future full of robotaxis, it might be a wise thing to look around as well.