J.P. Morgan upgrades Tesla to neutral, cites robotics and autonomous driving as long-term catalysts

J.P. Morgan just did something it hasn’t done in a while: it stopped being bearish on Tesla.

The bank upgraded Tesla from Underweight to Neutral on June 5, lifting its price target from $145 to $475. That’s a 227.6% increase in the target.

New analyst, new thesis

The upgrade comes under new analyst Rajat Gupta, who assumed coverage of Tesla in May 2026, replacing Ryan Brinkman. Brinkman had been one of the most consistently bearish voices on Wall Street when it came to Tesla, so the changing of the guard here is more than procedural. It’s a philosophical shift in how J.P. Morgan views the company.

Where Brinkman focused heavily on near-term EV sales metrics, where Tesla has admittedly struggled, Gupta is looking further down the road. His thesis centers on Tesla’s expanding portfolio beyond cars: autonomous driving, robotaxis, humanoid robotics, AI chips, and software services.

The bank projects Tesla’s revenue will more than double to approximately $203 billion by 2030. Roughly 50% of that projected revenue is expected to come from newer autonomy and robotics-related ventures, not traditional EV sales. Earnings per share are projected to climb to around $7.50 by 2030.

This upgrade essentially asks investors to look past near-term EV headwinds toward a post-2028 growth inflection.

The robotics question

Gupta specifically flagged execution risks in the humanoid robotics sector. Tesla’s Optimus robot program has drawn both fascination and skepticism from the tech world. Turning a prototype into a commercially viable product that generates tens of billions in revenue requires clearing manufacturing, regulatory, and market adoption hurdles that don’t have clear precedents.

On the autonomous driving side, competitors like Waymo have been operating commercial robotaxi services, and the regulatory landscape remains fragmented across markets.

What this means for investors

J.P. Morgan is one of the largest and most influential investment banks on the planet. The sheer size of the price target revision, from $145 to $475, could trigger portfolio rebalancing across funds that use analyst targets as inputs for their models.

Moving from Underweight to Neutral isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement. It’s more like J.P. Morgan saying, “We were wrong to be this negative, but we’re not ready to pound the table either.”

The humanoid robotics market doesn’t have proven unit economics. The robotaxi business faces regulatory uncertainty in every major market. And Tesla’s core auto business faces intensifying competition from Chinese EV makers and legacy automakers.

The $203 billion revenue projection for 2030 is only four years away, and the gap between where Tesla is now and where J.P. Morgan expects it to be is, to put it mildly, substantial.

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