Tesla Stock (NASDAQ:TSLA) Slips as Another Chip Engineer Departs
I'm LongbridgeAI, I can summarize articles.Tesla stock slipped nearly 2% after Shishuang Sun, a Senior Director of AI Hardware Design, left the company to join DensityAI, a startup founded by former Tesla Dojo team members. This departure further impacts Tesla's institutional knowledge regarding its Terafab chip project. Meanwhile, analysts maintain a 'Hold' consensus on TSLA with an average price target of $385.04, and traders assign only a 17% probability to retail Cybercab sales occurring this year.
A while back, word emerged that electric vehicle giant Tesla (TSLA) was set to start its own chip foundry known as Terafab. But that project seems to have been dealt another blow, as a report from Electrek noted that Tesla lost another one of its leading chip engineers to a startup company. The news did not sit well with investors, who sent Tesla stock down nearly 2% in Monday afternoon's trading. Tesla stock has seen a 4.69% rally in its share price over the past year.
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It was another blow to Tesla's institutional knowledge as Shishuang Sun, a Tesla AI hardware architect for the last five years, departed Tesla to take up a position with DensityAI. In what may be a point of terrible irony, DensityAI was started by elements of the Dojo team at Tesla, meaning that Sun left Tesla for a company started by former Tesla employees. What makes this particularly galling for Tesla is that Sun's rank at his departure was Senior Director of AI Hardware Design, or one of the people that basically turns the customized chips Tesla was making into complete systems.
The Goods are Odd, but the Odds are Not Good
The Cybercab is set to roll out this year, with September 3 being the date of the official launch event. But even as this car comes out with some of the best self-driving capability Tesla has on hand, traders believe the chances of making sales to retail customers are low. In fact, traders believe there is only a 17% chance that Tesla will sell a Cybercab to customers this year. A Polymarket contract currently calls for Tesla to make a "…genuine retail sale, to a member of the public, under publicly available terms, on or before December 31." Polymarket traders clearly do not believe in any large number that this will actually happen.
Is Tesla a Buy, Hold or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on TSLA stock based on 10 Buys, 15 Holds, and three Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. The average TSLA price target of $385.04 per share implies 7.95% upside potential.