Piper says DeepSeek implications ‘neutral at worst’ for Tesla

Piper Sandler analyst Alexander Potter says the firm has fielded several inbound emails this morning regarding the implications of DeepSeek for Tesla (TSLA), stating that the firm doesn’t think DeepSeek “represents a threat to the thesis.” The lesson, as the firm sees it, is that A.I. models can “perhaps” be trained using smaller-than-expected capex outlays and as a consumer of GPUs and a spender of capital, Tesla “may actually benefit from this trend,” the analyst tells investors. In addition, Tesla’s advantage doesn’t stem from a big capex budget, but the company’s moat stems from a fleet of vehicles that was purpose-built to collect self-driving data, adds the analyst, who keeps an Overweight rating on Tesla shares.