Could Buying Tesla Stock Today Set You Up for Life?

It's any investor's dream to pick a single stock and turn it into a life-altering transaction. It's the 21st-century equivalent of a California gold panhandler finding some big gold nuggets, or a treasure hunter unearthing a buried fortune.

While putting all of your savings into a single stock is an awful idea, it's possible for some relatively small sums to set you up for life. A $10,000 investment in Nvidia in 2015 would have made you a millionaire, turning into $3.7 million. And similar investments in companies like Advanced Micro Devices and Broadcom would have brought you $800,000 and $340,000, respectively.

So, it's possible to make life-changing money from a single stock. Let's take a closer look at a fourth company -- the electric vehicle maker Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA). It would have done pretty well, too, generating a return of about $300,000 in the last 10 years. And while there are arguments to be made for Nvidia and other chipmakers to generate massive profits in the next decade, I think there are compelling cases for Tesla, as well.

In fact, I think Tesla could do much better than a 30x gain over the next 10 years, because it has unique tailwinds that could drive fundamental changes in how we work and live.

Image source: Tesla.

More than an EV company

Tesla's ascent to the global spotlight is grounded on its electric vehicles. Tesla became a powerhouse with a $1.4 trillion market capitalization because of its success in building a global fleet of EVs and being the first to mass-produce them at a price point affordable for many consumers. Tesla delivered 1.63 million vehicles in 2025, and nearly 97% of them were the popular Model 3 sedan and Model Y midsized SUV.

However, Tesla is no longer the global EV leader. Chinese automaker BYD surpassed Tesla in 2025, with EV deliveries jumping 28%. In addition, CEO Elon Musk's political activities haven't helped -- some Yale University economists have projected that Tesla lost at least 1 million units in sales from October 2022 to April 2025 as Musk got involved in the 2024 U.S. presidential election and Germany's national elections.

Tesla's third quarter looked solid on the surface, with revenue of $28.09 billion, up from $25.18 billion. And the company set a company record for vehicle deliveries with 497,099. But the record was attributable to the Sept. 30 expiration of a $7,500 tax credit, as customers rushed to complete their purchases. By way of comparison, fourth-quarter deliveries numbered 418,277, down nearly 16% on a sequential basis.

Then there's the margin issue. Tesla's operating margin in the third quarter was only 5.8%, versus 10.8% a year ago. Net income also fell to $1.62 billion, down from $2.71 billion in the third quarter of 2024.

But fortunately for Tesla, this is much more than an EV company. While some level of autonomous driving has always been a staple with Tesla vehicles, the company is investing in its own full self-driving (FSD) software with the intention of making self-driving cars a common sight across the country.

Tesla's Robotaxi app will allow Tesla users -- when the technology is approved -- to make their vehicles available as robotaxis, essentially giving Tesla owners a passive revenue stream. Tesla currently has a limited robotaxi service in the Austin, Texas, area, but a human driver needs to behind the wheel and prepared to take over if needed.

Unsupervised FSD is a major hurdle for Tesla to overcome, and the company has missed past deadlines to implement it. However, Musk has always been tenacious, and if Tesla can perfect the system, it already will have a massive fleet of vehicles at the ready.

The second major driver for Tesla is also an artificial intelligence product, the Optimus robot. The general-purpose robots are currently under development and are designed to do everything from repetitive to dangerous tasks. Musk said during Tesla's third-quarter earnings call that the company planned to release Optimus V3 sometime in the first quarter of 2026.

"It won't even seem like a robot," Musk told analysts on the earnings call. "It'll seem like a person in a robot suit, which is kind of how we started off with Optimus. It'll seem so real that you'll need to like poke it, I think, to believe that it's actually a robot."

Angel investor Jason Calacanis, speaking this month at the CES conference in Las Vegas, said he recently saw the Optimus V3 at a company lab and called it a transformative product. "I can tell you now, nobody will remember that Tesla ever made a car," he said.

The outlook for Tesla

If Tesla stock is going to generate 30x returns or more in the next decade, it will be because of unsupervised FSD and the Optimus robot. Both have breathtaking potential. Piper Sandler analyst Alexander Potter points out that Tesla is getting "very close" to unsupervised FSD, based on improved performance metrics. And Cathie Wood of Ark Invest has said the Optimus robot is even a bigger opportunity than robotaxis.

Musk himself has said that the Optimus robots could generate $10 trillion in revenue, accounting for more than 80% of Tesla's valuation. If the projections by Musk and others are accurate, then Tesla may very well be a stock that sets you up for life.

Patrick Sanders has positions in Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Nvidia, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends BYD Company and Broadcom. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.