Sylvia Jablonski, Defiance ETFs CEO and CIO, joins CNBC's 'Power Lunch' to discuss outlooks on Tesla, expectations for the company's robotaxi development, and more.

Tesla is preparing to launch its new robotaxi service in Austin, with recent share performance reflecting strong investor interest. Sylvia Jablonski, CEO of Defiance ETFs, expressed support for analyst Dan Ives' view that Tesla could reach a $2 trillion market cap, citing the robotaxi business as a major growth driver. Jablonski noted that the robotaxi initiative could allow Tesla to generate additional revenue from its existing fleet and leverage advancements in AI and power grid technology.

The discussion also touched on investment strategies comparing Tesla and traditional automakers like Ford, emphasizing the importance of embracing new technologies. While some consumer sentiment around Tesla is influenced by CEO Elon Musk's public profile, the panel agreed that autonomous vehicles represent a significant opportunity if they can be safely developed and widely adopted.

Tesla's robotaxi business alone could add $1 trillion in value

Welcome back to Power Lunch. Tesla is set to roll out its new robo-taxi service in Austin over the weekend. Shares have just been on a tear over the past two months, up more than 33 percent, up about half a percent today. Joining us now is Sylvia Jablonski, the co-founder and CEO of Defiance ETFs. It's great to see you today. One of the reasons we wanted to have this conversation is because Dan Ives has come out, and one, he's the notorious Tesla bull. Everything is bullish around Tesla for Dan, I think. But he says Tesla could hit a two trillion dollar market cap by the end of 2026. What do you think? Well, first of all, thanks for having me here. And happy Friday. I am very much aligned with that view. You know, Dan Ives has really been right about Tesla. And Tesla has suffered its ebbs and flows. I think a lot of that is recently because of Doge and some of the things going on with China and regulatory restrictions and things like this. But I think robo-taxis opens up a new horizon for them. This is the business that can get them to that trillion dollars. This allows them to utilize the capacity of cars that they have and generate revenue from them. I think they're going to have growth in their power grid, on solar, on their AI technology that they can share with other cars. And then the regulatory environment will also better for them, which will, you know, help help drive that growth. We saw a push here about autonomous vehicles, not just from the EV makers that were already doing it, but from the traditional guys that said, OK, we're going to test this out a little bit, too. You have a Tesla versus Ford ETF called Elon. That's the ticker symbol. What is it? And how do you think about how investors make money through positioning these two against each other? Yeah, exactly. So this is a very popular retail trade, right? It's the idea of one stock does better than another. So you go long one and short the other. And what we thought was, well, why don't you enhance your view on the stock that you'd like to go long? So this is like a battle. We call it battle shares. It's your leverage 2X Tesla and your short Ford. And essentially what you're trying to do is the new guard versus the old guard. So as Tesla goes up, you have leverage exposure and outperformance. And if Ford goes down, you also benefit from that drop. But the idea is just that the world is changing. You know, AI, machine learning, companies that embrace this and use it to drive their business strategy will do better than kind of the old guard that doesn't adapt to it. And why is there so much emotional passion around Tesla? It's because Elon and politics, right? I mean, it's weird. Elon and politics. But we don't know how it's going to affect sales. There's people literally in my neighborhood that have sold their Teslas because they're mad at Elon Musk. That's a hard thing to model. Yeah. Yeah. But if you think about the future of the robo taxi, I mean, I have two little kids and I wonder if one day they're going to say to me, Mom, were you one of those people that stood on the side of the road and like hail the taxi where there was a driver that you never met before? You know, I think it's the future of the world. And if it actually can take off and it can be safely monitored and developed, I mean, that is a multi-trillion dollar opportunity. Well, I don't know about the robo taxi, but I got into a Waymo and it as a big truck, a box truck was trying to turn into a San Francisco street. The Waymo backed up so the truck could make the turn. There are human drivers that don't know how to do that. So I was in a Waymo month. It was fantastic. It was. Yeah, it was impressive. So I like I buy it's part of it is getting over the hurdle of the human sentiment. Right. And as I grows and develops and you have, you know, the growth of supercomputing and data and visual data, lower latency, 6G, this just becomes more and more efficient. Sylvia Jablonski, Defiance ETF's co-founder and CEO. I just gave you some made up title there. Thank you for coming in. We appreciate it. Today, it's all about making up words. Yeah. You had some doozies. I had some.

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