Tesla is being pressed by Future Fund Managing Partner Gary Black to rethink how it sells its next wave of products, with the investor arguing that organic buzz and Elon Musk's social media presence are no longer enough to support a robotaxi service and the Optimus humanoid robot. Black said Tesla needs a long-term marketing and branding strategy alongside engineering investment, contrasting the company's approach with Apple and warning that an engineering-first culture may have left value unrealized. His critique comes as Tesla's unsupervised robotaxi fleet remains stuck at roughly 90 to 100 vehicles and as concerns persist over whether its vision-only self-driving approach can scale safely against rivals spending more on alternative systems. The debate lands against weak relative share performance: Tesla has risen about 43% over five years versus 96% for the Nasdaq 100 and 103% for Apple, while the stock is down more than 27% year-to-date, closed Wednesday at $327.51 and was down 0.6% on Thursday at the time of writing. Even with signs of demand in California and fresh Cybercab prototype sightings near Giga Texas, skeptics say Tesla's roughly 195 times forward 2026 earnings valuation is hard to defend without a clearer path to scaling robotaxis and monetizing Optimus.