Tesla was back in the $1 trillion market capitalization club on Friday, following a rally in the days following Donald Trump’s election as US president.
The stock of the electric automaker has risen about 23% since Wednesday, which is quite a reversal from a year that had seen the company’s stock trading in a range.
The new valuation also takes Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s net worth to about $300 billion, Forbes said — adding more than $30 billion to his fortune as the world’s richest man.
Musk was very vocal in his support for Trump, a man who has indicated his willingness to nominate Musk to a position that would oversee the government ‘streamlining’ of ‘inefficiencies’ and eliminate programs that are considered frivolous.
Musk has been the recipient of billions of dollars in government contracts over the last decade through his rocket company SpaceX. Tesla has fewer direct contracts but has been involved in multiple federal investigations and regulatory actions that could be scaled back as soon as Trump assumes the presidency.
Tesla’s market capitalization of over $13 billion places the company in the same league as Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Google’s Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook’s Meta.
Tesla had achieved this market value before in 2021. Some signs of weakness have been observed in demand for Tesla’s electric cars in recent quarters, but Musk has said he is betting the car maker’s future on not on the environmentally conscious drivers but on a future fleet of driverless cars.
In this regard, the company is now up against Alphabet’s Waymo, which has been gradually advancing “robotaxi” services in several markets.