(Reuters) – Shares of Tesla Inc jumped as much as 5.6% on Friday, pushing the electric car maker ‘s market capitalization to more than $ 800 billion for the first time ever and moving closer to the trillion dollar club.
Tesla’s stratospheric rally has helped CEO Elon Musk overtake Amazon.com Inc. chief executive Jeff Bezos to become the richest man in the world, Bloomberg News reported Thursday.
At today’s high session, Musk has a 21% stake in the automaker according to Forbes adding more than $ 170 billion to its net worth, surpassing the general market capitalization of General Motors, Ford Motor Co and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, the three Detroit manufacturers.
In the previous session, Tesla’s market value exceeded $ 774 billion, making it the fifth most valuable company on Wall Street, just behind Google-parent Alphabet Inc and ahead of social media giant Facebook Inc.
The company’s fortunes are an anomaly as the 17-year-old automaker has production that is just a fraction of major competitors with sales such as Toyota Motor, Volkswagen and General Motors.
Reporting by Akanksha Rana and Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru; Edited by Arun Koyyur