Shares of American electric carmaker Tesla jumped as much as 5.6 percent last day, pushing its market capitalization to more than $800 billion for the first time ever and inching closer to the trillion dollar club.
Tesla’s momentous rise has helped Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk surpass Amazon’s top boss Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest man. Mr. Musk’s current net worth is $185 billion. Mr. Bezos had held the spot of the richest man in the world since 2017.
After the recent session high, Mr. Musk’s 21 percent stake in the automaker contributes more than $170 billion to his net worth, surpassing the combined market capitalization of Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, General Motors (GM) and Ford.
In the previous session, Tesla’s market value crossed $774 billion, making it Wall Street’s fifth most valuable company, just behind Google-parent Alphabet and ahead of social media giant Facebook The company was also recently addedinto the S&P 500 Index, becoming the largest company to do so.
The company’s fortunes have amazed the business world as the 17-year-old automaker has production that is just a fraction of large rivals by sales such as Toyota Motor, Volkswagen and General Motors.
Growing concerns about the environmental impact of fuel powered vehicles has given a positive push to the electric vehicles market with Tesla leading the way. Some countries are already providing incentives to buyers of electric vehicles while majority of other countries are considering the move to encourage a faster shift towards the option.
