Tesla returned to the $1 trillion club on Friday after its shares soared in the days following Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election.
Shares of the electric car maker are up about 23% since Wednesday – a sharp reversal from a year when the stock price otherwise moved sideways.
The new valuation also increases Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s net worth to around $300 billion, according to Forbes, expanding his already significant margin as the world’s richest person by more than $30 billion.
Musk campaigned aggressively for Trump, who has indicated he plans to appoint the Tesla chief to a role charged with increasing government “efficiency,” which would cut programs seen as wasteful .
Through his rocket company SpaceX, Musk has been the beneficiary of billions in government contracts over the past decade. While Tesla has fewer direct contracts, it is embroiled in multiple federal investigations and regulatory actions that could be reversed once Trump takes office.
Tesla’s 13-figure valuation puts it in the ranks of Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook parent Meta.
Tesla previously reached $1 trillion in 2021.
Demand for Tesla’s electric vehicles has shown some signs of weakness in recent quarters, but Musk has said he doesn’t pin the automaker’s future on environmentally conscious drivers, but rather on a future fleet of autonomous vehicles. On that front, the company now faces competition from Alphabet-owned Waymo, which has been steadily rolling out “robotaxi” services in several markets.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
