January 8 (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 inching closer to the trillion dollar club.
Tesla’s stratospheric rally has helped Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk surpass Amazon.com Inc’s top boss Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest man, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.
At today’s session high, Musk’s 21% stake in the automaker as per Forbes contributes more than $170 billion to his net worth, dwarfing the combined market capitalization of General Motors, Ford Motor Co and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, the three Detroit automakers.
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 Inc and ahead of social media giant Facebook Inc.
The company’s fortunes is an anomaly 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.
