By Al Root
Tesla stock was down in early trading on Friday as it looks to avoid a second consecutive weekly loss. Shares have been listless lately as investors have given SpaceX more of their attention.
Tesla shares were down 0.1% in premarket trading at $417.30, while S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were up 0.1% and 0.2%, respectively.
Premarket prices leave Tesla stock down about 1.2% for the week. Shares dropped 1.4% last week after rising in early May on hopes that Tesla's AI-trained Full Self Driving, or FSD, driver assistance product would be approved for sale in China. Tesla has about 1.3 million people paying $99 a month for FSD in the U.S.
Chinese approval hasn't come yet, leading to a stock slide. Investors have also turned their attention to SpaceX, which made its IPO registration public on Wednesday. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, of course, runs both companies, and Tesla was mentioned in the filing almost 90 times.
The companies share a director, are collaborating on an AI digital assistant, and are building a " Terafab" chip-making facility to be run with Intel's help. Tesla has helped SpaceX with purchasing, buying advertising on X. "We plan to explore other areas of strategic collaboration with Tesla in the future," reads part of the prospectus.
Tesla also holds 19 million shares of SpaceX, the result of its earlier investment in xAI, which merged with SpaceX in February.
That's a drop in the bucket compared to Musk, who holds 6.4 billion shares of SpaceX. The IPO hasn't happened yet, but recent private-market trades have reached as high as $130, making that stock worth roughly $800 billion. Musk controls more than 700 million shares of Tesla stock, including vested options from his 2018 pay award, worth some $300 billion.
SpaceX is worth far more to Musk than Tesla, but that's been the case for a while.
Musk's holdings are a reason Tesla investors pay attention to SpaceX. Musk himself, of course, is another reason. Tesla and SpaceX are both richly valued. The former trades at almost 200 times expected earnings over the coming 12 months. The latter will be valued at roughly 80 times sales in its IPO.
Some of that valuation boils down to Musk himself, and his ability to convince investors in a rosy vision of the future for both companies.
Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 22, 2026 07:46 ET (11:46 GMT)
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