By Al Root
Tesla stock rebounded early Tuesday as CEO Elon Musk reminded investors about where his EV company started and how far it's come.
He just might be trying to help justify SpaceX's valuation.
Shares of the electric-vehicle maker were up 0.5% at $418.05, while S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were down 0.1% and 0.4%, respectively.
The move came after Musk tweeted that Tesla's IPO market cap was only 0.1% of its current market cap. The math is correct and relatively easy. Tesla was worth roughly $1.7 billion in June 2010. Today it's worth about $1.6 trillion (or $2 trillion if you include Musk's vested stock options in the share count).
That's a 1,000-fold gain.
The tweet also comes just ahead of SpaceX's massive IPO, which is expected to raise a record amount of cash, and could value the rocket company at $2 trillion.
Investors shouldn't be looking for a 1,000-fold gain in SpaceX over the next decade-plus. That would take SpaceX's market cap into the quadrillion territory, or 15 times global GDP.
When Tesla went public, its value represented 0.003% of global GDP. Today it's worth about 1.5% of global GDP. What's more, SpaceX is already the most valuable space company on Earth. Ford Motor was worth 35 times as much as Tesla in 2010. (Now, Ford is worth 3% or 4% of Tesla.)
Whether Musk was supporting SpaceX's valuation or reminiscing about Tesla is unclear. Tesla and SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment.
Tesla stock dropped 4.6% on Monday after OpenAI announced it was hiring for a robot business, putting the AI start-up in direct competition with Tesla's plans to sell humanoid robots.
The Monday drop left Tesla stock down about 8% for the year, but up 20% over the past 12 months.
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
June 02, 2026 07:36 ET (11:36 GMT)
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