Tech mogul Elon Musk’s electric car business exceeds the value of almost every company in the S&P 500, including some iconic American companies.
Shares of Tesla were up 4% in midday trading Wednesday to a new record high of above $1,120 per share. At that price, Tesla’s market cap is nearly $210 billion.
That makes Tesla the most valuable car company on the planet, ahead of Toyota. Tesla has also passed the market caps of Dow components Disney, Coca-Cola, Merck, Cisco, and Exxon Mobil.
Now, there are19 companies in the S&P 500 that are worth more than Tesla. One of them is the CNN owned AT&T. Tesla’s worth is more than PayPal — a company that was formed from the merger of another payments company co-founded by Elon Musk.
While Tesla is not consistently profitable enough to join the S&P 500, it may be closing in on that milestone.
Meanwhile, optimism about electric vehicles is not limited to Tesla.
Shares of electric truck maker Nikola have skyrocketed since the company went public in June through a merger with an existing publicly-traded blank check company.
Nikola is now worth nearly $25 billion, surpassing Ford.
While the stock of electric battery maker Workhorse, which has a stake in private startup Lordstown Motors, has doubled in just the past week.