Tesla’s stock is likely to triple from its current valuation, making the electric car company’s CEO Elon Musk the first trillionaire.
American-Canadian venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya told CNBC Thursday that Tesla’s stock could be worth three times its current levels. As a result, Tesla’s chief executive Elon Musk could be the world’s first trillionaire.
During an interview with CNBC on Thursday, Palihapitiya told investors “don’t sell a share” of Tesla. He urged investors to get behind entrepreneurs like Musk who aren’t willing to bend to short-term profits, and are leaving no stone unturned in a bid to make the world a better place.
“I don’t understand why people are so focused on selling things that work,” the Social Capital CEO said. “When things are working, you’re paid to stay with people that know what they’re doing. And this is a guy who has consistently been one of the most important entrepreneurs in the world. And so why bet against him?”
Musk surpassed Jeff Bezos as the world’s richest person on Thursday. Tesla shares increased as much as 69.9 percent to $808.69, shooting up the net worth of its founder to about $186 billion. Musk’s wealth stem from his stakes of nearly 20 percent in Tesla and 48 percent in SpaceX and 57 million exercisable Tesla stock options, according to Bloomberg.
“I tweeted this a while ago that I thought the world’s first trillionaire would be a person fighting climate change,” Palihapitiya said. “It very well could be Elon. But if it’s not him, it’ll be somebody like him. It will be because of this: Delivering clean energy, allowing the world to be sustainable, is an incredibly important thing that will be rewarded by markets and individuals.”
Palihapitiya said the power-utility business ripe for disruption and that there were “trillions of dollars of bonds, of CAPEX, of value sitting inside the energy-generation infrastructure.” To double and triple again, Tesla will need to harness those. Palihapitiya’s CNBC interview aired shortly after Tesla RBC upgraded the EV maker to sector perform from underperform, increasing its price target to $700 from $339.
“There is no graceful way to put this other than to say we got TSLA’s stock completely wrong,” RBC said Thursday. Watch this space for the latest business news.
