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Elon Musk’s net worth attacked by VT Senator Bernie Sanders
Elon Musk is the richest man in the world with an estimated net worth of over $200 billion. Bernie Sanders, a long-time United States Senator from Vermont, isn’t too pleased about it.
Sanders, a Progressive Independent politician who has run for President on multiple occasions, has been vocal regarding the “issue” of billionaires and having the wealthy business people of the world pay their fair share. With Musk gaining a considerable amount of money in 2020 thanks to Tesla’s unbelievable stock run, he became the subject of a Bernie Sanders rant on Facebook, where the Senator highlighted the growth in the Tesla CEO’s net worth while the U.S. minimum wage has stayed the same.
“Wealth of Elon Musk on March 18, 2020: $24.5 billion
Wealth of Elon Musk on January 9, 2021: $209 billion,” the Senator wrote.
“U.S. minimum wage in 2009: $7.25 an hour
U.S. minimum wage in 2021: $7.25 an hour.
Our job: Raise the minimum wage to at least $15, tax the rich & create an economy for all.”
Musk’s net worth has been attacked by Sanders in the past. In August, Sanders proposed that Musk pay a one-time $27.5 billion tax, which would eliminate 60% of the Tesla CEO’s net worth gain during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was apart of Bernie’s “Americans for Tax Fairness and Institute for Policy,” and Musk wasn’t a fan of it.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2020
Musk, who gained the “World’s Richest Person” title last week, does not collect a salary from Tesla and his net worth comes from his 20.8% holding in the electric automaker, which makes him the majority shareholder. The company has gained over 700% in its valuation since last year, mostly because of increased sales figures and its ability to scale production while combating demand, which is as high as its ever been. While many CEOs with a massive net worth spend their dollars on big houses, fast cars, and ritzy vacations, Musk has spent the last year trying to figure out how to make EVs reach price parity with gas cars, while figuring out manufacturing bottlenecks and trying to build a new battery in-house, which will increase energy and range of Tesla’s cars.
In fact, the work rarely stops for Musk. After finding out that he was the world’s richest person, he was relatively unphased. “Back to work,” he said to @TeslaOwnersSV, who notified Musk of his new title.
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Musk also doesn’t own any houses in his company’s home state of California. He sold them all after stating that his possessions weigh him down and his full focus would be turned toward getting humans to Mars.
Despite Musk’s desire to combat climate issues and cut dependence on fossil fuels, he is still the subject of attack from American socialists who are looking for economic equality for all Americans. The question is, where does that money come from? Sanders believes the rich should pay their fair share. But Musk’s net worth is tied up in his massive holdings of TSLA stock, which would force him to dilute his shares and would likely cost him his title as majority stakeholder.
Sanders’ plan to increase the minimum wage has arguments both ways. However, Musk has been a repeated target of Bernie’s because of his net worth. This is just the most recent example.
What do you think? Leave a comment down below. Got a tip? Email us at tips@teslarati.com or reach out to me at joey@teslarati.com.Â
Investor's Corner
Tesla crushes Wall Street expectations, beats delivery estimates by over 15 percent
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) beat Wall Street expectations of 406,000 vehicles delivered in Q2 by reporting 480,126 deliveries for the three months ending in June.
Tesla reported it delivered 467,762Â Model 3 and Model Y units, while 12,364 Model S, Model X, and Cybertrucks switched hands during the quarter. The Model S and Model X were officially sunset this past quarter and will no longer be part of the company’s Production & Delivery reports moving forward.
🚨 BREAKING: Tesla delivered 480,126 vehicles in Q2, ANNIHILATING Wall Street expectations of 406,000. Production was reported at 451,758.
Deliveries:
Model 3/Y: 467,762
Other Models: 12,364Production:
Model 3/Y: 442,936
Other Models: 8,822 https://t.co/TTHwQAsKt8 pic.twitter.com/7qI4Zj6FE5— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 2, 2026
The quarter is a pleasant surprise and a good rebound from Q1, when Tesla slightly missed the Wall Street consensus of 365,645 cars by reporting 358,023 deliveries for the first three motnhs of the year.
Energy storage deployments also provided some strength in Tesla’s delivery report, hitting 13.5 GWh for Q2. This is a particular division of Tesla’s business that has been overwhelmingly robust over the past few years, truly being a strong point of the company’s overall model.
For the year, Tesla analysts still predict deliveries to trend in the 1.69 million unit region, a modest 3 to 5 percent increase from the 1.64 million cars the company delivered last year. Tesla will likely return to more sequential and noticeable year-over-year growth as the Cybercab project starts to ramp up considerably in the next few years.
Tesla has some other potential catalysts to spur vehicle deliveries, too. Not only is it expecting Cybercab to truly start making a change in the next few years, but other vehicles could be entering the company’s lineup.
Tesla sends production Cybercab with no steering wheel, pedals to on-road testing
The slightly longer Model Y L has been a highly speculated release candidate in the U.S. It has already done incredibly well in China, and U.S. buyers have been wanting slightly more interior space than the Model Y. Now that the Model X is gone, it is more needed than ever.
Q2 highlights a pretty stable automotive division within Tesla, and no true concerns arise from these figures, especially considering it managed to beat expectations convincingly.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted a photo of himself standing with the Optimus production team inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, arms crossed amid workers in hard hats and safety vests. The image captures a pivotal industrial shift: the same facility space once dedicated to building Tesla’s flagship Model S sedan and Model X SUV is now home to the company’s humanoid robot manufacturing line.
Walking the Optimus production line in Fremont pic.twitter.com/ABS0tuRibW
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2026
Tesla’s Fremont Factory, acquired in 2010 from the former NUMMI joint venture between Toyota and GM, has been the company’s original U.S. manufacturing hub since Model S production began in 2012.
The Model X followed soon thereafter. These premium vehicles offered lower annual volumes, recently around 30,000 combined, compared to the high-volume Model 3 and Model Y lines that continue around the site. Over their combined run, the S and X accounted for roughly 610,000 units.
In late January 2026, during Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings call, Elon Musk announced the end of Model S and Model X production in Q2 2026. The final vehicles rolled off the line in early May. Rather than retooling for another vehicle, Tesla chose to convert the dedicated S/X assembly area into a dedicated Optimus Gen 3 production line.
Model 3 and Y manufacturing remains unaffected. Tesla’s official Fremont Factory page now lists Optimus alongside the 3 and Y as core products.
The conversion was executed with remarkable speed. After production stopped, crews dismantled the existing vehicle line and installed entirely new modular equipment—including lines sourced from Germany and dozens of sub-lines for actuators, batteries, and other components—in roughly four months.
Musk described the timeline as “insanely fast,” noting it would be unprecedented for any other manufacturer. Initial Optimus output is expected to ramp slowly due to the robot’s roughly 10,000 unique parts and the brand-new production processes involved. The Fremont line targets an eventual capacity of 1 million Optimus units per year.
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Optimus Development Timeline
- August 19, 2021: Optimus (then called Tesla Bot) formally announced at Tesla’s first AI Day. A concept video showed a person in a suit demonstrating the vision for a general-purpose humanoid capable of dangerous, repetitive, or boring tasks using the same AI architecture as Full Self-Driving.
- 2022: Early prototypes displayed. At the second AI Day in September, semi-functional units demonstrated walking across a stage and basic arm movements
- 2023: September videos showed improved capabilities, including sorting colored blocks, precise limb awareness, and holding a Yoda pose.
- 2024-early 2025: Factory integration videos showed Optimus navigating workspaces and handling objects like battery cells.
- January 2026: Gen 3 mass-production activities began at Fremont, with reports of over 1,000 Gen 3 units already operating inside the factory for real-world learning and AI training
- April 2026: Musk confirms Optimus production on converted Fremont line would begin in late July or August 2026. The Gen 3 reveal, originally eyed for Q1, was pushed closer to production start. A second, much larger Optimus factory at Giga Texas is under construction, with volume production targeted for Summer 2027 and long-term capacity of 10 million units annually
- July 1, 2026: Musk’s on-site visit and team photo confirm the Optimus line is operational and the transition is actively progressing
Tesla positions Optimus as potentially its largest project ever, leveraging vertical integration, AI expertise, and car-like manufacturing know-how to scale humanoid robots first for its own factories and later for broader industrial and consumer use.
The Fremont conversion serves as a critical proving ground for this ambitious new chapter in Tesla’s already-rich history.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.
In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.
In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:
“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”
This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.
The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.
The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.
This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.
Tesla crushes Wall Street expectations, beats delivery estimates by over 15 percent
Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress
