Investor's Corner
Tesla celebrates its 10-year IPO anniversary: A look back at TSLA’s storied decade
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) recently celebrated its 10th year anniversary at the stock market. Since the company held its initial public offering, TSLA stock has been on a massive bull run, earning its investors about 45% a year on average. That’s quite impressive, especially for a company that entered one of the most competitive industries in the market using vehicles that were once thought of as nothing but glorified golf carts.
Tesla held its IPO on June 29, 2010. During the time, Tesla was in need of funding, and its entrance into the stock market provided the company with a much needed boost to get its rhythm going. Tesla’s IPO was priced at $17, which valued the company at about $1.7 billion. Since then, TSLA stock has aggressively risen, with the company breaching the $1,000 per share barrier this month.
Overall, steep swings due to its trademark volatility aside, Tesla stock has earned investors 5,677% over the past decade. That’s an average of about 45% per year, quite an achievement for a company that is ranked among the world’s automakers.
Today, Tesla is valued only second to Toyota in the car industry. Of course, Toyota far outsells the much smaller Tesla, with the Japanese auto giant selling about 9 million vehicles each year with sales of about $234 billion. Tesla, on the other hand, sold over 360,000 vehicles last year with about $26 billion in sales. But these numbers alone miss the big picture.
A look at Tesla’s pace of growth over the decade shows a company that is expanding fast. Back in 2010, Tesla sales came in at less than $120 million and it was built on the back of the original Roadster, a small sports car that was priced beyond $100,000 per unit. Over the past ten years, these sales numbers are up by a factor of more than 200, as per Barron’s. Toyota, on the other round, has grown too, but nowhere near as much, with the Japanese automaker’s sales coming in at about $200 billion in 2010.
This is not to say that Tesla has not met challenges over the past decade, of course. Electric cars are a hard sell to begin with, and the negative sentiments surrounding the vehicles themselves were prominent, from the long tailpipe myth to range anxiety. Tesla was able to address these largely with the Model S, its first vehicle that was designed from the ground up. The Model S was well-reviewed, at one point even being dubbed as the 2013 MotorTrend Car of the Year.
If there is something that Tesla has shown, it would be foresight. Even if it only had the Model S, the company already began setting up a Supercharger Network that would allow its vehicles to charge their batteries quickly and conveniently. This allowed Tesla owners to conduct long trips without much issue, something that was rarely possible with previous electric cars.
The company also established a Gigafactory in Nevada in anticipation of the arrival of the Model 3, its first mass market car. The idea of a mammoth factory that only produces electric car batteries and powertrains seemed like a questionable idea then, and it was met by critics’ vocal opposition, but it ultimately paid off as the Model 3 hit its stride in the United States and in other countries.
Tesla today is at a very different place compared to where it was when it debuted in the stock market. Today, Tesla stands as the gold standard of EVs, and its always-connected, tech-driven vehicles are now being emulated by the world’s largest automakers such as Volkswagen. Elon Musk has always stated that Tesla’s goal is to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy, and so far, the company appears to be doing just that. Ultimately, Tesla has done the near impossible: it was able to disrupt the auto market.
Tesla shares are up more than 130% year to date as of the company’s 10-year IPO anniversary yesterday, surpassing comparable returns of the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
As of writing, Tesla stock is up 1.43% at $1,023.77 per share.
Disclosure: I have no ownership in shares of TSLA and have no plans to initiate any positions within 72 hours.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets tip of the hat from major Wall Street firm on self-driving prowess
“Tesla is at the forefront of autonomous driving, supported by a camera-only approach that is technically harder but much cheaper than the multi-sensor systems widely used in the industry. This strategy should allow Tesla to scale more profitably compared to Robotaxi competitors, helped by a growing data engine from its existing fleet,” BoA wrote.
Tesla received a tip of the hat from major Wall Street firm Bank of America on Wednesday, as it reinitiated coverage on Tesla shares with a bullish stance that comes with a ‘Buy’ rating and a $460 price target.
In a new note that marks a sharp reversal from its neutral position earlier in 2025, the bank declared Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology the “leading consumer autonomy solution.”
Analysts highlighted Tesla’s camera-only architecture, known as Tesla Vision, as a strategic masterstroke. While technically more challenging than the multi-sensor setups favored by rivals, the vision-based approach is dramatically cheaper to produce and maintain.
This cost edge, combined with Tesla’s rapidly expanding real-world data engine, positions the company to scale robotaxis far more profitably than competitors, BofA argues in the new note:
“Tesla is at the forefront of autonomous driving, supported by a camera-only approach that is technically harder but much cheaper than the multi-sensor systems widely used in the industry. This strategy should allow Tesla to scale more profitably compared to Robotaxi competitors, helped by a growing data engine from its existing fleet.”
The bank now attributes roughly 52% of Tesla’s total valuation to its Robotaxi ambitions. It also flagged meaningful upside from the Optimus humanoid robot program and the fast-growing energy storage business, suggesting the auto segment’s recent headwinds, including expired incentives, are being eclipsed by these higher-margin opportunities.
Tesla’s own data underscores exactly why Wall Street is waking up to FSD’s potential. According to Tesla’s official safety reporting page, the FSD Supervised fleet has now surpassed 8.4 billion cumulative miles driven.
Tesla FSD (Supervised) fleet passes 8.4 billion cumulative miles
That total ballooned from just 6 million miles in 2021 to 80 million in 2022, 670 million in 2023, 2.25 billion in 2024, and a staggering 4.25 billion in 2025 alone. In the first 50 days of 2026, owners added another 1 billion miles — averaging more than 20 million miles per day.
This avalanche of real-world, camera-captured footage, much of it on complex city streets, gives Tesla an unmatched training dataset. Every mile feeds its neural networks, accelerating improvement cycles that lidar-dependent rivals simply cannot match at scale.
Tesla owners themselves will tell you the suite gets better with every release, bringing new features and improvements to its self-driving project.
The $460 target implies roughly 15 percent upside from recent trading levels around $400. While regulatory and safety hurdles remain, BofA’s endorsement signals growing institutional conviction that Tesla’s data advantage is not hype; it’s a tangible moat already delivering billions of miles of proof.
Elon Musk
SpaceX IPO could push Elon Musk’s net worth past $1 trillion: Polymarket
The estimates were shared by the official Polymarket Money account on social media platform X.
Recent projections have outlined how a potential $1.75 trillion SpaceX IPO could generate historic returns for early investors. The projections suggest the offering would not only become the largest IPO in history but could also result in unprecedented windfalls for some of the company’s key investors.
The estimates were shared by the official Polymarket Money account on social media platform X.
As noted in a Polymarket Money analysis, Elon Musk invested $100 million into SpaceX in 2002 and currently owns approximately 42% of the company. At a $1.75 trillion valuation following SpaceX’s potential $1.75 trillion IPO, that stake would be worth roughly $735 billion.
Such a figure would dramatically expand Musk’s net worth. When combined with his holdings in Tesla Inc. and other ventures, a public debut at that level could position him as the world’s first trillionaire, depending on market conditions at the time of listing.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index currently lists Elon Musk with a net worth of $666 billion, though a notable portion of this is tied to his TSLA stock. Tesla currently holds a market cap of $1.51 trillion, and Elon Musk’s currently holds about 13% to 15% of the company’s outstanding common stock.
Founders Fund, co-founded by Peter Thiel, invested $20 million in SpaceX in 2008. Polymarket Money estimates the firm owns between 1.5% and 3% of the private space company. At a $1.75 trillion valuation, that range would translate to approximately $26.25 billion to $52.5 billion in value.
That return would represent one of the most significant venture capital outcomes in modern Silicon Valley history, with a growth of 131,150% to 262,400%.
Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, invested $900 million into SpaceX in 2015 and is estimated to hold between 6% and 7% of the private space firm. At the projected IPO valuation, that stake could be worth between $105 billion and $122.5 billion. That’s a growth of 11,566% to 14,455%.
Other major backers highlighted in the post include Fidelity Investments, Baillie Gifford, Valor Equity Partners, Bank of America, and Andreessen Horowitz, each potentially sitting on multibillion-dollar gains.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk hints Tesla investors will be rewarded heavily
“Hold onto your Tesla stock. It’s going to be worth a lot, I think. That’s my bet,” Musk said.
Elon Musk recently hinted that he believes Tesla investors will be rewarded heavily if they continue to hold onto their shares, and he reiterated that in a new interview that the company released on its social accounts this week.
Musk is one of the most successful CEOs in the modern era and has mammothed competitors on the Forbes Net Worth List over the past year as his holdings in his various companies have continued to swell.
Tesla investors, especially those who have been holding shares for several years, have also felt substantial gains in their portfolios. Over the past five years, the stock is up over 78 percent. Since February 2019, nearly seven years ago to the day, the stock is up over 1,800 percent.
Musk said in the interview:
“Hold onto your Tesla stock. It’s going to be worth a lot, I think. That’s my bet.”
Elon Musk in new interview: “Hold on to your $TSLA stock. It’s going to be worth a lot, I think. That’s my bet.” pic.twitter.com/cucirBuhq0
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) February 26, 2026
It’s no secret Musk has been extremely bullish on his own companies, but Tesla in particular, because it is publicly traded.
However, the company has so many amazing projects that have an opportunity to revolutionize their respective industries. There is certainly a path to major growth on Wall Street for Tesla through its various future projects, including Optimus, Cybercab, Semi, and Unsupervised FSD.
- Optimus (Tesla’s humanoid robot): Musk has discussed its potential for tasks like childcare, walking dogs, or assisting elderly parents, positioning it as a massive long-term driver of company value.
- Cybercab (Tesla’s robotaxi/autonomous ride-hailing vehicle): a fully autonomous vehicle geared specifically for Tesla’s ride-sharing ambitions.
- Semi (Tesla’s electric truck, with mentions of expansion, like in Europe): brings Tesla into the commercial logistics sector.
- Unsupervised FSD (Full Self-Driving software achieving full autonomy without human supervision): turns every Tesla owner’s vehicle into a fully-autonomous vehicle upon release
These projects specifically are some of the highest-growth pillars Tesla has ever attempted to develop, especially in Musk’s eyes, as he has said Optimus will be the best-selling product of all-time.
Many analysts agree, but the bullish ones, like Cathie Wood of ARK Invest, are perhaps the one who believes Tesla has incredible potential on Wall Street, predicting a $2,600 price target for 2030, but this is not even including Optimus.
She told Bloomberg last March that she believes that the project will present a potential additive if Tesla can scale faster than anticipated.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.2.2.5 might be the most confusing release ever
Tesla gets tip of the hat from major Wall Street firm on self-driving prowess
