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Tesla becomes world’s most valuable “automaker”, but the story goes well beyond cars

(Credit: Tesla)

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Tesla has officially become the world’s most valuable automaker, surpassing Toyota Motor Corporation on Wednesday morning. However, Tesla is much more than an automaker, and its success has a lot to do with its other sustainable projects.

Tesla now holds an over $185 billion market capitalization, meaning the total value of all of the automaker’s shares of stock is worth more than any other carmaker on Earth. Toyota now sits in second place, with its $178 billion market cap.

Interestingly enough, Tesla’s solidification as the most valuable carmaker is eye-opening simply because the company does so much more than build sustainable vehicles. Tesla has become a leader in energy storage and solar solutions, something that no other carmaker in the world can say. While car companies continue to chase after Tesla’s industry-leading efficiency and technology, its focus remains on accelerating sustainability as a whole, and not just through vehicle manufacturing.

https://twitter.com/ElonsWorld/status/1270712021357658114

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At the time of writing, Tesla shares were trading a few dollars above the $1,000 per share mark. At that price, the market cap stands at $185.10 billion.

Tesla overtook German automaker Volkswagen for the second-most valuable carmaker label in February. Volkswagen currently sits in third with an $85.53 billion market cap.

TSLA stock has continued to rise amid rising production rates and sales figures in China, the world’s largest automotive market. However, developments in battery technology and rumors of an upcoming million-mile capable battery pack have helped the electric automaker’s stock price soar in the past months.

On the energy front, Tesla has ramped its Solar Roof to a 4 MW per week production rate. The company indicated in the Q1 2020 Update Letter that this is enough for 1,000 homes. The implementation of rental and subscription services has also helped the company’s solar initiatives be affordable for more people.

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On the morning of June 10, TSLA stock officially crossed the $1,000 per share threshold for the first time after rumors of a production push of the company’s Semi circulated. The talks, which were confirmed by company CEO Elon Musk, indicated production volumes would no longer be limited. The Semi was geared for initial deliveries in 2021, but Musk has decided to ramp up the manufacturing of the company’s commercial vehicle.

Meanwhile, Model 3 continues to dominate in nearly every country it is available. The car was the best selling electric vehicle in China in May, selling over 11,000 units during the month. In the United States, the Model 3 was the most popular vehicle in California through the first quarter of 2020.

After Tesla managed to reopen its vehicle production facility in Fremont, California, following the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has ramped up production of the Model Y, which has become the company’s main focus for the coming months.

Tesla is also looking to increase its production rate by opening up a series of new manufacturing facilities across the globe. Not only will the company open a new U.S.-based factory in the Central United States. Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Austin, Texas, are the two finalists for the new factory, with a decision expected to be made within the coming months.

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Additionally, the company’s foreign presence is being ramped up. Not only is Giga Shanghai’s Model Y facility, known as Phase 2A, coming along in a timely fashion, but Tesla’s construction crews also recently broke ground on Giga Berlin in Germany. Tesla plans to manufacture half-a-million vehicles a year in Germany, and rumors have even suggested another European production plant will be built somewhere in the United Kingdom.

Tesla is riding a wave of momentum that has taken it from a small, likely unsuccessful car startup that was plagued with issues in 2008, to the most valuable automaker in the world in 2020. Not only has Tesla established itself as the leader in American EV manufacturing, but the company has launched itself into an international powerhouse that has combined electric mobility with sustainable energy solutions to become an international sensation.

Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Elon Musk

Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO

SpaceX has secured an option to acquire Cursor AI for $60 billion ahead of its historic IPO.

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SpaceX announced today it has struck a deal with AI coding startup Cursor, securing the option to acquire the company outright for $60 billion later this year, while committing $10 billion for joint development work in the interim. The announcement described the partnership as building “the world’s best coding and knowledge work AI,” and comes just days after Cursor was separately reported to be raising $2 billion at a valuation above $50 billion.

The move makes strategic sense given where each company currently stands. Cursor currently pays retail prices to Anthropic and OpenAI to the same companies competing directly against it with Claude Code and Codex. That means every dollar of revenue Cursor earns partially funds its own competition. With SpaceX bringing computational infrastructure to the Cursor platform, that could reduce Cursor’s dependence on OpenAI and Anthropic’s Claude AI as its providers. Access to SpaceX’s Colossus supercomputer, with compute equivalent to one million Nvidia H100 chips, gives Cursor the infrastructure to run and train its own models at a scale it could never afford independently. That one change restructures the entire unit economics of the business.

Elon Musk teases crazy outlook for xAI against its competitors

Cursor’s $2 billion in annualized revenue and enterprise reach across more than half of Fortune 500 companies gives SpaceX something its xAI subsidiary currently lacks, which is a proven, fast-growing software business with real enterprise distribution.

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For Cursor, SpaceX’s $10 billion in joint development funding is transformational. Cursor raised $3.3 billion across all of 2025 to reach that $2 billion in revenue. A single $10 billion commitment from SpaceX, even as a development payment rather than an acquisition, dwarfs everything Cursor has raised in its entire existence. That capital accelerates product development, enterprise sales infrastructure, and proprietary model training simultaneously.

The timing is deliberate. SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC on April 1, 2026, targeting a June listing at a $1.75 trillion valuation, in what would be the largest public offering in history. The company is expected to begin its roadshow the week of June 8, with Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley serving as underwriters. Adding Cursor to the portfolio before that roadshow gives IPO investors a concrete enterprise software revenue story to price in, alongside rockets and satellite internet.

The deal also addresses a weakness that became visible after February’s xAI merger. Several xAI co-founders departed following that acquisition, and SpaceX had already hired two Cursor engineers, signaling where its AI talent strategy was heading. Cursor, for its part, faces a pricing disadvantage competing against Anthropic’s Claude Code.

Whether SpaceX exercises the full acquisition option before its IPO or after remains the open question. Either way, this deal reshapes what investors will be buying into when SpaceX goes public.

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Elon Musk

Tesla Supercharger for Business exposes jaw-dropping ROI gap between best and worst locations

Tesla’s new Supercharger for Business calculator reveals an eye-opening all-in cost and location-based ROI projections.

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tesla v4 supercharger

Tesla has launched an online calculator for its Supercharger for Business program, giving property owners their first transparent look at what it really costs to install Superchargers on site and what kind of return they can expect.

The program itself launched in September 2025, allowing businesses to purchase and operate Supercharger hardware on their own property while Tesla handles installation, maintenance, software, and 24/7 driver support. As Teslarati reported at launch, hosts also get their logo placed on the chargers and their location integrated into Tesla’s in-car navigation, meaning drivers are actively routed there. The stalls are open to all EVs, not just Teslas.


The new online calculator, announced by Tesla on Wednesday with the note that “simplicity and transparency” have been a problem in the industry, lets any business enter a U.S. address and get a real cost and revenue model. A standard 8-stall V4 Supercharger site runs approximately $500,000 in hardware and $55,000 per post for installation, bringing an all-in price just shy of $1 million. Tesla charges a flat $0.10 per kWh fee to cover software, billing, and network operations. Businesses set their own retail price and keep the margin above that fee.

Tesla expands its branded ‘For Business’ Superchargers

 

Taking a look at Tesla’s Supercharger for Business online calculator, we can see that ROI is not uniform, and the gap between a strong location and a poor one can stretch the breakeven point by several years.

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The biggest driver is foot traffic and how long people stay. A busy rest station, hotel, or outlet mall brings in repeat visitors who need to charge while they’re already stopped, pushing utilization numbers higher and shortening payback time.

Tesla Supercharger for Business ROI calculator

Tesla Supercharger for Business ROI calculator

Local electricity rates matter just as much on the cost side. Markets like California carry some of the highest commercial electricity rates in the country, which eats into the margin between what a host pays per kWh and what they charge drivers. At the same time, dense urban areas with high EV adoption tend to support higher retail charging prices, which can offset that cost if demand is strong enough. Weather also plays a role. Cold climates reduce battery efficiency and increase charging frequency, but they can also suppress utilization in winter months if drivers avoid stopping in exposed outdoor locations. Suburban and rural sites face a different problem: lower baseline EV traffic, which means a site with cheaper power and lower operating costs can still take longer to pay back simply because the stalls sit idle more often. Tesla’s calculator uses real fleet data to pre-fill utilization estimates by ZIP code, so businesses can run their specific address against these variables rather than relying on averages.

The program has seen real adoption. Wawa, already the largest host of Tesla Superchargers with over 2,100 stalls across 223 locations, opened its first fully owned and branded site in Alachua, Florida earlier this year. Francis Energy of Oklahoma and the city of Alpharetta, Georgia have also deployed branded stations through the program, as Teslarati covered in January.

Tesla now exceeds 80,000 Supercharger stalls worldwide, and the calculator makes the economic case for accelerating that number through private investment rather than company-owned sites alone.

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Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet

Tesla’s folding V4 Supercharger ships 33% more per truck, cuts deployment time and cost significantly.

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Tesla is rolling out a folding V4 Supercharger design, an engineering change that allows 33% more units to fit on a single delivery truck, cuts deployment time in half, and reduces overall installation cost by roughly 20%.

The folding mechanism addresses one of the least glamorous but most consequential bottlenecks in charging infrastructure: getting hardware from factory floor to job site efficiently. By collapsing the form factor for transit and unfolding into an operational configuration on arrival, the new design dramatically reduces the logistics overhead that has historically slowed Supercharger rollouts, particularly at large or remote sites where multiple units are needed simultaneously.

The timing aligns with a broader acceleration in Tesla’s network strategy. In March 2026, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet after more than seven years and 15,000 units, pivoting entirely to V4 cabinet production. The V4 cabinet itself is already a generational leap, delivering up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, while supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. The folding transport innovation layers logistical efficiency on top of that technical foundation.

Tesla launches first ‘true’ East Coast V4 Supercharger: here’s what that means

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Tesla Charging’s Director Max de Zegher, commenting on the V4 cabinet when it launched, captured the operational philosophy behind these changes: “Posts can peak up to 500kW for cars, but we need less than 1MW across 8 posts to deliver maximum power to cars 99% of the time.” The design philosophy has always been about maximizing real-world throughput, not just peak specs, and the folding transport upgrade extends that thinking into the supply chain itself.

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