Tesla, Inc., the world’s largest all-electric car company, is also a clean energy company that acquired SolarCity, a well-established company in the solar industry. Tesla is popularly known for its luxury electric cars and of course, its CEO and co-founder, Elon Musk. However, do you know that Tesla is not founded by Musk initially? Musk is the fourth member to join Tesla Motors, which is now known as Tesla. Well, this can lead to a question – who owns Tesla, right? Okay, this article briefs you on the answer!
Let us see who owns Tesla quickly. Before that let’s have a look at its history.
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History of Tesla
Tesla is an American all-electric car and clean energy company that sells electric cars, trucks, batteries, solar products, etc, and offers related services. Elon Musk, Martin Eberhard, Marc Tarpenning, Ian Wright and J.B. Straubel are named as co-founders of Tesla.
The company was initially named Tesla Motors (named after Nikola Tesla). It was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in July 2003. They both financed the company and played active roles in developing the company. In February 2004, a few months after Ian Wright had joined the company, they took it to the public and raised US$7.5 million in Series A funding.
Want to know how Tesla makes money? Read Tesla business model here.
Elon Musk contributed $6.5 million in the funding and became chairman of the board of directors. Eberhard became CEO and in May 2004, J.B Straubel joined the company. In 2009, a lawsuit settlement was agreed to by Eberhard and the company allowing all five members to call themselves co-founders.
Tesla’s Roadster has become tremendously popular. Musk was actively involved in product design, electronics module and other styling activities more than daily business operations. He received Global Green 2006 product design and 2007 Index Design awards for designing Tesla Roadster.
Tesla was in the game with the mission to produce mass-market electric vehicles. The charismatic entrepreneur, businessman and co-founder of many successful companies including Tesla always made sure that the company’s long-term goals are never compromised. However, they started with a premium sports car targeting early adopters, green planet lovers and then they moved to create sedans and affordable compacts.
The company plays well majorly in the US, Europe and China and it reported rapid growth in China in recent years.
Musk was responsible for adding Valor Equity Partner, Technology partners, dominant entrepreneurs such as Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Skoll, and many others who are co-founders and president of Google, eBay and other companies.
Thus, Tesla raised $13 million in February 2006, Series B funding $40 million in May 2006 in the third round of funding and more than $100 million in May 2008, fourth-round through private financing.
Okay, enough said! Now let’s get into the actual topic of this article – who owns Tesla. Shall we?
Who Owns Tesla?
Tesla, which is ranked as the world’s best-selling plugin and battery electric passenger vehicle manufacturer in 2019 is owned by Elon Musk.
The company’s market share is 17% of the plug-in segment and 23% of the battery-electric segment.
As mentioned above, there are many successful investors for Tesla. Yet, the majority of shares are owned by Elon Musk, the co-founder and CEO of the company.
Elon Musk, who is known for co-founding innovative companies such as X.Com, SpaceX, Neuralink, The Boring Company, PayPal etc., is also known for controversies. He didn’t stop innovating though. He had to step down to CEO of the company from the board of directors position after he was sued by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for the false tweet stating he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla at $420 a share.
Read: Business Model of SpaceX – How does SpaceX Make Money
Also Read: Business Model of PayPal
Despite this, he holds the major shares of the company. He owns over 20% of Tesla’s shares that are worth over $60 billion.
His income is growing along with the company’s revenue as Tesla posted a net income of $331 million for the fifth time in the row.
Thus Elon Musk’s net worth is soaring higher than ever before making him the 31st richest person with around $25 billion net worth.
In fact, Musk owns shares almost equal to combined shares of the next big four investors which is around 23%. Therefore, he is the largest shareholder of Tesla among both individuals and investment institutions.
The Other Largest Shareholders of Tesla
Susquehanna Securities: This is a part of Susquehanna International Group, a global quantitative trading company. It holds around 12.1 million shares that is almost 6.6% of outstanding shares of Tesla. It is the second-largest shareholder of Tesla.
Baillie Gifford & Co.: The company that belongs to Scottish investment management company owns 12.1 million shares of Tesla, 6.5% of all outstanding shares.
Capital World Investors: An investment management branch of Capital Group stands fourth among the largest investors of Tesla. It holds over 10.7 million shares of the company, nearly 5.8% of outstanding shares.
Citadel Securities LLC: The fifth-largest shareholder that owns nearly 7.9 million shares accounting for 4.3% of all outstanding shares.
The combined shares of these four shareholders result in 23% which is almost nearer to Musk’s shares (about 20%).
Bottom Line
So, thus by holding the majority of shares, about 20% of all outstanding shares of the company, Elon Musk has become the largest shareholder of Tesla. Besides, he is the CEO and product design architect of the company leading the design and styling departments.
