(Reuters) - Shares of Tesla Inc jumped as much as 5.6% on Friday, pushing the electric-car maker's market capitalization to more than $800 billion for the first time ever and inching closer to the trillion dollar club.
Tesla's stratospheric rally has helped Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk surpass Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN)'s top boss Jeff Bezos to become the world's richest man, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.
At today's session high, Musk's 21% stake in the automaker as per Forbes contributes more than $170 billion to his net worth, dwarfing the combined market capitalization of General Motors (NYSE:GM), Ford Motor (NYSE:F) Co and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, the three Detroit automakers.
In the previous session, Tesla's market value crossed $774 billion, making it Wall Street's fifth most valuable company, just behind Google-parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc and ahead of social media giant Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB).
The company's fortunes is an anomaly as the 17-year-old automaker has production that is just a fraction of large rivals by sales such as Toyota Motor, Volkswagen (DE:VOWG_p) and General Motors.