Tesla's IPO was 15 years ago The stock is up almost 300-fold

• Tesla debuted on the Nasdaq 15 years ago, at a time when its only car available for sale was the Roadster.
• The IPO price of $17 is equal to a split-adjusted price of $1.13 today. The stock closed on Friday at $323.63, an almost 300-fold increase.
• A $10,000 investment in Tesla at the time of its 2010 IPO would now be worth almost $3 million.

• At the time ofTeslasIPO 15 years ago, the company had generated roughly $150 million in revenue in its lifetime. That came almost entirely from the Roadster, a two-seat electric sportscar that boasted a range of 236 miles on a single charge.

  The Model S sedan was still in the lab, two years away from hitting the market.

  The Model S, which is planned to compete in the premium vehicle market, is intended to have a significantly broader customer base than the Tesla Roadster, the company said in itsIPO filing, ahead of its planned$226 million offering.

  A bet on Tesla, which debuted on the Nasdaq on June 29, 2010, was a wager on CEOElon Musksability to develop a roster of mass-market electric cars and scale an automaker far away from the Detroit auto hub, focusing instead on Silicon Valley, home to much of the worlds top tech talent.

  Musk didnt start Tesla, but he invested early, served as chairman and took over as CEO in October 2008, after leading a board revolt against founding CEO and inventor Martin Eberhard early that year.

  An investor who put $10,000 into Teslas stock at the time of the companys IPO and held onto all those shares would now own a stake worth close to $3 million. A similar investment at the time in the SP 500 would have resulted in holdings worth about $57,000.

  Far removed from its days as an experimental clean-tech startup led by a member of thePayPalmafia, Tesla is now the eighth most-valuable publicly traded U.S. company, with a market cap of over $1 trillion after nearly hitting $100 billion in revenue last year.
  

• But for the 54-year-old Musk (his birthday was Saturday), now the worlds wealthiest person, thats the past. Hes told investors that the reason to buy and own Tesla stock from here has almost nothing to do with selling cars to consumers.

  If somebody doesnt believeTeslas going to solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company, Musksaidon an earnings call in April of last year. He added, We will, and we are.

  Two months after that, Musk said his companys Optimus humanoid robots that he hopes some day will perform like R2-D2 and C-3PO in Star Wars, could some day lift Teslas market cap to$25 trillion.

  Musk, who last year characterized himself as pathologically optimistic, has said he expects thousands of Optimus robots to be working in Tesla factories by the end of 2025, and that the company will begin selling the robot next year.

  As for autonomy, Tesla currently lags behindAlphabetsWaymo, which is operating public robotaxi services in several U.S. markets, andBaidusApollo Go in China. Teslas Robotaxijust launcheda very limited pilot service in Austin, Texas, earlier this month, and said Friday it had completed its first driverless delivery of a new car to a customer.

  While Tesla still has its share of fanatics and a largely bullish slate of analysts, Wall Street is skeptical of Musks futuristic promises or sees them asbaked into the stock price. The stock isdownabout 20% this year, badly underperforming major U.S. indexes and trailing all of its megacap tech peers.Apple, down 19.7% for the year, is the only one close.

  Earlier in June, Teslasvice president of Optimus robotics,Milan Kovac, said hes leaving the company after a nine-year tenure, and Musk more recently firedOmead Afshar, the automakers vice president of manufacturing and operations.

  Meanwhile, Tesla EV sales have beensluggishin 2025, with automotive revenue suffering a second straight year-over-year decline in the first quarter due to an aging lineup and bustling competition, especially from lower-cost Chinese manufacturers.

  New Tesla sales in Europe fell for a fifth straight month in May, according todatafrom the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, or ACEA, and Teslas newest model, the Cybertruck, has failed to gain significant traction in the U.S. after a series of recalls.

  Hovering over Teslas business is the unpredictability of Musk.

  Long glorified for his business success through PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, brain tech startup Neuralink and artificial intelligence company xAI, among other pursuits Musk asserted himself in the political realm last year, when he endorsedDonald Trumpfor president and subsequently injected nearly $300 million into his campaign and related Republican causes.

• Musk spent the first few months of 2025 spearheading President Trumps Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), slashing the size of the federal government and stripping resources from regulatory agencies, including those tasked with oversight of his companies.

  But his pivot to politics came at a cost, at least in the short term.

  Musks vocal and financial support of Trump, endorsement of Germanys far-right AfD party and extended string of charged and divisive remarks and gestures, including on his social network X and in press appearances, has been correlated with declines in Teslas reputation, and a drop in his overallfavorability, according to polling data.

  Unless Tesla can come up with a whole range of new products that will really excite consumers, and unless they can mitigate some of the antagonism caused by their leader, they will be seen as past their peak and will begin to go down, David Haigh, CEO of research and consulting firm Brand Finance, said in January.

  Brand Financesdatashowed that the value ofTeslasbrand fell by 26% in 2024, a second straight annual decline. That was before Musks time working in the second Trump administration.

  Musks official tenure in Washington, D.C., ended earlier in June, just as his relationship with the president was souring. Shares ofTeslafell 14% on June 5, as President Trump threatened to pull governmentcontractsforMusks companies, escalating a war of words over the presidentsspending bill.

  Musk temporarily slowed his posting about politics on social media after that, and appeared to focus more on promoting his businesses. But this weekend he resumed attacking portions of the bill that would hamper solar and renewable energy companies, including Tesla.

  Whether Musk is now focused enough to solve Teslas problems and, even if he is, whether thats a big catalyst for the company, is very much up in the air.

  Musk and Tesla didnt respond to a request for comment.

  Tesla investors have learned that volatility is a big part of the story, and has been since the companys stock market debut. On more than 40 occasions in the past 15 years, Teslas stock has gained or lost at least 20% in a single month.

  Here are the three best and worst months for the stock and what happened to cause these hefty moves:
  

  May 2013

  In Teslas best month on record, the stock jumped 81%. The company for the first time reported aquarterly profit, albeit a very narrow one. It didnt mark a sudden turn to profitability, as Tesla continued to lose money until 2018. But sales of Model S cars topped estimates as did revenue from zero emission vehicle (ZEV) credits, which have long been a boon for the company and have sometimes been the difference between a quarter ending in the red or the black.

  August 2020

  Following a big dip in the early days of the Covid pandemic, Teslas stock began an historic rally, leading to an eightfold increase in the stock in 2020, by far its best year on record. Its single best month that year was August, when the share price jumped 74%. Model 3 sales were accelerating rapidly, but much of the momentum was tied to buzz that the company could soon enter the SP 500,and apandemic market boom,when retail investors poured into meme stocks, cryptocurrencies and FOMO (fear of missing out) assets. Teslas big announcement in August 2020 was afive-for-one stock split, with the share price having soared well past $1,000. Tesla would split its stockagainin 2022.

  November 2010

  Teslas 62% rally in its fifth full month as a public company was as much a sign of early volatility as anything else. The next month, the company would lose almost a quarter of its value, wiping out most of those gains. Teslas cash position at the end of 2010 was precarious enough that the companywarnedit may need to raise more money in the future, particularly if there are delays in the launch of the Model S. On Nov. 9, 2010, Teslareporteda 31% drop in year-over-year revenue to $31.2 million and a net loss of $35 million. A week earlier, the company saidPanasonic had invested $30 millionin Tesla through a private placement.

• December 2022

  Teslas steepest monthly slump on record was a 37% decline towrap up 2022, which was the worst year for the Nasdaq since the 2008 financial crisis. The company faced a production halt at its Shanghai facility, which was dealing with a fresh onslaught of Covid cases. Musk had beenselling Tesla stockin big chunks to fund his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, which he later renamed X.

  Musk said on Twitter Spaces on Dec. 22 that he wouldnt be selling any stock for 18 to 24 months. In a debate with a Tesla shareholder, he pinned Teslas declining share price on Federal Reserve rate hikes, writing that people will increasingly move their money out of stocks into cash, thus causing stocks to drop. The distraction of the Twitter deal weighed on Tesla shares, and Muskalso frustrated some shareholders by borrowing personnel from the Tesla Autopilot team to work on his social media companys technology.

  February 2025

  What was supposed to be a honeymoon period for Tesla, thanks to Trumps return to the White House, turned into a massive selloff, with the stock plummeting 28% in February. In itsearnings reportin late January, Tesla said automotive revenue sank 8% from a year earlier and the company reported a 23% drop in operating income. Tesla cited reduced average selling prices across its Model 3, Model Y, Model S and Model X lines as a major reason for the decline. Investors also worried about impendingtariffson goods and materials coming from Canada and Mexico, where some of its key suppliers are based. With Musk ramping up his political rhetoric, new vehicle registrations dropped in Europe,plummeting in Germanyby around 60% in January from a year earlier.

  January 2024

  The beginning of 2024 was almost as bad for Tesla, with the stock tumbling 25% to open the year. The company reported revenue and profit for thefourth quarterthat trailed estimates, partly because of steep price cuts around the world. Tesla warned thatvolume growth in 2024 may be notably lower than in 2023, and cautioned investors that it was currently between two major growth waves.
  

  There were countless other monumental moments for Tesla along the way and, had Musk gotten his wish in 2018, the IPO anniversary may have never taken place.

  Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured, Musk infamously tweetedin August of that year. Teslas stock trading was initially halted and shares were volatile for weeks. A take-private never occurred.

  The SEC investigated andchargedMusk with civil securities fraud as a result of the tweets. Tesla and Musk struck a revised settlement agreement in 2019 over those charges. The agreement forced Musk to temporarily relinquish his role as chairman of the Tesla board, a position thats now held by Robyn Denholm.