Tesla shares kept rally in premarket trading after hitting all time high on Tuesday.
Almost a year after achieving its last closing high, Tesla's stock finally surpassed that mark on Tuesday.
The stock's Tuesday close of $489.88 was its first record since December 17, 2024, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Shares also traded above $490 for the first time on an intraday basis, touching as high as $491.50 during the session.
The new milestone highlights how the Tesla narrative has played out in the past year. In late 2024, investors were trading on optimism that Tesla $(TSLA)$ CEO Elon Musk's "bromance" with President Donald Trump would pay off for the company. But the relationship quickly soured, and Tesla sales suffered due to the increasing politicization of the business.
By February, anti-Tesla protests in the U.S. and abroad had started to gain steam as critics expressed their outrage over Musk's relationship with Trump and with far-right leaders in Europe. That, combined with slower sales in China, put the company on pace for an annual sales decline and brought the stock to as low as $221.86 per share in early April.
But the stock has stormed back as Tesla has advanced its plans for artificial intelligence and robotics. It also helps that investors approved an ambitious compensation plan that ties Musk to the company for at least a decade, and also that Musk's SpaceX is planning to go public.
The latest gains come after Musk confirmed Tesla has started tests that will allow it to use fully autonomous vehicles in Austin, Texas, where it operates a ride-hailing service. The company currently has employees supervise all trips made by vehicles equipped with its advanced driver-assistance system.
"Unsupervised is pretty much solved at this point," Musk said at a recent event hosted by his xAI startup, which Tesla may invest in. "So there will be Tesla robotaxis operating in Austin with no one in them."
Musk has said that will happen by the end of December. Tesla also aims to increase the size of its fleet and expand operations to several additional cities in Florida, Nevada, Arizona and Texas by the end of the month. However, time is running out to achieve those goals, and Tesla still hasn't applied for the necessary permits in at least one of those states.
Tesla supporters are upbeat. Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives, a major Tesla bull, said Monday that Tesla's AI and robotics plans could propel the company to a valuation as high as $3 trillion by the end of 2026.
The company is currently worth $1.63 trillion and on Tuesday topped Broadcom $(AVGO)$ to become the seventh-largest U.S. company by market capitalization, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The company hasn't held that position since late May.
With Tesla's rise, the seven largest U.S. companies are, for the first time since May 29, all members of the group of megacap tech stocks known as the "Magnificent Seven."
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