What it does: Tesla designs and manufactures electric cars, battery energy storage from home to grid-scale, solar panels and solar roof tiles, and related products and services.
Mission: Tesla’s mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.
Size and presence: Tesla is present on 3 continents having more than 10,000 employees.
Best known for: With global temperatures rising, the faster we free ourselves from fossil fuel reliance and achieve a zero-emission future, the better.
The good bits: Very nice people working in a fast-paced environment.
The not-so-good bits: Occasionally intense work hours.
The company was incorporated as Tesla Motors, Inc. on July 1, 2003, by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Eberhard and Tarpenning served as CEO and CFO, respectively. Eberhard said he wanted to build "a car manufacturer that is also a technology company", with its core technologies as "the battery, the computer software, and the proprietary motor".
Ian Wright was Tesla's third employee, joining a few months later. In February 2004, the company raised $7.5 million in series A funding, including $6.5 million from Elon Musk, who had received $100 million from the sale of his interest in PayPal two years earlier. Musk became the chairman of the board of directors and the largest shareholder of Tesla. J. B. Straubel joined Tesla in May 2004 as a chief technical officer.
A lawsuit settlement agreed to by Eberhard and Tesla in September 2009 allows all five – Eberhard, Tarpenning, Wright, Musk, and Straubel – to call themselves co-founders.
The company was incorporated as Tesla Motors, Inc. on July 1, 2003, by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Eberhard and Tarpenning served as CEO and CFO, respectively. Eberhard said he wanted to build "a car manufacturer that is also a technology company", with its core technologies as "the battery, the computer software, and the proprietary motor".
Ian Wright was Tesla's third employee, joining a few months later. In February 2004, the company raised $7.5 million in series A funding, including $6.5 million from Elon Musk, who had received $100 million from the sale of his interest in PayPal two years earlier. Musk became the chairman of the board of directors and the largest shareholder of Tesla. J. B. Straubel joined Tesla in May 2004 as a chief technical officer.
A lawsuit settlement agreed to by Eberhard and Tesla in September 2009 allows all five – Eberhard, Tarpenning, Wright, Musk, and Straubel – to call themselves co-founders.
Tesla opened its first "Gigafactory" outside the United States in Shanghai, China, in 2019. Giga Shanghai was the first automobile factory in China fully owned by a foreign company and was built in less than 6 months. The following year Tesla also started construction on a new Gigafactory near Berlin, Germany, and another in Texas, United States. In March 2020, Tesla began deliveries of its fifth vehicle model, the Model Y crossover.
On January 10, 2020, Tesla reached a market capitalization of $86 billion, breaking the record for the greatest valuation of any American automaker. On June 10, 2020, Tesla's market capitalization surpassed those of BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen combined. The next month, Tesla reached a valuation of $206 billion, surpassing Toyota's $202 billion to become the world's most valuable automaker by market capitalization. On August 31, 2020, following this increase in value, Tesla had a 5-for-1 stock split.
From July 2019 to June 2020, Tesla reported four profitable quarters in a row for the first time, which made it eligible for inclusion in the S&P 500. Tesla was added to the index on December 21, 2020.[ It was the largest company ever added, and the sixth-largest company in the index at the time of its inclusion. As investors tried to buy more shares as a result of this inclusion, some analysts, such as J.P. Morgan's Ryan Brinkman, suggested investors exercise caution as Tesla was "dramatically" overvalued. Throughout 2020, the share price of Tesla increased 740%, and on January 26, 2021, its market capitalization reached $848 billion, more than the next nine largest automakers combined and making it the 5th most valuable company in the US.
From 2015 to 2020, Tesla went on an acquisition spree, buying a handful of little-known companies: Riviera Tool, Grohmann Engineering, Perbix, Compass Automation, Hibar Systems, and German ATW Automation to advance Tesla's expertise in automation, along with Maxwell Technologies and SilLion to add to Tesla's abilities in battery technology. Grohmann (renamed Tesla Grohmann Automation) and Maxwell would continue to operate as subsidiary companies, while the rest would be merged into Tesla. In July 2021, Musk acknowledged that Tesla had sold Maxwell to the former VP of sales for Maxwell.
In January 2020, Tesla donated 5 million Yuan ($723,000) to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention to fight the COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China.
In October 2020, Tesla told Electrek that they had dissolved their public relations (PR) department (except for a few PR managers representing Tesla's European and Asian markets), becoming the first automaker to do so.
Tesla hit its goal of building a half-million cars in 2020. The company ended the year with over $19 billion of cash, compared to $6.3 billion at the end of 2019.
In February 2021, Tesla revealed that it had invested some $1.5 billion in bitcoin in 2020 and on March 24 the company started accepting bitcoin as a form of payment for vehicle purchases in the United States and stated that they would introduce bitcoin payment in other countries later that year. At the time, Musk tweeted that "Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as Bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency." It was later revealed in financial documents that between January 1 and March 31, 2021, Tesla had made a $101 million profit on the sale of bitcoin. After 49 days of accepting the digital currency, the company reversed course on May 12, 2021, saying they would no longer take bitcoin due to concerns that "mining" the cryptocurrency was contributing to the consumption of fossil fuels and climate change. The decision resulted in the price of bitcoin dropping around 12% on May 13. During a July bitcoin conference, Musk suggested Tesla could help bitcoin miners switch to renewable energy in the future and also stated at the same conference that if bitcoin mining reaches, and trends above 50 percent renewable energy usage, "Tesla would resume accepting bitcoin." The bitcoin price rose after this announcement.
After earlier disputes with California officials over COVID-19 restrictions, on December 1, 2021, Tesla moved its headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to its Gigafactory in Austin, Texas. However, Musk stated that Tesla would continue to operate its Fremont factory in the San Francisco Bay Area, and will continue to expand in California. In September 2021, Tesla broke ground on a new battery factory in Lathrop, California, and signed a lease in October 2021 for additional office space in Palo Alto.
Also in October 2021, Tesla's market capitalization reached $1 trillion, the sixth company to do so in U.S. history, on news that car rental company Hertz had placed an order for 100,000 Tesla vehicles for its fleet.
On April 7, 2022, Tesla celebrated the public opening of the Giga Texas facility with its Cyber Rodeo event attended by an estimated 15,000 invitees.
We’ve replaced corporate hierarchy and bureaucratic conventions with open communication and a collaborative working environment. By promoting a safe, innovative, and inclusive culture, anyone with the talent, energy, and focus to solve hard problems has a seat at the table.
It doesn’t matter where you come from, where you went to school, or what industry you’re in—if you’ve done exceptional work, join us to rethink the future of sustainable energy and manufacturing.
We offer several opportunities to find your community at Tesla with Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). Creating space to connect over shared interests and goals, our ERG network supports a diverse, inclusive workplace.
We provide employees and their families benefits like medical, dental, vision coverage, 401(k), and generous paid time off from day one. With flexible scheduling, fitness resources, and stock benefits for everyone, we invest in team members to help them do their best work.
Tesla considers the needs of the local community by taking part in different philanthropic activities. The organization supports community programs and also contributes part of its profit to charity (Dibble, 2018, 56). ‘The norms of charity create pools of resources to support social entrepreneurs, many of whom are also motivated by the same compassionate impulses that drive charity in the first place” (Dees 2012). Tesla engages in social entrepreneurship to address the community’s environmental and social needs. There are three social entrepreneurship theories. The first principle holds that organizations should have a clear environmental and social mission. Secondly, the firm should generate optimal income through trade. Thirdly, a significant part of the profit needs to be reinvested in social missions. Therefore, philanthropic activities boost the local economy and sustainable development.