The daily business briefing: October 26, 2021

Tesla becomes the first trillion-dollar automaker, Facebook reports higher profits as it faces fallout over leaked documents, and more

Tesla
Tesla
(Image credit: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

1. Tesla's market cap hits $1 trillion for 1st time

Tesla shares jumped by nearly 13 percent on Monday, vaulting the electric-car maker's market capitalization above $1 trillion for the first time. The spike followed car rental company Hertz's announcement that it planned to buy 100,000 Tesla cars by the end of 2022. After the purchase, electric vehicles will make up 20 percent of the Hertz fleet worldwide. Tesla shares, which bottomed out below $100 in the early days of the pandemic, settled above $1,000 for the first time, closing at $1,024.86. Tesla, the world's first trillion-dollar automaker, is now worth more than General Motors, Toyota Motor, Ford, Volkswagen, BMW, Honda, and several other automakers combined. The surge appeared to surprise Tesla CEO Elon Musk. "Strange that moved valuation," he said via Twitter, "as Tesla is very much a production ramp problem, not a demand problem."

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.