The electric carmaker has struggled with quality issues as it has scaled from making tens of thousand cars a year to 500,000 in 2020.
Every carmaker is trying to figure out how to make the leap before governments force it and Tesla and other start-ups lure away drivers.
The company benefited from a jump in sales of electric cars in China and Europe, but its fourth quarter earnings fell short of Wall Street’s expectations.
Tesla’s transformation from a company that lost large sums of money every year has been made possible in large part by rising sales in China and Europe.
The pandemic dampened sales for all automakers in the spring and summer, and Tesla’s plant in Fremont, Calif., was idled from late March until the middle of May.
Rivian, which has raised another $2.65 billion, plans to sell a pickup truck and S.U.V. it has worked on for more than a decade.
Traditional automakers have struggled to sell electric cars. That could change as Ford, Volkswagen and others introduce new models.
Mr. Musk’s net worth was $188.5 billion at 10:15 a.m. in New York on Thursday, $1.5 billion more than taht of Jeff Bezos.
The milestone seemed unreachable just three years ago and comes as Tesla has seen a string of profitable quarters and a buoyant stock.
As Tesla completes a factory in Berlin, Mercedes-Benz and Audi are introducing electric cars in bids to defend their dominance of the luxury market.