Goldman Sachs more than doubled its stake in Tesla during the first quarter, taking its holdings to the highest level since it first invested in the electric carmaker in 2013, according to its latest 13F filing with the SEC.
The investment bank held 26.59 million shares by the end of March, a 123% increase from the 11.92 million shares it held at the end of 2024. After buying 14.67 million shares earlier this year and based on Tuesday’s closing price, the position is valued at nearly $9 billion.
Between January and March, Goldman Sachs sold all of its 5,227,900 call options and all of its 10,848,200 put options.
With several fluctuations over the past decade, the New York-based group had previously registered its largest stake in the second quarter of 2024, when it held over 20 million shares.
Goldman Sachs also doubled its position in the U.S. EV maker Rivian by 158.7%, holding over 11.7 million shares, which were valued at more than $60 million. The firm increased its stake by 88% in Lucid Motors, closing the first quarter with over 5.44 million shares valued at over $13 million.
Regarding Chinese EV makers, the bank sold nearly 2.4 million Nio shares during the first quarter of the year, cutting its position by 57%. As of the end of March, the firm held 1,220,696 XPeng shares, down 16.5% from the previous quarter.
Goldman Sachs raised its stake in Geely-backed Polestar by 12.3% to 528,893 shares, while halving its Zeekr holdings from 58,502 to 29,303 shares. The group bought its first shares in the last quarter of 2024, a few months after the company went public in May.
Last week, Geely Holding Group — which owns 65.7% of Zeekr — announced its intent to privatize the carmaker by acquiring the company’s publicly traded shares listed in both Hong Kong and New York.
Institutional Ownership
As of Wednesday, Tesla has 5,047 institutional shareholders holding a total of 1,750,000,781 shares — according to data from Fintel.
Vanguard is the company’s largest institutional investor with 246,887,705 shares (14.1% of the total), which were valued at $63.98 billion by the end of March.
The fund group is also Lucid’s largest institutional shareholder, with nearly 11 million shares in the U.S. brand, and Rivian‘s largest owner after Amazon, holding nearly 77.1 million shares.
BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, follows with over 205.67 million shares in the Elon Musk-led company, valued at $53.3 billion.
In a new research note published on Tuesday, Goldman Sachs’ analyst Mark Delaney stated that “the level of technology and cost improvement that Tesla can achieve with FSD (…) will be key for its longer-term economics related to autonomy.”
The analyst reiterated Tesla‘s Neutral stock rating, reaffirming the $235 price target on the shares. Based on Tuesday’s closing price at $334, the price target implies a downside of 29.7%.
As of the time of writing, Tesla is trading 2.3% higher on Wednesday’s pre-market session, at $341. Over the past twelve months, the stock nearly doubled its value, posting a 92% growth.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Financial Times reported that Tesla’s board is considering new compensation arrangements for CEO Elon Musk, as uncertainty grows over the status of his voided $56 billion pay package.
