<-
Back to all articles
Tesla, Startup Mafias
The Tesla Mafia - $40bn raised, 10 countries
Feb 16, 2024
When Tesla was founded in 2003, no one could imagine what it would be 10 - 20 years down the line. Cut to today, the company has seen it all – from its legendary bull run in the stock market to its founder, Elon Musk, becoming the richest person in the world.
What’s also intriguing is the level of talent that Musk has been able to cultivate. Many of them, who have risen to executive levels, have left to build their own ventures. These ventures have now collectively raised a staggering $40+ Billion. These folks are now being labeled as the ‘Tesla Mafia’.
Sweden based Northvolt, which is a battery developer and manufacturer, specializing in lithium-ion technology for electric vehicles, sits on top of the cartel with over $13.8B in funding.
Other unicorns from the group include Lucid Motors, Redwood Materials, Aurora and Proterra.
All the founders seen here have been involved in either a founding role or C-suite level positions.
Clean Energy and eMobility have been two of the most favorable sectors, accounting for 23% and 18% respectively of all the startups that are a part of the Tesla Mafia, closely followed by Software Development.
Out of the 66 companies that are a part of the club, 50 are based out of the US. Canada, China and the UK, collectively rank a distant second with 3 companies each.
Sonnen, a global pioneer in energy storage technology, outpaces the others by over 150% in terms of Year over Year headcount growth. Given the fact that every company featured here, has over 100 employees each, is what makes the numbers stand out even more!
Over 21 founders (close to 1/3rd) of the Tesla Mafia went to Stanford University, followed by Harvard and MIT.
The Tesla Mafia has been one of the biggest success stories in the startup circuit. If the Paypal Mafia was the pioneer, then the Tesla Mafia is the one taking the ‘mafia’ legacy forward.
About the data
The data seen above is from Crustdata - the most accurate AI powered alternative data platform for private growth stage investors and sales leaders. It indexes billions of public data points on companies every week to provide an edge over the private market.
