[basch]

It is worth $1T in the sense that people have said "this team looks like the best team to give $1T to to build cars."

Sure, everyone is investing to make money and extract it later, but its also a bet that they will be a player for a while, are more efficient at using the cash then their competitors, can scale better. At the end of the day it is capital allocation, and the market has decided this team is the best team to handle the task. (Or it is a true bubble, where everybody doesnt want to miss out, but I think its some of the former too. Ford and GM are legacy businesses that have legacy overhead.)

[robjan]

$1TN is just the last price multiplied by the number of shares. The amount Tesla raised was just however much they earned from the original sale of stocks.

[basch]

Tesla can buy other companies with it's stock.

Facebook's stock is basically Mark's personal currency.

I understand that buying stock isn't straight up giving a company cash, but by pumping up its value, the shares the company is in control of are worth more. I also totally get how thinking people are this altruistic with investing is naive, and it's probably just fomo and short squeezes in a death spiral.