Friday, March 29

Tesla’s Second Largest Shareholder Acquires Stake in Rival Nio

The second largest shareholder of Elon Musk’s Tesla called Baillie Gifford has now acquired 11.44 percent stake in Chinese electric vehicle automaker Nio which is Tesla’s rival.

The company disclosed that it had purchased 85.3 million shares, which were valued at about $515 million as of the close of trading Monday.

Baillie Gifford is the largest outside shareholder of Tesla stock. CEO Elon Musk, Tesla’s largest shareholder, own about 20 percent of the company. The filing pushed shares of Nio to close at $7.39, up from its opening of $6.19 this morning.

Nio wants to become the Tesla of China and beyond. The company has operations in the U.S., U.K. and Germany, although it only sells its ES8 vehicle in China. Those tariffs, plus other costs like shipping Tesla vehicles overseas, is pushing the U.S. automaker to accelerate its China factory plans.