Jim Simons' RenTech first bet on Elon Musk's Tesla a decade ago - and the fund once held a stake worth $12 billion today

• Jim Simons' quant fund, Renaissance Technologies, first bet on Elon Musk's Tesla as early as 2013.

• It bought a split-adjusted 2.7 million shares, worth $19 million then and over $500 million now.

• RenTech's stake peaked at 59 million shares in 2019, worth $12 billion at Tesla's stock price today.

Renaissance Technologies first invested in Tesla a decade ago, and its stake has whipsawed in value from under $400,000 to $1.6 billion since then, a Markets Insider analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission filings shows.

RenTech was founded by Jim Simons, a former NSA codebreaker and MIT math professor. It relies on algorithms to decide most of its trades, and ranks among the biggest and best-performing hedge funds in history.

The quantitative fund took an interest in Tesla as early as the second quarter of 2013, or about three years after Elon Musk's car company went public, filings show. It initially purchased 178,000 shares, or 2.7 million after adjusting for Tesla's 5-for-1 stock split in 2020 and its 3-for-1 stock split last August.

The electric-vehicle maker's stock price has surged by about 28 times since then, from a split-adjusted $7 to $198 as of Friday's close. RenTech's original position would be worth over $500 million today, compared with just $19 million when it was first purchased.