Tesla confirms several acquisitions worth $96 million

Despite several reports of acquisitions, Tesla had only confirmed the acquisition of Maxwell Technologies so far this year, but the electric automaker is confirming several more acquisitions worth $96 million.

Over the last few years, Tesla made only a few acquisitions — most notably SolarCity, but reports indicated that the automaker went on an acquisition spree in 2019.

However, the company only confirmed a single acquisition this year: Maxwell Technologies, a battery technology company and ultracapacitor manufacturer.

In its newly released 10-Q SEC filing, Tesla has now confirmed “various acquisitions” other than Maxwell during the last nine months.

The automaker confirmed that it paid a total of $96 million for these acquisitions:

During the nine months ended September 30, 2019, we completed various other acquisitions generally for the related technology and workforce. Total consideration for these acquisitions was $96 million, of which $80 million was paid in cash.

It’s the first time that Tesla acknowledged the acquisitions of other companies than Maxwell this year.

We previously reported that Tesla acquired “Hibar Systems,” a small Canadian engineering company specializing in battery manufacturing equipment, and AI startup DeepScale.

Tesla doesn’t confirm the name or any details about acquired companies.

However, they did confirm that they issued 67,526 shares to 13 former shareholders of one of the companies:

On September 16, 2019, we issued an aggregate of 67,526 shares of restricted common stock to 13 former shareholders of an acquired subsidiary.

Based on Tesla’s last closing price, those shares are worth over $22 million.

Electrek’s Take

It confirms that Hibar and Deepscale were relatively small acquisitions for Tesla.

Deepscale appears to be mostly what some people call “acqui-hire,” and the people who join Tesla probably got a bunch of shares.

As for Maxwell, which was a $207 million acquisition, and Hibar, which had to be less than $96 million, I think those two acquisitions combined is a somewhat inexpensive way to supercharge their now obvious move into manufacturing their own battery cells.

Again, we expect to hear more about Tesla’s effort to invest heavily into its own battery cell production in the next few months.